He matched up the cards, one way and then another. Finding combinations of colors, suits, numbers and other seemingly random patterns. When he finished, he repeated the process. Faster and faster, his hands flew across the table, dealing out cards into piles. Swiping them back together and separating them again.
Never once did he take his eyes off the cards. The pattern seemed to change and become more erratic. The boy made a low hum in his throat that grew with the intensity of his dealings.
He slapped the cards down, shoved his chair away from the table and strode out of the room.
“Where are you going?”
Anger laced his response. “To the bathroom.”
“Why?”
“The jacks.”
“What about the jacks?”
“They’re dirty, damnit. You know that.”
On screen, a hand pointed to the cards laying face down on the table. The disembodied hand flipped them over to reveal two jacks facing each other.
The hand removed the cards and put the lid back on the empty box.
When the boy returned to the table, his hands were red and raw. Blood seeped from two knuckles. He sat in the chair and looked straight at the camera. After a moment, his hands found the box and opened the lid. Opened and closed.
Off screen. “What’s in the box?”
The hum returned.
After more cajoling, he opened the box. His body went rigid.
“What’s in the box?”
“Me.”
“How?”
“I’m a Jack.”
The boy froze with ugly pain stretched across his face.
My stomach churned.
I scanned the list of diagnoses. My head pounded and my heart ached. All those case studies. All those kids. “And me.”
Not you.
“Where am I on this list?”
Bach, music.
Chapter 33
Blackness closed in around me. The train going through the tunnel, chugging in tune to Bach. I asked him to play me a different song. A little Johnny Horton. At first he balked before plinking out the bare bones of a folk tale. Roughly forty-five minutes had passed since Collin left for Prairie Flats. I couldn’t afford to lose this chance to another memory lapse. To keep me focused on the here and now, JayJay sang along to the music—
whispering minds, whispering minds
—mangling the words as only a little kid could.
Collin had said something about two sites, yet I didn’t have time to search for a second one. Due to his frantic need for the flash drives, I suspected everything online was also on the drives I’d stolen. I started with the file of the OCD boy. I rechecked the table of contents, this time keeping Collin’s comments in the forefront of my mind—what was it he’d said? That I had more security guards on the inside than Fort Knox?
As much as I’d like to, I couldn’t cross something off my list because I didn’t want to have it. A quick review of the disorders took out bipolar and schizophrenia. My traumatic childhood, with the loss of my brother, alcoholic parents and domestic abuse pointed toward Borderline or Multiple personalities.
The yellow room flickered across my vision. The Baker’s Dozen. Personal Guards. Inner self.
JayJay crooned—
whispering minds, whispering minds
—
I clicked on the Multiple Personality link.
A case study popped up: the Schoolgirl and the Slut.
The same gray marbled table from the obsessive-compulsive video filled the screen.
I walked in wearing a black t-shirt and heavy makeup. A jagged cut slashed across my wrist. My own stitches itched in response.
I introduced myself as Luna, a member of the Baker’s Dozen who had met online for a psychology project.
In and of itself, nothing abnormal appeared during the interview. A depressed teen, crying out for help in an unjust world. They were as common as mosquitoes in July.
After the interview I left. A small clock in the corner of the video counted out the seconds and minutes. The date was December twenty-ninth.
I returned, this time wearing a gray sweatshirt from PFU.
The introduction would have been laughable if it wasn’t so painful.
“My name is Brutus.”
The Dozen paraded across the screen.
Pious Angel.
School Girl Daisy.
JayJay—immature and boisterous.
Indie in her leather, excited about videotaping a commercial. The Slut.
My skin crawled at the possibility.
I could not be thirteen different people. It defied logic. The texts from Luna. Our online community.
We were never on at the same time.
Brutus.
You always came late to the party,
Angel said apologetically.
Luna called me.
Before I could think that through, Rae came on with her knitting needles telling the camera that Fell didn’t have time to attend the dream interview.
So that’s how he got them—me—there, by hiding behind my psych experiment.
But how did he know about my multiple personalities in the first place?
Easy. We spent nearly a week with him.
For one week, we’d been held prisoner by Collin’s booze so he could tear apart our world and our minds. We’d cowered together—multiple fragments of one whole—listening to Collin pound on the door of our yellow room. Fell had stood guard, flinching with each blow, yet refusing to let him in. The door handle had rattled repeatedly, and the curtain had stirred in the stillness. We’d held our collective breath for fear that it would blow the drapes open and let the outside in.
Despite our best efforts, it had. And the outside shone a light on our imperfections, highlighting the split within ourselves and the bond that held us together. One body, thirteen minds.
A fact Collin had captured for the whole world to see.
I watched myself walk up to the table and sit down. I was poised, normal. Me. I opened my mouth and the screen went blank. Unable to watch more, I’d pulled the flash drive.
Who else knew? Granny? Travis? Who only guessed?
I wiped my hands on my jeans to dry the dampness.
Who else thought I was a freak?
Nobody.
That’s why we’re here.
“I don’t want you.” I shouted in the quiet room. Chrissy still didn’t stir. “I never asked you to come here.”
