He follows me as I hurry to the bathroom, feeling hollow inside as I trudge down the hallway, desperately trying to summon up last nights memory of when I went down it and then locked myself in the freezer. Just like the first time I lost my memory there’s no spark of anything, only this time there’s no accident and I can still remember everything else, except for part of last night.
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” River asks as I grab my bag from the cubby and head for the front door. The fresh air out front feels weird and my stomach still feels like it’s on fire.
I turn around, hitching my bag over my shoulder. “Actually, do you know if anyone else was in here at all this morning? Or if you saw me with anyone wandering in the direction of the freezer?”
“No, not that I’m aware of…” He skims the bar, chairs turned up onto the tables, floors swept, the air smelling of Clorox. Someone has cleaned up in here and closed up, which is usually Bella’s and my job. And Bella would have a fit if she did it on her own. In fact, I once asked to get out of it, leave early, and she took off out the front door so I’d be the one to do it—and she barely helps out when she does stay. His attention lands back on me. “Why are you asking about the freezer?”
“It’s where I woke up this morning.” As soon as the words leave my lips, I want to retract them. He shouldn’t know that. It’s weird. Crazy. I’m crazy. He’s going to see the crazy in me.
“You woke up in the freezer? Jesus. How long were you in it?” He scans my body as he continues to scratch at his arms. It doesn’t make any sense—why I can’t at least remember that part. I know I couldn’t have gotten that drunk after I left his office, but I can’t even remember going back up. I’m concerned that maybe all those thoughts about letting Lily take over finally might have made it happen. Perhaps that’s why she’s being so calm about this. Maybe when I blacked out, I turned into her. God, what if I turned into her?
“I’m not sure…. Who cleaned up here last night?” I ask, hugging my arms around myself.
“Bella, I think… Leon was here pretty late too,” he says and I swear he flinches when he says Leon’s name.” I think he might have a thing for her or something because I don’t remember him being that motivated to help out before. But then again, it’s been a while.”
“How long has it been since you’ve seen him?”
“Oh, I’d say about ten years or so,” he says with a shrug. “But even so, he’d pretty much just stop by as he was driving through town. I think he’s kind of a drifter or something. Never stays in one place too long.”
I try to recollect meeting this Leon person, the alleged trafficker, but I’m drawing a blank, yet at the same time it feels like I met him.
River crosses his arms, studying me. “Maddie, are you sure you’re okay? You seem, I don’t know…” He extends his arm toward me and brushes his finger down my cheekbone. “A little confused. Nervous. Lost.”
“I’m fine. I promise. I just need to go home and get some rest,” I assure him, moving away from his touch. Then I swing around him and push out the front door before I can say anything more. The last thing I want to do is discuss in details what’s going on inside my head right now. I just want to remember what I did and why the fuck I woke up in the freezer with blood all over my arms… why I’m hearing voices outside of my head… more than just Lily’s…
Swirling in my own confusion, I make my way across the parking lot. Fuck, it’s bright out here. And my ears and head are ringing. Plus the chilled air is stinging against my skin. I’m rummaging in my bag for keys, when I stumble across a white button shaped like a heart and an oval bright red one. I shake my head. Even in a drunken stupor, the obsession still gets to me. I stuff the buttons in my pocket and then start digging around for my car keys again. I’m pulling out the contents—lipstick, brush, a pack of cigarettes—when I notice red and blue flashing lights in the parking lot across the street at the One Stop Quickie Mart. Cop cars are parked in it, an ambulance, people crowding around, gawking. I know that scene. Something bad has happened and I want—I need—to know what it is. I’m not even sure if it’s an obsession this time. More like a need to find out if I’m connected to it at all. Lily grows extremely silent almost like she’s left my body entirely.
Feeling even sicker to my stomach, I cross the road, wrapping my arms around myself as the cold air blows. Cars drive up and down the street slowly, people curious, wanting to know just as much as me what’s going on, yet at the same time I don’t want to know, fear the answer and what it means about me. With each step, my heart slams harder in my chest. By the time I arrive at the curb, I’m barreling with adrenaline, my stomach burning. I know what lies on the other side of the crowd. God, do I know.
When I push through the crowd and reach the front, my hunch becomes painfully correct. A girl lies on the ground, a circle of dried blood pooled around her head making her blond hair look red. She’s wearing an apron too—an apron from the Devil & Angels Bar. I know her. Sydney, the waitress I’ve been fighting with.
“Jesus,” I mutter under my breath, unable to take my eyes off her. I know this girl and now she’s dead. Just last night she was walking around in the bar and now she’s here, lying on the ground. I got into a fight with this girl and now she’s dead. I thought about killing this girl and now she’s dead. “This is not good.”
“I know. It’s terrible, right?” Some woman says from beside me, horror stricken as she gapes at the body, probably a first timer in the dead body department. She’s probably in her forties, her black hair obviously dyed, and she’s wearing too much pink blush that matches her shirt that says Jesus Rocks! I actually think she’s knocked on my door a few times to try and convert me to something or anotherism. It actually happens a lot and my mom always sends them away with a smile and a wave as if she’s glad they stopped by even if she never goes to church. “Fairfield’s such a good community… this stuff shouldn’t happen here.”
