Vicarious

by Paula Stokes

  I grab the folder and leave the study, pausing outside the door to Gideon’s bedroom. I can’t even remember the last time I set foot in his room. We’re both very respectful of each other’s personal space.

  But not today.

  I skirt around the king-size bed to the black lacquer dresser. A collection of pipes carved from gingko wood is displayed in a glass case on top of it. A Korean flag hangs proudly on the wall. I feel uneasy, like I shouldn’t be here, like I’m violating an unspoken rule. Maybe I should just go through the paperwork I’ve already found. I force my eyes away from the flag’s red and blue yin-yang and turn to leave. My gaze falls on the far corner of the dresser, on a lamp shaped like a gazebo.

  The main hotel Rose and I worked out of in Koreatown looked out on a green gazebo with red trim, almost like the lamp. I think of the businessmen studying Rose and me with their quiet, careful eyes. Negotiating prices like we were animals.

  I start to turn away from the hated gazebo but then stop. There’s a faint outline of dust here, almost as if someone moved the lamp recently. If I were Gideon and wanted to hide something from me, I’d put it near this hated memento of my past.

  I snatch the lamp from the dresser. The base is hollow and there’s a piece of indigo cloth stuffed up inside of it. I yank out the fabric and something rectangular and metallic falls out—the neural editor. But that’s not all. Six playback headsets and a thin metallic hard drive are also wedged in the base of the lamp.

  My insides go dead. It’s all the equipment that was supposedly stolen at Escape.

  CHAPTER 38

  I was right. There never was a break-in at Escape. Gideon is the one in the ViSE with Rose.

  He overdosed her.

  He killed her.

  No. There has to be another explanation.

  The room starts to fragment. I focus on the wall, on the yin-yang at the center of the flag, holding on to its familiar shape.

  Some other explanation.

  Something else.

  Be strong.

  The yin-yang’s red and blue teardrops split apart. Furniture starts to melt into colors. Colors become black and white.

  Gideon loved Rose.

  Always.

  I’ve never once doubted that.

  Black and white begins to fade into nothingness.

  I struggle to stay in control. You can handle this. “I can handle this,” I say aloud. My brain wants to shut me down, but I fight it. I force the yin-yang back into formation. The dresser regains a bit of its shape.

  Gideon saved Rose and me. He took us away from Kyung, away from Los Angeles. He brought us here so that we could start over.

  The three of us.

  It’ll be just the three of us. That’s what Rose always said.

  And Gideon did his best to make it happen. He gave us jobs. He gave us a place to live. He’s family. If Rose is dead, then he’s the only family I have left.

  My family killed my family.

  Suddenly the penthouse feels like a prison. I leave Gideon’s bedroom and pull the door closed behind me. Hurrying down the hall, I open the front door.

  And then I realize I have nowhere to go.

  Everyone I know besides Andy is loyal to Gideon. I have no friends of my own, no support network outside of the one he built for me. I should have realized this years ago and done something about it, but I never did because I had Rose. And because Gideon took care of us, or so I thought.

  I shut the door quietly and retreat into my bedroom. I need to think.

  I can’t think.

  Instead I lie facedown on my bed. Deep racking sobs claw their way out of me. It’s like I’m vomiting out demons. How could Gideon take my sister away from me? He knew how much I needed her.

  He needed her too.

  But he lost her. And for a moment, it all makes sense. Maybe seeing her with Jesse made him snap. No wonder he didn’t want me to go to the police. No wonder he didn’t want me to look for her killers.

  I turn over and stare at the ceiling. Another sob escapes my throat and I hug my arms around my chest. Reality starts to fragment again. The room disintegrates. Solids. Colors. Blacks and grays.

  I debate calling Jesse. I am 100 percent certain he’s not on the recording with Gideon. I know what it’s like to vise from Jesse’s point of view. I remember the slight visual distortion—you can’t edit out something like that. The other man with Gideon had clear eyesight.

