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“What do you mean?” Spencer asked, hugging her knees. This sounded awfully psychobabblish to her.
“Are your friends sort of…the center of everything? They have everything you want, they push you around, you never feel good enough?”
Spencer’s mouth went dry. She certainly used to have a friend like that: Ali.
She closed her eyes and saw the strange Ali memory that had been plaguing her all week. The memory was of a fight, Spencer was sure of it. Only, Spencer usually remembered all of her fights with Ali, better than she remembered the good moments of their friendship. Was it a dream?
“What are you thinking?” Dr. Evans asked.
Spencer took a breath. “About Alison.”
“Ah.” Dr. Evans nodded. “Do you think Alison was like Melissa?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Dr. Evans plucked a Kleenex out of the box on her desk and blew her nose. “I saw that video of you girls on TV. You and Alison seemed angry at each other. Were you?”
Spencer took a deep breath. “Sort of.”
“Can you remember why?”
She thought for a moment and gazed around the room. There was a plaque on Dr. Evans’s desk that she hadn’t noticed the last time she’d been here. It said THE ONLY TRUE KNOWLEDGE IN LIFE IS KNOWING YOU KNOW NOTHING.—SOCRATES. “Those weeks before Alison went missing, she started acting…different. Like she hated us. None of us wanted to admit it, but I think she was planning on dropping us that summer.”
“How did that make you feel? Angry?”
“Yeah. Sure.” Spencer paused. “Being Ali’s friend was great, but we had to make a lot of sacrifices. We went through a lot together, and some of it wasn’t good. It was like, ‘We go through all this for you, and you repay us by ditching us?’”
“So you felt owed something.”
“Maybe,” Spencer answered.
“But you feel guilty too, right?” Dr. Evans suggested.
Spencer lowered her shoulders. “Guilty? Why?”
“Because Alison’s dead. Because, in some ways, you resented her. Maybe you wanted something bad to happen to her because she was hurting you.”
“I don’t know,” Spencer whispered.
“And then your wish came true. Now you feel like Alison’s disappearance is your fault—that if you hadn’t felt this way about her, she wouldn’t have been murdered.”
Spencer’s eyes clouded with tears. She couldn’t respond.
“It’s not your fault,” Dr. Evans said forcefully, leaning forward in the chair. “We don’t always love our friends every minute. Alison hurt you. Just because you had a mean thought about her doesn’t mean you caused her death.”
Spencer sniffed. She stared at the Socrates quote again. The only true knowledge in life is knowing you know nothing. “There’s a memory that keeps popping into my head,” she blurted out. “About Ali. We’re fighting. She talks about something I read in her diary—she always thought I was reading her diary, but I never did. But I’m…I’m not even sure the memory is real.”
Dr. Evans put her pen to her mouth. “People cope with things in different ways. For some people, if they witness or do something disturbing, their brain somehow…edits it out. But often the memory starts pushing its way back in.”
Spencer’s mouth felt scratchy, like steel wool. “Nothing disturbing happened.”
“I could try to hypnotize you to draw out the memory.”
Spencer’s mouth went dry. “Hypnotize?”
Dr. Evans was staring at her. “It might help.”
Spencer chewed on a piece of hair. She pointed at the Socrates quote. “What does that mean?”
“That?” Dr. Evans’s shrugged. “Think about it yourself. Draw your own conclusion.” She smiled. “Now, are you ready? Lie down and get comfy.”
Spencer slumped on the couch. As Dr. Evans pulled down the bamboo blinds, Spencer cringed. This was just like what Ali did that night in the barn before she died.
“Just relax.” Dr. Evans turned off her desk lamp. “Feel yourself calming down. Try to let go of everything we talked about today. Okay?”
Spencer wasn’t relaxed at all. Her knees locked and her muscles shook. Even her teeth ground together. Now she’s going to walk around and count down from one hundred. She’ll touch my forehead, and I’ll be in her power.
When Spencer opened her eyes, she wasn’t in Dr. Evans’s office anymore. She was outside her barn. It was night. Alison was staring at her, shaking her head just like she had in the other flashes of memory Spencer had recalled during the week. Spencer suddenly knew it was the night Ali went missing. She tried to claw her way out of the memory, but her limbs felt heavy and useless.
“You try to steal everything away from me,” Ali was saying with a tone and inflection that were now eerily familiar. “But you can’t have this.”
“Can’t have what?” The wind was cold. Spencer shivered.
“Come on,” Ali taunted, putting her hands on her hips. “You read about it in my diary, didn’t you?”
“I wouldn’t read your diary,” Spencer spat. “I don’t care.”
“You care way too much,” Ali said. She leaned forward. Her breath was minty.
“You’re delusional,” Spencer sputtered.
“No, I’m not,” Ali snarled. “You are.”
Rage suddenly filled Spencer. She leaned forward and shoved Ali’s shoulder.