“And what? Stuff like this should happen in other places because they aren’t good communities.” I say in a low voice.
“That’s not what I was saying at all,” she gasps, offended.
“That’s exactly what you were saying.”
The woman shakes her head in revulsion, and then she inches to the side away from me. I focus on the scene in front of me. Sydney looks so peaceful, like she’s asleep, only the blood shatters the illusion, paints it red with the nightmare that this is a reality. That she’s dead. Her shirt torn. Skin as pale as the snow. The white button down shirt, tied at the bottom, splattered with blood. The white shirt that’s missing a top button... a little heart button… I step back so suddenly that I bump into the person behind me. Muttering an apology, my eyes stay fixed on Sydney.
It’s just a coincidence. I must have found the button and picked it up before all this happened. I’m being set up. I wait for Lily to chime in with whatever she has to say on the matter, but she’s still inside my mind. Everything’s still. My body. My mind. It seems wrong, yet right. I seem empty, yet I seem whole at the same time.
Men in uniforms walk over to the body with a sheet in hand. They drape it over the body, cover it up from the wandering eyes. My heart slams against my rib cage as they start to scan the ground for evidence and I decide it’s my cue to leave. Turning away from the body, I squeeze my way to the back of the crowd and dash across the street to my car. Impatient to get away from here, I dump my purse out on the ground and search through the contents until I find my keys. Then I toss everything back into bag and hop into my car, revving up the engine.
“This can’t be happening… The button isn’t real,” I whisper as I push the car into drive, watching the lights across the street flash, flash, flash. Feel the rain falling… let the building burn… help me… Don’t leave me behind. Please don’t let me die. I’m sorry. A loud bang, and I walk up to the dead body, slowly pulling the buttons I’ve counted for years off his shirt, one by one. And with each one, I get a sick grat
ification from it.
“Good girl,” she whispers. “I knew you’d eventually come around.”
With my foot on the brake, I stuff my hand inside my pocket and retrieve the heart shaped button, stained with a dot of blood. The red one I’m not sure of who it belongs too, but I have a feeling that person might be lying somewhere in a parking lot, too. I should throw both of them out the window. Get rid of the evidence. The problem is I can’t. I attempt to several times, but my obsessive compulsive anxiety disorder is stopping me. I end up putting them back into my pocket and opening up the car door to throw up in the parking lot. My stomach is pretty much empty at this point and I mostly just dry heave. When I’m finished, I shut the door, ignoring the tears streaming down my face and drive away, wondering what the hell I did last night. Wondering if maybe Lily got too out of control and finally went through with her dark thoughts.
Maybe the end of Maddie is nearing.
Maybe she never existed at all.
Chapter 11
Maddie
I think I’m paranoid. Insane. Joined the crazy train and there’s no getting off. Not after what happened with Sydney. I can’t stop thinking about it, no matter how much it makes me ill. I’ve been trying to text Bella for the last day, hoping she could give me some insight to what I was up to, but she hasn’t responded to my messages yet.
“Blood on my arms. Buttons. That doesn’t mean anything. I could have been drunk, got into a fight or something, and simply passed out. Or maybe it was River’s blood all over me,” I say to myself as I pace my room, back and forth, back and forth, Lily chattering away in my head. She’s growing stronger with each passing hour and Maddie is desperately trying to hang on to reality. “I didn’t kill anyone. There’s no way.” Lily laughs and I let out a scream through my teeth in aggravation.
It’s been a day since Sydney died. A day since I brought home that button like a psychopath collecting a souvenir. A day since I woke up in the freezer with blood all over my body. And about an hour since the news announced the murder of Sydney M. Ralwington’s, former daughter, friend, waitress, soon to be worm food. “God, what the fuck is wrong with you?” There is no answer to that question, no resolution, no nothing. I never wanted to be crazy. Never wanted to fully act on my twisted impulses, the ones I’ve been fighting for the last six years. They were just supposed to be thoughts, but now… is it possible I’ve brought the madness out and made it reality? Did I kill Sydney? Or did something else happen? Was I set up by someone maybe? But who? Who knows me enough that they’d know putting a button in my pocket would mean something? There’s only one person who knows about it and she lives inside me.
Walking over to the box of buttons opened up on my bed, I look at Sydney’s, now part of the collection and the red, oval one that I have no idea who it belongs to. Picking up the heart, I clutch it in my hand, feeling the slightest bit of a prickle in my mind. Pick up the button, Maddie. What do you see?
“I see a crazy obsession,” I mumble, running my thumb across the front of the button. “All because of you.”
Don’t pretend that this is all me. You think it too sometimes. And you see where the obsession started. You were just a kid.
