September Rain

by A.R. Rivera

47

  -Angel

  My chest is bursting with snotty, uncontrolled howls. One of my hands has been un-cuffed to let me wipe my nose. My throat feels unsteady as I try to keep talking, trying to tell them.

  "I wish I'd died with him. I'd be better off. But you have to believe me, I didn't know."

  Tight Bun leans in. "You didn't know what?"

  I want to roll my eyes into the back of my head just to see the look on the face of the guards behind me. I can't be the only one flabbergasted by this stupid, stupid question. The reason I'm here is no secret to anyone.

  Even my shitty lawyer is shaking his head.

  The swell in my throat threatens to choke me. I clear it as best I can. "What I know now. I didn't know then what I know now."

  Tight Bun Tara clasps her hands, setting them on the table in front of her. "And what is that?" This time, her own eyes are glistening as she passes me a replacement tissue. "What have you learned?"

  "Who I am."

  "Who are you, Angel?"

  "I'm-" fighting for a way to explain.

  "You don't have to answer that." My lawyer waves his hand through the air, obstructing my view of Tara, across the table. "If it's too stressful-"

  "I didn't know the signs." If he thinks he can shut me down, he's got another thing coming. "I didn't do anything-but I am at fault. For J-Jake." My heart wrenches on his name.

  They have to know how the two are connected: Avery's words and the night Jake died.

  I'm shaking, as if the fault line of my mind has shifted, forcing my whole body into tremors. "I can see now. None of it was-"

  "Miss Patel, would you like to stop?"

  I turn to glare at Mister Brandon and keep talking. "None of it should have happened. It was all wrong. He was . . . It wasn't peaceful. It wasn't real."

  "What makes you think that it wasn't real?" Tara's voice is velvet soft, though she's glaring at my lawyer.

  Avery is the fucking devil!

  "How else-how could she take my soul like that? It's gone, and I'm still here. Still breathing."

  "She's wrecked. Let's leave this for tomorrow." Quiet Darren insists and Mister Brandon jumps up in agreement.

  "No!" I sob, throwing up my free hand that had been kindly uncuffed earlier to allow me to wipe my own nose.

  The two men look at each other for a long moment before Quiet Darren asks, "What do you think? Should we wrap it up?"

  My lawyer waves his hand, "If she's determined to continue-"

  "I am. I want to finish." My clenched fist bounces off the table. Quiet Darren looks back to me, his relaxed posture now unyielding. I nod frantically. "Please. I'll calm down, I promise. Just, let me finish."

  The two men settle back in their chairs as Tight Bun Tara looks on with expectation. Looking at the three faces, the room suddenly feels much smaller, the air too quiet. Frantic silence floats all around and I am drowning in it.

  "It was not real." I repeat, taking a deep breath. "It wasn't. It wasn't." Air like soup, suffocates me. "Until . . . it was.

  "When Avery said that . . . about the broken jar, it was like this door inside my head opened up, connecting two rooms that I didn't know were even there. And I was sure the knowledge that flooded in like a contaminated light had to be a lie."

  I can see myself back inside that bloody motel room as clear as if I'm standing in it. "I didn't know that I was the only person who set foot inside that room. That there was no one else. That I-that she was me."

  Something inside me breaks. It's as if I've been kicked and all the air shoved from my body. It takes a minute to draw breath. I'm fighting to stay in this moment, fighting to get the words out. But all that comes are the sounds of giant, irrepressible sobs heaving up my tight throat, folding me in half. I sound like a wild animal and it's fitting that I'm caged like one.

  I can't let myself stop now. More than my next breath, I need them to know what happened. I want them to believe me. And if I can't give them my truth now, I won't get another chance. It's a miracle that they've let me get this far into the aftermath, that my lawyer has let me go on. If I give in, they'll stop listening and all of this will have been for nothing.

  All I have is breath, so I take it, use it to hold my cries inside and shove the words past them. "Doctor Bender said Doctor Williams was wrong. That I was just traumatized, had PTSD, or something. And that I had a severe mood disorder and the night with Jake . . . was because I was coming down from a 'prolonged state of manic euphoria,' which, would be controlled with new medication."

  "But I swear-I swear to you on whatever I have left inside me, that everything I am was asleep on that bathroom floor when Jake walked into that room."

  Breathe.

  Say it.

  "And I swear to you, that I did not kill Jake. I love him. Love him. I could never hurt him."

  My lawyers' eyes are burning with an emotion I don't care to identify as he stares at one side of my face.

  "Doctor Bender lied. He saw what happened, he talked to Avery. He knew that I always forgot everything and that Avery was the reason. She put me to sleep! She took over!"

  "Dissociative amnesia and delusions." Mister Brandon mumbles and Tight Bun and Quiet Man both nod their heads, making notes on their respective notepads.

  "Doctor Williams spoke to Avery without me there. She knew I wasn't faking."

