Phantom Limb: A Gripping Psychological Thriller

by Lucinda Berry

  As soon as the words were out, I wanted to take them back. I never talked about Emily with anyone and I’d just told someone her secret. In our twenty years, I’d never betrayed her. Even when Dalila discovered her cutting and questioned me about it, I’d refused to say anything. I wanted to cry but held the tears back. I still hadn’t let Thomas see me cry.

  He got up and sat next to me on the bed, putting his arm around my shoulders. “My freshman year was awful. It took me over a year to get used to not living with my parents. It makes sense that it’s even harder for her. I get it. There’s no judgment here.”

  He was the most nonjudgmental person I knew. He was going to make a great pastor, even if I didn’t understand his religion.

  “You don’t have to feel guilty that you aren’t miserable and she is.”

  “But I do. It eats away at me. I pay all my bills by myself and I’m getting straight As, which should make me happy, but I feel bad about it. Like I’m a horrible person for leaving the house every day. I even feel bad that I love you.”

  His head snapped up. “I’ve been waiting a long time for you to say that.”

  I kissed him tenderly and pulled back. “I love you.”

  It still sounded right the second time.

  “Now if you could just work on the whole God thing,” he laughed.

  I punched him in his arm and he reached over, pulling me into his arms. “I love you, too.”

  I floated through the rest of the week. I was in love for the first time and it felt wonderful. It was like every romantic movie I’d seen where the girl walks like she’s dancing on clouds with a huge grin on her face. I didn’t change the station on the radio when the sappy love songs came on. Instead, I turned them up and tried to sing along. I’d been freed from a prison I didn’t know I was in. I’d always been cynical about falling in love, because I was afraid I wasn’t capable of it, and it was exhilarating to discover I was.

  I picked Saturday to tell Emily about Thomas because she did better on the weekends, when I was there. It didn’t matter if I was sitting in front of the computer or buried in one of my textbooks. She just liked having me around. When Saturday morning rolled around, I was happy when she got up before noon and joined me for coffee at the table because it meant it was one of her good days.

  “You slept good last night,” I said.

  She’d only kicked me once and hadn’t talked at all in her sleep.

  She smiled at me and lit a cigarette. “Do you have lots of homework to do this weekend?”

  “Not really,” I said, shaking my head and pointing to my pile of textbooks lying open on the table. “Just a lot of reading.”

  She picked up my economics book and began thumbing through it. “Yuck. God, I hate anything that has to do with math. I don’t know how you do it.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s not so bad.”

  She picked up another book. Theories of Mind. I was taking Introduction to Psychology this semester. “Now this is more like it. I think I could do this stuff,” she laughed. “Maybe I’d figure out what the hell is wrong with me. Is there a section in here on blood tasting?”

  She laughed again, but I didn’t think it was funny. Her compulsion to cut was terrible, yet understandable, but the things she did with her blood were disgusting. Over the years, she’d tasted it, written with it, and lately her new thing was to save it in empty water bottles. It was the one part of her sickness I chose to ignore completely. I didn’t like to see it or talk about it. Not even with her. I shot her a knowing look that she’d stepped over my line.

  “That’s not funny,” I said.

  I stared into my coffee cup, searching for the words to begin the conversation, trying to figure out what her response would be and how I’d respond to it. This was unfamiliar territory for us. I had lots of secrets but never one I’d kept from her.

  “What’s up?” she interrupted my thoughts.

  She knew me too well.

  “I …” I cleared my throat. “This is really weird for me. I don’t even know how to start.”

  Her eyes froze in fear. She sat back in her chair.

  “It’s nothing bad. Don’t worry. It’s actually a good thing.” I reached out and squeezed her hand. She clung tightly to mine. I took a deep breath. “Em, I met a really great guy at work.”

  “You should go out with him, then.”

  Guilt washed over me.

