Collared(14)

“Because the girl who created it is dead,” I say at last.

“No, she’s not. She’s lying in this bed right in front of me.”

I exhale loudly. “You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t.” Dr. Argent shakes her head. “I believe we’re all free to create whatever kind of life we want on whatever day we choose. I believe, yes, you are going to have more challenges getting there than most would, but I one hundred percent know you have a chance at a new life. A good life.”

“A good life like becoming a hermit afraid to leave a house? Scared to wake up each day and realize there’s no waking up from the nightmare? Unable to have anything close to another loving, trusting relationship ever again?” I turn my head away from Dr. Argent. “That kind of good life those other girls are just reveling in?”

“No, the kind of life you want, not the one that comes easiest. The one you have to work really hard for. That kind of good life, so when someone else in my shoes has to sit down with another girl like you someday in the future, she can say some girls have risen above what happened to them and mean it. So the next girl can have a little more hope that it’s possible.”

I look at the ceiling as she slides into the chair beside my bed. I can’t keep talking about new lives and possibilities and overcoming the odds. I can’t talk about all of that positive shit because it’s just too damn depressing. Because I know . . . I’m too f*cked up to even hope any of that’s a possibility for me now. “Aren’t you supposed to be like, I don’t know, understanding? I’ve been through something most people, a psychologist especially, would be sensitive to.”

Dr. Argent lifts her hands like she’s holding something in them. “You know how medical doctors have those electric paddles to bring a person’s heart back to life?”

My eyebrows move together. “Yeah?”

“I like to think of my ‘unique’ approach as those paddles that jolt your psyche back to life.” She lowers her hands and shrugs. “What you do after this is up to you, but at least it’s back. You can feel it, can’t you?”

My psyche? My soul? My feelings? I’m sure what she’s talking about specifically, but I do feel something stirring. I think it’s irritation more than anything, but she’s right—at least I can feel something. “You’re kind of crazy . . . and I’m supposed to be the crazy one.”

Dr. Argent leans in like she’s about to tell me a secret. “Life is the great maker of crazy. No one’s immune.”

I’m not sure if that’s more reassuring or depressing, but I know it’s true. After everything, I’m starting to wonder if the whole point of life is to see how much each person can take before they break.

“I’m sorry you got stuck with me,” I say because how frustrating must working with me be for a person whose profession is to help piece back together a person’s life? Mine has been totally and irrevocably obliterated.

“Actually, I requested your case. I couldn’t wait for the chance to meet you.”

I would have laughed if my throat wasn’t burning. “It’s such an honor to meet the stupid girl who managed to get herself kidnapped by a total stranger a whole twenty feet away from her front door, right?”

Dr. Argent crosses her legs and folds her hands in her lap. She doesn’t have a pen and notepad like I would have expected. You know, so she could make notes for her book deal. “It’s an honor to meet a strong woman who managed to survive ten years of captivity with a severely mentally ill man. It’s an honor to meet a survivor.”

This time I do laugh. It comes out ragged-sounding though. Like I’ve spent most of my life puffing on a cigarette. “Yeah, well, I didn’t really have a lot of choice in the matter. He kind of kept me chained up for ten years”—God, has it really been that long? I guessed closer to eight.—“and it wasn’t like he starved me or beat me senseless, so I didn’t really have a choice in the whole surviving part. It was kind of forced on me, because that wouldn’t have been my choice.”

My eyes shut. After those first months spent locked in that dark closet, the months—or hell, years—that followed were dark ones. I held on to too much of the old part of me, and I wanted to die. If I had been given the opportunity, I probably would have taken it. It wasn’t until I forced myself to strangle the life out of the girl I’d been that life got better. I could be Sara Jackson more easily when Jade Childs was dead. The life I had wasn’t so bad when I didn’t compare it to the one I’d had before.

“Do you know how old you are, Jade?” Dr. Argent asks. “Or would you prefer I call you Sara? That’s what you told the officers your name was when they found you.”

“My name’s Jade. You can call me Jade.” I open my eyes and stare at the ceiling tiles.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what you want to be called.”

“I want to be called Jade,” I say slowly. “The sooner I get back to my old life, the better off I’ll be.” It’s a lie, but I’m telling her what she wants to hear. I hope it doesn’t backfire on me because I’d like to pass the shrink test and move on to . . . whatever comes next. “And I’m twenty-seven,” I add because even though I hadn’t known I was missing for ten years, I can still do simple math. Seventeen plus ten equals twenty-seven.