September Rain Bk 2, Savor The Days Series (42 page)

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 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. N-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? It’s gone! But 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 this.” 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 suffered from
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 loved him. Love him. I would
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 control!”

“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—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, along with the
words.

“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 never gave to the police, information 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-eyed terror.

The times I argued with Jake over what
I thought were misunderstandings, were wasted. 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 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. How anyone could be so calculated and
cruel . . .

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 to me 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 people. 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 me, well Avery. She’s alone, standing in
the middle of the motel room. The only light is coming from the
television . . .”

48

—What Happened

A knock sounded at the door. Avery
hadn’t been in the room for more than a few seconds. She was still
in her clingy clothes, wet from her night swim in the motel
pool.

She opened the door minutely and saw
Band Chick—Angelica.

“Hey,” Angelica said with her perfect
lips, “it’s getting way too naked over there. You mind if I crash
in here?”

“Things not working out with Andrew?
And don’t you have a room?”