In My Dreams I Hold a Knife

by Ashley Winstead

Your body has a knowing. Like an antenna, attuned to tremors in the air, or a dowsing rod, tracing things so deeply buried you have no language for them yet.

The East House Seven. Mint, Caro, Frankie, Coop, Heather, Jack, and me. The people responsible for the best days of my life, and the worst.

Tree branches swayed and stalks of grass lifted with the breeze, in time to some secret song. I could feel it, humming and weaving around us, the lawn and the trees and the brilliant dying sun. Knitting us together. It was magic. Each of them a star on earth, pulling me in with the force of their gravity. I was theirs. In that moment, I gave myself over completely. I worshipped them. I died and started new, right there in the grass, in the center of the lawn.

I finally opened Coop’s fortune. Seven strange words: Today, something starts that will never end.

I thought of Duquette’s promise: We will change you, body and soul. Maybe it was happening.

And I think I knew, even then, that it would never get better than this. I think some part of me could sense—even here in our triumph, in our wild, perfect beginning—the small seeds of our destruction.

“Jess.” Mint blinked. “I like you.” For the second time that day, the world tilted on its axis. Mark Minter liked me? Me, Jessica Miller? It was the most improbable of victories, like winning the lottery, or finding a golden ticket in your chocolate bar.

“For years, I’ve traced leads, putting the pieces together, uncovering what you’ve hidden. Do you want to know what I discovered?” No, no, no. “Jack didn’t kill Heather. But someone in this room did. One of you is a monster, hiding behind a mask.”

How ironic that we’d now switched sides: Coop, running to the cops. Me, urging him not to. Time, making fools of us all.

Everything I thought I knew gone in the blink of an eye, our past scratched out and written over with the truth, the words dark and terrible.