“So what. That still doesn’t mean anything.” I look around at the pictures of when I was a child, feeling like they can see and hear what’s going on, feeling as if they’re judging me. Finally, I can’t take it anymore. I start tearing them down, not caring that I rip some of them in half. I pull them all down, because I don’t want to see the past anymore—don’t want to feel like I’m being haunted by a past that doesn’t feel like it belongs to me. By the time I’m finished, I’m panting, there are photos all over the floor, and I feel strangely satisfied.
I pad over to the mirror and smooth my hands across my short, black hair that’s nearly drenched in sweat. There’s something in my eyes that I don’t like but that I do like at the same time. Untamed wildness, a specter of Lily. “I really do hate you,” I say quietly.
“No, you don’t. You’d be lost without me.” The reflection speaks back and I jolt back, slamming my elbow into the wall. “That’s why we’re talking, isn’t it? Because you need me? You created me because you needed me?”
I shake my head as I stare in horror at the mirror. This has never happened before, her appearing to me like this. She looks just like me only she has a streak of blond in her black hair and her eyes are a shade darker than mine. “No, I hate talking to you. It’s because of you that I’m going crazy.” I touch where the streak would be in my own hair.
The reflection laughs at me. Actually throws her head back and laughs like this is all just a big joke. “Don’t kid yourself. You’re only going crazy because you’re fighting the crazy inside you. If you’d just accept it—me—this would be a hell of a lot easier. I could take care of you, you know. Take care of all your problems.” She sounds so much like Ryland for a moment that it throws me off. “Life would be so much easier if you’d just let me take over.”
“Fuck you.” I glare at her and she rolls her eyes. “And I know it was you that night. Somehow you took over.”
“Maybe I did,” she says with a shrug and a twinkle in her eyes. “But sorry to disappoint, it wasn’t me that’s making you forget. That was something else entirely. Perhaps you had too much to drink… I’m still trying to figure it out.”
“I didn’t have that much to drink… And you have to remember some things because I can remember you with River,” I say.
“Yeah, but after that I’m in the dark too. I can honestly tell you I have no clue what we did that night, although really the possibilities are endless.”
I don’t believe her. “I know you killed Sydney that night and now you’re getting some sick pleasure in the fact that you did.”
“If I killed her, then you killed her. And if I find pleasure in killing, then you do,” she responds dryly, coiling the blond strand of hair around her finger. “You and I are the same Maddie in so many ways, so think twice about the accusations you make.”
My eyes burn with anger. “Fuck you.”
Lily rolls her eyes, the anger simmering in the reflection. “Now, now, now Maddie, don’t let yourself get out of control. It’s why you need me—for stability. I’m always taking care of you all the time. And sometimes it gets annoying how you repay me—with such hatred.”
“Maddie, are you in there?” A knock on my door startles me and I drop the button onto the floor. I hesitate to respond to my mother. I’ve been keeping my distance from her for the last twenty-four hours, for her protection mainly. Worried that Lily will take over again. That she’ll hurt someone. I haven’t even been able to shut my eyes, fearing what will happen the moment I go to sleep.
Knock. Knock. Knock. “Maddie, open up. This is important.”
“Okay… just a second.” I pick up the button, toss it back into the box, then put the lid on and hurry to the closet to tuck it safely away. I kick as many photos as I can underneath the bed before opening the door.
My mom’s standing just outside it, looking more worried and more aged than normal. “Who were you talking to?”
I force my brows to knit. “No one.”
She peers over my shoulder, her eyes enlarging as she takes in my bare walls. “And where did all your photos go?”
I shrug nonchalantly. “I got sick of looking at them, so I took them down.”
She frowns at my attire “What are you wearing?”
Cutoffs, fishnet tights, and a torn t-shirt—I’m Rocker Girl today. The outfit was supposed to go underneath my work attire, but I never made it that far. “My lounge clothes.” I sketch my fingers over a few studs in the collar of the shirt. “I was just about to change out of them.”
She touches the hem of my shirt, her face draining of color. “Why were you wearing them at all?” She rubs the corner of the shirt between her finger and them, then withdraws her hand and looks at me. “I didn’t even know you owned clothes like this. You look l
ike…” She makes a face. “You look like a whore.”
You’re a whore!
You’re a whore!
You’re a whore!
My muscles spasm as her words, the deep voice thunders in my mind. My mouth opens and shuts. Opens and shuts. Lily is forcefully trying to push her war to the surface and it takes a lot to suppress her. I have no idea what I’m going to say to my mother. Cruel things. Hateful things. Terrifying things. But part of me just wants to keep my mouth closed. “Did you need something?” I snap.
“There’s someone here to see you,” she says almost soundlessly, lifting her hand to point over her shoulder at the hallways. “A detective.”
“What?” I can’t conceal my shock, my voice coming out off pitch. They know. “Why?”
She shrugs, folding her arms around herself, looking very upset, near tears. “I’m not sure. I think he said it had to do with Sydney Ralwington’s case.” She doesn’t sound surprised. I’m not surprised, but she should be, unless she knows more than she’s letting on.