I was sitting across from Dr. Banz’s empty desk when he walked in. The room was bare, just his laptop blinking on top of a small wooden desk, an empty coffee cup and a few pens perched on top of a yellow notepad—the brevity of his stay clearly evident.
“Bryn…” He lowered himself into his chair, resting his cane within reaching distance. He tried to smile. “What brings you into the office to—?”
“What is it?”
“What is what?” he said.
I steadied my voice. “What’s following me?”
I waited for him to ask me to explain or for him to give me an explanation of his own. For him to call it another symptom, another coping mechanism, another aspect of my illness that felt less and less like an illness and more like a prison every day.
But then he said, “I don’t know.”
“But you know something.”
I reached back, pushing the door closed until I heard a click. He stiffened.
“What is it?” I repeated.
“Evil.”
I grew still, forgetting to breathe until he spoke again.
“There’s no name for a thing like that.”
“But it’s bad?” I asked.
He nodded.
“What does it want?”
He looked right at me. “You.”
And Eve.
“So it’s hunting me?” The words tripped over my lips, soft and weak like a whisper. “But why?”
“We’re not positive.”
“But you have a theory?”
Dr. Banz’s eyes softened. “I’m afraid not, Bryn. We’ve been waiting decades to find someone else with Eve’s symptoms so we could finally unravel the mystery of her death but now that we have it’s just not that simple. As of now, whatever’s following you, whatever it is, we have to assume that it’s dangerous and we have to assume that it wants—”
“To hurt me…” I started.
“Have they?” he asked.
“I’m not sure.” I wasn’t. I’d felt its closeness the night before in that alley. I’d felt its heaviness, its hunger. It had pressed down on me, steeling me there cold and helpless. But it hadn’t really hurt me. Not yet. “It’s gotten close.” I inhaled. “Is that what really happened to Eve?”
He was quiet for a long time, face twisted and pained. “She’d seen them. She said there was something watching her. She’d mentioned strange things like that before she got sick, some kind of recurring nightmare. I thought she just had a vivid imagination.”
“Bad dreams?”
“That’s all they were at first. But then she started sleeping for longer periods of time, hallucinating during episodes, and then that stopped too. It was easier for her mother and I to manage but there was still something happening to her. She would wake up and describe these vivid scenes.”
“Like the dream state?” I asked.
He nodded. “That was what brought me here. Your case was described as incredibly rare but when I read Dr. Sabine’s notes, it felt so familiar. The dream state, as she calls it, Eve used to write about it in her journal.”
“Was it made up of memories?” I asked.
“Sometimes it seemed that way but…then that started to change too.”
“How?”
“Eve was obviously being traumatized by something and the more often she lashed out, the longer her episodes became. She was breaking down. They…they broke her.”
“They.” I swallowed, my voice slipping and faint. “Shadows.”
“Shadows?” he repeated.
I met his eyes. “That’s all they are. Darkness.”
His face paled. “Anytime Eve was asked to describe what she was seeing that was the only word she ever used. Whatever darkness she’d seen, whatever darkness you’re seeing now, I can’t deny the connection between its sudden presence and the sudden worsening of your symptoms.”
“But you don’t know how?” I asked, “or why? What if they’re not just hallucinations? Or what if they are and it means that my KLS has caused some kind of irreparable damage to my brain?”
His hands shook and he clenched them tight. “That’s something we’re still trying to figure out.”
I let myself slip back to that night I was sitting on those swings, the shadow trying to force me into something deeper than sleep. “Whenever they’re around all I want to do is close my eyes. The cold is so fierce it hurts and I can feel myself drifting.”
“You’re becoming more debilitated. Eve was bed-ridden by the time she…” He pinched his forehead. “She was so small.”
The room seemed to tilt and Dr. Banz was quiet for a long time as I held tight to my chair. Every time I learned something new about Eve I felt like I was learning something new about myself and it only made me that much more afraid of what was happening to me.
“Eve.” I swallowed. “How did she…? How did it end?”
