by Paula Stokes
“Things for our new life!” my sister added. “It’ll be just the three of us.”
Ki Hyun ruffled her hair playfully. “I just need to take some pictures of you both.”
Min Ji immediately wrapped an arm around my shoulder and posed—her smile bright, her free hand arranged in a peace sign.
Ki Hyun laughed. “As it’s sort of a special occasion, I thought you might like to dress up first.” He gestured toward the boxes.
Min Ji squealed. “Presents! Let’s open them.”
We tore open the boxes eagerly to find matching scarlet dresses, with gentle scoop necks and flowing skirts. They were two of the most gorgeous dresses I had ever seen. We got dressed in the bathroom, and my sister painted my eyes and lips with makeup. Then we posed for half a dozen photos, some proper for official papers, some silly just for fun.
The last photo we took was the two of us standing in front of the hotel window, both of us with our hands raised in peace signs.
This is the photo I am now holding.
We look so happy.
We look so hopeful.
You can see the fading cross-shaped scars on our palms—mine on my right, hers on her left.
A pair of sisters like matching gloves.
I’m left-handed. My sister was right-handed. It hits me that Rose’s scar was on her right hand in the overdose recording. Which means Jesse is telling the truth.
Unless I’m remembering wrong.
“I need to play the ViSE one more time,” I mutter.
My headset is on the coffee table, with the recording still loaded inside. I turn away from Jesse and cross the apartment in a few hurried steps, both anxious and terrified to know the truth. What’s worse? That I’m clinically insane, or that the only two people in the world I trust killed my sister and are now conspiring to drive me crazy … and succeeding? Either way, Rose is gone.
“I need to be alone for a few minutes.” I grab the headset and disappear into my bedroom. Lying on my bed, I skip forward to the middle of the ViSE.
A rush of warmth pulses up my right arm. The kaleidoscope blurs into a rainbow and the smell of something sweet tickles my nose. A clove cigarette. The figure releases the tourniquet with a sharp snap and takes my hand. I can barely make out the cross-shaped scar carved into my palm.
My right palm.
I rip the headset off and fling it across the room. I can’t breathe. I yank the comforter from my bed. Dropping to the floor, I wrap the blanket around me like armor.
Jesse peeks in through the open door. Tentatively he kneels down, maintaining a few feet of distance. “I’m sorry,” he says, for what feels like the millionth time. “Gideon really thought he might be able to heal you.”
I feel many things right now. Healed is not one of them. “Her ViSEs? I did all those things?”
Jesse fiddles with his hearing aid. “Yes.”
My brain is spinning. Everything begins to make sense in the worst way. I’m missing pieces of time. I sometimes wake up feeling like I haven’t slept. If I actually believed it possible that I might have killed my own sister, is it really a stretch to believe that I could have stayed out all night making sexy ViSEs? “I don’t want to believe you,” I say. “If I’ve truly been acting as Rose, that means Gideon and I—it means … who knows how many people…” Nausea wells in my stomach.
“No. Gideon never touched you. Not like I did.” Jesse hangs his head. “I thought he was going to kill me, seriously. Once he saw how far your alter would go with your body, that’s when he said we had to figure out a way to get rid of her.”
How far your alter would go with your body. How can I have no clue about the things I’ve done or the people I’ve done them with? “If all this is true, how could you still want to be with me?” I think of all those strangers at the switch party, of the way I tried to convince Rose—myself—that I didn’t need to be that girl.
Jesse scoots closer to me. “Winter,” he starts. “None of that affects the way I feel about you. You’re smart and kind and resilient. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known.” His eyes fall to the initials tattooed on his wrist. “And I have known some strong people.”
I want to feel his pain right now, but I can’t. All I can feel is my own. My heart grows hard as my brain begins to fill in more blank spots. “When did it happen—you and me?”
Jesse looks down at the floor. “A few weeks ago. Not too long after we finished our snowboarding ViSE.”
