And then I heard something more. Metal inside the handle, scraping along the inside, searching for something. Someone picking the lock.
Then the door swung open. Water splattered onto the carpet, falling from the sky, dripping from his hair.
The realest thing in the world.
Dylan took a step inside.
Chapter 18
I backed up, moving deeper into the living room until my back was pressed against the bathroom door. It was so thin, I didn’t think it would support my weight. Dylan stared at me, water dripping all around him, and I shook my head. Just shook it, and shook it again. The room was buzzing with that other thing that wasn’t real. Like the whole room was about to pop.
And still I held the pepper spray out in front of me. But I was too far away now for it to work. Dylan let the door fall shut behind him. The room was crackling with energy. Even Dylan seemed to sense it. He looked around quickly before his eyes settled on me again.
And I kept shaking my head. Because I couldn’t figure out what was real and what wasn’t. Because in my head I heard those same footsteps, chasing after me. Dylan’s footsteps. And I saw the moon in the upper corner of the night sky—the sky that felt like it could burst open at any moment and—
“Hello, Mallory,” Dylan said from across the room, all drawn out, like a rumble of thunder.
I lowered my eyes to the floor. Except for a second I saw pavement instead of beige carpeting. I heard his feet move across the ground. Scuff, step. Scuff, step. I put one hand on the doorknob behind me, and I kept my other arm extended in his direction, like a warning.
He stopped moving.
I raised my eyes. “What are you doing here?”
He looked around the room, confused, like Brian had done that night, like he wasn’t really sure what he was doing here after all. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Waiting?” Nothing was making sense. Not back then, and not right here.
And then I remembered Dylan breaking into the lifeguard supply shed the night on the beach, when I shoved Danielle into the wall, so long ago. The paint on my door, and my shirts, slashed up. And the green car driving past Monroe, always waiting. It had always been Dylan.
“What do you want from me?” I kept the pepper spray aimed in his direction, and I stepped to the side, trying to judge the distance between me and the door. I wondered if I could sneak by him before he could grab me. But the whole room was buzzing, thick, like I might not even be able to break through that energy.
Dylan tilted his head back and laughed, only it came out through a grimace. “What do I want? What do I want? I guess that’s the question, isn’t it?”
I took a deep breath and heard myself wheeze a little, and then I blew it out slowly. Dylan took a step, and then another, toward me. “Are you going to hurt me, too?” he asked. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough?” He leaned forward, definitely within range now, and he whispered, “You killed him.”
I kept staring at him. Of course I’d killed him. That wasn’t a secret. I didn’t understand why he was telling me this.
The buzzing in the room grew. My eyes darted around, not looking at Dylan, looking for that other thing, taking form somewhere. I could feel it. I knew it was near, just out of sight.
And then Dylan was in my face and the pepper spray was on the floor, and he had both hands on my upper arms, and he was shaking me. “Look at me. Do you know what you did? Do you?”
Then for the first time since I held that knife, since Brian’s blood covered the floor and my clothes and my hands, since Colleen found me and I learned he was dead, I felt my own tears. “Yes, I know what I did. I know.”
“I don’t think you do. Did you know my mom had to be committed to a mental hospital?” he asked as he pushed me into the wall.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“I have no home anymore. No family. I had to move in with my dad. In fucking Massachusetts. Did you know that?” he asked again, shoving me even harder into the wall.
I shook my head. And I heard the thud as my back hit the wall, but I felt nothing, really, at all.
He let go of my arms and ran his hands through his hair, only he was pulling at it. “I don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t get how this happened . . .”
And while he was distracted, I dove for the pepper spray, only he dove for it too. My fingers brushed the key ring at the base, and then Dylan jerked it from my grip. I sat with my back against the wall, and he was on his knees in front of me. He threw the pepper spray across the room, where it hit the opposite wall and landed somewhere behind the couch.
I was still breathing too heavily, trying to figure out why Dylan was here at all, what he had been waiting to do to me. “What do you want? What?”
He put one hand around my upper arm, and he looked at the base of my throat, but I didn’t think he heard me at all. “Joe and Sammy think I should take something from you.” He looked at my throat, and then lower. “That you deserve it.” As his eyes drifted down, I understood, with sickening terror, exactly what they thought he should take from me.
But he didn’t do anything. If Joe and Sammy were here, I wondered if he would have. His face contorted and he squeezed his eyes shut. Finally, he released me—threw his hands up in the air, like he was surrendering to something.
I turned to the door, before he could change his mind, and started walking slowly. Step. Breathe. Step. Glance to the couch, checking for the pepper spray. Another step. But halfway across the room Dylan was suddenly right behind me again. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Wait.”
Wait.
I heard it echo around the room in a whisper. Like it did every night.
Brian had asked me to wait, he did. But the voice in my room at night hadn’t been his.
I staggered backward. Because I remembered.
The footsteps following me down the alley and the hand on my shoulder and the voice in my ear—
It had been Dylan.
“Wait,” Dylan had said. I had been running, but he caught up. And his hand was on my shoulder. He wanted me to wait. He wanted me. I spun around in the alley between the back of the homes. The moon was bright, but a cloud moved across it, and Dylan’s face darkened. “Please, Mallory,” he’d said. “I hate that you’re with him. I hate it. I’m a moron, okay?”
I leaned closer, because I couldn’t really see him. Couldn’t tell if he meant it or if those were just words he had rehearsed, but I think he misunderstood because he put his palm on the side of my face, and he ran his thumb across my bottom lip, and he said, “Okay?”
I thought that he meant it. And I felt like saying yes.
And just in case I wasn’t okay with it yet, he leaned even closer and brushed his lips across mine, and he smiled. Because it felt like this was what everything had been leading up to. We just got there the wrong way.
“Okay,” I said. But then I frowned and glanced down the alley, toward the party. “I think I should . . .”
Dylan shook his head. “Did you see him? Not a good idea. Later.”
The sky was about to break open. A fat drop fell between us, and then another—he took my hand, and we started running. We were laughing, racing the storm.
Dylan watched as I dug the key out from under the gutter, and then the sky busted open. I ran up the porch steps, and Dylan was right behind me, pressed up against my back to escape the rain. I slid the key into the lock. And I felt him smiling against my neck.
We slipped inside and I turned the deadbolt behind us.
And then I wasn’t sure what to do. The windows were still open, and I thought maybe I should close them. I saw there were drops of water on the display table next to Mom’s vase.
But Dylan was still smiling like he won something. Or like he was about to win something. He kissed me in the middle of the living room. Not like when I’d kissed him in chemistry class. Like I was the only one he wanted. Me.
He took a breath and said, “No, really, I was a fucking moron.”
“You were,” I’d said. “You really were.”