Dr. Banz looked down. “For a long time her doctors were still clinging to the theory that it was schizophrenia or some other mental illness in tandem with the KLS. They wouldn’t listen to her.” He cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t listen to her. Eventually she stopped talking about the shadows. She stopped talking at all.”
I wanted to ask Dr. Banz about the notes I’d read about Eve. It had sounded like she’d attacked one of the nurses. But I hadn’t confessed yet how I’d even heard about Eve and I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
“Is that when…?” I couldn’t finish the rest.
“It wasn’t long after. A few weeks after she stopped talking we were forced to move her to a psychiatric facility permanently. At the hospital where she’d previously been receiving treatment she’d…attacked one of the nurses. Not intentionally. I’d tried to explain that to the physicians. She was afraid. She never would have hurt someone.” He was breathless then. “I could see it in her eyes that she was delirious. When we saw her she was just so afraid.” He grew quiet for a long time and I didn’t like sitting in that silence of his grief. I didn’t like watching it tear at his insides. So I was relieved when he finally said, “The boy…”
“Do you think he’s like the shadows?” I asked, even though I knew it was impossible. I just needed Dr. Banz to tell me that he was real, for someone to promise me that he was.
Dr. Banz shook his head, glancing out the window as he said, “Vogle, he’s not just my assistant.”
“What do you mean?”
“Vogle and Eve had a very special connection. I guess you’d call it a soul mate. To be that ruined on the day she died, he could be nothing but.”
“And Roman? What does any of this have to do with him?”
Dr. Banz looked me right in the eye. “I’m afraid, everything.”
I stiffened. “You know why he’s there in my dreams?”
“I’m not sure of that either. But what I do know, if my theory is correct, is that he’s not supposed to be.”
“What theory? What else do you know that you’re not telling me?”
The door pushed open and Dr. Banz only had time to mouth the words, “Find him,” before Dr. Sabine interrupted.
The moment she saw me she almost losing her grip on the stack of folders she was carrying. “Bryn, well, what a nice surprise. Is everything alright?” she asked, gaze flitting from me to Dr. Banz.
“Yes.” I stood. “I just stopped by for a minute to ask a few questions about the trip. I didn’t see you in your office so I came in here to ask Dr. Banz.”
“Oh, I must have been downstairs grabbing lunch.”
From the way she said it I wasn’t sure if she believed me, but I decided to get out of there before she could ask me anything else.
“Thanks, Dr. Banz.”
He nodded. “I’m not sure I’ll be seeing you until you land. My flight heads out tomorrow.”
“I look forward to it,” I said, and then I headed for the elevators.
My grandmother was out in the yard when I got home, whatever sickness that had stripped the garden in th
e backyard starting to contaminate the flowers near the front steps. The rose bloom she held was dry and cracking.
When she heard me, she let if fall to the ground. She sniffed. “You smell like public transportation. Where have you been?”
“Out…” I scrambled. “With Dani.”
“Well, be warned. Your mother’s dying to take you prom dress shopping. I told her you could wear her old one; save her some money. I still have it under my bed, you know. But oh no, that woman won’t even reuse her paper plates.”
“I’m not sure that you’re supposed…”
My mom came down the steps. “Oh, there you are. I was looking for you. Did you go somewhere this morning?”
“Just out for a walk.”
My grandmother shot me a disbelieving look.
“With Dani,” I clarified.
“Well, how are you feeling?”
“Um, fine. Why?”
“Good enough to have a day out of the house?”
“A day of what?”
“Oh, drop it,” my grandmother said. “I already told the girl you wanted to force her to buy a new prom dress instead of wearing your old one.”
“You what?”
“That I spent twelve hours sewing I might add. All because you wanted to look like that hussy Paula Abdul. I should have told you not even the grace of God could—”
“It was supposed to be a surprise,” my mom said. She turned to me, eyes pleading. “We could grab lunch downtown. Maybe walk the shops. Find you a prom dress there?”
“I’m not going.”
She sighed. “I heard.”
“From who?”
“Your aunt. She said Dani’s going with Felix.”
