I didn’t hear the police car edge up behind me. Someone stepping out.
A man appeared, spoke to me real simple, and eventually had it all make sense. His voice was gentle and considered. Rivaling those in my head, particularly the Fouls—Jump, you fucking crybaby.
Finally coaxed down from the ledge, I was driven in the pouring rain to a police station, PC Keith Chandler taking his time, swerving around blips in the road. Going easy on the clutch. He was careful to speak softly, noticing my bloodshot eyes, a tremble in my limbs. My leggings still wet and reeking of urine.
In a square fluorescent-lit room at the police station, a female officer with a half smile joined us at an oblong table. I suspected her to be just a little judgmental. A slight flicker to her eyes when Runner emptied the rucksack of its entire contents.
She stared at me: an alternate personality destroying a criminal underworld from the inside.
Suddenly overcome, I gave a statement. Well, Oneiroi did, with Ella’s help. I stepped back into the Body, thinking she might articulate better the sequence of events. I was tired.
Four hours later I was committed.
Glendown is home now for a while. At least until the Flock are considered safe enough for flight. Daniel believes my dissociated identities are what saved me. That without them I might not have survived the club or the Groom House, and even though his administering medication mutes their voices, we’re figuring it out, together—the Fouls, of course, remaining our biggest challenge. It’s our hope that one day I’ll integrate a little more—us, we, and them taking on the curious shape of an I.
Because I can mean any one of the eight personalities—nine, including me—that I’ve gathered over the years. I, the Nest Builder. But in this, I have not lost sight of the girl who was born and named, the one growing and learning person I know as Alexa Wú.
The Electra, along with the Groom House, eventually slipped off the front pages of local newspapers. Then, when the arrests were made, hacks wrote hyped headlines: human traffickers arrested in the east end: 15 women rescued.
They got the “women” part wrong. Most of them were girls.
Another claimed: police arrest 11 people involved in pedophile ring as sex worker tips off local police.
The subheading named Navid Mahal and Cassie Wang as the ringleaders, the story accompanied by a black-and-white photograph of Navid, Cassie, and Shaun, handcuffed, outside the Electra. Its pink neon light killed. Each had been taken in a separate police car, the crowns of their fallen heads forced down further as they stepped inside. In the end, Navid had shown his vulgarity by turning around and giving his fame the middle finger, a nasty curl to his lip. A week later there were more photographs. Of Annabelle and Amy and their brother, who gave testimony to Navid’s hit-and-run. Of Jane—though no Sylvie—with a new hairstyle, no longer red but blond. They all still wore their gold necklaces, a key dangling from each—their longing and childhood wounds heartbreakingly and infuriatingly unresolved. I wondered if the authorities caught up with Tao Wang and what had become of Poi-Poi. Had she been sent back to China?
That was five weeks ago, when I believed myself destined for Jumpers Bridge or a life of crime. The Flock splintering into warring parts as protection against our pain. Who knew how much trouble we’d get ourselves in? The risks we would take. How justice and revenge would take over like some rabid beast, those helpless girls reminding me of all the times I too had my voice silenced. Unheard. A sense of powerlessness felt for so long.
So few people tell you there are other choices. That you can change the story. That we’re not a fixed product of our past. That there’s a way to reclaim the many frightened, exiled parts of ourselves. That we’re not worthless, or stupid; or; or; or.
Instead they gaslight.
And lie.
And shark.
And groom.
But they’re wrong.
We will triumph.