Page 155 of Creeping Beautiful

“Where do you want to start.

“From the beginning, I guess.”

I agree and walk over to the bag. Donovan is one neat motherfucker. The tapes are in little soft-sided, mini-cassette-tape storage bags, arranged according to year. I never understood why Donovan used a cassette recorder when these things are practically obsolete. But the answer hits me, in this very moment, that this might’ve just been the way he was trained. Twenty years ago, it wasn’t so unusual to use such a device.

And then another revelation hits me too.

Twenty years ago might be the last time he had an actual, real lesson in PSYOPS.

I rub my hand down my face and swallow down fourteen years of regret.

What. The fuck. Have we done to this girl?

I know it’s not all our fault. It’s pretty clear that we picked Indie up in the middle of something. Someone, probably someone called Carter, got to her first.

And she sure as hell didn’t come with an instruction manual, so whatever. I put the first tape into the recorder and press play.

Indie paces the floor as her own little girl voice fills the room. She stops and looks at me. Smiles at me.

It’s a fun tape, I guess. She was busting Donovan’s balls pretty hard that first time.

But they don’t stay fun for long.

The first time Indie Anna Accorsi disappeared and came back with blood on her clothes and no memory of what she did or where she was, she was twelve years old.

Indie faces the door and presses her head against it as she listens to Donovan’s questions. Her own, hesitant, answers. Which are not answers. She never remembered anything, no matter how hard Donovan tried to coax it out of her.

The next one she’s normal again. Lots of them are totally normal. She is a happy girl content to talk about frogs, and Nathan, and the things they get up to in the swamp.

But she disappeared eight times before her twentieth birthday. Eight times she left us and returned with no memory of where she went, or what she did. So we have to get through seven more reality checks.

Even though most of the tapes are no longer than ten minutes, there are a lot of them and it takes a long time. By the time we’re finally at the last one before that very bad birthday, she’s huddled in the corner of her bedroom, hugging herself the way Donovan taught her, sobbing quietly.

I want to go to her. Hold her and tell her it’s all gonna be OK.

But I’m not sure it is.

When that tape is over, there’s nothing left but the one we played first. “Do you want to hear the last one again, Indie?”

She wipes a hand across her face. Sniffs loudly. And then turns her body so she can see me.

She is a beautiful fuckin’ mess.

She is a pretty little nightmare.

A gorgeous piece of misery and cloak of lovely darkness.

But she is my mess. She is my nightmare. She is my misery and my darkness.

So I smile at her.

She sniffs again. “Why are you smiling at me, Core McKay? There is nothing to smile about.”

That makes me smile even wider. She never calls me Core. “Because I love you, Indie Anna Accorsi. I don’t care what you’ve done, I still love you. And you’re not the only mess in this house. We’re all a mess. We’re all hiding darkness inside us. We’re all filled with regrets, and shame, and we were all born into the same fucking nightmare. But you know what?”

“What?”

“We’re still here, Indie. We made it this far. And if we can make it this far, we can keep going.”