  The words are coming easier now, flowing together with my tears instead of one blocking out the other. "I didn't know. I couldn't see that I-that my eyes were the last ones that he saw. I didn't know that the nightmares I had of-of him dying were m-memories."

  I take a deep breath and release it, letting the room fall silent. All the fight gone.

  "We're done for the day." My lawyer shoots from his chair, ordering the guards and everyone else in the room to come back first thing in the morning.

  I don't get a say in what happens to me, but I'm begging anyway. Yes, I've said the hardest thing, but it's not enough. And in the chaos that follows-my insistence at remaining until the end of the scheduled session and arguing with my lawyer about it-it feels as if the room takes a collective breath.

  The two judges on the other side of the table seem dumbstruck, trying to absorb my confession: information I couldn't give the police, another stuid girl treated as fodder. My condition was never taken seriously.

  And how could I tell my whole story when even I didn't know all of it? I was trying to come to terms with the fact that my very best friend murdered the love of my life. I had no clue that she wasn't-for all their intents and purposes-real. I saw her and touched her. I hear her still.

  But she's a by-product of my fractured psyche.

  A projection.

  A delusion.

  Things that would require years and years of therapy to come to terms with.

  I didn't know that no one saw her but me. I never noticed the way people skipped over her in conversations, or only spoke to one of us at a time, never included her in activities. I never saw how we only communicated when we were alone.

  I didn't know how hard my mind had to work to save me from my exceptionally shitty life. Avery's emptiness, her anger and memories, the cutting, and sleeping around-all of that was me.

  It feels like a question, not an answer. How is it that Avery's eating disorder and need to coddle me was just another fractured part of me trying to find a way to cope? To coexist within myself? What type of life did I lead before that accident that I had to make up an entirely different person to handle it?

  I couldn't even accept what Doctor Williams was explaining to Doctor Bender until I saw the taped interrogation videos. I looked strange, elegantly folded into a chair, and giving attitude that wasn't mine. I insulted everybody, moving smoother than I ever knew I could. I saw my own lips say, "I'll tell you whatever you want to know, so long as Angel walks." And then I smiled and stabbed myself with a pencil.

  A brown-haired, brown-eyed girl, acting like a green-eye
d terror.

  The times I argued with Jake over what I thought were misunderstandings, weren't.

  Avery must have made sure he never found out there were two souls living in my body. I didn't even know it. It seems the only ones who did, weren't sure enough to say anything. Until that day in the jail, when Avery talked about being broken, nothing made sense. And after, it made even less sense.

  "I promise to stay calm," I beg my lawyer. "Please. Just let me go a little longer."

  Once he gives a reluctant nod, a guard re-cuffs my free hand to the arm of the chair and I am allowed to keep talking, telling all of them what I now know to be true.

  "Jake was completely innocent. He dealt with everything and understood so little. He truly loved me. And she-" my voice gives. I clamp my lips in my teeth, holding the urge to cry inside. I can't finish the sentence.

  A hand sets a fresh Diet Coke on the table in front of me. Bendy straw and everything. The sight calms my bawling. I thank the quiet man with, what I hope is, a smile and take a long, cool sip.

  Darren asks, "Can you tell us what happened that night?"

  My lawyer cuts in. "She has no first-hand knowledge-"

  "I'll tell them." My lips tremble around the straw as I take another drink.

  "Miss Patel, I understand your desire to share, but you are distressed and I am charged with looking out for your best interest." He's closer now, in my line of sight. One hand is extended towards the microphone. "As you recall, that night was never the purpose of this interview. Any commentary on an event you cannot fully recall is reckless. Pointless."

  Darren leans towards the microphone and flips the switch. The constant red light on the base goes black. "Mister Brandon, Miss Patel, I ask for simple, professional curiosity. It's not often we have the opportunity to observe dissociative behavior firsthand. We have all the hard evidence in the case file; the forensics, and statements from the band members. Transcripts from your hearing, but as you insist, no one was there except your alter, Avery, and the victim."

  "I have dreams about it sometimes. My doctors at Canyon View say they're repressed memories manifesting or something like that. They may not be exactly right."

  In my heart, I pray they aren't.

  Quiet Darren's forehead has had a constant crevice for the past several hours, but now he leans back in his chair and the crevice smoothes out. He looks years younger. "I can accept that. What about you?" He turns to Tight Bun Tara.

  Her eyes widen. "So long as you understand, Miss Patel, whatever you reveal to us will have no bearing on the results of this evaluation. Our decision will not be swayed-neither more nor less lenient. Is that clear?"

  "Yes," I say, leaving out that I don't give shit either way what happens after this. Explaining this part was the whole point of my cooperating. So they can all see that I am not Avery. Though we share the same body, we are not the same person. We are polar fucking opposites. I need for that to be clear.

  I look at my lawyer. "You know my opinion." Mister Brandon crosses his arms.

  I adjust myself in the chair. "The dream always starts with . . . well, Avery. She's alone, standing in the middle of the motel room. The only light is coming from the television."