Pretty Girl Thirteen (12 page)

“He’s doing paperwork in the den. Didn’t you hear him complaining about the big presentation? Seems he has more work than ever these days.”

“Sorry. Guess I spaced out,” Angie said. Oh God. Spaced out for eight hours? How was that possible?

Mom handed Angie the remote. “You choose.”

Gripping the remote to hide the tremor in her hand, Angie scanned the meaningless titles. Most of them were R-rated, and she was too young for those. Anyway, she didn’t want to watch something too violent or sexy with her own mother.

“Want a blanket?” Mom said. “You’ve got goosebumps.” She reached into the blanket bin for a pair of couch blankets and settled closer to Angie. “So did you and Bill have a good catching-up chat on your walk?”

They walked? When? Angie spread the green chenille blanket over her lap, stalling for an answer. As she tucked her feet up, she noticed the hems of her jeans were covered in cobwebs. Her knees were dusty brown.

Mom rattled on. “You two were always so close. He was your favorite babysitter, and he wouldn’t even let us pay him.”

Thinking back, Angie couldn’t remember him coming over a lot. Well, maybe she did. She remembered him arriving and leaving, just no idea of in-between. Maybe he let her stay up and watch inappropriate TV.

Her pulse was still rapid, her breath strained, her stomach sour, her arms red, her legs achy. What was wrong with her?

“Such a sweet boy,” Mom added. “I know you missed him like crazy when he was deployed. You cried for a week straight.”

Funny. She didn’t remember missing him at all.

“I
CONTAIN MULTITUDES,
” M
S. STRANG ANNOUNCED TO THE
freshman lit class.

Angie’s heart leaped in response.

The teacher continued, “Does anyone know what Walt Whitman meant by this? It’s part of the closing stanzas of his ‘Song of Myself,’ which you all should have finished reading last night. Anyone?”

Angie had. She’d loved it—the language, the images, even the parts she didn’t understand at all but let them roll around in her mind. She felt her hand rising on its own and pulled it down abruptly. “Figuratively,” she whispered to herself. “It’s just a metaphor.”

“I’m sorry, Angela. Could you speak up, please?” Ms. Strang must have the hearing of a bat.

Angie’s fan club stared, waiting for her answer. What would the Gone Girl say?

She collected her thoughts. Her own thoughts. “I think Whitman means that he contains all the ancestors who lived before him—like a huge human family tree that all comes to a point in him. And also, he contains all the world today, all of creation, because he’s part of it and connected to it and stuff.” Fifty large eyes swung back to the teacher to see if that was correct.

Angie added, “It’s NOT like a multiple personality. It’s a metaphor.” Why’d she blurt that out?

But I
do
contain multitudes, she thought. Literally. Whitman would probably think her version was pretty cool too. Maybe she’d write her own “Song of Myself” once she got to know herselves better.

No progress there, unfortunately. After a couple of weeks of waffling, Angie brought her journal to a session, hoping it would help. “Do not mention this to my mother,” she commanded as she handed it to Dr. Grant. “She’d flip out.”

Dr. Grant read quietly for a few minutes, her placid face concealing her own reaction. “Ah,” she said gently. “So, the kidnapping hypothesis proves true.”

Angie felt a burst of gratitude for Dr. Grant’s under-response. It was so much easier to deal with things on an unemotional level. “Yep. But I still can’t remember it myself.”

“That’s okay, Angie.”

“Shackles. Suicide. Pretty heavy stuff,” she said flatly. “I don’t want Mom to have this in her head every time she looks at me. Okay?”

“I understand,” Dr. Grant said. “What about Detective Brogan, though? This is valuable evidence, an eyewitness statement.”

Angie thought about it. “There’s not much there. No descriptions or anything.”

“Still,” Dr. Grant said. “There might be enough to prevent wasting his time on false leads or wrong ideas.”

Point made. Angie shrugged. “Sure. Go ahead and make a copy. But I need to keep the original.”

“Of course. So, how do you feel about Girl Scout’s story? Her experience?”

