Don’t be afraid… just run. We need to run! Now! Before they catch us and lock us back up again.
I pause in the trees, coming to a stop. “Us? But I wasn’t locked up,” I say to Lily, standing beside me, her long blond hair wild, her eyes reckless as she scans the trees for a way out. “Just you.”
She shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “That’s always been your problem.” She ducks under the trees and shouts out. “You listen to what everyone else tells you instead of seeing it for yourself.”
“What does it mean… why was I running with it that night… and who was I running from?” I ask, tracing my finger across the jagged edge of the key. A solid steel door appears in my head with the number fourteen painted on it. “Does this go to the hospital room I was in?” As soon as I say it, I pause. In the memory, Lily told me that I was locked up, but I said I wasn’t. She said I believed what everyone told me and never saw things for myself. “But how can I ever see things for myself when I’m so blind… I can’t even remember anything.”
Because you repressed it yourself. Not because it was stolen from you.
She’s right, but still, at this point I think if I could actually remember, I would. Just to have some answers.
“Do you know what I did that night when I got hit by the car?” I ask, enfolding my fingers tightly around the key. “Do you know what happened before all of that? How I escaped the hospital… why I was there?”
I know as much as you. You’re mind is my mind. If you don’t want to remember then neither do I.
I feel my legs carrying me to the mirror on their own accord. “But I don’t know anything.” I study myself in the mirror, imagining myself as blond like the detective said, imagining myself as someone else. “Other than these pieces that don’t make any sense.”
You don’t know anything because you chose to forget. Everything you do, you chose to do.
She’s right. If I was a better person, then I’d simply go talk to someone—go to Preston and confess what’s going on. Tell him about Sydney. Bella. These horrifying memories and how I think I might be a killer. But I know I won’t. I’m not sure if that makes me a bad person, for carrying those thoughts inside me, not speaking about them because I worry what they mean. Maybe if I’d spoken up sooner, lives could have been spared. Maybe Sydney would still be alive.
“Maybe,” Lily says. “But maybe not.”
Chapter 21
Maddie
“Bartender Bella Anderfells Missing, Foul Play Suspected.” This is the headline on the news the morning after I find the birth certificates and key. There aren’t too many details only that she was seen over a week ago on March 15th, on the day Sydney died. I don’t know how to process this information, but every time I shut my eyes I end up back at her place, surrounded by blood and no body.
As I’m struggling with whether I should be guilty or not, whether I killed her or not, I decide it’s time to confront my mother about the birth certificate, convincing myself that maybe if I get more answers, then somehow the mystery will be solved. Although in the back of my mind, I think part of me secretly wishes to stay in the dark. What I don’t know can’t hurt me. If I’m a killer and I don’t know it, then everything’s still okay, right?
Wrong. But it’s what I tell myself to keep moving and breathing.
I opt for a surprise attack, and catch my mother one day while she’s eating a sandwich at the kitchen table. I simply walk into the kitchen and set the birth certificate down on the table in front of her.
She immediately drops her sandwich and her jaw drops as she stares at. “Where did you get that?”
“I think you know where I got it.” I pull out a chair and take a seat across from her. “The spot where you were hiding it.”
She shakes her head, staring at the piece of paper. Finally she reaches out to touch it, her fingers trembling, but she quickly pulls back. “Maddie, you need to forget you ever saw this,” she says, her gaze drifting up to me.
I cross my arms on the top of the table. “No. I’ve forgot enough during my lifetime. This is it for me.”
She presses her lips together so forcefully that they start to turn blue around the edges. “It was your sister’s.” Her voice is so soft, delicate, fragile.
“My sister’s?” I act surprised, but I’m not. I had my suspicions. Still… “Why didn’t you tell me about her before?”
She swallows hard, her hand clasps around the bottom of her neck as if she’s trying to strangle herself. “Because the memory of her will only cause you pain.”
“Try me.” My tone is firm, demanding.
She shakes her head over and over again, tears dotting her eyes. “It’s better if you don’t remember her.”
I grip the edge of the table, needing to hold onto something because I feel like I’m about to tumble into darkness, but I don’t know why. “It’s my decision whether I remember her or not and right now I’ve decided that I want to remember her. Now tell me. Where is she?”
It takes her an eternity to answer. Cars drive by from outside, the wind blows, my mother battles to breathe evenly. “She died.”
All noises fade away. “When?” My voice cracks.
A single tear falls from her eye. “A long time ago.”
“But why didn’t you ever tell me about her?”
“Because she’s better forgotten.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I press my hands to the side of my face, struggling for oxygen. I keep thinking about the girl in my memories, the one with blond hair that told me to cut her wrist. She said she was Lily and I thought she was my Lily, but maybe she was my sister. But in the pictures… I look so much like her. Long blond hair and the scar was there, so it had to be me. “What the hell is going on?” The room is spinning, tumbling out of control. Or maybe it’s just me. “Nothing makes sense.”
“Maddie, this is why I didn’t want to tell you.” She slides her arm across the table to take my hand. “It’s better if you can’t remember painful things like this. It’s the bright side of your amnesia.”
My hands drop to the table and I suck in a large mouthful of air. “Brightside? Are you f**king kidding me?” I jump out of the chair so abruptly it topples to the floor. “There is no brightside to this.” I give an exaggerated gesture at myself. “Everyday I feel like I’m losing my mind and you just add to that.”