Whisper to Me(32)

“Fill you with drugs. Treat the symptom, not the problem. Most people who hear voices, they’re not mentally ill. They’ve just suffered something. Lived through something really bad. And it manifests itself as a voice that seems to come from outside.”

My legs suddenly shook. There was an image in my head: blood pooling around a head, small white tiles. A baseball bat.

I put out a hand and grabbed her wrist.

“You okay?”

I gasped. “Yeah, yeah. Sorry.”

She looked at me, and her eyes were lit with intelligence. “I would hazard a guess”—she talked like that sometimes—“that something bad may have happened to you when you were younger. Am I wrong?”

“No. I mean, yes, you’re wrong.”

My veins and arteries were alive, thin snakes writhing within me. I was so freaked out I didn’t even think to ask the obvious question.

Can you see what the obvious question would have been?

Take a moment.

Yes.

The obvious question would have been:

If that’s true, if it comes from trauma, then what happened to you?

“Okay, then,” she said. “Fine. You just remember what I said.” She thought for a second, then she flicked some invisible hair from her ear and looked right at me. She was wearing no makeup at all and was pale and skinny, but I still almost had to look away from her; it was painful, her beauty, like looking at the sun without those weird shades that have a slit in them that people wear for eclipses. “Pop quiz,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Obamacare: Pro or con?”

I closed my eyes. “I’m tired. I can’t—”

“Oh please,” she said. “I aced an Anthropology midterm at Rutgers on Xanax and methadone. On which note: Marcel Mauss.”

“What?”

“Marcel Mauss,” she said, stressing it this time.

I thought for a second. My brain was so slow. “Uh, magic. Or sacrifice?”

“Both, actually.” She gave a soft clapping mime. “Back to the start. Obamacare: Pro or con?”

“Pro?”

“Good. Word association. Pro.”

“What?”

“What word do you associate with the word ‘pro’?”

“Choice.”

“Good answer. ‘Life’ would also have sufficed. Next one: leather.”

I hesitated for a moment. “Notebook.”

“Martin.”

“Amis.”

“Eleanor,” she said.

“Rigby.”

“Good. I would also have accepted ‘Roosevelt.’ ”

“I think you might be crazy,” I said.

“Wiser minds than yours would agree,” she said. “Next one: procrustean.”

“Bed.”

“Pan.”

“Echo.”

She frowned. “Echo?”

“In one version, Pan wanted her, and she said no, and so he had his followers tear her apart. But the earth loved her, so it kept her voice in the stones and the trees and the caves. To cut a long story short.”

“Wow,” she said. “You taught me something. Doesn’t happen often. I was going for pipes, or Dionysus.” She looked at me funny.

“What is it?”

“I knew I recognized you, that first time. You go the library, right?”

“Ye-e-e-s. You?”

She did a comical big-eyes thing. “Are you serious? No. But I pick up books for school sometimes. Books are expensive shit. Anyway, you’re a big reader, huh?”

“Yes. I mean, I was.”

“Risperidone stop you reading?”

I nodded.

“Told you, you have to get off that stuff. Yeah, I saw you, I remember now, you had a load of books … about murder or something?”

“Yeah.”

“Light reading.”

“It was … you know what, forget it.” It had made so much sense at the time—the idea that the voice was a victim of the Houdini Killer, a remnant left behind. If I said it now it would just sound insane.

“Well, anyway, I like you,” she said. “You’re okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah.” She reached into a front pocket of her skinny jeans and handed me another card. Her dark eyes were warm on mine, like black asphalt heated by the sun. “E-mail me if you want to hang out.”

I glanced down at the card. It had a silhouette of a girl sitting on a chair, legs wide. Under her, embraced by her legs, was: CAM GIRL. GLAMOUR. PRIVATE PARTIES.

INSTA: @jerseygirl95

There was no phone number, just an e-mail address: jerseygirl95@_____.com I looked up at her.

“She’s a ******* whore,” said the voice, but not loud, as if it were coming from the other side of the parking lot, by the Dumpster and the trees, shimmering in the heat.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “I forgot to mention, I’m a glamour model. Or, you know, aspiring. It would drive my dad crazy if he knew. Which is a big part of why I do it.”





DR. REZWARI (making notes on her pad) Do you ever hear the voice now?

ME: (lying) No.

DR. REZWARI: You’re sure?