Page 109 of Buried in the Woods Below

“Olivia and Dad? Those were accidents. What do they have to do with this?”

Her mouth creases, and I watch her eyes dance left and right, searching mine.

“Nothing. It was an accident. It’s not your fault. Mom will make it better.”

Something in the way she says it seems off, more like she’s reciting a mantra than the truth. It was an accident. It’s not your fault. Mom will make it better.

Those words unlock something in me.

Memories resurface in my mind like Laelynn’s body.

Olivia lying on the fairground pavement. A halo of blood around her head.

It was an accident. It’s not your fault. Mom will make it better.

My dad. A shard of glass jammed into his neck, glistening.

It was an accident. It’s not your fault. Mom will make it better.

Laelynn. Vivek and Freida. Heathcliff. The twins.

The rope, the knife, the axe. The blood.

It was an accident. It’s not your fault. Mom will make it better.

It can’t be.

My breath seizes. My temperature rises.

The room spins. The fluorescent lights flicker and spread like a starburst, taking over my vision.

I drop to the floor, curling.

My mother hugs me and brushes my hair from my face. Just like when I was eight. We rock back and forth. I say it with her, barely breathing.

“It was an accident. It’s not my fault. Mom will make it better.”

“It was an accident. It’s not my fault. Mom will make it better.”

Epilogue

Six months later

The cold steel bench bites through my jumpsuit as I survey the yard. The snow is gone, leaving behind damp soil and the scent of thaw. Dead leaves skitter across the concrete, restless in the breeze. They call this place the Central Square. But let’s be honest: It’s a prison yard.

Tilting my head, I let the March sun warm my face. It’s been a long winter. I was beginning to forget the feel of heat. Nearby, a basketball thuds in a steady rhythm as six women play a sluggish three-on-three. Others drift along the perimeter in white uniforms, chatting, laughing, pretending this is anything other than what it is. I prefer to be alone. Alone with my thoughts. Alone with nature. At my feet, a blade of grass fights its way through a crack in the pavement. An ant scuttles up its length, frantic, searching.

Dr. Moeller says I have dissociative identity disorder. Not multiple personalities, he’s quick to clarify. Not like the monsters in the movies. Just me, splintered into jagged panes, each one reflecting what I couldn’t face. He calls the shard that carried the sharpest edges my “alter.” I call her CharBar. She was never separate though. She was just the part I wasn’t allowed to be.

He says Olivia was different. Not an alter. A hallucinated companion. A trauma-born ghost my mind conjured to hold the guilt I couldn’t carry. I saw her because I couldn’t accept the truth of what I’d done at the Ferris wheel. He calls her a “visual projection of unresolved grief.” A coping mechanism. A child’s trick dragged into adulthood.

I know she’s not real now.

Integration. That’s his word. He says we’ve made progress, stitching the pieces together. He expected me to weep. That’s what they want when they press your trauma into words, squeeze it through the therapeutic sieve: tears, apologies, guilt. But when I saw CharBar whole, I didn’t feel guilt. I felt recognition. Like finally catching my reflection in a broken mirror and realizing it was me all along.

We—I mean—I remember everything now. The Ferris wheel. Olivia beside me, teasing, always making me feel small. Not as pretty. Not as athletic. Not as charming. She broke the rules, but I was always the one who paid the consequences. That day, she stood on the edge of the gondola, taunting me, taunting death itself. So, I taught her a lesson.

I let her fall.