I drop the shirt to the floor like it’s made of coal. Then I take off, wanting to get the hell out of the house. But it’s still somewhat light outside and I’m covered in blood. So instead of running out the front door, I hurry into the bathroom. It’s the most sickening thing I’ve ever done. Well, maybe. Depending on what happens when I blackout. But I still do it, take a shower in Bella’s bathroom and wash the blood that might be hers off my body. Then I put on some of her clean clothes that I find in the washroom. A black skirt and a white shirt, very similar to the one I left to be forgotten in blood on the bedroom floor. I leave my damp hair down and take it one step further, finding a tube of red lipstick and mascara in the medicine cabinet. I stare at my reflection for a moment, looking for evidence that maybe the eyes staring back at me aren’t my own anymore. Who is this girl in the mirror? A sinner? A good girl who’s just gotten lost? A girl who’s lost her identity?
Suddenly I see a face appear behind me, a body of a girl that looks just like me only has long blond hair and piercings covering her face. She smiles at me through the mirror and I whirl around, only to find that she’s gone.
“Lily,” I say with my hand pressed to my racing heart as I recollect seeing her take my hand and guiding me down the hallway before I passed out. “Is that you?”
The only response I get is the quiet.
I hurry out of the bathroom and to the backdoor, ready to slip out of the house. As I’m rushing through the kitchen, I spot a piece of paper on the countertop. I’m not sure if it was there or not when I walked in, but what catches my attention is the bloody handprint on the front of it.
I pick it up and flip it over, my heart trying to escape my chest before I even see what’s on the other side. It’s like I already know what it is and when I see the picture of myself, I’m not even that surprised. I’m not even sure when it was taken, probably before the accident since in the picture; my hair is blond and long like how the detective described it. I look rougher, piercings in my lips, darkness in my eyes, and an ‘I don’t give a shit’ smirk on my face as I flip the camera off. But the real icing on the cake is scribbled in the corner is the name Lily Asherford.
“Why does Bella have this?” I mutter.
Someone over my shoulder whispers, Go.
I don’t turn around to see if anyone’s there. I just stuff the photo into my pocket and run away from the house, wishing I could run away from myself as well.
Chapter 16
Maddie
It was a project getting back into the house and I set off the alarm again, pissing my mother off even more. She starts getting edgy, nervous, as if she’s waiting for a killer to show up—or that she’s living with one. She keeps her distance from me, glad when I spend a lot of time in my room, waiting for the police to show up like a vulture waits for death. It’s all I think about; it consumes every inch of my mind. I watch the news for a discovered body. Hide the button. Throw Bella’s clothes away when I get home. I call in sick for work for the next four days, worried what I’ll find when I get there. The police. River had to have given up my alibi by now and if not, then someone had to have discovered the blood at Bella’s apartment. Bella. I’ve tried to call her, tried to make sense of the blackout and the scene I woke up to, but her cellphone’s been disconnected. Something’s wrong. If I was a good person I’d go to the police, risk myself to make sure Bella’s safe. But I’m not a good person. I’m Lily. All her.
So instead I stay home and lock myself in my room with my secrets. Nothing happens except for when I get a call from a concerned Glen asking if I’m okay on a voicemail. I’ve been sick for so long and he’s worried about my health. I’m worried about my health—my mental health.
I don’t sleep more than a few minutes a night. Too afraid to shut my eyes. I can’t take any risks. But it’s starting to affect me. I’m starting to see things that aren’t real, like Lily standing in my mirror all the time. And I’m talking to her more and more. In fact, she’s pretty much all I talk to.
To pass time, I do some research on fires nearby where my mother said I was hit, wondering if I put the pieces of my past together then perhaps somehow I can figure out the madness of the present. I find an article about a forest fire that happened in the general location. No casualties, but it did say an old building burned down. There’s a picture of it in the article. It’s faded, black and white, but it looks like an outdated hospital, one I know for a fact I’ve been to before.
Flames ignite around me. Smoke smothers my lungs. My skin feels like melting wax.
“You did this,” someone whispers. “So you might as well run.”
Run? “I can’t… not without her.”
“She’ll be fine. She did put you here after all.”
They’re right. She did put me here, made me take her place. And now it’s time to run away from it. Let myself be forgotten instead of her. So I take off running into the scorching flames, letting room fourteen slip farther away from me, feeling lighter with each step. I can almost taste the freedom. Right there in the trees, but then I hear her call my name.
“Maddie, don’t leave me. Please.”
I hate her. I love her. I don’t want to help her. But it’s not about me. It never is. It’s always about her. So instead of running away from the fire, I turn around and burn, burn, burn. All for her. Everything is.
I jerk from the memory, trembling, my veins pulsating with adrenaline as I touch my finger to the scar on my hand, tracing the faint lines of the numbers. “Room 14.” I look up at the picture of the old hospital. “Is this where I was? Was I locked up here once?”
