CHAPTER
CHASE’S HANDS MOVE UP AND DOWN MY ARMS. His warmth rips away the cold and brings me back to the present. The burns on my shoulders ache, but I can’t tell if the pain is real or not. All that time I thought Jason had held me, shielded me from the fire . . . but now I know that I am forever branded by his madness. His betrayal seems small compared with my own.
I toy with my white hospital bracelet, the one with the bar code that rests just underneath my yellow wristband. I trace the letters of my name, Alice. They blur together until they rearrange: Celia. The truth is a dagger buried in my back. “I’m Celia?” I ask. Though I’m not talking to anyone in particular. Chase bows his head and pulls me into a tight hug.
“I don’t understand,” I say, pulling back. Even though I feel the truth in my core, something inside of me rejects it. “You said she was in the D ward.” My voice is faint, full of doubt.
Chase shakes his head and looks at me sadly, pitifully. “I never said she was in the D ward. You drew that conclusion yourself.”
I nod in a sort of vacant way. My mind runs through our conversations. I was the driving force behind each one. She’s in the D ward, I had said. And Chase hadn’t disagreed, but he hadn’t agreed either. Silence hides the most damning things, I guess.
I press a hand against my chest. It feels as if my heart has cloned itself and now there are two heartbeats at war with each other. Thousands of images swirl in my mind. Cellie offering me cake. Cellie stealing food at the Chans’. Cellie setting fires. No—not Cellie, me. Oh God, all the things I’ve done, all the people I’ve hurt. How will I ever forgive myself? I stagger back and have to use the wall for support. The surface is charred, and little splinters prick the skin under my fingernails. How could I not have known? “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
Chase takes off his hat and twists it in his hands, so hard that water squeezes out of it. The scar on his cheek twitches. “I thought, in the beginning, when you asked about her, that she was real. I didn’t know she was . . .” He can’t look at me. “I didn’t know she wasn’t until the things you said didn’t quite add up, and then I stole your file. And it spelled it out, all in black-and-white. Dr. Goodman noted in it that he didn’t think you were ready to handle the truth. He believed that if you were told the truth, it would cause significant and irreversible damage. And I thought that was bullshit.” It all makes sense now, Chase’s dislike for Dr. Goodman.
But then, all too fast, Chase’s lies come back to me. It hurts. My file must have said everything. He played along with my fantasy. I’m being held together with thread. I sink to the floor, draw my legs up, and hook my arms around them. I’m shaking, but not from the cold. I rock in place and cry. “So what? This was all some game to you? Something to keep you from boredom in the mental hospital?” I spew the words, and they’re full of hate.
“No.” He shakes his head, almost violently. He melts to his knees and reaches for me, but I turn my cheek and choke back a sob. A cold finger runs down my spine. The world shrinks away, and I just want to find a hole to crawl into.
“Look,” he says. “You remember I told you about my sister, how I killed her?”
I don’t answer, I just keep crying. Cellie’s not real. It’s destroying me. I always wondered what it would feel like to be brought to the bottom, and now I know.
Chase squeezes my kneecaps, forces my eyes to his. “Please, I know I don’t have any right to ask you this, but just listen, okay? That’s all. Just listen? And then if you want me to go, and you don’t ever want to see me again, I’ll understand, okay?”
I can’t manage words so I just nod. He starts talking fast, like if he doesn’t get the words out in enough time, they’ll burn up in the distance between us. “My sister, Maya. She was sick.” He smiles, but it’s melancholy. “I told you that you reminded me of her, remember?” He doesn’t wait for me to confirm, just goes on. “That was the thing at the beginning—you reminded me of her.” My little bird with a broken wing. “She had all sorts of things wrong with her, mostly this horrible temper—which you don’t have. But my parents, they kept insisting that she was just sad, that there wasn’t anything wrong with her. They refused to get her help. And she got worse.” He looks at the ground. “Like, a lot worse. One night when my parents were gone, she freaked out and started saying all this shit about how the government was tapping our phones. I couldn’t calm her down. She was out of control. She grabbed a knife from the kitchen. When I tried to wrestle it out of her hands, she cut me real bad.” He motions to the scar on his cheek. “I locked myself in the bathroom. She finally calmed down and tried to apologize through the door. But I was so pissed. And I . . . I said things I shouldn’t have, things I didn’t even mean. I told her I hated her. I told her to go away.”