I think back over the past month. There was one morning Jesse had acted really odd. “The day you brought over breakfast.”
He nods. “Gideon was out of town. You called me. I spent the night. I left to get food while you were asleep, and when I came back, it was like it had never happened. You turned me away and told me you had to study. I thought maybe you just needed time to process things, but Gideon came to see me in my apartment when he got home. He said we had to do something—that I had to help him if I wanted to keep my job. I agreed to keep his secret and watch out for you afterward, but I couldn’t bring myself to be involved in the actual ViSE. So he used Baz.”
Baz. The other recorder, the one who had felt almost emotionless. Of course.
“You planned this for weeks?” Suddenly every look he’s given me, every innocent touch from the past month feels tainted.
“We talked about it. But then Gideon got some call from a paranoid viser and had the idea to make it look like retaliation for a recording. We just wanted you to get better.”
“I can’t—are you serious? You think this is better?” My left hand curls into a fist. “I think you should go now.”
“Winter—”
“You helped him take my sister away from me in the most horrible way possible. Please, just leave.”
“She wasn’t real,” Jesse says.
“She was real to me.”
I’m still here, a voice whispers.
But I ignore it. She’s not real anymore. Rose is dead and I am crazy. And Jesse is sitting on my bedroom floor with his scarred face, disfigured ear, and an armful of dead comrades. And he seems so normal in comparison, so whole.
Something shatters inside me and I am on him, tears falling, fists flying. It’s like punching a granite cliff, but I don’t care. A strike to the chest. An uppercut to the chin. Jesse’s head snaps back. Pain explodes through my knuckles, but it doesn’t feel real. Nothing feels real. It’s like I’m watching myself from outside my body. Stop, a voice whispers. I should stop. I can’t stop. I don’t want to stop.
“Fight back,” I scream. But he doesn’t. So I hit him again, this time in the mouth. My bones feel like they’re coming through my skin. Droplets of blood spray through the air, dancing across my eyelashes. I lash out once more.
“Enough.” Jesse catches my fist and twists my arm behind my back. He pins my body to the floor. “I deserved a couple decent shots, but killing me won’t make you feel better. I’m not the one who needs to fight back right now, Winter. This isn’t you.”
I wrestle beneath his weight, kicking upward with my feet. “You’re wrong. This is me. Unstable. Violent. Those are the words you used, right? That’s what I am.” I struggle again, but Jesse outweighs me by almost a hundred pounds and he’s not budging. “You can’t pick and choose. The girl you care about doesn’t exist.”
“She does exist,” Jesse says. “I was wrong. This is you, but it’s not all that you are. You can fight the dark parts if you want to.”
Tears leak from my eyes, each one feeling like a traitor, like maybe they’re products of some secret piece of me controlled by someone else. “I don’t know if I want to,” I rasp.
Jesse sighs. “I know what that’s like.”
My body goes limp beneath his. I’m too tired to fight anymore. This is all too much.
After a couple of minutes, Jesse slides off me and sits with his back against the wall. Gradually I pull myself to a seated position and face him. His mouth is a mess of blood where I’ve spli
t his lip.
I fight the urge to reach out and touch it, to take care of him. Jesse lied to me. I don’t care what his reasons were. “You should go,” I say.
“I’m not going to leave you like this.”
“You’re the reason I’m like this—you and Gideon.” Each word hits Jesse like a separate stab wound. His shoulders hunch. His body folds in on itself.
“Try not to blame Gideon,” he says quietly. “I’m the selfish one. Not him.”
My eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”
“Gideon wanted to protect you. He kept hoping eventually your personalities would blend together, that if he loved you enough and gave you time, you would heal. I kept telling myself it was the same for me. I was playing along not to keep my job, but for your own good.” He looks down at the carpet. “But the truth is, part of me just didn’t want to share you. Not with club rats. Not with loser switch-party boys. Not with Andy Lynch.”
