Megan Abbott - The Fever

“Gabby Bishop, Jesus,” she said. “I never even had her in a class, but I knew about her. The way she’d walk down the hall, girls circling her like little magpies. All that hair and drama.”

“Yeah,” he said, just to say something.

Her hands dropping to her lap, she sighed. “It’s all so freaky. All the other ones who got sick—I sent two to the nurse myself. So they must have gotten some of that jimson stuff, right? They must have smoked it too, like at a party?”

“I don’t think so,” Tom said. “I don’t think they took anything.”

She nodded and they sat silently for a moment.

“I remember when I was a sophomore in high school,” she said. “There was this girl, the coolest girl in school. Laia Noone. Even her name was cool. She had a tattoo on her stomach: I’ve seen love die . In tenth grade!” She laughed. “All I wanted was to be like her.”

“And now you’re the coolest girl in school.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” she said. Then she lowered her jacket zipper and, using two fingers, separated the space between a pair of blouse buttons, baring the smallest triangle of flesh. He could see only the middle words— seen love —but was sure the rest was there too.

“And so,” Tom said, “marked for life.”

“That’s what high school does.”

“And everything else,” he said, smiling.

She smiled back, like he knew she would.

“It’s funny the things you think of now,” she said, yanking the zipper back up. “I remember last year once, Jaymie Hurwich crying in my classroom after school. She said there was something wrong with her mom’s brain and it’d started when her mom was sixteen and now she was sixteen and what if something happened to her. She said her dad was always looking at her, like he was watching for signs.”

Tom was surprised, but then everything surprised him now.

A hundred thoughts started floating in and out of his head, but none cohered.

“It’s going to be hard for all of them,” she said. “Everyone’ll be looking at them. Like they’re these damaged girls.”

They sat for a minute.

“But not Deenie,” she said, smiling. “Thank goodness. No one will be looking at her.”

Tom looked at her. Nodded.

Spring

Six weeks after Dryden High School faced a seeming health crisis among female students following the poisoning of a classmate, local health officials are still struggling to identify the cause.

At least 18 students were treated for symptoms ranging from facial and body tics to hallucinations and even temporary paralysis, but the case began with Lise Daniels, 16, who experienced a seizure following ingestion of dangerous jimsonweed placed in her thermos by a fellow student (see sidebar, “Student Faces Sentence after Plea Deal”).

No jimsonweed was detected in any other of the afflicted girls, and health department officials have been unable to find any organic causes for individual cases or any connections among them.

Reports emerged this week that the department is now consulting with experts who specialize in “mass psychogenic illness,” a condition in which physical symptoms that are psychological in origin emerge in a group, spreading from one person to the next. “It’s not a copycat situation and no one’s faking anything,” clarified Dr. Robert Murray from the State Psychiatric Institute. “These girls had no control over their symptoms. Which can be terrifying.”

Such outbreaks tend to occur within groups experiencing emotional stress and anxiety. “That’s likely the scenario here,” Dr. Murray said, adding he hadn’t interviewed any of the girls so could not speak to their individual circumstances.

At least one parent, David Hurwich, 42, does not accept the diagnosis, and he may not be alone. Last night at a school-board meeting, several parents noted, off the record, that they continue to believe that the real cause is being ignored or covered up, citing ongoing concerns about air and water safety. “Time will tell,” said Mr. Hurwich. “But I know my daughter. And that was not her.”

Questions also remain for Miss Daniels, who was released from the hospital two weeks ago. Dr. April Fine, chair of psychiatry at Mercy-Starr Clark, warns that what the long-term side effects will be are unclear.

“This girl not only suffered significant physical trauma, she is also the victim of a crime,” Dr. Fine said. “The real impact may not be felt for some time, and may emerge when least expected. In some ways, she’s a ticking time bomb.”

It was one of those painfully lovely spring mornings, the kind only Dryden could conjure.

The same obscure meteorology that produced the awesome ferocity of winters kept the lake unusually cool and made for cloudless skies. Only a few popcorn cumuli broke up the brilliant blue that hurt your eyes. It was called the oasis effect.

Waiting for the coffeemaker, or Deenie’s sneakers on the stairs, Tom didn’t know what to do with himself. He’d stopped reading the newspaper, listening to the news. None of it seemed to explain anything. That morning, though, he hadn’t been able to stop himself. Mass psychogenic illness . There was a term for it, or so the article claimed.

The main story was about Gabby, who would be sentenced on Friday.

Every day, he thought about calling Lara Bishop, but she hadn’t returned his other calls.

That night with her had come to feel like a murky dream, erotic and strange—the enigmatic beauty of it, her scar pulling from her neck, her voice in his ear—and best tucked in a far corner.

It was still hard to imagine. Gabby, the girl he was used to seeing at his kitchen table or nestled on his sofa with Deenie, their hands crackling in potato chip bags. The sushi-pattern pajamas she wore when she slept over. Hair hanging in her face over a morning cereal bowl.

Some days, he felt like she could almost be his own daughter.

Except that wasn’t really true. She’d always felt grander, graver. Embossed with the gold stamp of Experience. Something adultlike about her, different. But in the end she was both different and not, burdened by both a girl’s crush and a dense gnarl over her heart.

Or maybe he was wrong.

The coffee was ready.

“Deenie,” he called out. “Let’s go.”

The second pot, and stronger. He’d been up awhile, had been lying awake in bed when he heard the click-click of Eli’s hockey stick on the kitchen floor as he left the house for practice.

It was strange to think of his son now, after all this. The object of such intense feeling. Lady-killer. Heartbreaker. This was the boy for whom a girl had nearly killed, nearly died. Little Eli, who watched six consecutive hours of ESPN Classic, ate over the kitchen sink, and, despite having had at least one female visitor to his bedroom, never seemed to quite lock eyes with any girl, any woman. Except Deenie, and sometimes Georgia, though Tom hadn’t seen them together in so long.

Whenever he looked at Eli now, he tried to find it, as if the answer might lie in some deeper enchantment a father couldn’t see.

The skittering on the stairs startled him.

“We’ll be late,” Deenie said, running in, her hair brushed hard into a tight ponytail. “We better go.”

In the car, she was quiet, folding and unfolding a new scarf, pale green like a lily pad. She’d brought it back after visiting Georgia over spring break, another visit cut short.

The day she returned, he found her in the basement, holding her pizza shirt up to the light, an errant grease stain still lurking.