  I imagine Jesse’s voice. Soothing. Calm. The tears begin to dry on my skin. He cares about me, even if he lied, even if Rose is the one he fell in love with. He deserves to know what happened. If Gideon killed my sister out of jealousy, then Jesse could be next. I exhale slowly and the room regains its form. I dial Jesse’s number.

  “Winter.” He sounds out of breath. “I’m so glad you called. Where are you?”

  “Home.” One word. Cracked whisper. This place doesn’t feel like home anymore.

  “Are you crying?” Jesse asks. “Are you hurt?”

  I ignore his questions. “You might be in danger.”

  “What?”

  “Gideon staged the break-in at Escape. I found the stuff that was supposedly stolen.” The air around me buzzes heavy in my ears. I can barely hear my own voice. “He OD’d Rose. That’s why he didn’t want us investigating.”

  “Winter. Calm down.” Suddenly it’s Jesse who sounds anxious.

  “Don’t tell me to calm down.” Without warning, I start crying again. I can’t remember the last time I cried this much, but I suspect my sister was there to keep me from doing anything rash. “I’m going to the police,” I say. “I’m turning him in.”

  “Okay,” Jesse says. “But wait five minutes. I want to go with you.”

  I try to answer but can’t. I am wailing now, a deep animallike cry that seems to be originating from outside of my body.

  “Stay there,” he says. “I’ll be right up.”

  * * *

  When I open the door a few minutes later, I have managed to stop crying, but I still can’t speak. Jesse stands awkwardly in the hallway until I motion him inside. He leans back against the wall, one hand thrust deep into his pocket, the other clutching a single printed sheet. I can tell he wants to touch me, hug me, make things better. But he can’t. A cold space has sprung up between us, a barrier he’s afraid to breach.

  And with good reason. All I can see is him in the ViSE he tried to hide from me. Him and my sister.

  And now she’s dead.

  “There’s something you need to see,” Jesse says.

  “I have something you need to see too.” I point at the neural editor and hard drive sitting on the counter. “I found this hidden in his bedroom. He killed her. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  Jesse looks sick. “Winter,” he starts. “Gideon didn’t—”

  I cut him off. “I played the ViSE again. The way the guy injected her. The way he touched her. I know it was him.”

  Jesse crosses the living room to the kitchen. He sits down at the table and immediately I wonder if he ever sat there with my sister. My dead sister. I can’t sit. Can’t stand. Can’t exist in this apartment without overlaying her corpse.

  I pace back and forth in front of the stove. Jesse hands me the paper he’s holding—a news story printed off the Internet. There’s a picture of a tall glass building. A red-and-green gazebo stands behind it. It looks like the hotel from Los Angeles.

  “What is this?” I ask, skimming the first few lines of text. “An unidentified body found in the elevator of a hotel? So what?” But sluggish parts of me have flared to life. Not just a body, a girl. A dead girl.

  In an elevator.

  For a moment I feel the walls around me shrinking, closing in, trapping me. I smell blood. Blood on my hands. The paper slips from my grasp and flutters to the ground.

  Jesse bends down to retrieve the article. He presses it back into my hands. “Look at the date. It’s the day after you left Los Angeles—you and Gide
on.”

  I glance down at the paper again. Sure enough, the date is from almost exactly three years ago. “And?”

  “Winter. The girl who died in that elevator. It was Rose.”

  CHAPTER 39

  “That’s insane,” I say. “Rose came to St. Louis with Gideon and me. I was so sick at first I had to be hospitalized. She slept next to me in bed. She took care of me. If it weren’t for Rose, I would have…”

  “You would have what?”

  Suddenly I start to shake. I would have died without her by my side. “It doesn’t matter, because Rose was there. And this girl was in L.A. Dead.” In an elevator.

  “Why were you in the hospital?”

  “I was—” I stop. I remember the ambulance, restraints, IV drugs, the doctors saying that Gideon should leave me there for observation. Why was I so upset?

  Jesse doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. He just observes me carefully, as if he’s trying to see the possibility settling in my brain. But it doesn’t settle because it’s not a possibility. It’s an impossibility.

