by Trisha Wolfe
When she looks up to make eye contact, I notice the pallor of her once rich umber skin. “I thought he loved me,” she says.
My stomach sinks. Nothing good ever follows that statement.
“I did what you said,” she continues. “I wanted to have it all, love and a college career. He made me believe he wanted that, too. That he wanted me.”
She proceeds to tell me how, after she gave herself to Tyler on a special night they had both planned to be together, he suddenly changed. He became distant. His buddies on the football team snickered and taunted her.
“He became cruel,” she says, her voice cracking. “What’s worse, he’s with another girl now. She’s on the dance team, and she and her friends are even crueler.”
Some lost memory of Irina and her lashing cinnamon hair and taunting green eyes floats to the surface. You’re a psycho. Leave Jeremy alone.
A hot spike of fury prods me to stand. I walk around the desk, towing my chair behind me, and place it next to Mia. When I speak, my voice is low and deliberate.
“I’m sorry this happened to you, Mia.”
She sniffs hard and nods. I wait for her to look at me before I continue.
“He’s a bully,” I say. “They’re all bullies. They see something special in you that threatens them, and they want to annihilate it. But you can’t let them crush you.”
Her eyes well with tears. “I don’t know what to do, Ms. Montgomery.”
“Yes, you do.” I reach out and place my hand atop hers. “You know Tyler. You know him better than this other girl. You know his strengths, and you know what makes him weak.”
Her watery gaze holds mine as she listens intently. She understands what I’m telling her.
“Find that one vulnerability and use it against him.” I sit back and relax my shoulders. “Cut off the head of the snake, Mia. The most dangerous one—the leader—must go down first, then the rest will follow.”
She wipes the tear tracks from her face. “I’m scared,” she admits.
“I know you are,” I say, “but are you more frightened of them, or what you know you need to do? Think about it, Mia. Only you can make the torment stop.”
She inhales a deep, fortifying breath. “I understand.”
Mia leaves my office a little less broken than when she entered, and for the first time since I began this career, I feel as if I made a difference.
The advice I gave Mia is the advice I wish someone had given me back in my high-school days. Sure, when Dr. Leighton befriended me, she became my sounding board, offering support and knowledge and a listening ear.
But, looking back as I am now, I see where my mentor failed me.
Dr. Leighton never once inspired me to fight. I had to do that all on my own—to find my worth and move away from the past.
I look down at the scars on my palm, run my thumb over the raised skin. It’s not healthy to look back, to wonder and dwell on what might be different if only we’d made another choice.
Because if one thing would’ve been altered—one single event changed to redirect our courses—then I might have never been found on that beach, and Jeremy and Irina might still be alive.
15
Delusion in Her Eyes
Lanie
If we go back far enough on our timeline, we can pinpoint the one incident that set the course for our life.
I used to think it was the night I lost my virginity to Jeremy behind the sand dunes. But now I can see where that was a rite of passage in my youth; not my defining moment.
I vowed a while ago not to let Jeremy—or anyone—define me.
No, what really set me on my course was my introduction to Dr. Leighton. She came into my life at a very crucial moment, and I clung to the hope she offered, promised.
I remember thinking the room was far too white. It hurt my eyes.
Her first words to me: “I’ve been assigned to your case.”
My first words to her: “You want to be my friend.”
“Yes, Lanie, in a sense, I am your friend. I want to help you.”
And she did. We talked so much that first day, and the days to follow. There was a pending court case where I was going to be judged. She walked me through that; she was by my side through the worst of it, and she remained with me afterward.
I wonder why it took her so long to ask the question that everyone else had already asked so many times. Maybe she didn’t have as much faith in me as I had thought. Maybe she was afraid of what my answer would be.
I mean, how many people can really be friends with a killer?
Still, one day she asked the question. And, as I respected her more than anyone else, I wanted to give her the answer that would please her.
Dr. Leighton: “Lanie, did you kill Jeremy Rivers and Irina Hollis?”
“No. Of course not.”
Her features pulled together in disappointment, and that wounded me. That was the first time I realized my mentor was fallible. I became desperate to make her believe me.
“I don’t remember that night,” I told her, my voice pleading.
“Why do you think you can’t recall?”
I shook my head.
“You had defensive wounds, Lanie. A cut on your face. Bruises around your neck. You were discovered not too far from the crime scene that morning, in shock. How do you think this all happened?”
Fury bit my nerves. It was a dull ache that throbbed at the back of my head, a sharp violence trying to break through the darkness. A name triggered, conjured, from the oblivion of my mind.
“Irina got around, did you know that?” I crossed my arms. “There was a rumor about her and the drama teacher, just saying. Maybe somebody should question him.”
Or any of the other, many girls that Jeremy had wronged.
She sighed. “And who is that, Lanie?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Mr. White or Whitmore or something like that.”
“You’re deflecting.”
My defenses flared. “I gave you the truth.”
“Truth is what the mind makes true.” She took out her prescription pad. “Do you know what delusional means, Lanie?”