“I don’t want to waste money on a dress I probably won’t wear. It’s been four weeks and my internal KLS clock is ticking.”
“See?” my grandmother cut in. “At least she’s got a good head on her shoulders. Girl’s practical.”
“We’ll just go look,” my mom said, ignoring her.
“You never just look,” I said.
“It’ll be fun. Come on.”
I watched her face, nose wrinkled in anticipation.
“Okay,” I said. “Just to look.”
We didn’t just look. I was immediately hurled into the dressing room, hangers flung over the door, my mom trying to zip me into sample sizes that were all that was left. I held my breath.
“Just a…little…more…” she said, face turning red.
“I can’t,” I choked, and then I let out a deep breath, something tearing. “Oh sh…crap.” I lowered my voice. “Did it just rip?”
My mom shushed me. “Hurry. Get it off.” She pulled it up over my head, burying it under the pile of discarded dresses on the floor.
There was a knock. “You doing alright in there?”
“Uh, just fine,” I said, pulling on my clothes in a rush.
The woman’s footsteps receded and then we ran for the door.
“We’ll find something else,” my mom said.
“We were in there for two hours. Please don’t make me do it again,” I groaned.
“It’s your senior prom, Bryn. I put up with your anti-social, smart-ass attitude 365 days out of the year. I think you can give me this one. At least pretend for me.”
“Fine.” I smiled wide, deranged. “How’s this?”
“Creepy,” she said. “But it’ll do.”
We found another store, a small boutique tucked behind a pair of tall trees. We thumbed through the racks, a large stack flung over my mom’s forearm, one black dress tucked under mine.
“So has anyone asked you? To prom?”
“I’d rather go alone. Or with Dani and Felix.” I instantly thought about how awkward and uncomfortable that would be and said, “Scratch that. Alone is good.”
My mom stopped, looking at me. “You know sometimes I worry—”
“Sometimes?”
“Very funny. I just think sometimes you’re a little too comfortable with being alone. I know you like your privacy and everything and that’s fine but being alone isn’t all that great, not all the time.”
I thought of my mom sitting on the couch, her silence after I’d asked if she was happy. I felt a lump in my throat and tried to swallow it back down.
“It’s just easier,” I said. The truth.
“For who?”
“Me.” I paused. “Everyone.”
Her face darkened and I scrambled for a lighter explanation.
“It’s not just that. Time…” I looked away, thinking of Eve, and trying to bite back the fear in my voice. “I don’t have that much of it. I’d rather not waste it on people I don’t particularly like or doing things I don’t really like to do.”
“Isn’t that a little isolating?”
“I hang out with Dani. And you. My family. Maybe I have a smaller social circle than most people but—”
“It’s more like a triangle. I just don’t want you to miss out on anything,” she said.
“Like you?”
She looked at me. “Like me.”
“You know you don’t have to be alone either,” I said.
She leaned against the door to the dressing room. “I’ll try if you will.”
I stared at the floor. “Okay,” I lied. “Me too.”
She didn’t need to know that it might not matter.
“Deal?”
I looked at my mom, at the parts of her that didn’t want to be sad anymore. I didn’t want her to be sad anymore.
“Deal,” I said.
She ushered me inside and handed me a slinky red halter dress. “Then start with this.”
Back home I stood in front of the mirror, that red dress clinging to my hips, to the dimples and curves—to the body that finally looked normal. I wasn’t just bones anymore, my collarbone finally hidden, my cheeks full, my chest spilling over my bra.
I’d gained ten pounds in the four weeks I’d been awake. Late night ice cream runs with my uncle Brian and afternoons binging on leftovers with my grandmother while my mom worked late carving me into someone I didn’t quite recognize.
I stood there, eyes scanning every inch of myself, and I tried to imagine what some other girl might have thought if she’d been standing in that body. What Dani might have thought. That my thighs were too big, dimples trailing into my lower back. That my stomach wasn’t flat, my underwear cutting into my hips.