The silence builds and then collapses as the final part of his secret spills out. “You don’t know how many times a day I relive those final moments. She made this sound like . . . like I was pulling out her heart. Fuck. After the house had been quiet for a while, I came out. I found her in the kitchen. There was so much blood. I remember taking off my shirt and wrapping it around her wrists. I screamed that I didn’t mean any of it. I begged her to stay. Stay alive. But she died. After that, it was like there was a monster in my chest. I was so angry. Five months later, I wound up at Savage Isle in the D ward for beating the shit out of a teacher who asked me if I was doing okay. I don’t even know why I did it. When the cops came to arrest me, I sobbed like a fucking baby. All I could do was rock back and forth, and all I heard was that sound Maya made.”
I understand what he’s telling me, but I don’t have it in me to sympathize. I just don’t. I’ve heard enough. “Chase—”
“Just let me finish, okay? I know what you’re thinking—what does this have to do with you, right? So, like I said, you reminded me of her, but then you didn’t, and I started to like you in a whole different way. Like, really like you. I didn’t understand why you were at Savage Isle. So I stole your file and that’s when I figured it all out. And I thought . . . Fuck.” He runs a hand through his hair, leaving a chaotic mess in its wake. He’s wild for me to understand, accept, and forgive what he’s saying. “I know, what I did was wrong, but I guess I thought if I couldn’t save my sister, I could save you.”
I was right. He wanted to fix me because he couldn’t fix his sister. I don’t blame him, but I don’t excuse him for it either. He slumps down so his shoulder aligns with mine. I have a sudden flash of Jason holding me, his weight pressing me down. I flinch at the contact and curl away. “Jesus, Alice. I’m not going to hurt you.”
I want him to go away. I don’t want to hear anything else. I lie down and rest my cheek on the ashy floor. There’s movement in the barn and it’s not from Chase, he’s gone utterly still, just like me. There are footsteps. And then a voice. “Alice, are you in here?” It’s Dr. Goodman.
Chase nudges me. It has no effect. He tries again. But I’m frozen. It’s almost like one of those horror stories you hear about when people are anesthetized and their bodies can’t move but they can feel everything during surgery. I would be lucky to feel such torture. I feel nothing. I’m not even crying now. I’m all dried up inside. Hollow like the wind through dry grass.
Chase stands with his hands up. “She’s here.”
“Alice, come on out. You’re safe now,” Dr. Goodman says, and his voice echoes in my ears like I’m standing at the back of a cave.
“She won’t move.” Chase gasps, and then, based on the noise he makes, he’s either crying or sick. Maybe both. “I really fucked up. I think I really fucked up.”
“Chase, come on out. We’ll get everything sorted. I just need you to step away from Alice for me. Can you do that?” Dr. Goodman negotiates.
Long seconds pass and nobody moves. Finally, the standoff ends when techs storm the stall. Chase is pushed down. I hear the unmistakable sound of handcuffs, and then Chase is dragged away.
Dr. Goodman kneels beside me. “Alice, it’s over now. Time to go back to the hospital.” I don’t move. He draws a penlight from his pocket and shines it in my eyes. I guess my body still works, because I squint and try to withdraw. Someone, a nurse I think, asks if he wants to sedate me. That’s funny. My limbs are already heavy. Finding out that your twin doesn’t actually exist is a kind of natural sedation. He tells her no. The world falls out beneath me as I’m lifted. Donny carries me to a waiting police car. He settles me into the back seat and assists me with the seat belt. Dr. Goodman gets in beside me. I turn away from him. Chase is in the next car. I can’t see his face, because he’s hunched over. Shudders rack his body.
The doors slam and the car lurches forward, red and blue lights spinning. Dr. Goodman shrugs off his jacket and lays it over my legs. Somehow I forgot that I’m soaking wet from the lake.
“I’m sorry this happened, Alice,” Dr. Goodman says. He goes on to tell me all sorts of things, about how hopeful he is for my recovery. How when I’m ready, he’ll be there to listen. He wonders if I know now that Celia isn’t real. He says I must have so many questions. I do. Or I did. But right now, they don’t seem to matter. “You won’t have to worry about Chase coming back to the hospital. I’ll find him a placement at another facility.” He’s trying to reassure me, but it’s pointless. I close my eyes. Dr. Goodman keeps talking, but all I hear are the wheels of the police car on wet cement and the sound of Chase taking me to the edge and pushing me off.