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A sob rips from her throat, and she turns on her heel, stumbling toward the door. I have to stuff my hands in my pockets to keep myself from reaching out and grabbing her. This is the best thing for both of us. I’ll feed her every lie I can to keep her out, clinging to the only truth I need to know.
She made this bed.
Now we both have to lie in it.
Chapter 27
Lyric
As the days continue to pass with mostly silence and the gory images on the wall to fill them, reality slips further from my grasp. I’m beginning to doubt that anything ever existed outside these four walls. I feel like I’m losing my mind and questioning if I had a life before I arrived here or if I imagined it all. Is Eden even real? Or did I just invent her as a way to escape this confinement?
I ask Kodiak about her from time to time, but he stopped responding to me the day I got sick again. He washed me up, laid me on the couch, and never said anything else.
Every day, he comes in here and delivers my meals with a side of psychological torture. It’s always something different. Familiar songs he plays at all hours of the day and night from the overhead speaker. Images of the girl he calls Bianca laid out on the table in front of me. Newspaper articles. Pamphlets for some kind of ranch for troubled teens. Photos of more people I don’t recognize. Just when I think there can’t be anything else, he’ll prove me wrong.
At one point, he brought in a tablet, placed it in front of me, and played a series of videos while he sat next to me and observed. I could only speculate that the man in the film with similar eyes was his brother. He looks like the same bloodied man in the photos on the wall. But regardless, I don’t know him.
There have been times I’ve considered that I could have. With nothing else to do here but think, it’s crossed my mind. I’ve tried to connect the dots just to test that theory, but it doesn’t make sense. Because I know if I was that girl in the photos, I would have to feel something when I looked at her. But I don’t. And from what I’ve read so far, she was from Texas. She had a family who missed her. Even the articles Kodiak brought me have speculated she’s dead.
I can see how impossible it is, so why can’t he?
But then I look at her face, and it makes me wonder if I’m the one who’s insane. How can two people be so identical unless they were either the same person or a set of twins? I don’t know the answer to that question. All I know is what my gut tells me, and I have to rely on that.
This morning, I pace from wall to wall, trying to exhaust myself after another nightmare. I just want one solid hour of sleep, and when I crawl back onto the couch, I think maybe it will work. But it isn’t long before someone startles me by tapping on my shoulder. My swollen eyes snap open with a jolt to meet Birdie’s. And the visit is so unexpected it overwhelms my emotions. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see a kind face in my entire life.
“Hey,” she says softly, taking a seat on the couch beside me. “Are you okay?”
I sit up and smooth my hair back, a little embarrassed she’s witnessing me in this state. I barely know her, but she’s the closest thing I have to a friend right now.
“I’m okay,” I lie.
She glances around the room, taking in the pictures taped to the wall, and frowns. When she shifts on the sofa, she seems uncomfortable but also not entirely shocked by the carnage. For a second, it looks like she’s trapped in a memory of her own, and her next words seem to confirm it.
“You know, if you did it, you can tell me,” she says. “I’m not here to pass judgment. My own record is far from squeaky clean. If you knew the things I’ve done in my past, you might not feel so bad.”
“If I did it, I would tell you,” I answer. “But I’m not lying to you. I don’t know how many ways I can say it.”
Birdie studies me, then nods as if she accepts I’m being honest. And just that small comfort allows me to draw the first full breath I’ve taken in weeks.
“Can you tell me the first thing you do remember?” she asks. “After you lost your memory.”
I consider her question and realize I’ve got nothing to lose or gain by doing that much. Eden told me not to talk, and I’ve always trusted her judgment when it comes to things like this. She’s been homeless longer than I have, managing to stay alive by using her instincts, but I think if she were in my shoes, she would probably do the same.