  “But I talked to Rose the other night. Her stuff is still in her room,” I say. “Up until last week she was dating Andy Lynch and making ViSEs for Gideon. I didn’t hallucinate all of that. I didn’t imagine the ViSE of her overdose. Everyone played it.”

  “I can explain,” Jesse says.

  “You don’t have to, because you’re wrong.” But for the first time, my voice lacks conviction.

  And so does my heart.

  Could I possibly have hallucinated Rose’s presence in order to save myself? Like an imaginary friend? But that would mean I’ve been hallucinating her for years. And that’s completely crazy. People like that can’t function. They can’t wake up and work out and get all As in their classes. They can’t be trusted with dangerous work like recording ViSEs.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” Jesse suggests. “I can make you some tea.”

  “No.” I back away from the table, shaking my head. “You’re messing with my mind again. Dr. Abrams said I had post-traumatic stress disorder, which was normal. That’s why I had bad dreams. That’s why I saw things that weren’t there.” I start to crumple one corner of the printed page I am still clutching. “I’m better now, except I sleepwalk sometimes. I haven’t been hallucinating my sister for years.”

  “Winter—”

  I ignore him and keep going. “Why are you doing this to me? Did you and Gideon kill her and you’re afraid I’ll find out so you’re trying to make everyone think I’m crazy?”

  “I’m so sorry.” Jesse’s voice is laden with pity and it makes me want to lash out at him. Instinctively, I reach for a knife, but I don’t have one on me and I feel exposed. Naked. I raise the article toward my face as if I can use it as a shield. The word exsanguination stands out amidst the blurring print.

  Blood. Blood on my hands.

  A fragment of a memory flits into my brain. An awful, terrible memory of blood spraying like a fountain. My sister is screaming. I am crying. And then Gideon’s arms tighten around me.

  I concentrate on the moment, but that’s all I get. I don’t even know if it’s real.

  “She bled to death?” I blurt out.

  “Gideon never told me exactly what happened. Just that she died in Los Angeles. I found this online.”

  “Why would he tell you anything about her?”

  Jesse looks down at the ground. “I told him how I felt about you. He wanted me to know the truth.”

  “The truth. You mean how I’m crazy.”

  “I mean…” He struggles for the right word. “I don’t know what your therapist would call it.”

  Suddenly I remember the papers I found. Setting the article on the table, I turn and grab the file folder from the counter. A pair of Korean passports spill out from the middle. The first is mine. The photo looks about three years old. I vaguely remember Gideon taking pictures of Rose and me back in Los Angeles.

  Holding my breath, I reach for the second thin, dark green book, my fingertips nervously tracing the gold Hangul on the cover. I flip it open and see the name Rose Kim. She has a round face and wider-set eyes. Her hair curls under slightly. Next to her, I am a mess of angles—pronounced cheekbones, a sharper chin. My hair is stick-straight.

  She looks the way I remember her, but we look nothing alike. There is no way anyone could ever get us confused. But Andy did. And his agent did. And that makes no sense, unless I’ve been hallucinating them too.

  Setting aside the passports, I flip through the papers without looking at Jesse. I skim the first page that has my name. It’s the discharge summary from the emergency room, the day we arrived in St. Louis.

  Patient: Kim, Winter

  Diagnosis: Anxiety attack; acute psychotic episode secondary to PTSD, as evidenced by

  • history of abuse

  • repressing or suppressing memories of traumatic events and/or dissociation

  • nightmares, flashbacks, and/or hallucinations

  • explosive anger

  Visit summary: Patient admitted to ER by legal guardian because of unrelenting violent hallucinations. Guardian states patient’s older sister died recently and patient has been struggling to cope. Elevated RR, HR, and BP. 4L of O2 given via nonrebreather en route by paramedics. Anxiolytics administered. Psychiatry consult ordered.

  I skip past more medical jargon to the very bottom.

  Recommended course of treatment: 72 hour observation.

  Referred to Abrams, Cara, MD, for follow-up.