  “I already have. We’ve been going out for a while,” I said, surprised at her response.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I never thought it’d go anywhere and I felt bad because of you being so, uh, not well. I guess I felt bad being … being …”

  “Happy?”

  “I feel like I shouldn’t be. Like somehow I’m betraying you.”

  She cocked her head back and laughed. “By not being miserable? It’s not your fault I’m crazy.”

  “You’re not crazy.” I hated when she talked that way. “You’re just depressed and going through a hard time. Things are going to get better again.”

  All emotion left her eyes and she stared at me vacantly. “No. They’re not.”

  Her emptiness scared me. I could handle her emotional intensity, but her nothingness was frightening. I got up, refilling both of our coffee mugs.

  “So, do you want to meet him?”

  She shrugged. “I guess I probably should. Where?”

  “I don’t know. I could call him. He could come over and—”

  “No!” She leaped up from her chair. “This is our place, ours!”

  She ran through the narrow kitchen, down the hallway, and into the bedroom, where she slammed the door. I took a few deep breaths before following. I walked in and found her face down on the bed, beating her fists onto the pillows as if she was a three-year-old child having a temper tantrum. I sat at the end of the bed.

  “Get away from me,” she cried. I moved closer. “I mean it.”

  I slid up next to her, touching her lightly on the back.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  I began to rub circles on her back slowly. Round and round while I hummed “You are my Sunshine” softly.

  I sang through it three times before she spoke, “You must really like him.”

  “I do,” I whispered.

  She rolled over and pulled herself up to sit next to me, looking me in the eyes. She looked like little Emmie. Lately, it felt like each day she grew backwards.

  “I’m sorry I’m being such a whiner about it, but this is our place. It’s my safety. My sanity. To bring someone else here feels like they’d be contaminating the only space I have to feel safe in.”

  I nodded. “I understand. I don’t know why I suggested he come here. It was a bad idea. I just got excited about you guys meeting each other. It was the first thing I thought of. You could meet him anywhere. We could all go out for coffee or dinner or—”

  “What’s his name?” she interrupted.

  “Thomas.”

  “Your eyes lit up when you said his name.” The emptiness was back in hers.

  “He’s a great guy. He wants to be a youth pastor and works so hard at it. You’d think he’d be this huge dork or something because of the whole preacher deal, but he’s not. He’s amazing. Just this really well-rounded guy. I don’t know what he sees in me.” I laughed.

  “I do. He sees the you that I see. Beautiful.” The words made me blush even coming from her. “So, when do I get to meet him?”

  “When do you want to?”

  5

  “I met your sister,” he announced as soon as we shut the doors in his Honda on our lunch break on Tuesday.

  “What? When? Where?”

  “Yesterday.”

  Yesterday was Monday and I never worked on Mondays because I had classes all day. I usually didn’t get home until after seven and last night was no different. Emily was home when I got there, watching her trashy reality TV shows. She didn’t menti
on meeting Thomas. Nothing. Not even a word about leaving the house. She hadn’t left the house by herself in over six months. How could she not have at least mentioned that?

  “How’d it go?” I asked.

  He rubbed his nose like he did every time he got nervous and cleared his throat. “I’ve gotta admit, it was pretty weird to see someone who looks exactly like you. I knew you were twins, but I guess I never expected not to be able to tell you guys apart. In the beginning, I had to keep telling myself that she wasn’t you. But once I got over the weirdness, it was easy to see she wasn’t you. You guys are very different.”

  My heart was thudding. My ears rang.

  “She met me at my car. Asked me if I was Thomas—”

  “Wait, how’d she know who you were?”

  “I don’t know. A twin thing, maybe? She just walked right up to me in the parking lot. I guess she could’ve seen my name tag or something. She didn’t seem depressed …”

  He wouldn’t look at me.

  “What do you mean? What’d she say? How’d she act?”

  A million questions and scenarios whirled through my mind so fast that one started before the other ended. He was visibly shaken and I’d never seen him unnerved. Not even when they’d plastered Playboy on his cubicle walls.