Angie rolled her eyes. “It sucked. Obviously. But I kind of admire her spirit.”

The doctor allowed a smile. “There’s much to admire in a survivor, isn’t there?”

Angie felt a twinge of jealousy. Some days Dr. Grant spent most of the session with Angie under hypnosis. How exactly was that helping her?

“So … what do you guys talk about? I mean when I’m ‘not here’?” She made quote marks with curved fingers.

“Whatever Girl Scout needs to talk about. She’s working through some of her own issues.”

“Oh great.” Angie digested that idea for a moment. Her problems had problems. Fabulous. “But what about this Little Wife person she hinted about? Do you know who she’s talking about? Does she have issues too?” Angie absently scratched her left hand. She frowned at the silver ring. There was something about it. Her chest tightened uncomfortably.

“I haven’t met her yet,” Dr. Grant said. “Or any others, for that matter.”

“What the heck? Is this like some mental hide-and-seek game? I mean, how am I supposed to get better if you can’t even find these stupid alters?” She bolted up from the couch and paced to the window. She parted the drapes, pressed her forehead against the cool glass. A circle of moisture formed as she loosed a heavy sigh.

Silence stretched in the room behind her. Blinking away the almost-tears, she turned back to the doctor. “Well?”

Only the faintest lift of her chest betrayed the doctor’s answering sigh. “Angie, therapy for DID takes a long time. Achieving complete integration, if that’s what you want, will take a huge amount of work and dedication, on both our parts.”

Angie was back on the desk again, swinging her legs with agitation. “What do you mean, ‘if that’s what I want’? What’s the alternative? Go on like this? I want to be one person. Me.”

“I understand,” the doctor said. “But realize, the negotiated blending of the separate personalities is going to result in you-plus.”

“Plus what?”

“Memories, feelings, shades of the alters. They’re you too.”

Angie was silent, absorbing this idea. Her heels kicked against the wood.

Dr. Grant smiled gently. “As I said, this is a very gradual process. Everyone will be evolving toward one another. You will feel like you, one you, in the long run.”

“What’s the long run? It’s been almost a whole month already! So when will I be one me? Like six months? A year or so?”

“Angie, dear. We’re talking about several years. Potentially longer, depending on how cooperative everyone is feeling.”

“You’re kidding.” Angie kicked the desk a little too hard, a new worry taking over from the last. Dad’s insurance didn’t cover this kind of thing. She’d accidentally seen the bill for the first three weeks of therapy, nine sessions—Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays: more than thirteen hundred dollars. There was no way Mom and Dad could afford that—not now, and certainly not when there was a baby coming. “I can’t wait for years. I need to be myself again now. Why should it take so long?”

Dr. Grant laid her pen down with a shrug. “Hypnotism, reprocessing, and talk therapy, the work we’ve started together, is a gradual process of revealing, experiencing, and coping with the injuries and abuses you, the primary, can’t remember. You can’t rush it. But there’s an excellent track record of success. I have no worries about your eventual success, especially as you have no alcoholism, no signs of depression. Angie, you’re a very resilient personality.”

Angie huffed. “I am
the
personality. The boss.” She ignored the sensation of laughter inside her skull. “It’s not that I don’t, uh, admire and thank Girl Scout for taking one for the team, but it’s time for the team to disband. I’m back.”

Dr. Grant sat back and twiddled her pearls. “Hmm. I hear you. But we haven’t heard from the rest of the team, have we?”

“Why do they get a vote?” She met Dr. Grant’s unblinking and surprised stare.

“They’re people. The citizens of your body. Aren’t you curious, Angie?”

Typical. Why did she have to answer questions with questions? “Curious? Isn’t it better if the past just stays in the past? I mean, I’m doing fine in school. Things are okay at home. I’m beginning to make some new friends. I’m starting over fresh. Why would I want all the awful stuff dredged up from the bottom of my mental pond? Why would I want to remember it? Why can’t it all just go away and let me be the old me again?”

Angie’s eyes filled with angry tears. Dr. Grant’s face smeared into a pink blur.

