And he kissed me again.
That’s what we did for seconds, or minutes, or hours. Until the beating started.
Boom, boom, boom.
“Dylan!” a voice called from outside.
Boom, boom, boom.
Not a heart from the grave. Not a heartbeat at all. Brian was pounding on the front door.
And now Dylan was asking me to wait again. The room was buzzing. Vibrating. Even Dylan seemed to sense it, because his eyes darted into the upper corners of the room. I turned around and jabbed my finger at his chest. “You were there,” I said.
He stared at me, unblinking.
My brain tried to make sense of it. He was there. But then he wasn’t. Brian was there. And now Brian was dead. But the mark on my shoulder was exactly where Dylan had grabbed me that night. Like the memory wanted to make itself known. I was stuck in that back alley with Dylan, with his hand, reaching for me. The moment replaying each night, over and over and over again, until it had become something more than a memory. I just hadn’t known it.
“I just want to know,” Dylan said. “I want to know why. Because I don’t understand.” He swallowed and his mouth hung open a little, and he looked so empty.
Don’t tell.
It was whispered through the room, with the buzz, riding the vibration, bouncing back and forth across the room, off the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Dylan was watching me, watching the room. “Did you hear that?” I whispered.
“Hear what?”
“Don’t tell,” I said.
Dylan froze. One hand still on my shoulder, his skin the color of ash. He didn’t move.
“I think,” I said, “I think he’s here.” I shook my head. Hard. Because I understood that it wasn’t the soul of Brian in the room with me. That I wasn’t haunted by him. I was haunted by an elusive memory. I was trying to remember, but I couldn’t. “I think he told me not to tell.”
Dylan shook his head, at least I think he shook his head, but he might have just had a chill instead. “No,” he said. And then he pulled his hand away and backed into the wall. “No,” he said. “I did.”
Brian had been shouting in the rain. “Mallory!” he’d screamed. “Open this goddamn door.” The door smacked against the frame, but the deadbolt held. “I know he’s in there. I saw you guys. I saw you.”
Dylan had backed away from me. “Shit,” he said. “Shit, shit, shit.” He cowered, like maybe Brian could see through the walls or something. “He’s drunk,” he added.
“So are you,” I said, which had nothing to do with the situation at all.
“Yeah, but I’m not . . . like that . . . when I’m drunk.”
“Dylan, you little shit, I know you can hear me! You fucking lay a hand on her and you’re dead. You hear me? You’re dead.”
Dylan scanned the room quickly, walked back through the kitchen, and silently turned the lock on the back door. He gently pulled the door open, put a finger to his lips, and said, “Don’t tell.”
He eased the door shut behind him.
And I was alone.
“You left me,” I said. “Why did you leave me?”
The whole room was pulsating, like my kitchen used to do. “Everything was fine,” he said. “When I left, everything was fine.”
“No, it wasn’t fine. Brian climbed in the goddamn window. He was looking for you, and he was yelling at me, and he was completely out of control.”
“He was drunk!” he yelled. “Couldn’t you just leave or something? Why did you have to kill him, Mallory?”
And with that, he raced across the room and got in my face like Brian had done that night. “Why did you do it? Why?”
I remembered racing into the kitchen, racing away from Brian, and looking at the back door. Looking for Dylan. Hoping he would see me and come back, hoping he would help me. And Brian was right behind me, practically breathing down my neck. But all I saw, out in the darkness, was the high gate, swinging open and closed with the wind.
Dylan was gone. And Brian said he wanted to kill him. And I was—
“Scared,” I said. “I was scared.” Dylan didn’t back up, so I added, “I’m still scared.”
He walked backward, out of the room, out the door, into the rain. And when I looked up to meet his face, I knew he’d left me alone that night for the very same reason: he was scared.
I ran after him and caught him when he was halfway to his car. “Dylan,” I yelled. The rain was so loud, I could barely hear myself even when I was yelling. He spun around, and I gripped the front of his shirt.
I had to say something, had to do something. But all I could do was hold onto his shirt, trying to bridge the gap. Remind him of something.
He peeled my hands from his shirt and held my arms down to my sides. He leaned forward over my shoulder and whispered three words into my ear, which I think I must have been waiting for.
“I hate you,” he said.
I felt it in my heart, all the way to my bones. Because he meant it all the way to my soul.
“You didn’t always,” I said. “I remember. Don’t you?”
I had my hands on the sides of his shirt again, like I could will him to remember somehow, and he had his hands gripped around my arms. I couldn’t tell whether he was pushing or pulling me, and we stayed like that, like he didn’t know what to do with me other than hate me. And I didn’t know how to make him remember. He must’ve felt something at some point that was something other than hate. But not now, because he was shaking.
Then I remembered he left me. He left me. And if he’d felt anything back then, really, he wouldn’t have done that.
He was just a boy I had liked because he smelled good in chemistry, and he smiled at me when I walked in the room, and I could feel him looking me up and down when I was leaning over the lab bench. And I couldn’t have him.
I was just a girl he didn’t want until he couldn’t have me. And it was the most tragic thing I could even imagine that someone was dead because of something so cliché. Because of us. Because of me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I was doing something halfway between crying and yelling, so it came out all cracked and angry and sad. “I’m sorry,” I said again.
“Don’t,” he said, prying my fingers off his clothing.
That night was a lot of people’s fault. It was Brian’s fault, it was Dylan’s fault, and it was my fault. I grabbed onto his shirt again. “I’m sorry,” I said again. “Please,” I added, “please.”
Dylan was still shaking, and he took these deliberate steps backward, like it was the hardest thing in the world. He got in the car, and I heard him yelling in rage, I heard him through the metal and the rain. No words, just noise. And then the engine turned over, and all I saw were his taillights.
I stood in the rain, watching him go, feeling this unbearable weight in the pit of my stomach.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “Please, I’m sorry.” But I wasn’t talking to Dylan anymore.
The only answer was the rain, washing away nothing.
“Mallory?” I turned and saw a figure standing in the rain against a car. Reid, frozen, like he didn’t know whether to stay or go, like he was trying to make sure it was really me.
I shook my head at him and stepped back toward the hotel room.
“Are you okay?”
I backed up again. Shook my head again. Imagined what Reid thought he was witnessing. Stepped away.
“What was that about? Who was that?” He was coming closer, now that he was sure it was me.
“Nothing. No one.” I watched the empty road, silently begging for something. Then I looked at Reid, who looked like he wanted so badly to understand.
Brian. Dylan. Jason.
“Mallory?” he asked again, like he wanted to give me the benefit of the doubt, like always. Like he wanted to believe.