I looked at the pictures pinned on the corkboard above Heather’s desk. The seven of us, smiling. Sophomore year, Myrtle Beach, waves behind us. Junior year, Coop’s and my hands clasped, our secret. Freshman year, seven round faces outside East House.
In all of them, the light seemed to shine special on Heather. She was in the center of the group. The center of attention, with her high theatrics, breezy confidence.
I tore the photos from the wall and stabbed a pen down hard into Heather’s face, scratching her out, erasing her, clawing back the spotlight she’d gotten unfairly. I scratched, X-ing her out, and it felt so good.
I stabbed harder, the pen piercing the photograph, marring the desk underneath. Without Heather, I could’ve had so much—Chi Omega, Amber Van Swann, the fellowship, Harvard. Moving to DC, becoming an important person, the kind my father wanted to be himself.
I hated her. It was the truth, pulled from my shadow life, a feeling that had been simmering underneath my conscious mind for four years, growing and growing.
I stared at the pictures, at Heather’s face, destroyed with vicious hex marks.
It wasn’t enough.
Everything was kicking in now. I could feel the dizziness circling, trying to tug me under. I stumbled into Caro’s room, running into the doorframe, then pulled myself straight. I grabbed for her desk drawer, missed, and tried again. Yanked it open, searched clumsily for her scissors.
The silver pair, nearly large as my forearm, twin points as sharp as blades. For scrapbooking, of course, because it was Caro, who did that sort of thing.
I made it back to my room and took the ruined photographs to Heather’s desk. I slid the scissors in and cut, again and again, carving Heather into pieces.
I hated her.
I wanted her gone.
I wanted her to die.
The dark thought twisted in my mind. If she was dead, the world would be balanced. I could finally have what I wanted. I could be best, first place, winner.
I cut until she was nothing more than scraps littering her desk.
But it still wasn’t enough.
A new idea was dawning. One that could restore the balance, right the wrongs—take back what Heather had stolen from me. It was terrible, and cruel, but as the rage seethed inside me, I knew I’d do it. To punish her, and Dr. Garvey. Everyone.
I dropped Caro’s scissors onto Heather’s desk and swept the scraps of photographs into her desk drawer.
Then I walked out the door and into the night. And for the first time in a long time, I was in control.
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.