This isn’t my life.
It can’t be my life.
Who is Zach?
“How did it work?”
“The procedure? I’m not too sure. I know they use electrodes—these black patchy things hooked up to a machine. Or do you mean how we were able to get them to do it without your parents knowing?” She pauses, but I don’t answer, so she addresses the latter question. “We used our fake IDs. You had it done as Kathleen Kelly. They thought you were nineteen.”
I glance up at that. So wedidget use out of them, like she wanted.
“Who was my doctor?” It’s such a stupid question. Mundane.
“Overton. The old one.”
Dr. Hunt must have done the procedure when I was twelve. Overton Sr. removedZach.And Overton Jr. really had never met me.
“But how?” I ask again. “Nobody else knew him? My parents have never even mentioned him.How?”
“We never told your parents you got the procedure done. You were really upset after everything with him, and they knew that. So when you asked your family not to bring him up again, they were only too happy to agree. None of our friends at school really knew him. The biggest problem was his dumb-ass friends would approach you and try to talk to you—mostly at the beginning.”
People I thought were Katy’s friends.
The girl at the mall—Ashley—who said she’d met me.
God.
Oh God.
Still leaning over the steering wheel, I bury my face in my hands and cry. Quiet, heavy tears that start from my chest and weave their way up.
This is not my life.
None of this can be true.
And yet—here are the pieces, falling together, interlocking. Making sense.
My whole life is a lie.
“I’m so sorry,” Katy says. “I only wanted you to not be so sad. I didn’t even want you to have the procedure, but you were so sure. I’d never seen you so upset.”
I can’t even answer her. I can only continue weeping, shaking silently.
Oh God.
What do I do now?
“I’ll tell you everything you want to know,” Katy says, squeezing my shoulder. “Everything I remember. Stuff you told me. I’ll tell you how you met and everything you toldme.”
Everythingsheremembers.
What aboutme?
Somehow Katy has one giant chunk of my life, and my family has the other. What do I have?
What have I done?
“No,” I say, lifting my head from the steering wheel. I don’t want her to tell me what happened.