That was the first day I ever questioned my sanity. How horrible, that it should stem from someone I trusted more than any other. Up until that moment, I had never doubted my own thoughts and mind.
I began taking the medication my mentor, my only friend, prescribed to me.
16
Verity
Ellis
Truth is what the mind makes true.
Dr. Leighton has given me priceless advice over the years. She always explains life and psychology in a unique way that relates to me so I can understand. I hear her voice now telling me to take a step back, observe the situation objectively. Trust my instincts. I’ve come so far, have worked so hard to be free and to find love…I can’t give up now.
I open my medicine cabinet and grab the bottle of pills.
The truth of our existence is based on perception. I know this. Everyone who has ever walked the earth has lived in a creation of their own perceived reality. Just like the cosmos are creating new existence in space, turning the void of nothing into matter and energy, the human mind is constantly altering our reality.
The clock in the hallway ticks away, the sound abhorrently loud, but the hands are stuck on that dreadful time.
Nine-eleven.
The number of times Jeremy and Irina were stabbed.
The psychology of this torment would state it’s a manifestation of guilt. Yet, I feel no guilt for the past. My actions didn’t place me in that psychiatric facility; a jury did—a jury of people misled by other brainless people in authority over a young, troubled girl’s life.
I might have been disturbed on some level when I entered—but it was the years inside that changed my course, that created the woman who I am now.
The bottle in my hand feels heavy, weighted by the choice I have to make. Just as Alice had to accept her perceived real
ity of Wonderland and drink the potion so she could go through the door, I have to decide whether to stay or move forward on my adventure.
I lift the toilet lid and empty the bottle into the basin. I flush and watch the water swirl and take the tiny white pills to the sewer where they belong.
It causes me physical pain to know what I have to do next. I wish love was easy, but nothing worth anything is ever easy, is it? It’s struggle, and pain, and defiance.
Yes… Defiance.
Those pills kept me from experiencing life, they were killing my soul.
I step to the sink and wash my hands, look at myself in the mirror. I take special care to cleanse the cuts on my palms, then I smile at my reflection. Be bold, be defiant, but also be kind to yourself. All those other fuckers shouldn’t be the ones to receive all my smiles.
Dylan Thomas wrote: Rage, rage against the dying of the light. The very essence of defiance.
I’ve read that poem many times over the years and, though the author was referring to physical death, there are a number of different ways to die. Spiritually. Emotionally. Our ability to love.
Just as a flower wilts from lack of nurture, so does love wither if you don’t fight to keep it alive.
Carter once told me he’d fight for me.
I have to keep fighting for us.
And sometimes, the things we do for love are dastardly. We have to become the base and vile creatures we fear in order to protect that love.
Through my car windshield, I watch Carter. He’s sitting in a retro-style diner booth with his friends, a group he’s befriended since starting BMA.
I’ve been watching him from a distance a lot lately.
I know Carter isn’t ignoring me to be cruel; it’s his way of trying to protect me. Ever since Sue’s death, things have become tense at the academy, and we have to be careful.
I reach over into the passenger seat and grab my phone. Snap a few pictures of him while he’s laughing, looking carefree. He’s so beautiful when he smiles. I want to print these images to add to his file—to show how far he’s come since he first entered my office.
To be safe, I destroyed the recordings. I can’t trust that the author of the texts won’t search my home or office while I’m not there, so everything that relates to Carter I keep with me at all times.
It was evidence.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I will the voice away. It’s nothing like that; it’s simply a precaution.
We haven’t spent much time together lately, not since last week. Or was it the week before? The days started to blur together after Carter left Devil’s Bluff that afternoon we made love.
After I received the text, there were words exchanged—
You had a fight.
A weary laugh springs free. “Carter and I don’t fight. He’s worried about us, just like me. He told me he needs me, and I can’t be there for him as long as people are trying to interfere.”
Ultimately, it was my choice to “take a break”. I want us to be completely rid of any danger before we’re together.
As he’s my sole priority, I stopped our sessions. I wrote up a report that states Carter is doing increasingly well at school, and has no need at this time for sessions to distract from his studies. I then took a two-week leave of absence from the academy. Which was difficult—it means even less time with Carter—but I have to put all my focus on making us safe. Carter wasn’t there when the choice was made, but I know he trusts me.
I can’t abandon him for too long, though. Deceitful little bitches have a way of manipulating men, and I intend to put a stop to Addison toying with his head.
The yearning to go to him lashes through me like a whip, the urge to sate our hunger demands action, but we have to be patient. My head pulses with a fresh ache, and I touch my forehead. The headaches have gotten worse.
That’s why this can’t wait any longer.
The messages have increased, the author of the texts demanding that we meet, that I pay for their silence. Otherwise, they’ll report the escaped mental patient to authorities.
I laughed when I read that one. Escaped mental patient. As if this is some noir film and I’m running around in a straitjacket. The lunacy of the accusation…and the irony.
