Teen Hyde (High School Horror Story #2)(32)

My fingers relaxed. In my trancelike state, I was able to find the face I was searching for. I seemed to know him, though he didn’t know me. We were outside. I was thankful to be free of the merciless beating music and the attacking strobe. I sank into the shadows, coaxing the boy after me. Enticing him. Egging him on. Hatred hatched inside me, reached across the divide of time and space, and grew roots in my veins.

Deeper, deeper, sinking, shutting.

A blade was in my hand. A blade was in his face, his chest, his throat. And it was glorious, beautiful, exquisite.

It was red.

And I was in love with it.

Somewhere in the distance I heard a snap of fingers and a command to wake up and then I was hurdling through nothingness, falling upward back into myself, back up to where gravity could grasp on to my arms, legs, back, and shoulders. I was there. Gasping. Sucking thin air and not finding enough oxygen.

I sat up pin straight, my back rigid.

“What did you see, Jessica?” Dr. Crispin’s voice hit me like ice water to the face.

I stared at him, wild-eyed. “I—I—” My tongue felt around for words other than the truth, which was difficult with the truth pinging against every molecule in my gray matter. “I remembered a fight with my sister,” I said. “I don’t know how I forgot. Or why. But, yeah, just a stupid fight. It was dumb.”

Dr. Crispin adjusted his glasses. “Really?”

And I could have been imagining it, but I thought from the way that he was looking at me that Dr. Crispin didn’t quite believe me. Had I said something while under hypnosis? Cried out? Screamed? Or could he see deeper than that. Did he know, like I now knew, that the eyes he was looking into were the eyes of a killer?

*

I STROLLED INTO the gymnasium exactly one minute before the official start of cheer practice wearing my biggest pair of sunglasses and feeling even worse than I looked. I took pains to keep my arms pinned to my sides, resisting the urge to scrape invisible coats of blood off with my fingernails.

I kept feeling it on me. Reams of red spilling over my hands.

“See, told you she’d show up.” Ava jabbed Paisley in the ribs.

Paisley rolled her eyes and gave me an unenthusiastic wave hello.

“Haters gonna hate,” whooped Erica from her straddle position on the floor.

My heart squeezed with longing for them.

“Wow, though”—Ava stretched to the side with one arm arcing over her head—“you really do look sick.”

“She always looks sick,” added Paisley.

“I’m not sick.” I pushed the sunglasses into the bridge of my nose.

“Oh my god.” Erica jumped up, her eyes wide. “Are you pregnant? You are, aren’t you? That’s exactly how my cousin looked when she found out she was pregnant.”

The word pregnant flashed through my head like a migraine. I squinted in discomfort. After the night in Dearborn, I woke up feeling sore and impossibly stupid. I hadn’t been able to look up from my wallet when the pharmacist slid the packet of morningafter pills across the counter. Every achy cramp that day and the next felt well-deserved as I hoped and prayed for the medicine to wash away every scrap of the night before. “I’m not pregnant,” I said, which was true. “I’m fine.” Which wasn’t.

“All right, all right.” Erica held up both palms like I had a gun trained on her. Then again, maybe she was right to be afraid of me. Oh god. “Then are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

My abdomen was rigid. It had to be to hold all the panic inside. “Of course,” I said curtly. “We have a game in two days.”

I wanted to stamp out the shared glances from the squad. More than that I wanted to be a part of them again. I wanted to press rewind and erase the last six months of my life. The images that had been resurrected this afternoon thundered around in my skull. The migraine that had been triggered was busy exploding in short bursts like the Fourth of July.

A blade in his face, his chest, his throat. Glorious, beautiful, exquisite.

I wanted to push my thumbs into my temples. The other girls were all staring at me, waiting expectantly. “What are you all waiting for?” I pushed the words out slowly and deliberately. “Are you all warmed up? Because it doesn’t look like it. Ten laps around the court. This isn’t the freaking chess club, ladies.” I clapped twice and the noise felt like something snapping inside me, but it got the squad moving.

Fifteen ponytails took off around the baseline. I excused myself into the locker room where I made a beeline for the farthest bathroom stall. I dropped my gym bag onto the tile beside me and collapsed onto my knees.

My breaths were coming in great, heaving puffs that blew my cheeks out and sucked them in tight.

Coughs of crimson. Deep maroon that oozed from holes that shouldn’t exist. Torn shirt, torn skin, torn face. The smell of iron. Hot and pleasant like bathwater.

I thrust my head over the toilet and vomited the contents of my stomach into the bowl. Mouth still dripping, I retched again. Yellow mucus ran from my nostrils.

From outside the stall came the sound of footsteps. “Cass?” It was Ava.

I turned and lowered my backside onto the cool tile and leaned my back against the stall. “Yeah?” I tried to force my voice into a normal octave.

“Are you coming back out?” She sounded like she felt awkward asking. “We finished our laps a few minutes ago.”