In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead

Chapter 33

Now

I ran, streaking across campus, legs pumping hard and fast. All the crimson-clad people—students and alumni—stared in shock at the girl sprinting, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was getting somewhere safe, outpacing the angry mob that was surely only steps behind me.

It was all so clear now, so terrifyingly obvious. I was the villain; I always had been. It explained everything—why I’d never gotten what I wanted, no matter how hard I’d tried. It wasn’t because life was unfair, or not working the way it should. I’d had it backwards my whole life: I wasn’t the princess, set upon by misfortune; I was the witch. And life had unfolded the way it was supposed to, giving me what I deserved.

I ran with all my strength past the people and into the trees, the famous Duquette forest, carving a path where there wasn’t one.

Did you kill my sister?

The truth I’d resisted for ten years now rang through my head.

I could have.

It was possible. That night I’d hated Heather so fiercely, so violently. And, if I was finally being honest, I’d hated her long before then, since freshman year, when I first saw that everything came so easily to her, when she got Chi O and I had to watch her celebrate with Courtney in the gym.

Branches whipped my cheeks, but I pressed faster, faster, looking for somewhere safe.

Tears rolled down my cheeks, though they were too late. I’d tried so hard to be good, to use the love I had for her to stifle the hate I sometimes felt. But it had always simmered underneath. It had simmered until the night it boiled over, the night she stole the one thing that was most important, the one thing that should have been impossible for her to take.

I’d probably killed her.That’s what the blackout was hiding. Blackout, black hole, two defense mechanisms. Like the memory of my father telling me he hated his life when I was eight that my mind kept safely tucked away for fourteen years—even if the poison had seeped out over time, slowly shaping me.

It all made sense. The cuts and blood all over me the next morning. The strange certainty I’d done something unforgivable. Well, here it was, the truth finally exhumed out of the dark.

I’d killed her.

It became clear where I needed to go. I’d run through campus, desperate and blinded by tears, once before: Junior year, Parents’ Weekend, the day Heather got her BMW and I got my red envelope.

Blackwell Tower rose before me, its black spire piercing the sky. I ran until I reached the massive double doors, swung them open, and found the winding staircase, climbing as fast as I could.

Up, up, up.To the top of the tower. Like the villain, hiding from a pitchforked mob.

I burst into the hidden storage room, where students used to smoke pot and have sex—all the forbidden things that once felt so wicked—and jerked to a stop. The room was filled, wall to wall, with leftover furniture, cardboard boxes, stacks of old newspapers. There were classroom chairs, desks stacked on their side, outdated couches from dorm lobbies. No longer a place for rebellion, but a dump. Nothing at Duquette was the same, not even this.

I didn’t care. I scrambled through the maze, tumbling over a couch, until I landed on my hands and knees on the floor before the wall of windows.

I was alone and safe, finally. With the thought, I started to shake, every muscle on fire from running. I pressed my knees to my chest, rocking back and forth, trying to soothe myself.

I didn’t remember stabbing Heather, but I could have. I had to have done it, and I was just too terrified to let myself remember, to pull back the curtain and look at my true face.

One of you is a monster, hiding behind a mask.

I stopped rocking and stared out the window. I was so high up I could see most of campus. The parade was winding closer. That meant…

I laughed out loud when I remembered: Blackwell Tower was where the parade route ended, where the chancellor gave his speech. All the eyes of the crowd—the photographers and the video cameras—would be pointed right here. At me.

It was almost like I wanted to get caught.

I watched the parade inch nearer and considered it. I’d thought I was obsessed with Homecoming because it was the perfect second act, and I wanted to be admired and envied for once in my life. But what if it was more than that? What if all along there’d been another plot, orchestrated by my shadow self, the subterranean Jessica Miller, who was capable of things I couldn’t imagine?

The last thing my therapist said to me was a warning: “Listen to me, Jessica. The real you—whoever she is—will get what she wants in the end. Whether you realize it or not. It’s what the subconscious always does. Wouldn’t you rather know? Don’t you want to see it coming? You have to reconcile yourself.”

She’d been right. Maybe this is what the real Jessica—the one who came out when I was too drunk, the one who existed in the moments I shoved away—wanted all along. To get caught. To be punished. And now, finally, we were reconciled, all her crimes my own.

I couldn’t breathe. The air in the room was too thick, heavy with dust, and I couldn’t force it into my chest. I had to do something.

I looked at the chairs stacked in the corner, then at the window, and lunged, hauling a chair to the window. With all my strength, I lifted it and smashed it into the glass.

Nothing. I swung the chair again, almost doubling over with the lack of air. Again and again, I struck the window until my arms ached, and finally there was a crack, unspindling like a thread across the glass.

I held the chair aloft and brought it down, hard, over the crack. The window splintered. I smashed the pieces of glass, fighting the strangest sense of déjà vu. It felt like every move was a move I’d made before.

A chill wind whipped into the room. I took a deep breath, cold air filling my chest, inflating my lungs. There, that was better. Now I could breathe.

I stepped to the edge of the window, glass crunching under my shoes, and looked down at Crimson Campus. My heart swelled, hair flying like a flag behind me—no longer the mouse-brown of college but blond, like Mint’s and Courtney’s, Jack’s and Heather’s. I stretched out my arms. A strange calmness filled me that made me think of Eric. A calmness that came with having nothing left to lose.

I’d loved this place so dearly. It had been an escape, an open world of possibilities. I’d screwed it all up, of course, but I wouldn’t think of that now. I would think only of how right it felt to be back where it began, where the magic of my old happiness still pulsed in the soil.

I inched both feet onto the windowsill. The sky was so blue. I could swear I smelled the magnolias—heady and sweet—luring me toward them.

I’d really loved it. I swear I’d loved them, my friends, even when I hadn’t. But I’d made every wrong decision, I knew that now. Since the day East House first loomed into view, and probably long before then. The wrong boy. The wrong major, wrong career, wrong obsessions, wrong allegiances. Valentine’s Day, I’d made the worst possible choice, done something there was no coming back from.

I was so sorry. I hoped they’d know.

“What the hell—”