I didn’t escape; I walked right out the front door. Dr. Leighton had signed my release papers…right before she penned a suicide note confessing her affair with her colleague and swallowed a bottle of pills.
Again, I hated to leave her in that state—but I had a new life to start. Besides, that’s a whole other story, one with a true villain and victim, and one that won’t be told. The past belongs in the past.
What’s important is Lanie survived her years inside, and now Ellis has a chance at freedom and love. But for that to happen, I can’t have Jeremy and Irina and even Dr. Leighton haunting Ellis’s life. In order to belong in Black Mountain, that past—and anyone who knows about it—has to vanish.
I take out the Zippo lighter and flick it open and closed, open and closed, as I watch Carter.
Yes, silence can be bought, but in reality, I’ve already achieved their silence. They simply don’t realize it yet. They’ve had weeks to approach me, to report me. They’ve done neither. Their desperation for money makes them weak, just like with Sue.
She made the same mistake and paid the price.
Doesn’t anyone ever learn from movies? You never hesitate or stall. If you make a threat, see it through. Otherwise, you give the villain the time they need to retaliate.
And I am the villain of this story, right?
I’m always painted as such.
Well hell then, let’s give these fuckers a truly villainous ending.
17
To What End
Ellis
Black Mountain’s elite congregate en masse at Alister’s mansion. This party is happening on a Friday, and the front of the house is cluttered with expensive cars. It’s late—but I don’t dare look at the time. With only a splinter of moonlight tonight, I don’t need to hide behind shrubbery to stay concealed.
I’m sitting in a used Honda parked alongside the street. So I could be inconspicuous, I crossed to a neighboring town and bought a cheap car with cash. The interior is worn and the dashboard is tacky to the touch, making my skin crawl.
I’m wearing a tight-fitting little black dress that accentuates all the right body parts. My hair curls in loose waves over my shoulders and my lips are painted blood-red.
I look nothing like the Ms. Montgomery who counsels students at BMA.
As time drags on, people start to leave. One by one cars disappear from the property. I stay inside the dank-smelling car for hours as I wait for the right boy to leave the party. When I spot him—stumbling and carrying a beer bottle—I exit the car and lean my hip against the hood.
Sully is clearly intoxicated, but that doesn’t stop him from noticing the scantily-clad woman eyeing him from across the street. He squints in my direction, as if that will help clear his vision.
“Hey,” I call out, making sure we’re the only two out here. “Want a ride?”
He laughs to himself. “I know who you are.”
He thinks he does, but he has no idea what I’m capable of.
“Oh yeah?” I say, pushing myself up onto the hood and crossing my legs. His unfocused gaze drops to the thigh-high slit that travels up my dress. “Who am I?”
He takes a swig of his beer bottle, then waves it at me, sloshing liquid over the amber rim. “You’re trouble.”
“Says who?”
“Says that fucking douchebag Hensley.”
White-hot anger licks my spine, and I curl my hands into tight fists. He’s lying. Carter would never talk about me that way—especially with some guy he loathes. We’re a secret.
An insolent little voice whispers: He told Addison.
Fury swirls in the pit of my stomach like a hot cinder. I sweep my hair from my shoulder and lift my chin. “Let’s not talk about Carter.”
&
nbsp; Sully stalks closer, his half-lidded eyes devouring me. “Dammit. I gotta be batshit crazy to fuck with you.”
Yes, he has to be, considering Carter would beat him to a bloody pulp—again—for even breathing near me.
“Shit though,” he continues, his speech slurred, “maybe that pussy-ass bitch just wasn’t man enough to handle you.”
I clear my throat and relax my tense shoulders, then inch my skirt up higher. “Carter doesn’t have to know,” I say. “Just me and you and the backseat.” I nod my head in that direction.
He spears his fingers into his hair and groans. “Christ, lady. You come on strong.”
I arch an eyebrow. “Does that mean you don’t want to play?”
He sways a bit, but his inebriated state doesn’t hinder his desire to get laid. Sully utters a curse under his breath as he trudges up to me.
I place my hand out, palm pressed to his chest. “First, you need a drink.”
He glances down at the bottle in his hand, and I smile. “Not that kind—” I reach behind me and grab my bag, pull out a silver flask. “A real drink. Try this. It’s aged to perfection, just like me.”
“Clever.” He sniffs the flask and blinks, woozy. “What is it?”
“Whiskey,” I answer simply. Whiskey and a few dashes of Xanax. A faithful cocktail that never goes out of style.
He takes a hard swig from the flask and coughs, wipes his mouth on his jacket cuff. After he sets the flask on the car hood, he places a clammy hand on my knee. I try not to cringe as I smile up at him.
“Let’s do this,” he says.
Bile coats the back of my throat. His breath wreaks of stale alcohol and his skin is slick with sour-smelling sweat. Still, I need him for this next step. He’s a link to Addison. So I swallow the rancid taste of disgust and place my hand atop his.
Uncrossing my legs, I spread my thighs and pull him between my legs. “Not here,” I say. “Let’s go somewhere more private.”
“Yeah, and where’s that?”