In My Dreams I Hold A Knife

Determined to be crowned Phi Delt “Sweetheart,” Courtney watches Mint, coveting him, not understanding why he is with Jessica. Just as she is about to talk to Mint, Heather comes stumbling down the stairs, obviously drunk. Heather begins to cry, sharing that Jack broke up with her and revealed a secret that she will tell Courtney later. Courtney, seizing her opportunity to support Heather in Jessica’s absence, gives her a pep talk. When Heather leaves to use the restroom, Frankie tells Courtney that Heather has been chosen as the Sweetheart rather than her. She then concocts a plan to drug Heather with her diet pills. Courtney thinks they can’t “crown a passed out Sweetheart” (154).

Back from the bathroom, Heather tells Courtney that she is going to get the ultimate revenge on Jack during Parents’ Weekend by telling them his big secret. (The reader knows the secret is Jack’s sexual orientation, though Courtney is ignorant of this at the time.) Courtney gives her the drink with the crushed weight-loss pills, and Heather drinks it.

In the forest, Courtney “cowers” confessing her sins from the night Heather died. Jessica surprises herself by pitying Courtney. Caro explodes in shock that Courtney would drug her friend to be “queen of a fraternity party” (157). Courtney defends herself, claiming she only hoped Heather would go to sleep. Jessica then has a flash of memory of the night Heather died—a night she has mostly forgotten. She sees two hands “covered in dried blood” (158), then shoves the image away, too afraid of the memory.

Eric yanks open Courtney’s purse and pulls out the pills. Courtney, who is addicted, begs for the pills back. Jessica, understanding the mind of an addict because of her father, gives the pills back to Courtney but lets Eric keep one of them. Finishing her story, Courtney reveals that she told Frankie about Heather’s plan to expose Jack’s secrets to his parents. Frankie had left this out of his story earlier, and the friends are again suspicious of him. They plan to confront Frankie at the parade in the morning.

Everyone returns to their hotel except Jessica and Coop. He asks her who she knows with an addiction, and she tells him about her father. He wonders if being as private and untrusting as Jessica is lonely. Thinking that Coop is a good man, the memory of the morning after Heather’s murder comes back clearer: Jessica remembers herself covered in dried blood.

It is graduation, Heather is dead, and Jessica and Mint have recommitted to their relationship. They attend the graduation concert, and he asks her to move to New York with him. Stressed because his mother and her boyfriend are in town, Mint takes a walk to let off steam, and Coop approaches from behind. He tells Jessica he’s heartbroken and wants her to marry him. He tells her to “choose happiness,” but she chooses ambition and Mint instead.

Back in Jessica’s hotel room, Caro shows up in the middle of the night in her pajamas, wracked with guilt. Caro is convinced Frankie murdered Heather because she knows that he took steroids in college. When Jessica asks how Caro could know this, Caro tells her that she watched her friends when they didn’t know she was there.

Caro recognizes that she is lower on the social hierarchy than Mint, Heather, and Coop. As the years passed, Caro felt her friends pulling away from her and one another. In response to this feeling, she secretly stalks them. Seeing Frankie, Heather, and Jack walking across campus, Caro follows them into an administrative meeting room, where Caro is able to sneak against the wall unseen and eavesdrop.

Through their conversation, Caro finds out that Heather discovered a pee cup belonging to Frankie in Jack’s bathroom. Heather accuses Frankie of using steroids and using Jack’s urine to cover it up for his athletic drug tests. She threatens to tell Frankie’s coach if he continues to use. Frankie says the steroids are worth it if he can reach his dream of playing in the NFL. Sensing they aren’t alone, they leave to discuss the matter elsewhere. Caro makes a plan, determined not to let Heather destroy Frankie’s future.

Jessica, Coop, Caro, Courtney, Mint, and Eric join Frankie on the parade float. Seeing his friends, Frankie thinks they’ve come to support him. The crowd beyond cheers Frankie’s name. When Jessica asks him if he’s still using steroids, Frankie says that Heather threatened but never told, which had scared him enough to stop. Tired of being someone he’s not, Frankie then announces to the crowd that he is a “proud gay man.” After a silence, the crowd erupts in cheers.

After Frankie’s proclamation, no one thinks he murdered Heather, and the group is back to square one, wondering the identity of the culprit. Eric then brings out three cut-up photographs that make Jessica’s memories come back faster than she can “push them down.”

Jessica’s therapist has helped her uncover a memory the first time her father’s addiction to pills came to light. He blamed her for his troubles and told her, “I don’t have a wife and daughter” (197). She then recounts his death from an overdose her senior year and the funeral where only her mother and grandparents showed up. Her grandmother blamed Jessica’s mother for his death.

When Jessica returns to Duquette after winter break, Caro gives her a Mary Oliver poem. A line in the poem, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” (199) enrages her because her father’s life was small and his existence full of failure. From then on, Jessica is determined to do something great and plans to get the Duquette Post-Graduate Fellowship, ensuring acceptance to Harvard graduate school. She approaches a famous economics professor, Dr. John Garvey, with whom she has taken numerous classes, to ask for a recommendation letter. He does not recognize her and asks her name, “crushing” her. He tells her he will write her a letter if she goes to dinner with him.

Eric tells everyone that Heather’s murderer is likely one of her roommates. He implies that Caro is the weak link among the friend group, settling for being a kindergarten teacher when the rest have done big things. Caro admits threatening Heather because she planned to expose Frankie’s steroid use. Caro said she would tell everyone Heather leaked Amber Van Swann’s sex tape. Afraid of being blamed, Heather backed down and didn’t go to Frankie’s coach. Satisfied with Caro’s story, Eric turns to Jessica and asks, “What did Heather do to make you want to kill her?” (207).