But for some reason I couldn’t absorb any of it. My lip trembled, my throat raw, and I started to cry. But not because I didn’t look perfect. But because I looked healthy and because I wasn’t sure how long I’d stay that way.
I heard the sharp squeal of breaks, someone pulling to a stop in front of the house. I wiped my eyes and then I watched through my window as my dad sat in his truck.
He was glancing at the front door in the corner of his eye but he didn’t get out. I knew my mom was in the kitchen making dinner and I waited for her to spot him through the window and run him off again. But I could hear her singing to some commercial jingle on the TV, the volume on full blast.
So I just stood there watching him.
I didn’t want to watch him. I wanted my uncle to get back with the can of chicken stock my mom forgot and I wanted my grandmother to step outside to check on the flowers she’d just planted and I wanted my mom to pull back the curtains and see him there. I wanted him to leave. Because I didn’t like looking at him, his face already flushed beneath his thin beard, his eyes closed for a long time while he gripped the steering wheel.
His shoulders slumped and then he opened the door and stepped onto the street. It was empty but he kept looking from one end to the other, waiting for a car or something else to force him back into the truck. Or maybe he was waiting for someone to run him over. By the look on his face, it looked like someone already had.
I thought about the last time I’d seen him, the things I’d said. I’d wanted to say my piece but maybe that wasn’t all I’d done. Wh
at if I’d hurt him? What if I’d wanted to?
He made it to our front yard and then he stopped again. He was clutching something, his fingers gripping the binding. I waited for him to lift his hand, to hold it up so I could read the spine but he was stuck there, one foot in the grass, the other still on the sidewalk. He turned back toward the truck, took a step, and then he stopped. He gripped his scalp and when he turned back toward the front door, I was pulling it closed behind me.
He froze there and that’s when I remembered the dress I was wearing. I crossed my arms, making my way toward him.
“What do you want?” I said.
He looked down, still gripping the book. Then he handed it to me—the vintage copy of Through The Looking-Glass my grandfather had given me, the one I’d lost.
“Where did you get this?” I asked.
“It’s still empty,” he said and I knew he meant the trailer. “It was on the floor of the closet in your old room.”
I imagined it there, exposed, and wondered how I hadn’t found it. I’d gone back to the trailer more than once looking for it. But for years it was never there.
I imagined my dad standing in that empty tin shell, the wind cutting right through the walls. The last time we’d driven by the windows were all busted out, the frame warped from the heat and years of stagnant rainwater.
I wondered how he’d managed to stand it long enough to find the book—the smell and the dust and the emptiness. But then I remembered that he’d hardly been there. For my mom and I, that trailer was the place we’d lived. But for my dad it was just a place he drove by sometimes, coming inside on those rare occasions when he’d needed somewhere to sleep.
I clutched the book, pressing my fingers between the pages until they were numb.
“I’m sorry, Bryn.”
I tasted those tears I’d stifled earlier because I didn’t know if he meant that he was sorry for leaving us or if he was sorry because he was about to do it again.
He stared at the ground.
“Are you leaving?” I asked.
“If you want me to.”
“And if not?”
My uncle turned down the street and I watched my dad tense. The truck pulled into the driveway and then they were squared off again.
“Bryn, go inside,” my uncle said.
And even though the way he said it made me feel like a child, that’s exactly what I did. Because my dad actually looked sad. Because he finally looked sorry. And I couldn’t stand it.
I went back inside, passing my mom who’d finally looked out the window. I slipped out of the dress, hanging it on my closet door and then I sat on my bed, the base of the laptop hot against my bare skin.
I waited for the voices outside my window to grow faint, for my dad’s truck to churn to life, and for the quiet commotion of my mom cooking to continue on the other side of the wall.
I didn’t want to think about my dad. I wanted to think about Roman instead. So I curled up in the blankets, thinking about his hands on my hips, gripping me in handfuls, making this new body feel real.
Then I scrolled through the rest of the photos on Mismatched Machine’s website, resolved to finding him before another sleep, before I remembered that I was sick and that red dress didn’t hang on me quite the same way.