Whisper to Me (48 page)

It would be a shame if you stopped.

I’m sorry for everything the voice made me do.

And I would like another chance.

Oh.

Oh, I should tell you about the voice too, I mean, hell, maybe even if you forgive me you won’t want to take me back because of the voice, because you don’t want a crazy girlfriend. I would understand that, I would.

But here’s the thing—I’m
not
crazy.

Something bad happened to me; I saw my mom die, and then when I found the foot on the beach, something went wrong, the needle skipped on the record in my brain—or substitute that with some more relevant modern analogy, I guess—and I started hearing a voice. But it was a
coping mechanism
. It took my hatred for myself and insulated me from it. Placed it outside myself.

And then, when I learned how to deal with it, how to act toward it, how to give it a schedule, limits, it started to help me.

I’m not crazy. I’m really not. I got hurt; I developed a scar; and now the scar is healing. I see Dr. Rezwari and Dr. Lewis together now, and I’m doing well. Dr. Rezwari has helped me to see that I maybe fixated on Paris a bit, obsessed about her disappearance as a distraction from thinking about my guilt over my mom. I mean, Dwight was right: I hardly even knew her. Which is not to say that I didn’t like her.

I don’t take the risperidone at all anymore. The paroxetine, I still take. Dr. Rezwari was right about antidepressants, as it turns out: they just make everything a little bit easier, for now anyway. The plan is that, at some point, I can slowly ease off them—NOT just stop taking them right away, because both Rezwari and Lewis have helped me to see that dropping my drugs instantly might not have been the best decision I ever made. I mean, I went after a serial killer. I knowingly ate a chocolate bar that could contain nuts; I pretended to be with Dwight, to get rid of you so that I didn’t have to tell you the truth.

I was not, let’s say, strictly rational.

But anyway, the antidepressants are it for now—most of it’s using the techniques Dr. Lewis has taught me. I’ve got one more year of school, and I’m going to make it count, go to college, study Classics. I’d like to anyway.

And the truth is, I hardly hear the voice anymore. And when I do, it’s helpful, it’s nice … Well, okay, not
nice
. But it’s like my friend now, it points out things that I might have missed, it gives me clues, it gives me cues. It’s
useful
.

And it really is no more than a whisper, it’s so quiet, and it’s hardly ever there.

What else?

I joined Julie’s roller derby team. I suck at it, but it’s fun, and I like feeling part of the group. A group that doesn’t involve people talking about their invisible voices. Though I still go to that group anyway. How long I’ll be able to hang out with Julie for, I don’t know. I want to go to college, and I think I’d like to leave Oakwood to do it. But for now it’s good, I mean she’s good, I mean she’s my friend and that’s good.

It’s nice to have a friend. That sounds like the lamest, most bland thing anyone has ever said, but it’s true.

And anyway:

This is who I am.

So.

So I lost myself for a long time, and I did some terrible things to you and told you some terrible lies. But this is me now, okay? This is my real voice, my one true voice, which I am sending to you through the ether, over the wires and the wireless, so that you can hear it.

I’m like Echo, speaking to you when you can’t see me, I’m like the voice that came to whisper to me and insulted me and made me hurt myself but in the end, right at the very end, became my friend.

But now I want to be a real girl, not just a voice, I want my body back, and I want you to be the one to hold it; I want to hear my name on your lips.

I want you to be the one to whisper to me.

SEND.

I have only heard voices once. I was babysitting at a house where I would often spend the night if the parents were going to be out late. The children were asleep, the parents were still out, and I was lying in bed, and I could hear people, in the room, discussing me. Discussing me in very cold, contemptuous tones. “Look at him. What an idiot. He can’t even see us.” It was so profoundly disturbing—a precisely accurate term in this case—that it bubbled up years later in this book.

I can only imagine though what it would be like to hear voices more often. And that’s what I have tried to do in
Whisper to Me—
to imagine it, and imagine how it could be conquered.

Because these kinds of illnesses—or traumas—
can
be conquered. That’s something I don’t have to imagine, since for a number of reasons and in a number of ways I have had close and direct experience of mental illness for a large part of my life. And I know, for an absolute fact, that people can get better. Things can get better. Life can get better.