The blood drains from my face. Oh no. Andy. I bite back a scream of frustration. How many other people did I sleep with when I was pretending to be my dead sister? “Like I said, you should go.” Rising to my feet, I leave Jesse on the floor of my bedroom, still bleeding from his mouth.
I cross the hall into the bathroom. Punching the lock on the door, I lean back against it. My stomach twists with nausea as I consider everything I’ve just learned. I sink to the ground and bury my face in my hands. This cannot be happening. “Eonni,” I whisper. I want my sister. I need her to come get me and take me to wherever she is.
“Winter.” Jesse knocks on the door. “Are you all right in there?”
“I will be, once you leave,” I lie.
I will never be all right again.
“Your phone is ringing. It’s Andy. Do you want me to bring it to you?”
“Tell him I’ll call him back once I figure out if I’ve slept with him or not.” The words shoot out like spikes.
“Look. I know what we did to you might be unforgivable.” Jesse sounds like he’s crying. I’ve never seen him cry—not even when he talked about his dead army friends. “This isn’t enough, it’s not even a start, but I’m sorry. I am so goddamn sorry.”
I look down at my bloody knuckles. “Me too,” I whisper. I clear my throat. “Just leave, Jesse. Please. If you care about me at all.”
There is a long beat of silence and then I hear the front door open and close. I strip out of my clothes and get into the shower. Hot water courses down over my body, igniting pain in the cuts on my fingers. Jesse’s blood washes from my hands, staining the water beneath my feet a dull pink.
Minutes pass, or maybe hours, before it occurs to me that there’s one major piece of information still missing from Jesse’s little scenario of me being Rose being me: Who the hell was the guy who broke into the penthouse? Who got stabbed as part of this charade?
CHAPTER 40
When the hot water finally runs cold, I crawl from the shower to my bed, my eyes avoiding the bloodstains on the carpet. Jesse’s blood mixed with some unknown stranger’s.
Reaching out for my phone, I see that I have two texts. The first is from Andy:
I set up a meeting with your boss. Thanks for hooking us up.
Second text. From Gideon. Two words:
Call me.
Reluctantly, I dial his number. I should be angry. I should want to scream at him like I did Jesse. But once I do, I’ll be completely alone in the world.
I’m scared.
“I’m on the way home,” he says. “If you’ll allow it, I can help you make sense of this. Or else you can just attack me like you did Jesse.”
My hands are still throbbing from the punches I threw. “He told you?”
“Yes. He’s worried about you. It’s not like you to hurt someone who isn’t fighting back.”
“It’s not like he didn’t deserve it.”
“You don’t think you overreacted?” Gideon asks. “Jesse would never have touched you if he knew about your condition. I’m the one who lied to you for years. I made Jesse lie too. I’m the one you should blame, but I suppose I’m not as easy of a target.”
“Maybe,” I mumble. After six years of living in America and watching children disrespect their elders, that still feels odd to me. I’ve been inappropriate to Gideon several times since Rose disappeared, but there’s no way I could bring myself to physically strike him outside of our sparring matches. Plus, Gideon risked everything to save me. Technically he risked everything to save my sister—I was just a collateral beneficiary. But he took care of me after Rose was gone. And he taught me to be strong.
It’s hard to hate someone who has given me everything that I have.
“The cab is pulling up to the building right now. I’ll be up in a minute,” he says. “Perhaps you could put on some tea?” The call disconnects.
I head into the kitchen and dig through the cabinets for the teapot.
And then I stop. Gideon may have saved me, he may be the closest thing I have to a father, but he lied to me and kidnapped me and drugged me. I don’t have to make him tea.
A few minutes later, the front door swings open. Wordlessly, Gideon slips out of his loafers. I take a seat on the sofa. He sits in a chair across from me.
“How was your flight?” I ask.
“Fine.”
We stare at each other for a few seconds. I resist the urge to look away. I’m not used to making this much eye contact with him outside of our sparring matches. I feel as if I should let him speak first, but he seems more interested in listening.
