Megan Abbott - The Fever

“Over by the school.”

“I’m leaving. I’ll take you,” she said, throwing her cigarette to the ground.

On the way, the woman talked without stopping.

She told Deenie how the pharmacy had never had a day like this, the dispenser beeping ceaselessly, the premixed IVs gone by four o’clock, a tech fainting and splitting her scalp, four girls an hour admitted at first, double that by the time she left.

“I saw you and I thought, Not another one. All day, each of you acting crazier than the last.”

“I was visiting a friend.”

Mind racing, somersaulting, Deenie was trying to piece it all together: Why was Skye visiting Lise? What did it all mean?

The woman glanced over at her in a way that made Deenie’s eye twitch.

“A girl came in to visit her sister, and ten minutes later she was spinning around on the floor. We can’t get this tiger by the tail. Your eye always do that?”

“I’m okay,” Deenie said. “What happened at the press conference?”

The woman kept looking at her, “They canceled it,” she said. “Everything’s changed.”

“What do you mean? What happened?” Deenie felt her eye throbbing, wanted to put her finger to it, make it stop.

“Because of the police investigation.”

“What?”

“They found something in the girl’s locker. The first girl.”

Deenie thought of the people digging through Lise’s locker, their gloved hands on Lise’s gym uniform, her thermos, her binder.

“What did they find?”

“Look, I can’t talk about it,” the woman said, eyes returning to the road. “They made us sign all these papers.”

The feeling came over Deenie like a rush of water to the mouth, rimy and overflowing.

Please tell me, she tried to say, but her mouth wouldn’t do what it was supposed to, and the woman looked at her as if deciding something.

“I don’t really know, honey,” she said. “But I heard they think someone gave her something that made her sick. Very sick.”

Deenie sat for a moment, thinking.

“Like a Roofie?” she asked, remembering from health class.

“No. We check for that right away.”

“So…so that’s what happened to everyone? To the other girls too?”

“No. Their tox screens came back negative.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Deenie said, twitching, the vein at her temple like a wriggling worm, her hand jerking up, trying to hide it. “It can’t be just Lise.”

At that moment, the road rose and the school loomed on the horizon.

“You can stop right here,” Deenie said, pointing hurriedly to the nearest corner.

“I can’t leave you,” the woman said, squinting out the window, the empty parking lot. “It’s not safe.”

Deenie looked at her. Then it was like she’d touched a frayed plug. She felt something like sparks, her head jerking against the car window.

She looked at her hands, which tingled.

“Honey, you…” the woman started, her eyes leaping to Deenie.

“My dad teaches here. He’s inside waiting for me,” Deenie said, gritting her teeth to make the shaking stop, which only made it worse. She reached for the door handle. “Stop the car. Let me out now, please.”

The woman slowed the car to a stop, looking down the empty street.

“I don’t see anyone…” she began, but before she could say more, Deenie felt her shoulders vault forward, jaw percussing.

Swinging open the door, she jumped out of the car. And then she ran.

It was a little click-click sound and seemed to be coming from below.

Standing at the top of the basement stairs, Eli wondered if it was the dryer, or if it was a raccoon, like once before. For months after, Deenie wouldn’t go down there without singing loudly or raking one of Eli’s old hockey sticks across the rail.

“Deenie?” Eli called out. “Dad?”

“No,” a voice came, throaty, cautious.

Three steps down, he stopped.

She was sitting on the Ping-Pong table, purple rain boots dangling off the edge.

At first he could barely see her face, long hair catching the light and her face tucked behind it.

But then she turned, and he saw her eyes widen, heard the smallest gasp.

“Gabby,” he said, walking down the remaining steps.

“I’m sorry for coming in,” she said quickly. “Did I scare you?”

“No,” he said. “No problem.”

“It was raining,” she added. Under the lightbulb, her hair glistened from within its deep pockets. All the girls loved Gabby’s hair, but Eli always thought it looked so heavy, so complicated, like one of those leathery cocoons you stare into at the science center.

“I had a key from before,” she said.

“Good thing,” he said. “I was wondering what happened.”

“What do you mean?” she said, clasping her phone between her palms.

“To you and Deenie. Where is she?”

Gabby just looked at him.

“Deenie left a note that she was with you,” Eli said, walking over to the Ping-Pong table.

She said something, but with her voice so soft and the furnace kicking up, he couldn’t hear, so he moved closer.

“No. I was just trying to find her,” she said, almost leaning back from him, as if he were standing too close. “I came here to find her. I really need to see her.”

There was the smell on her of something, something in her hair that reminded him of his dad’s classroom.

He must have made some small gesture because she said, “They put glue in, for the EEG.”

“No, I—” he began.

“I can’t get it out,” she said, touching it. “Witch hazel, aspirin crushed in water, nail polish remover. I tried everything. Maybe I’ll just cut it all off.”

“Don’t cut it off,” he said, smiling.

She didn’t say anything, looking down at her phone. He was suddenly a little queasy, thinking of Gabby in the house while he was having that dream. Skye and her golden nipples and grinding hips.

“I guess they’re all still at the meeting at the school,” he said, eager to make conversation, to get the noise out of his head. “Things were crazy over there. I saw them digging around outside.”

Her eyes lifted. “Saw who?”

Eli shrugged. “I don’t know.” He thought about it. The dark coats and the blue plastic gloves. The one with rain cover stretching over his hat brim. “The cops, I think.” And then, fitting pieces together in his head, he added, “By the breezeway. By those big bushes. I guess it had to do with Lise being back there.”

“What do you mean?” Her eyes back down on her phone.

He didn’t want to tell her, but he was trying to see what the pieces meant.

“Lise,” he said, his brain churning, attempting to make sense of it. “She was back there. With a guy. Screwing around, I don’t know. What I don’t get is why the police…”

He stopped.

The look on her face, the way it seemed to collapse upon itself, to wither inside that cocoon of hair. He was the biggest jerk in the world. No one wanted to hear stuff like that about her friend.

“Wait, stop,” she said, shaking her head so forcefully it startled him. “I don’t understand. Why are you telling me?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. What if she was having another seizure, or whatever that thing was? “I shouldn’t have said anything. I only found out because there was a mistake. People thought it was me back there with Lise. People were saying it was me.”

Her head shot up.

“What?”

“But it wasn’t me. I’d never—well, it wasn’t me.”

“It was you,” she said, looking at him, eyes black and obscure.

“You heard that too, huh?” He hoped Deenie hadn’t. “No way, ever. This guy just looks like me, sort of. This guy, Sean, from the Pizza House.”