Read Hysteria for Free Online Page B

starting forest fires.
    “So,” she said, quirking her mouth to the side and leaning her back against the wall.
     “Like what I’ve done with the place?” She had hung band posters over the other standard-issue
     bed, and there were stand-up lights in the corners of our room now. She walked over
     to me and stuck her hand out all formal like. “Brianne Dalton. Bree.”
    I shook her hand and said, “Mallory Murphy. No nickname.”
    She stepped back and looked me over, scanning me slowly from my bare feet to my bare
     shoulders and raised an eyebrow at me. “Hmm. Well, you don’t need one. You new here?”
    I nodded, searching through my suitcase for another pair of flip-flops, feeling her
     eyes on me.
    “Me too. Transferred from Chelsey. You know it? No? All-girls school. Can you picture
     me at an all-girls school?”
    Actually, I could. Probably how she learned to make other girls uncomfortable just
     by looking at them. She reminded me of Colleen, even though they looked nothing alike.
     Colleen was the one who taught me how to walk when you know someone is watching, and
     how to walk to make someone watch. She oozed attraction just by being in a room. Same
     as this girl.
    Bree looped an arm through mine and led me back into the hall. “Come on, orientation
     tours are about to start. And trust me, you are in for a treat.”
    I looked down at the registration paper. Bree’s idea of a treat was my idea of perpetual
     humiliation.
    “I see you made it unscathed,” Reid called to me as we approached the grass. Unscathed. Who says unscathed? Prep school boys, apparently. With perfect hair. Who reject you.
    Bree leaned closer into my side. “You know Reid?”
    “Not exactly,” I said, because it was true. I knew him two years ago, when his hair
     stuck out in every different direction. I knew him before his father was taken from
     him, before all of this. I didn’t know him anymore.
    “Whatever,” she said. She kept her arm looped through mine, but I felt her pull away.
    The whole quad area between the dorms and the school buildings took up the space of
     two soccer fields. Students were scattered in circular groups, like they were singing
     “Kumbaya” or something. Reid was already surrounded by two guys and one other girl.
     He must’ve been the leader since he was the only one in uniform.
    Reid held my flip-flops out in an extended hand. “Hey, Cinderella, you lost your shoes.”
     He smiled and showed his dimple, which I’d forgotten about until right that moment,
     and suddenly I was back, three years earlier, a year before Reid’s dad died, walking
     into Dad’s twenty-fifth reunion and pushing through the crowd until I’d found Reid,
     and he was saying, “Miss me?” with that same dimple, and I was saying, “Hardly,” and
     trying not to smile.
    Now he was holding my shoes and smiling, like this whole thing wasn’t horrifically
     awkward. “I didn’t lose them. I left them right there.”
    “Well then, you’re welcome for keeping them safe. There’s a big demand around here
     for worn-out flip-flops.”
    Or maybe this wasn’t awkward for him. Maybe two years was long enough to forget. Maybe
     he started the process of forgetting as soon as he walked out of his room. Not that
     I blamed him. He’d had enough going on that day, and in the days that followed. And
     if I could’ve made myself forget that, I would have.
    I took them from his outstretched arm. “They’re not worn out,” I said, careful not
     to touch his fingers. But I threw them back onto the ground because I was pretty sure
     they actually were. I’m also pretty sure I was grinning.
    Bree caught sight of someone over my shoulder and smiled a “hello, I’m cute and somewhat
     mysterious” smile that, as it turns out, was not at all mysterious. Must’ve been a
     boy. A cute one.
    “When’s the tour start?” My shoulders tensed because I recognized that voice. I turned
     around just in time to see Jason,