WARNING! Recording Mode Is Unavailable In This Format
MY eyelids were no match for the blinding brightness. No matter how hard I squeezed my eyes closed, I could still see the neon pink of the insides of my lids. I could practically smell the light—a sharp, antiseptic scent way more intense than the vaguely bleach-like smell in the rest of the hospital. My skin prickled in a way that reminded me of my encounter with Sonja Hillebrandt back in Crimptown, when the air had suddenly shifted and I’d felt like I’d walked into a cloud of static electricity.
I kept walking, covering my eyes with one arm and waving the other, trying to find the wall and groping nothing instead. After what felt like forever, I thought I noticed the light begin to fade and I slowed to a halt. Hesitantly, I dropped my arm, then squinted around.
I was standing in the corner of room 313, facing the room. But everything was . . . reversed. Like the negative of a color photo. The white tiled floor was pitch-black, and the light blue-green wallpaper was bloodred. The room was flipped, too, like a reflection—the shelves and the dresser had swapped walls, the door was opposite the bed. Distantly, I heard a muffled ringing sound, like a fire alarm going off in the building next door. Behind me, the portal in the corner glowed white.
But as weird as all of that was, it barely registered in my brain. Because the Thing was standing in the middle of the room. Head tilted, blinking at me curiously. Then it spoke.
“She.”
I stood there dumbly, half convinced I was hallucinating. “What?”
“You always call me it,” the Thing said. “A thing. But I’m a girl. More of a girl than you are.”
The insult took a few seconds to sink in. I was too distracted by hearing the sound of my own voice, but all twisted and warped. Despite the cruel words, the Thing spoke softly and sweetly, like a little girl. And there was a weird distance, too. It was hard to explain, but it kind of sounded like a recording, despite the fact that it was right here in the room with me.
“You aren’t a girl,” I said finally, trying to sound confident. “You aren’t a person. You’re something I created, and I’ll call you whatever I want.” Hearing the way my own voice shook forced me to realize what I’d been attempting to ignore.
I was terrified.
In the last four months, I’d dealt with plenty of scary stuff. Emily and her knife and her high-pitched laugh. Lidia when she was possessed by a dead angry pirate. The ghosts of electrocuted prisoners and lost, frightened campers and even a possessed nun who’d never actually existed as a human being, but did as a paranormal being.
But the Thing was different. It wasn’t exactly ghost, and it wasn’t exactly human. It wasn’t even a doppelganger. It was an actual part of me, a part I’d spent most of my life trying to ignore.
“You didn’t create me,” the Thing said in a singsong way that raised goose bumps up and down my arms. “You hid me. You hid me from my mother. All you had to do was let me out, and she never ever would have left us.”
I shook my head, but tears were already streaming down my face. “That’s not true.”
“It is.” The Thing sighed. “You made us wear that Bride of Frankenstein shirt in our sixth-grade school photo just to make her mad. You whined every time she asked if she could paint our nails or do our hair. You pouted every time she took us shopping.” It took a step forward, its eyes flashing. “Why did you have to push her away? She was just trying to spend time with us.”
“She was trying to change me,” I said weakly, wiping my eyes. “She was trying to make me . . . you.”
The Thing stamped its foot. “I am you!” it roared, and suddenly its voice wasn’t girly and sweet anymore. “All you had to do was let me out! And we’d all be happy! Mom and Dad would still be together, we’d be a family, we’d have a normal life instead of this. We don’t even have a house anymore, we live in hotels and stay in abandoned prisons and hospitals and Dad wants to go back to our home in Chelsea and you won’t—”
“He does not!” I shouted, suddenly furious. “He loves our life now, he’s just . . . he’s scared he’s not being a good father. Mostly thanks to you. But a miserable life isn’t a normal life, and we were all miserable—Mom, Dad, me. It didn’t matter that we were all in a house together. Everyone’s happier with the way things are now, even Mom.”
“Happier with her new daughter,” the Thing sneered. “Don’t you see? If she wasn’t happy with you, it’s your fault.”
I closed my eyes. I knew that was wrong. I’d known ever since Grandma and Dad had told me Mom backed out on coming out to see me. She can be very, very selfish. It was true that I could have tried harder with Mom. I could have talked to her on the phone when she called after moving to Cincinnati. I could have swallowed my complaints when she took me shopping or painted my nails.
But she could have tried harder, too. She could have taken me to play laser tag when we’d passed it on our way to the mall. She could have helped me with my vampire Elsa makeup in seventh grade instead of sighing and asking if I was sure I wouldn’t rather be regular Elsa for Halloween instead.
I’d gone bridesmaid dress shopping with her over Thanksgiving, I’d had dinners and watched movies with her and Anthony and Elena, and I was going to her wedding shower in a few weeks. She could have come to Seoul. She could have taken an interest in my new life, like I was trying to do with hers.
I knew all this. It was time to actually believe it.
“It’s her fault, too,” I whispered, my eyes still closed. “I’m trying now. But she still isn’t, not really. Maybe she will someday, but until then, there’s nothing else I can do.”
“Of course there is,” the Thing said, all soft and sweet again. “You can change who you are. Look how easy it is!”
I opened my eyes and took a step back. “What the . . .”
No more dress, no more braid. The Thing had my short ponytail, my Final Girl hoodie and jeans. It really was my doppelganger now.
“I knew you wouldn’t be willing to do what it takes to fix our family,” the Thing told me. “That’s why I brought you here. You entered the portal, but I’m the one who’s leaving.”
And then it leaped forward and shoved me hard into the shelf before sprinting across the room to the portal.