Page 18 of Cracked Doll

He blinks up at me from the floor, dazed, uncomprehending, as though he has no idea what he's just done — because he doesn't, because he never does, because this happens to him too, this same forgetting, over and over, while it happens to me the exact same way it always does: total, absolute, undeniable.

I don't stay to explain it. I can't. I turn and run, half-blind, my vision swimming, my legs barely obeying me, until I reach the stairs and take them two at a time, my father's voice — confused now, calling my name — chasing me the whole way up.

I run upstairs, into my room, and finally, finally let myself fall apart in private.

I was supposed to be better by now. Seven years, and I still can't hold my own gaze, can't own a mirror, can't even own a proper photo ID, because the one time I tried, last year, I sat in that booth behind the curtain and simply couldn't do it — couldn't look into the little dark lens and let it show me back to myself. I left without the picture. I've never gone back.

I cry myself to sleep. It's not a new sensation.

The next morning, my eyes ache before I even open them — swollen, tender, the kind of pain that flares at the slightest touch. I sit behind the counter with a newspaper I bought off old Mr. Higgins's stand, folded open to a section he pointed me toward when I asked, quietly, embarrassed, if there were any listings for — for help. For people who needed help with things like mine.

There's a whole page of them. Clinics. Hospitals. Private practices.

I start at the top and work my way down.

"Hello," I say to the first voice that answers, my own voice small and careful. "I'm calling about — about a phobia. A fear of mirrors. Of reflections."

"Ah," the woman on the other end says, not unkindly. "That'll be eisoptrophobia. We do offer exposure therapy for that here — structured sessions, gradual desensitization, very effective long-term."

"How much," I ask, "would that cost?"

"Sessions run at one hundred and twenty pounds each," she says, "and we'd typically recommend a course of at least twelve to start seeing real progress."

I do the maths without meaning to, and my mouth goes dry. "Thank you," I manage. "I'll — I'll think about it."

I hang up and call the next number.

It's worse. A hundred and sixty a session, at the second hospital, plus an initial assessment fee that alone would eat a fortnight's earnings from the shop. The third quotes me privately by the hour, a figure so far beyond anything I could ever save that I nearly laugh out loud at the absurdity of it. I try therapist after therapist after that — some cheaper, most not, one so eye-wateringly expensive I actually apologize to the receptionist before hanging up, as though I'd wasted her time simply by asking.

By the last name on the list, I've stopped bothering to write the numbers down.

I sit behind the counter with the newspaper crumpled in my lap and let the truth settle over me, cold and final: I cannot afford to get better. Not through any door that looks even remotely like the ones everyone else gets to walk through.

I want it so badly it aches somewhere beneath my ribs — to be fixed, to be whole, to look into a mirror one single time without seeing two dead girls staring back. But wanting it has never once been the same as being able to reach it.

And there, unbidden, his voice returns to me — low, certain, terrifyingly patient. I'll fix your mind. But I'll put you back together exactly how I want you.

A stranger. A man who breaks into my home, who hides in my closet, who put a knife to my throat not a day ago.

And yet.

I sit there a long while, staring at nothing, turning the thought over and over until it stops feeling like a question and starts feeling, God help me, like a possibility.

Would I take that chance? Even from him?

Chapter 7

"Ophelia."

My father's voice drifts in from the living room while I'm mid-transaction, wrapping a tin soldier for a customer's grandson. I finish properly — count the change, hand it over, wish the woman a good afternoon — before I go to him, because whatever this is, it can wait the ninety seconds it takes to do my job right.

He's in the chair. His chair. Sober, upright, hands folded in his lap like a man at confession. That alone tells me everything about what's coming before he says a word.

"I shouldn't have said what I said." His voice is careful, threadbare. "Last night. On the street. I don't — I don't even remember all of it, if I'm honest, but I remember enough to know it was cruel. You didn't deserve that. You've never deserved any of it."

I fix my eyes on the wall behind his head, on a water stain shaped vaguely like a bird, and say nothing.

"You're the only thing I have left in this world," he goes on, the words worn smooth from repetition, "and I keep — I keep failing you, don't I. I know I do. I'm going to do better. I mean it this time."