“Does it really matter if you were?” Lily asks. “You already knew you were crazy.”
“Yeah, but it’s…” I trail off, looking at the computer screen. “It’s terrifying to think about… being locked away.”
“You’re locked away now.”
“Yeah, but this is different.”
“How so?” she asks as I move away from the computer desk and study myself in the mirror. I can see her staring back at me, watching me through the looking glass, same face, same eyes, only the pupils look rounder, darker.
“Because it is,” I reply, blinking quickly as my hair starts to shift from black to blond. By the time my eyes open again, the illusion is gone.
“You’re afraid all the time,” Lily says with a glimmer in her eyes, like she knows a secret. “But of what?”
“You,” I reply then sigh. “Myself.”
The reflection reaches up and touches her chin-length black hair, her fingers lingering on the blond streak, then she traces her fingers along the dark circles under my bloodshot eyes. “Well, we are the same person.”
I shake my head. “No we’re not.”
“I think you’ve known all along that I am,” she adds, the reflection lowering her hand to the side. “Maybe that’s why we were at the hospital. Perhaps they kept you there because you were insane.”
“But who’s they?”
“Your mother probably.” She says it like she knows it’s true, like she understands what lies behind the veil blocking out my memories. Perhaps that’s what Lily is. Maybe she has my memories and she’s keeping them from me. Perhaps she knows that I was once locked away in a hospital, because I was bad, because I talked to myself, was two different people. That the memories of the girl are really just memories of me. That my mother knows this but doesn’t tell me in the hopes that I won’t become that person again. That I’ll turn into the good daughter she’s always wanted.
“Yeah, but if that’s true, you and I know that’s not possible,” Lily says. “We’re not good—neither of us are good.”
I want to argue, but as I look back at my bed at the box of buttons, the computer screen with the article, and then at my hands that only days ago were saturated with someone’s blood, I can’t deny the truth. I can blackout. I can forget. But in the end, whatever Lily does, I do to, because she is me.
I created her.
> Chapter 17
Maddie
It’s going on five days since the detective showed up at my house and three days since the incident at Bella’s. Thankfully the days have been uneventful, at least that’s what I tell myself. But in the end I start to go stir crazy. The endless hours get to me and the need to do… well, something works its way under my skin. So when the alarm suddenly goes off in the dead of night, I feel twistedly excited.
I’m fully wide awake when it happens, still suffering from insomnia. For a second I think I’m hallucinating. But the longer the siren shrieks, the more I realize that it’s reality and that something set it off. Moments later, my mom comes stumbling down the hallway and runs fearfully into my room, right as I’m walking out of my bedroom to see what’s going on. We end up colliding into each other and she falls to the floor, landing on her ass while I brace myself by grabbing onto the door.
“What are you doing?” she hisses, fastening her robe as she scrambles to her feet. The house is dark, the only light coming from her room, so I can barely see her face but can hear the annoyance in her voice. It’s how she’s been with me for days. Always annoyed, especially when I try to pry answers out of her. I’m starting to get to the point where I’m considering tying her up and forcing her to tell me what she’s hiding.
I throw my hands over my ears and shout over the screeching, “Um, hello. The same thing as you are. Turning that thing off.”
She huffs and then stomps down the hallway. I hear a beep and the alarm silences. Then she’s rushing down the hallway toward me with a stern look on her face. “You didn’t set that off?” she asks as she reaches me.
I lower my hands from my ear and fiddle with the drawstring on my pajama bottoms. “How could I if I’m standing here?”
She looks over my shoulder into my room. “You didn’t open a window or anything?”
“Nope. I was just sitting here, reading.” Lie. I was counting my buttons.
Reality seeps in as we both realize the truth and her hand instantly finds my arm and her fingers tremble as she grasps onto me for dear life, as if I’m as precious to her as the buttons are to me. “Maddie, there’s someone in the house.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as a crash comes from the kitchen. My mother shoves me backward and starts to race off in the direction of the noise, but I grab the back of her robe and pull her to me. “Don’t just walk out there.” I hiss, taking control of the situation, “Call the police.”
She nods erratically then veers toward her room with her gaze fixed on the end of the hallway. When she reaches her doorway, she looks over her shoulder at me and says, “Go back in your room and lock the door.” Then she hurries into her room to get her phone.
I start to do as she says when I hear a voice mid turn.
“Lily.”
I freeze, muscles raveling, as I slowly turn back around. Standing in the darkness at the end of the hall is a person about the same height as me. They’re not moving, frozen, staring right back at me, unafraid. I don’t know who it is, but I know they know who I am by the name they uttered.
I can hear my mom chattering in her room as I begin to inch backward away from the figure, but then they laugh under their breath and mutter something about me still being weak and a whore.