The blur offered her a Kleenex box. “You know my primary concern is your recovery, but I have to ask you. What about the investigation? Do you want to help the investigation into your abduction? There may be other victims. Or potential victims.”

Angie imagined a new Girl Scout, chained up and frightened. Something in her mind wiped the image. “NO!” The yell exploded from her mouth before she could stop it. “I mean, no, that’s not going to happen.” She knew it was true as she said it. She just didn’t know why.

At her outburst, Dr Grant’s eyebrows practically popped off her forehead.

Angie released a huge, irritated sigh. “Fine. I get your point. I wish they’d all just tell you what they know. They’re like ghosts, hanging around with unfinished business on earth. I wish they’d just spill their guts and move on. Get out of town. I don’t need them anymore. I don’t want them!” Her voice rose again.

“Angie.”

“You hear me?” she yelled, slapping her head with both hands. “I DON’T WANT YOU! GET OUT!”

“Angie.” Dr. Grant grabbed her hands. “Angie. Don’t hurt yourself.” Worry lines stood out on her forehead. It seemed she was mulling something over.

“What? What are you thinking?” Angie demanded, reversing roles.

Dr. Grant sagged back into her wing chair. “Well, first, it’s nice to see a little color in your cheeks. That’s the most animated I’ve ever seen you.”

“Great,” Angie commented. “I’ll try to freak out more often. That’s not what you were thinking, though.”

“I have a … a proposition for you to consider.” She was uncharacteristically hesitant.

“I’ll consider anything. What?”

“I know of a psychiatrist at UCLA who’s begun clinical studies with an experimental method. He’s asked me several times whether I have any patients to refer to him.”

“Transfer? Oh. But …” Angie felt silly. “Start over with someone new? I’m sort of used to you.”

Dr. Grant clasped her hands together like a silent clap. “Why, thank you, Angie. Fear not. I’d be a full collaborator. I’d be right there with you all the time. He’d run the fancy equipment, and I’d monitor you.”

“Equipment?”

“I have to tell you, in all honesty, I have no experience with his method. It’s controversial, to be sure. It involves … eliminating, rather than integrating, the alters. But his patients can finish treatment in a matter of weeks, not years.”

Eliminating? Weeks?
Oh yes. Now we’re talking.
Angie leaned toward the doctor, excitement simmering. “Okay, that sounds interesting. Is it super expensive?”

Dr. Grant smiled. “It’s all being done under an NIH R34 award. The patients, of course, accept the risk of its experimental status in exchange for treatment.”

“But is it expensive?”

“There’s no charge,” Dr. Grant answered.

“I’m interested,” Angie said. “I’m way interested. How do I start?”

“We’ll speak to your parents.”

At the next session, Mom and Dad were both present, hanging on the doctor’s words. They perched on the edge of the couch. Angie slumped back in the beanbag chair.

“That sounds ideal,” Mom said.

“A win-win,” Dad added. “She can be rid of these extraneous so-called personalities.”

The doctor frowned. “With all due respect, Mr. Chapman, I wouldn’t call them extraneous. They’re unintegrated parts of your daughter’s psyche, but parts that did play a critical role in keeping her alive and sane through her ordeal. They deserve your respect.”

Even the one that steals underwear?
Angie thought.

As the sarcastic comment flitted through her head, she suddenly doubled over in agony, a knifelike pain radiating from her shoulders. No one noticed her, hunched over her knees in the corner of the room. The adult voices faded.

A picture forced its way into the space behind her eyes. On a bed, her thirteen-year-old body, cold and bare. On a bed, wrists red and scratched from the tug of coarse ropes. On a bed, looming over her, a pair of dark eyes too close together.

For a moment, she felt his weight. For a moment, she heard his heavy breathing. For a moment, she smelled his sweat. For a moment, paralyzing terror possessed every crevice of her being.

Then the image and the terror vanished, leaving shock waves behind, like the moment after a nightmare lifts. But words rang in her ears, the voice a low, female growl.
Don’t ever disrespect me, Pretty Girl, after what I did for you. I saved your fucking life.