  Chart signed by Bernard, Lance, MD

  The pieces start to slide into place. I raise my eyes from the sheaf of papers. “I’ve been hallucinating Rose, so somehow Gideon faked that ViSE. To make me think someone killed her.”

  “Yes,” Jesse says. “We shouldn’t have tried to trick you, but Gideon thought if we could convince you Rose was dead, that your unconscious might accept it too. He apparently read a bunch of research or something.”

  “A bunch of research,” I repeat woodenly. Like I’m an experiment. Like I’m a mouse in a cage. I swallow hard. “And you went along with this because you believed him? Or you were afraid he might fire you?”

  Jesse stares down at his hands. “Both, I guess. I care about you, and Gideon’s a smart guy. I hoped it would work.”

  “If you care about me so much, why didn’t you just tell me the truth?” I ask incredulously.

  “I wanted to tell you so many times, but Gideon said the hospital tried to orient you to reality when you were younger, and it didn’t work. He said you got unstable. Violent.”

  I tremble visibly. I can almost hear Rose telling me she wouldn’t let the hospital keep me. Hospitals are for the dying, and we are only just beginning to live. Only it wasn’t real. None of it was real.

  “It felt so lifelike.” My voice wavers. “How did you do it?”

  Jesse exhales deeply. “Baz grabbed you one night when you were being Rose. He and Gideon took you to Riverlights and shot you full of ketamine to mimic a near-death experience and some other drug to make you forget what happened, just in case.”

  “Being Rose?” I furrow my brow.

  Jesse rubs at his scar. He glances toward the front door. “When are you expecting Gideon to get home?”

  I ignore his question. “What do you mean, being Rose?”

  “I’m not sure I’m the person you should be hearing this from,” Jesse says weakly. “Gideon—”

  “Is not here. Please, Jesse. You can’t just come up here, tell me that my sister has been dead for years, and then not explain anything else.”

  He exhales deeply. “Okay. The ViSEs you and I have been playing are real.” He pauses. “Gideon said you couldn’t let her go. That you loved her so much you made her part of you. You let her … take over sometimes, in situations when you can’t cope.”

  “Wait. You’re saying that it’s more than hallucinating? That I have … multiple personalities or something?” I shake my head vi
olently. “No. That’s not possible.” But then I think about the blackouts. I think about the voice in my head that sometimes talks to me in Rose’s words. “I see what you’re saying, but the things she did—I would never have done those things. I can’t do those things. You know that.” Is Jesse really trying to convince me I danced with strangers at Zoo and made out with random switch-party guys? Is he trying to convince me I had sex with him and honestly don’t remember?

  “I mean, maybe this other part of you was there even before Rose died,” Jesse says. “Maybe you created it to deal with your life in L.A.”

  I turn away. I need for Jesse to be wrong, for this all to be wrong. I flip through the papers, looking for something. Anything. I don’t know what. There are a couple other visit summaries from hospital admissions that I don’t even remember. The papers say basically the same things as the ER record: psychotic episodes, panic attacks, complex PTSD. Apparently several types of medication were tried, but nothing was effective against my hallucinations.

  Below the medical records, I find Rose’s fake birth certificate and some documents that show Gideon as our legal guardian. And then, at the bottom of the folder, a single picture of Rose and me mugging for the camera, wearing matching red dresses.

  The entire memory floats back.

  One of Kyung’s men brought us to the hotel room. Gideon welcomed us inside; he was still Ki Hyun then. He bolted the door behind us and swept my sister—still Min Ji—into an embrace. I turned toward the blank TV screen to give them privacy and noticed the two boxes perched on the edge of the bed—long, flat boxes with brilliant red ribbons.

  “Come here, silly Ha Neul.” Ki Hyun pulled me into the hug, and for a moment all three of us were one, a tangle of arms and heat. “The preparations are almost completed.”

  “But where will we go?” I broke away from our awkward embrace.

  “I picked a place for us.” Ki Hyun’s hand lingered on my sister’s lower back. “Big enough to hide in, but small enough that no one would ever guess. I’ve already started buying things and putting them in storage.”