I know them.
That voice.
I’ve heard it before.
You’re a whore!
“Shut up,” I say through gritted teeth, my hands balling into fists. Emotions pour through me so potent I can barely control anything that I do. That voice. It belongs to a man. A man hurt you. Get our revenge.
“I know we know him,” I whisper aloud to Lily. “But who is he?”
The man moves toward me and a chill courses through my body. “You don’t know me, Lily? I’m hurt.” He stops to press his hand to his heart, chuckling under his breath. It makes me feel like he’s making fun of me and abruptly all I see is red. Blinding. Powerful. Overtaking. Then comes the pain. A huge, massive wave of it that nearly sends me to the floor. God, it hurts. And all I want to do is kill him to make it go away.
Then do it.
Chapter 18
Lily
I know this person and Maddie knows this person too. I don’t know from where or how I know them, all I know is that I do. And I hate them with more passion then anything else in the world. This man has hurt us both, made us suffer, and created us, which makes me fill sick and vile. Loathe myself for the first time in a long time.
Maddie releases control to me quickly, just like that. Without a fight. And I know that she wants me to take care of it—act on her impulses, something she’s always been too afraid to do. So I storm down the hallway, ready to attack. The man just stands there, fully welcoming it. I know this could end badly. I could get hurt. Die. That’s not what I’m worried about—that’s the point of me existing. To take care of the things that Maddie fears the most—to step up and deal with the pain when she can’t. I’m the strong one and she’s the weak. I’m what she could never be and wishes she always was.
I lunge when I near him and he still doesn’t move back, allowing my head to ram into his gut. He smells like cigarette smoke, booze, and ash, and the three scents combined make me want to vomit. I don’t have time to brace myself as we crash to the floor and I land on top of him, my hands sliding up to his neck as I sit up, growling. I grip tightly, feeling his muscles tense beneath my touch, and his pulse throb just below my fingertips. I’m gasping for air, wild, mind racing more than it ever has before. I want this, more than anything.
At first I think he’s just going to let me kill him as he lies there in the shadows simply staring at me. But suddenly, when he’s getting to the point where he’s struggling for air, he gathers his strength and in one swift motion, flips us over so he’s lying on top of me. I bump my shoulder against the end table and a lamp falls off, crashes against my head, and glass flies, razor sharp shards that slice open my flesh, just like I want to do to his.
“Not now, my Lily,” he says, pinning me to the ground by the shoulders. I try to kick him, knee him in the gut, but he’s too heavy and the bump on the head is making my mind dance and my body go to sleep. “But soon.”
It’s the last thing I hear before he lifts his hand and presses it over my mouth, while gripping at my neck, choking and smothering me until I’m on the verge of passing out. I shut my eyes and wait to die. I’m surprised by how comfortable I am with my own death. Or just death in general. Like my warm blanket I used to carry around when I was a child. Death. I know death. It makes me content. Just as I’m about to give into the darkness and slip away forever, the hands release me. My eyes shoot open and my lips part. There’s nothing there but an empty living room and the night.
He’s gone.
Was he ever really there to begin with?
Chapter 19
Maddie
I’m not sure how I pass out this time, but as soon as I wake up, I know I’ve lost a lot of time. It makes me nauseous, knowing I can lose control like that, but at the same time, I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with the man.
When I open my eyes, I’m in my bed. The sun is trickling through the window and my skull feels like it’s been split open.
“Maddie, relax,” my mother says from my bedside. She’s sitting in a chair, dressed in tan slacks and a blue blouse, her hair is in a bun, her makeup done, and a magazine is on her lap. “You’re okay.”
I press my hand to my aching head as I catch my breath. “What happened?” I glance around at my room, clean as can be, the computer shut down, and the buttons put away. She cleaned up my room while I was out, which means she saw the buttons, saw the article I had opened. “Did you clean up my room?”
“Yes, it was filthy.” She sets the magazine down on the floor and leans forward in the chair, taking my hand in hers. “I did it while you were sleeping.”
I yawn, trying to decide if that’s what happened. Did I finally just fall asleep. “
Sleeping? But what about the person that broke into the house? What happened to him?”
Her forehead creases. “Maddie, there wasn’t anyone in the house. After I called the cops, I came out of the room and you were lying in the hallway like you fainted… you woke up and said something about there being a man, but the cops checked the house and there were no signs of a break in... They did a few tests on you and said you showed signs of exhaustion.” She feels my forehead as if she’s checking for a fever. “Why didn’t you tell me you haven’t been sleeping very well?”
“I’ve been sleeping fine,” I lie, slanting away from her touch. “And if there was no man in the house then why did the alarm go off? I was… there was…” I’m at-a-loss for words. It’s difficult to defend myself when my mental stability is tottering from side to side and I can’t quite remember what happened, yet it feels like I should.