Crazy. I was crazy.
“Help!” I cried. And a door creaked open. And then another. Because I kept screaming for help. But nobody helped me. People crept along the path of bloody footprints, tracing it back to its source.
And I knew it was real when the screaming started.
There was too much screaming. So much. Until it didn’t even sound like screaming anymore. More like that ringing I’d hear in my ears when there was nothing making a sound at all.
People came. People in authority. The screaming around me turned to crying, and there were questions, but I couldn’t speak. I was still sitting, silently, in the middle of the hallway.
A name was being passed around, in whispers, underneath the crying, just out of earshot.
And then it reached me, the word. Jason, I heard. Jason Dorchester. Jason Dorchester. Jason Dorchester.
Then the cold hands came. Maybe the presence. Maybe a new one. Maybe something else.
Maybe this is how it ends. With a dead body and cold hands, reaching for me.
Chapter 15
There were fluorescent lights. Starchy sheets. White walls. And people in scrubs moving their mouths. My ears were ringing, then stopped. And then the voices came. Light off. Light on.
“Mallory.” A woman with wisps of red hair falling into her face was leaning over me. She turned her head to the side and said, “Run a full tox screen.” When she stepped back, I saw there were other types of uniforms in the room. The dark-blue kind, with gold shields. She cleared her throat and said, “You’ll have to wait your turn.”
A man started to protest but she raised her hand up, palm out. “First of all, we make sure she’s lucid. Second of all, and you should know this already, you wait for her parents.”
I started to feel sick, thinking of my parents. Then thinking of the cops. And then thinking of the body on the floor. Jason. So I didn’t even wince when the doctor slid a needle into the crook of my elbow, drawing the blood out.
I felt the pull as blood seeped out, drawing more along with it. Then she left, and I waited, alone.
Like before: I waited, I waited, I waited. I waited for hours, maybe even longer.
The door swung open and my parents barged in, the doctor with the red hair right behind them.
“What’s going on?” Mom asked. She ran to my bed and put a hand on my side. “I don’t understand. Is she hurt?” Then she turned to me. “Are you hurt?”
I stared back.
The doctor cleared her throat. “Your daughter was at the scene of a crime, and, apparently, she was unresponsive.”
“Unresponsive?” Dad said. “You mean unconscious?”
“No,” she said. “I mean unresponsive. She didn’t respond to verbal questions, and she didn’t seem to know where she was.” She held up the clipboard in her hand. “Tox screen results are back. Everything normal, except—did you take a sleeping aid?”
“Yes,” I said, which I guess was my first response since they brought me in.
“Okay, otherwise, she’s clean.”
I guess they couldn’t detect the orange fire I felt inside, like nerves twitching on overdrive.
My parents stared at me. Dad was looking back and forth between me and the doctor, like he was trying to put together the pieces to some puzzle. “I don’t think I understand,” he said. “Scene of a crime?”
The doctor looked toward the door and knocked twice, almost like she was asking to be let out. A man and a woman in police uniforms entered the room.
Mom sank into the seat beside the bed. “She’s okay?” Dad asked.
The doctor smiled stiffly. “According to this,” she said, jabbing a finger at her stack of papers. She left the room.
The two cops stood at the end of my bed. The woman licked her lips, like she was preparing to devour me. The man cleared his throat. “I’m Officer James, and this is Officer Dowle. Why don’t you start by telling us the events of last night.”
“I was sleeping,” I whispered.
Officer Dowle bounced a little on her toes, like she was ready to pounce. I kept my eyes on Officer James when he spoke again. “Okay, before that, then. What is the nature of your relationship with Jason Dorchester?”
“I have no relationship with Jason Dorchester.”
“You don’t know him?”
I sighed. “I know him.”
“Would you consider your encounters positive?”
“Not really,” I said, and I felt Mom tense beside me.
“Care to elaborate?”
“He doesn’t like me. Didn’t. Well, he did at first. I wasn’t interested, so now he hates me. Hated me. Hates me.” The dead can still hate, I was sure of it.
“Interesting,” said Officer Dowle, and I didn’t know whether she was talking about my story or my shift in tenses.
“Okay, so last night,” Officer James continued.
“I took a sleeping pill. Like every night.”
“And why,” Officer Dowle said, staring at my face, “do you take sleeping pills?”
“To sleep,” Dad cut in. The look he gave Officer Dowle made her look away.
She cleared her throat and raised her eyes back to Dad. “Yes, well, I assume I know the reason why.”
“Then you should also know that she wasn’t charged. It was self-defense.”
“Was this self-defense?” Officer Dowle asked, but she was still looking at Dad.
“I didn’t do it,” I said.
They stared each other down. Officer James cleared his throat. “Did you hear anything after that, Mallory?”
“No. Nothing. I was sleeping and when I woke up . . .” The ringing in my ears was back, and Mom gripped my arm.
I could barely hear Officer Dowle over the ringing. She leaned forward and placed her hand on my left leg through the sheet. “Sometimes when people take sleeping pills, they don’t really sleep. They think they do, but they don’t. They just don’t remember. My brother took a sleeping pill once. He got up for work the next morning, packed a lunch, got into a fender-bender on the way. But he didn’t remember any of it.” Then she placed her other hand on my right leg and said, “Do you think that could’ve happened to you?”
I thought about it. I thought about what I was capable of. My parents must’ve been thinking about it too. Because nobody said, Oh, Mallory wouldn’t do that, or Mallory’s not capable of that. Instead my father turned to me and said, “Don’t answer that.”
Officer Dowle squeezed my legs and grinned. They both turned to leave, and then Officer Dowle turned back. “Oh, I almost forgot. The knife. Any idea where it came from?”
The room seemed to hold its breath. I closed my eyes and said, “It’s mine.”
It was hard to explain why I’d have a knife without going into the reasons why I would want a knife. I told them someone stole it. And then I added, “My old roommate. Brianne Dalton. She knew I had it.” Then I repeated, “Brianne Dalton,” slowly, hoping someone would write it down. But nobody did. The cops weren’t buying it, I could tell. They took my fingerprints and left the room. Dad looked at me in that way where he’s asking a question without actually saying anything.
“I was scared,” I said, my voice breaking. “I thought I saw . . .” Dad shifted his eyes quickly to Mom.
“You thought you saw what?” she asked.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. “I thought I saw Brian’s mom.”
“No. No. That’s not possible,” she said.
“I know. That’s why I said I thought I saw instead of I saw. It was foggy, but I was—” And then I stopped talking because I wasn’t sure exactly what I was.
It sure seemed real. Just like the hand on my shoulder, which was definitely not real.