Estimates vary, but statistics reported by the Mental Health Foundation put the proportion of teenagers suffering from some kind of mental problem at around 10 percent. It’s not unusual, it doesn’t make you weird—it’s very common. And it is extremely important to know, if you happen to be one of those teenagers, that help is available—and it works.

Never listen to any kind of voice inside you that says things will not get better.

Things can get better, and with help, they will.

In the United States
:

National Alliance on Mental Illness (
www.nami.org
)

The Hearing Voices Network USA (
www.hearingvoicesusa.org
)

In the United Kingdom
:

MIND (
www.mind.org.uk
)

Hearing Voices Network (
www.hearing-voices.org
)

The techniques used by Dr. Lewis in this fictional work are similar to those employed by the Hearing Voices Network, a support organization inspired by the academic research of Professor Marius Romme and Sandra Escher. They have coauthored several fascinating books on the subject, including the seminal
Accepting Voices
.

In real life, as in the novel, there is some tension between this approach—which stresses the roots in trauma for much voice hearing and the practical tools that can be employed to deal with it—and the psychiatric one. However, this is
Cassie
’s story: it isn’t intended to present my or anyone else’s view on that debate, and I hope that it gives as balanced a perspective as possible. It also goes without saying that Cassie, Dr. Lewis, Dr. Rezwari, and all the characters in this book are figments of my imagination and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

I am deeply grateful to psychiatrist Dr. Martine Lamy, MD, PhD, and psychologist Dr. Michelle Madore, PhD, for their assistance in reading an earlier draft of this book and making comments. Any errors that remain are, of course, mine and mine alone.

My wife, Hannah; my editors, Cindy Loh and Rebecca McNally; and my faithful Second Reader, Will Hill, all made invaluable suggestions that helped me in the shaping of this story. It was a hard one to marshal, and without all of them it would be a mess. Thank you.

PRAISE FOR
THERE WILL BE LIES

‘This novel is such a series of revelations that it would spoil it to talk about the plot. Lake’s writing is clear and skilful: he creates Shelby’s down-to-earth voice with humour and credibility, brings home to us the value of all our senses, juggles shifting notions of reality, describes places and emotions vividly and resonantly, and keeps us curious throughout this gripping novel’

Nicolette Jones, The Sunday Times

‘This ambitious and sharply written story explores the complex emotional area of family and identity with originality and warmth’

Sally Morris, Daily Mail

‘Experience the rollercoaster of plot twists and turns’

Mary Arrigan, Irish Examiner

PRAISE FOR
HOSTAGE THREE

‘Well researched and nuanced,
Hostage Three
goes beyond the tropes of genre fiction, and does something rather more humane and interesting’

Guardian

‘Lake handles these difficult themes with great skill, making political points while never losing the balance between emotion and action. He captures Amy’s sense of abandonment with moving sensitivity and maintains the plot tension throughout’

Daily Mail

‘Nick Lake’s portrait of
Hostage Three
is so skilfully rendered’

Telegraph

‘An achievement to admire’

Five star review, Books for Keeps

‘Lake is adept at unusual tales inspired by real events’

The Times

‘This is a complex and thought-provoking thriller’

Marilyn Brocklehurst, The Bookseller

ALSO BY NICK LAKE

In Darkness

Hostage Three

There Will Be Lies

Nick Lake lives near Oxford with his wife and family. He works in publishing by day and writes books in every spare moment he can find. His powerful and moving novel,
In Darkness
, about the Haitian earthquake, won the 2013 Michael L. Printz Award and was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.
Hostage Three
and
There Will Be Lies
have also received huge acclaim.
Whisper to Me
is Nick’s fourth book for Bloomsbury.

@nicklakeauthor

❤❤

Babes With BOOBS

Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Oxford, New York, New Delhi and Sydney

First published in Great Britain in May 2016 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

First published in the USA in May 2016 by Bloomsbury Children’s Books

1385 Broadway, New York, New York 10018

www.bloomsbury.com

BLOOMSBURY is a registered trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Copyright © Nick Lake 2016

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 4088 5386 3

eISBN 978 1 4088 5385 6

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