  “She was pretty pissed off even though she tried to hide it at first. She said she knew who I was because you’d told her about me and that she knew all about our relationship. She kept trying to make me promise not to tell you that she’d come to see me. I kept telling her I couldn’t do that, which just made her even angrier. And then she was just like—‘stay away from her.’”

  “She did? She said that?” I couldn’t believe it. What was wrong with her? Why would she do that?

  “Yeah. Look, I’m sorry—”

  I cut him off. “What were her exact words?”

  “I don’t think it really matters. She just made it clear she didn’t want us to be together.”

  “Tell me her exact words.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Tell. Me. Her. Exact. Words.”

  He let out a deep sigh. “Her exact words were to stay the fuck away from you. I felt like I was dealing with a jealous ex-boyfriend or something. I told her I couldn’t do that either because I loved you. I stayed pretty calm, but honestly, I think being calm just pissed her off even more. She said some pretty mean things about you, so I told her I was done talking to her and didn’t want to hear anything else she had to say. Then she left.”

  She must’ve walked because the buses didn’t come down this far, and even if they did, I couldn’t imagine her riding the bus alone. She hated taking the bus alone. Always had. Even when she was acting normal.

  “What’d she say about me?”

  “It’s really not important.”

  “Yes, it is. Tell me. You have to tell me.”

  The tips of my ears were on fire. My entire face felt hot.

  He looked away from me. “I think she’s just scared and doesn’t know what to do. I’m the first real threat to your relationship, so it makes sense that she’s totally freaking out about it.”

  “Tell me what she said.” The anger in my voice surprised me, but I couldn’t help it. I was baffled by her behavior and had to know the whole story. It was infuriating that he wouldn’t give me all the details.

  “I told you it doesn’t matter. Everything was said in fear. Fear is a very strong and powerful emotion.”

  “All right, Dr. Phil.”

  “Okay,” he said, “if you really want to know, I’ll tell you. But just for the record, I don’t think it helps anything or serves a purpose.” He coughed. Coughed again. He was staring at some imaginary spot on the dashboard, rubbing it anxiously. “She said you were crazy and that I just didn’t know it yet. She told me you were really great at pretending to be fine and I had to be a fool if I believed you were normal. She went on and on about how damaged you are. Oh, and she kept saying she felt like it was her duty to warn me about you because she knew you’d hurt me. That’s pretty much all of it.”

  I felt like someone had taken a baseball bat and slammed the end of it into the middle of my gut. For a moment, I felt like I might throw up and rolled the window down in case I did. The breeze didn’t reach my face. I couldn’t believe Emily had said those things about me.

  The silence between us was deafening. The timer on his watch went off, signaling the end of our break. He looked at me.

  “I’m not going back to work,” I said. “Tell Josh I threw up in the parking lot or that I got hit by a car. I don’t care what you tell him. Just tell him I’m gone for the day.”

  He nodded. “I understand.” He reached for my hand, but I pulled it away. I felt like being touched about as much as I felt like going back to work. “I need you to know I don’t believe any of the things she said about you. None of it. I don’t think any differently about you now than I did in the seconds before she came to the car. I know your past and I respect your past. But I don’t believe for a second that it ruined you. Just look at you. You’re amazing.”

  I faked a smile purely for his benefit, not because his words touched me. I was reeling from Emily’s betrayal. I’d never been so furious.

  Thomas leaned over and gave me a hug. I halfheartedly patted him on the back, keeping one of my arms at my side. “Promise to call later?”

  “Sure.”

  We got out of his car and I watched him walk in the other direction towards the building. He looked back and waved right before reaching the entrance. I was sure he would pray to his God on the elevator ride and for a split second, I envied his faith. I wished I believed in a God or at least believed in the divine purpose of things like he did. Maybe then I could make sense of what was happening. But I didn’t believe in his God or any other person’s God and nothing about Emily’s words or actions made sense.