“So it’s true?” I start. “My sister died three years ago but I blocked it out and you concocted an elaborate scheme to make me accept her death?”
Gideon nods.
My lower lip trembles. “You said we were family.” I think of that day with the red dresses, of how happy all of us were. “Family is all I have ever had in this world. You should have told me the truth.”
He studies me with his dark eyes. “When we first arrived here, the doctors at the hospital told you Rose was dead. You refused to believe it. You threatened to hurt people. You threatened to hurt yourself. The nurses sedated you, and when you woke up, it was like you’d reset. You were back to believing Rose was alive, and you were calm. The psychiatrist who cared for you said there was no reason to force the truth on you at that moment. He prescribed you sedatives and referred you to an outpatient therapist.” He pauses. “Dr. Abrams experimented with medications, but regardless of what she tried, you still saw your sister. She said she would work with you and help you deal with your past, but that when it came to your sister you were going to have to remember and accept the truth at your own pace. So I learned to embrace your reality.”
“Rose has clothes, oppa. Furniture,” I say sharply. “She had a phone. That’s a bit more than playing along with some girl’s imaginary sister, don’t you think?”
He nods. “Some of those things I had bought before we moved. Some of them you bought for her yourself. You asked why we were never together, so I told you we broke up. After that, what started out as the guest bedroom slowly became Rose’s room. The phone was just another way to keep an eye on you—who you were calling, where you were going. But you’re right. I did a bit more than merely indulge your fantasies. It’s just that whenever something felt off in your reality, it would upset you. I hated seeing you upset.”
“Clearly you got over that,” I say through clenched teeth.
“Do you remember why you quit vising?”
I shake my head. “I never vised, except a couple of times with you. I’m really sensitive to overlay. You know that.”
“No, that’s just something your mind has convinced your body to believe. You used to go to sleep and then I would catch you out late or up early in the morning as Rose, using the beta tech to make ViSEs of just walking around the city. That’s when I first realized you weren’t just seeing her, that you were being her too. You were agoraphobic, but somehow as Rose you were able to go out
side. And then as Winter you would play the recordings. I knew it wasn’t normal, but it seemed therapeutic. I felt like you were helping yourself heal.”
“So then why did I quit?”
“You started to figure things out. I suspect because of the scar on your hand. I tried to tell you the truth again but you didn’t want to know who was really making the recordings.” He pauses again. “I still have some of them somewhere, if you want to see. You went out a lot that first December to record the holiday decorations.”
Another memory flashes back. Me lying on my bed, blankets pulled up to my chin, a ViSE headset secured to my head. Christmas lights, snowflakes, shiny decorations. Gideon is right. The department store windows were one of the first things that made me want to leave the penthouse.
“I remember,” I say. “I can’t remember her giving me the recordings, but I remember playing them.”
“Believing Rose was alive seemed to strengthen you.” Gideon’s eyes get misty. “In a strange way, it helped me too. I would listen to you talk to her and I could almost hear her again. I couldn’t bring myself to try to take your sister away from you when you were happy.”
“Until now.”
“Yes. I knew this other part of you had started doing things you wouldn’t choose to do. And then I realized what a fool I’d been not to stop it earlier. I feared you would become unstable again if I told you the truth, or that you would hate me. I’m a coward, and I’m selfish. I had already lost your sister. I didn’t want to lose you too.”
“Are you really worried about losing me?” I ask quietly. “Or am I just the last piece of her you have left?”
Gideon rubs the bridge of his nose. “You cannot imagine what it’s like to leave your whole life behind to start over somewhere else as a twenty-seven-year-old man with a teenager. And yes, having you close felt like hanging on to her—I won’t deny that. But I’ve grown to love you, Winter. You are your own person—not a piece of her.”
“And yet you used the fact I was dissociating to send me out to record your sexual ViSEs.” I can’t keep the bitterness from creeping in. “How could you do that to me? How could you treat me like a whore knowing everything my sister and I went through?”