Oh, but you did.
You needed us. Made us. Molded us.
We protected you.
You called us.
I shook my head. “How long have you been here?”
Forever
“…and always?”
Exactly.
We are you and you are us.
The spider coming home to rest.
The pieces didn’t come together. I needed to see them, talk to them. Know them. “Can we go to the yellow room?”
The yellow room is gone.
“No it’s not. Not any more than before I knew it was real.”
We can try.
“You do that.”
I went to my room and curled up on the bed, cuddling Fluff Bunny under my arm.
The blue and red curtains fluttered in my memory. I tried to focus on the train tracks or the rocking chair, but could get no solid image. The knowledge of my disorder had brought to light my sanctuary and now it was stripped from me. I heard voices, but couldn’t see the Dozen.
“Luna?”
She’s not here.
“What do you mean she’s not there? If she’s me and I’m her, shouldn’t she always be there?”
Maybe.
It doesn’t always work that way.
“Who else is missing?”
Fell and James.
“Is he ever there?”
No. James never comes out. Luna sometimes, but never James.”
We just feel him the same way you do.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
Does it have to?
I laughed, a nervous sound in the quiet room. “I guess not. Who’s in charge?”
JayJay sang in the background of my mind. A quiet verse against the silence of the Dozen.
“Well?”
Fell, I guess.
She…manages us.
Even if we get away from her sometimes.
“Explain that, please.”
She’s our gatekeeper. But sometimes Indie slips out, you know, for fun.
She’s naughty.
Hey, I’m right here. Sheesh, nothing like talking about someone like they don’t exist.
“Do you exist?” My question was aimed toward Indie and her comment.
Einstein answered.
Do you?
I nodded.
How do you know?
“Because I just am. I can see, feel, taste, hear. Do things. I’m real.”
So are we.
“
But I have a body.”
And so do we, when Fell lets us.
When you let us.
My head ached. It was so loud in the room, and yet when I opened my eyes to the night-light gray, I was the only one in there. Reality threatened to consume me. As impossible as it seemed, I could no longer avoid the facts. Within me, resided more entities than I dreamed possible.
But is that such a bad thing?
Obviously. It made me a freak. According to Collin, it put my face, or rather, the many faces of me, on a website for the whole world to see. I imagined coeds across the country riveted to the screen. Dirty old men in their lounge chairs
and gaping women—moms, good clean wholesome women—shocked yet too fascinated to turn away. I was a train wreck.
“No.” My voice was loud in the room. Louder than the voices inside me. “I’m not a wreck. I’m a survivor.
“And I’m in control.” I closed my eyes and pulled the blanket up to my chin. “Did you hear that, Fell? I’m in control. Not you. Not Luna. Me. Just me. Bach, music, please.”
Chapter 34
The soothing sounds of a lullaby filled my mind. It was comforting, yet underneath it the quiet sounds of crying grated on my nerves like a metal fork scraping against teeth. My dreams were a replay of all I had learned. The circumstances of my birth. My carefree childhood with Jimmy and Travis before the terrible accident that tore Jimmy from my life. As the truck careened toward the tree, I tried to change the outcome, willing a tire to blow and slow the vehicle before the fatal crash. I failed and startled awake with the sound of Jimmy’s cries ringing in my ears.
Exhausted though I was from a mere three hours of sleep, morning brought determination. I was not going to let this destroy me. I was not going to be the victim. Most of all, I was not going to be a freak. I’d continue to piece together my past until I was whole again, and maybe, if I was lucky, I would earn back Trav’s love.
I sat on the couch with a mug of vanilla chai and my treasure boxes. Nobody would save me from myself. Only I could do that. I slit the tape on the first box and opened the flaps. A seashell from a trip to the ocean, rocks from the garden, childhood trinkets, crayon pictures and birthday cards spilled out. My writing was wobbly, kindergarten or first grade. One picture drew my attention.
A boy with dark hair and two long braids over his shoulders holding the hand of a girl with matching blonde braids. A rainbow arched over their heads. The words on the paper were bold and sure.
To Gemi.
By Travis.
Tears trickled down my cheek and landed on the page. Our hands darkened and the spider-like legs of our fingers stretched out. I pushed aside the urge to call Travis and opened the next box. The crayon pictures turned to notebooks. Journals of sorts. The lone trinket was a miniature green feather. When I held it up to the light, it shimmered.
A hummingbird feather.
I closed my eyes and willed the memory to come to me. Encountered resistance. Opened my heart instead of my mind. I was ready to reclaim what was mine.
* * *
The same emerald shimmer lay on the ground in a puff of feathers. Mesmerized, I stepped closer, only to be pulled back by a hand.
Don’t step on the tracks, Gemi. You’ll burn up just like the bird and die.
Jimmy.
Tears rolled down my cheeks.
Travis—maybe seven or eight—stepped over the tracks. He was bigger than Jimmy. Way bigger than me. When he returned, he opened his hand and showed me the treasure. One tiny feather lay in his palm. I reached out to take it and watched his hand close over my own. Small and white against his tanned fingers. His heat traveled up my arm and into my heart.