  The most upsetting part wasn’t that she’d tried to keep Thomas away from me. I’d expected her to feel threatened by our relationship. It was her words—the terrible things she’d said about me. I’d never uttered an unkind word about her. I didn’t even allow myself to think an unkind word about her.

  My hands shook on the wheel and were covered in a clammy sweat. My heart was pounding so hard it made my chest hurt and it was difficult to breathe. I forced my legs to quit trembling and turned the car on. Somehow I drove to our apartment without running a stop light or causing an accident. I was shocked to find her in the kitchen, busy making a pot of coffee and humming as if everything was fine. Something inside me snapped.

  “How could you?” I screamed, lunging at her. I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “How could you?”

  It was all I could say over and over again as I shook her. And I couldn’t stop. She just let me fling her back and forth. When I finally stopped, I looked into my own face, searching for answers. I felt as if I was looking into the reflection of a stranger.

  “Calm down,” she said and moved to put her arm around me as if she might be about to give me a hug. I slapped her arm away. “Come here.”

  I walked away from her and into the living room. I traced a pattern back and forth across the floor, wringing my hands together. I was on the verge of hyperventilating. She followed me into the living room, taking a seat on the couch, and waited for me to calm down. She’d never seen me this angry.

  “I just didn’t want you to get hurt. You’re gonna get hurt by him. I know you will. I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be involved with anybody,” she said, not waiting for me to speak.

  I wanted to choke her. I hadn’t even said anything about Thomas and she knew exactly what I was talking about. She’d done it. She’d gone there and said those horrible things. There’d been a small part of me hoping it was all a misunderstanding.

  “I’m sorry. I just don’t like the idea. He’ll come between us. I know he will. He already has. I mean, you’ve already been lying to me. You’ve never lied to me before. Ever.” />
  “Don’t you get it?” I screamed at her. “It’s not about that. I understand you’re afraid of a man taking me away from you. But how could you say those horrible things about me? Calling me crazy? And damaged? I’m crazy? I’m fucking crazy? All this time, I’ve protected you. I’ve never even thought of calling you crazy. Never. I don’t breathe one word about you that’s bad. Not one. Ever.” I shook my head ferociously. “I can’t believe you did that to me. Said those things. How could you do that? How could you?”

  She was sobbing now, curling herself into a ball on the couch which only infuriated me more.

  “Stop crying! Stop! All you do is cry. This is about me—damn it. It’s not about you. It never gets to be about me. Just once, I want it to be about me. Two years. Two years it has been nothing but you. All I’ve done is walk around your fragile fucking emotions. Then you slap me in the face. No, not even slap. You spit in my face. That’s worse.”

  “Stop, Bethy, please, just stop.” She was pulling on my arm, trying to get me to sit on the couch next to her.

  But I couldn’t stop. Something inside of me had been unleashed and it was beyond my control. “No, I won’t. I’ve had the exact same life. We’ve been the same damn person. For the first time ever, I was doing something for myself. Just me. I had to have somebody because you disappeared on me. You fucking disappeared. What did you think I would do? Live in this crazy isolation forever? I’ve waited and hoped that you’d get better, that you’d come back to me. But you’ve ruined everything. You’re more fucked up than I thought you were!”

  “Stop!” she screamed like a wild animal. “Just stop! I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! For everything!”

  She jumped up, ran down the hallway, and slammed the bedroom door like she did every time she got upset. The same routine. This time, I didn’t follow her and assume my position at the end of the bed to comfort her. I stayed where I was—I’d never done that before.

  I heard the sounds of her sobbing through the wall separating us. It was a loud constant wailing that would go on for a long time. I stood out of instinct, beginning to take my customary steps down the hallway to the bedroom. I stopped in my tracks and turned around mechanically, heading back to the couch. I made myself sit back down again.