“Does it really matter if you were?” Lily asks. “You already knew you were crazy.”
“Yeah, but it’s…” I trail off, looking at the computer screen. “It’s terrifying to think about… being locked away.”
“You’re locked away now.”
“Yeah, but this is different.”
“How so?” she asks as I move away from the computer desk and study myself in the mirror. I can see her staring back at me, watching me through the looking glass, same face, same eyes, only the pupils look rounder, darker.
“Because it is,” I reply, blinking quickly as my hair starts to shift from black to blond. By the time my eyes open again, the illusion is gone.
“You’re afraid all the time,” Lily says with a glimmer in her eyes, like she knows a secret. “But of what?”
“You,” I reply then sigh. “Myself.”
The reflection reaches up and touches her chin-length black hair, her fingers lingering on the blond streak, then she traces her fingers along the dark circles under my bloodshot eyes. “Well, we are the same person.”
I shake my head. “No we’re not.”
“I think you’ve known all along that I am,” she adds, the reflection lowering her hand to the side. “Maybe that’s why we were at the hospital. Perhaps they kept you there because you were insane.”
“But who’s they?”
“Your mother probably.” She says it like she knows it’s true, like she understands what lies behind the veil blocking out my memories. Perhaps that’s what Lily is. Maybe she has my memories and she’s keeping them from me. Perhaps she knows that I was once locked away in a hospital, because I was bad, because I talked to myself, was two different people. That the memories of the girl are really just memories of me. That my mother knows this but doesn’t tell me in the hopes that I won’t become that person again. That I’ll turn into the good daughter she’s always wanted.
“Yeah, but if that’s true, you and I know that’s not possible,” Lily says. “We’re not good—neither of us are good.”
I want to argue, but as I look back at my bed at the box of buttons, the computer screen with the article, and then at my hands that only days ago were saturated with someone’s blood, I can’t deny the truth. I can blackout. I can forget. But in the end, whatever Lily does, I do to, because she is me.
I created her.
Chapter 17
Maddie
It’s going on five days since the detective showed up at my house and three days since the incident at Bella’s. Thankfully the days have been uneventful, at least that’s what I tell myself. But in the end I start to go stir crazy. The endless hours get to me and the need to do… well, something works its way under my skin. So when the alarm suddenly goes off in the dead of night, I feel twistedly excited.
I’m fully wide awake when it happens, still suffering from insomnia. For a second I think I’m hallucinating. But the longer the siren shrieks, the more I realize that it’s reality and that something set it off. Moments later, my mom comes stumbling down the hallway and runs fearfully into my room, right as I’m walking out of my bedroom to see what’s going on. We end up colliding into each other and she falls to the floor, landing on her ass while I brace myself by grabbing onto the door.
“What are you doing?” she hisses, fastening her robe as she scrambles to her feet. The house is dark, the only light coming from her room, so I can barely see her face but can hear the annoyance in her voice. It’s how she’s been with me for days. Always annoyed, especially when I try to pry answers out of her. I’m starting to get to the point where I’m considering tying her up and forcing her to tell me what she’s hiding.
I throw my hands over my ears and shout over the screeching, “Um, hello. The same thing as you are. Turning that thing off.”
She huffs and then stomps down the hallway. I hear a beep and the alarm silences. Then she’s rushing down the hallway toward me with a stern look on her face. “You didn’t set that off?” she asks as she reaches me.
I lower my hands from my ear and fiddle with the drawstring on my pajama bottoms. “How could I if I’m standing here?”
She looks over my shoulder into my room. “You didn’t open a window or anything?”
“Nope. I was just sitting here, reading.” Lie. I was counting my buttons.
Reality seeps in as we both realize the truth and her hand instantly finds my arm and her fingers tremble as she grasps onto me for dear life, as if I’m as precious to her as the buttons are to me. “Maddie, there’s someone in the house.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as a crash comes from the kitchen. My mother shoves me backward and starts to race off in the direction of the noise, but I grab the back of her robe and pull her to me. “Don’t just walk out there.” I hiss, taking control of the situation, “Call the police.”
She nods erratically then veers toward her room with her gaze fixed on the end of the hallway. When she reaches her doorway, she looks over her shoulder at me and says, “Go back in your room and lock the door.” Then she hurries into her room to get her phone.
I start to do as she says when I hear a voice mid turn.
“Lily.”
I freeze, muscles raveling, as I slowly turn back around. Standing in the darkness at the end of the hall is a person about the same height as me. They’re not moving, frozen, staring right back at me, unafraid. I don’t know who it is, but I know they know who I am by the name they uttered.
I can hear my mom chattering in her room as I begin to inch backward away from the figure, but then they laugh under their breath and mutter something about me still being weak and a whore.
I know them.
That voice.
I’ve heard it before.
You’re a whore!
“Shut up,” I say through gritted teeth, my hands balling into fists. Emotions pour through me so potent I can barely control anything that I do. That voice. It belongs to a man. A man hurt you. Get our revenge.
“I know we know him,” I whisper aloud to Lily. “But who is he?”
The man moves toward me and a chill courses through my body. “You don’t know me, Lily? I’m hurt.” He stops to press his hand to his heart, chuckling under his breath. It makes me feel like he’s making fun of me and abruptly all I see is red. Blinding. Powerful. Overtaking. Then comes the pain. A huge, massive wave of it that nearly sends me to the floor. God, it hurts. And all I want to do is kill him to make it go away.