In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead

Chapter 31

Now

That’s where the record stopped, every time. Where it went utterly dark. That’s what Eric didn’t understand. Out the door, into the night, in control. Out the door, into the night, into the night. The next thing I knew, I was waking up on the floor, sunshine streaming through the windows, my hands and dress covered in blood. Dried in iron-scented rivulets. A record of pain written across my body like a warning in some dark language I didn’t understand.

What had I done?

The answer was buried in the black hole. For ten years, I’d known I’d blacked out something important that night, destroyed my memories with whiskey and drugs, truly my father’s daughter. And for ten years, I’d refused to look, been desperate not to touch the wound, still as raw now as it was then.

Except for once.

A year after we graduated, right after Mint dumped me and I’d transformed into the worst version of myself in the middle of a restaurant, I’d wondered: What, exactly, was I capable of? Who was I, really, underneath all the layers, when no one was watching? Where were my limits?

I went to a therapist. A fancy New York therapist, with the dark couch and the soothing, neutral-colored walls. Who was I, really? She said the answer was waiting in the dark spaces. She wanted to explore them, the moments when time fast-forwarded. I was a quilt made up of light and dark, she said. She told me to trust her.

It was a mistake. I told her about the night Heather died, what I’d done to the photographs, what I’d wanted to happen. I could see her careful mask slipping as she listened, could see the suspicion, mixed with intrigue, as her pencil scratched the surface of her notepad. She told me my blackout was like the black hole, a way to repress. She wanted to know what was inside it. But I couldn’t remember, hard as I tried. The dark was impenetrable.

So she hypnotized me. Like Orpheus bringing Eurydice out of the underworld, I followed the sound of her voice back to my dorm room on Valentine’s night. Saw the broken laptop, felt my pink dress hugging my hips, burned and burned with rage. But still, the memories wouldn’t surface. Still, the picture ended at out the door, into the night, in control.

We failed to uncover anything. I quit seeing her.

Then a week after our last session, I woke from a dream and knew I’d gone back, that I’d remembered; but now, awake, I’d lost the thread. The only thing that remained was a single conviction, dredged out of the dark: I’d done something unforgivable. Something wicked, to Heather. Something my mind was desperate to keep locked away.

So I did. Dedicated myself all over again, with renewed fervor, to being perfect Jessica Miller, a wild success, every surface calm and beautiful. A woman who was unassailable. I needed everyone at Homecoming, all my classmates, to reflect that truth back to me, their eyes and words like mirrors showing the right picture. It was the most important thing, more important than whatever happened with Mint or Coop or Caro. It was life or death.

And here, in my most important moment, I was faltering.

“Jess.” Caro’s eyes were full of betrayal, suspicion—fear. “What did you do?”

Behold Caroline Rodriguez, finally reading someone right. Finally willing to believe the worst, and of her best friend, to boot. What extraordinarily bad timing.

Her voice was so loud that the football players stopped celebrating, turned, and stared. The crowd closest to us went quiet. We were suddenly, and inescapably, on display.

Frankie wrestled away from the players and strode to the back of the float. “What are you guys doing? You’re making a scene.”

“Jessica was about to explain how she’s a psycho freak who killed Heather,” Courtney said smugly. Oh, how the tables had turned.

Frankie spun to me. “What’s she talking about?”

“Did you cut up the pictures, Jessica, yes or no?” Eric watched me with a steady, unblinking gaze. Like everything he’d worked for had been leading to this moment.

“Yes.”

Caro sucked in a breath.

“Stop,” Coop begged. “You don’t owe them anything.”

“What are you talking about?” Mint turned to Coop with narrowed eyes. “What do you know about her that I don’t?”

I couldn’t take this. I had to get out. I looked over the railing at the crowd, who stared back at me, watching the terrible scene unfold like so many voyeurs.

“Did you apply for the Duquette fellowship?” Eric pressed.

There was no point denying it. “Yes.”

“Jess—” Coop hissed.

“Did Professor John Garvey write you a recommendation letter, like Heather’s?”

“Not like Heather’s.”

“But a letter?”

“A letter,” I agreed.

This time Eric’s voice boomed, his question ringing out over the sea of red and white, no microphone needed. Everywhere, faces turned to us. What a spectacle, what a show, like all my fondest dreams. The star of Homecoming.

“Did you kill my sister?”

Except in real life, I was the villain, not the hero.

The whole crowd tensed in anticipation.

I met Coop’s eyes, begging me. Mint’s eyes, hard and cold. Caro’s, full of horror.

It was buried in the black hole, spinning at the center of me, a darkness growing, eating the light: something unforgivable, something wicked.

Did I kill Heather?

I couldn’t look. And so I did the one thing my instincts had been screaming at me to do since the moment I’d spotted Eric at the party.

I vaulted over the railing, landing hard on the street, and pushed into the crowd.

People sprung back, as if my touch was poison.

From far away, someone shouted “Stop her!”

I ran for my life.