Hate To Love You

It was so clear, like she knew exactly what she was saying, what she was doing.

She asked, “Your brother loves you. I can tell from the things I’ve heard. That’s nice. You’ve never had to feel like a burden to your family. I did. That’s how Cameron looked at me. Me and Shay. Cameron used to be so jealous of Shay. He liked him, but he hated him, too.” A soft laugh slipped from her.

It sent another wave of chills down my spine.

“I felt this camaraderie with Shay. He was all my brother thought about. He had to get the girls Shay got. He had to break the records Shay made. He had to get better grades than Shay. All these things.” Her head hung low. She was still hugging herself tightly. “It made it all confusing in my head. Things go round and round. You stop noticing what’s up or down, where the ground is. You just focus on what’s ahead of you.” She paused, lost in thought.

I edged backward, pressing against the closed door. I could run this way if I had to. Sprint for it.

“I came here because of Shay. I wanted to keep an eye on him for Cameron. If he did well, I wanted my brother to know. He could break Shay’s record at his school. That was the plan. Shay doesn’t know me, but I know him. I know him better than anybody.”

Her eyes found me again.

I felt sick to my stomach.

“I do know you, don’t I?”

She ignored my question. “I probably know him better than even you.”

My mouth was parched. I tried to talk, but nothing came out. A whisper then, “You’re a freshman?”

“Sophomore. I’m here because I couldn’t get a single in a regular sophomore dorm. No one wanted to room with me. The girl they assigned to me refused, so they put me back here. The RA knows about me, about my special circumstances.”

Her special circumstances?

That she was a psycho?

I tried again, my voice a little louder now, “What circumstances?”

“That I’m crazy.”

She said it as if it made total sense and I was the idiot for not acknowledging it.

My eyes shot to hers. “What?”

She rolled hers. “I’m angry at him because he’s only allowed my brother to be number two all his life. Cameron deserves to be number one. Then Sabrina entered the picture. Shay dated her, and I didn’t care. She didn’t know my brother. That changed one day.” Her eyes narrowed. Her face tilted to the side again, still watching me with the unnerving resolve. “It was the end of classes, and I begged my parents to make Cameron pick me up. He did, and Sabrina was there. We lived on the same dorm floor last year. She was walking out as he was walking in, and he did a double take. I think he fell in love that day with her.” Her gaze darkened, and her top lip curled up. “I knew it was my job to watch over them, and they were doing great . . . until she met you.” Her head lowered, but she never looked away from me. “She wants another chance with Shay, and as long as you’re here, as long as she keeps running into you, I know she can’t help herself. You’ll remind her what she didn’t have with him, and she’ll always yearn for a second shot.”

She snarled.

It hit me then. The library.

My eyes bulged out. “You were there, at the library.”

She pulled back, her eyes narrowing.

“Yes!” It came back then. “You were standing by the doors watching Shay. I saw you, and you saw me, and then you started reading like you hadn’t been watching him.”

I hadn’t cared, or noticed. I was avoiding Shay then. It was so long ago, but Shay found me. He walked right past her like she hadn’t been there at all and dragged me out to study for a quiz. I hadn’t looked for her again.

No—there was more.

I started remembering—the football game. She was there, too.

“You were there. The Dick Crushing moment.”

Missy’s words came to me. “Some girl stopped by the room and asked about you.”

“That was you. You went to my old dorm room, asking about me.”

Phoebe paused, her head tilting. Her eyes were so flat.

A chill went down my spine.

“You might not understand it, but you being here is a problem. You’ll bring him into her life again, and she’ll end up leaving my brother. Then my relationship with him will end, too. He’ll stop coming to see me. I can’t let that happen.”

I saw the two shadows again.

They’d been behind me before. They were in front of me this time.

They were coming, coming, getting bigger and bigger.

I couldn’t look away from her.

I barely glimpsed them before.

She became those two shadows.

And then hearing her last words, it was like seeing the bat appear for the first time again.

She said, “I’ve been racking my brain about how to handle you, and then I remembered that you were attacked.”

She started forward.

She said, “I need to finish what they started. That’s why you were brought here.”

She started for me—





No.

I knew what she was going to do in the back of my mind, but time turned off for me. It slowed. She was starting for me.

It didn’t matter.

An eerie calm came over me.

This was my make-up time. I was getting a second chance.

I wouldn’t be a victim this time. She was giving me that opportunity. She didn’t sneak up behind me. She was coming at me from the front.

I could fight back this time.

I would fight back. I felt the need to do this rising up in me.

“Hey!”

I stopped.

Time snapped back to reality.

That was Casey’s voice.

Phoebe stopped also, turning around. Both of my roommates were running toward us. They were in their pajamas. Kristina had grabbed a robe, but it flopped open, flying behind her like a cape.

Casey had a perpetual scowl on her face. She pointed at us. “What’s going on? That’s my roommate.”

Phoebe was a deer in headlights. She was right in front of me, a dumbstruck look on her face, and she gaped between us.

This whole thing was surreal.

Kristina was right next to Casey, our room phone in her hand. She was holding it up toward me. “Shay called. He said something was wrong.”

Phoebe was trapped.

I was standing in the only opened door. The other one was locked in place, and my roommates boxed her in. Her only way out was through us, or if the dorm room opened behind her. I doubted she could crawl through the window, and for what?

I said, “Just give it up.”

Beads of sweat formed on her forehead. She looked between my roommates and me.

Then, one by one, the doors all along the hallway started opening until the RA came out and the lights were switched on.

Our little triangle of four that had formed now doubled.

The resident advisor saw Phoebe, then me, and stopped in her tracks. She let out a sigh. “Oh, boy.”

Casey reeled to her. “Oh, boy? What does that mean?”

She ignored Casey, looking at me. “What happened?”

“Call security. She threatened me. She’s psycho because of Shay.”

“Me?” I could hear from the phone in Kristina’s hand.

She handed it over. “He’s on the phone. He said your phone cut out, and when he couldn’t get ahold of you, he called us. We called the cops.”