You Are Not Alone(78)

I slowly walk over and sink onto it. My legs suddenly feel like they can’t hold me up.

I never made a smoothie for Cassandra or Jane. I have no recollection of ever bringing up the subject.

“Shay?”

“Can you remember exactly what they said?”

He looks up and to the left—which a lot of people do when they’re trying to retrieve a memory. I find myself holding my breath.

“One of them—I’m not sure which—told you she could picture you in your new kitchen, making your famous smoothie.”

My skin prickles.

He looks at me. “Are you okay?”

“How did the Moore sisters know about the smoothies I make?” I whisper.

As soon as I say this out loud, another thought explodes into my brain. It’s an echo of the question I hazily formed last night when I was lying on the couch: How did Jane know Amanda was wearing a polka-dot dress on the day she died?

There’s no simple explanation. Jane had said she was busy at work; she’d meant to call Amanda, but she didn’t. And although I knew what Amanda was wearing, I’d never discussed her outfit with them. I’m certain I hadn’t mentioned the green polka-dot dress when I encountered the Moore sisters at the Thirty-third Street subway station on the day I saw an Amanda look-alike. I remember thinking it would make me sound crazy if I included that detail.

“Shay?” Sean is frowning. “What’s going on?”

Another memory shard: Jane telling me to lie down on the couch and sleep. The exhaustion had crashed into me so suddenly last night I couldn’t fight it. Even on the nights when I’d taken Ambien, it had never hit me so hard or fast.

“I have to call Cassandra and Jane again.” This time I dial Jane first. My call goes directly to voice mail. “Jane, please, I need your help.” My voice is shaking.

Next I phone Cassandra. When I finally hear her throaty voice come over the line, I blurt, “Cassandra, thank goodness I reached you. It’s Shay. Something—”

She cuts me off, her tone so firm and cold I physically recoil. “Shay. I’m telling you for the last time, stop calling me and Jane. Stop following us. You need professional help. There’s something seriously wrong with you.”

Then she hangs up.

I hold the phone to my ear, shocked into immobility. It’s hard to breathe.

Why would Cassandra say those things to me? Could I have done something awful last night—something I don’t remember? I must have, for her to say those harsh words.

Tears fill my eyes as I reflexively start to call her back, to beg for her forgiveness.

“What did she say?” Sean asks.

“Wait a second,” I whisper. My head is beginning to throb painfully again.

Nothing about the last eighteen hours makes any sense.

Cassandra sounds like she almost hates me now. She told me to stop pestering her and Jane.

But they’re the ones who came to my apartment last night and brought champagne. Cassandra said she wished she could cancel their plans and hang out with me.

The same eerie, dreamlike sense I experienced on the day I followed the woman who looked like Amanda to the subway floods over me.

How could they have turned on me so quickly?

My stomach contracts and I run to the bathroom. I dry-heave into the toilet, then stand up and turn on the sink tap with shaking hands. I run cold water over my wrists and rinse out my mouth.

I stare at my reflection.

I don’t look like the old me, or the new one either. The expression in my eyes belongs to a stranger.

Amanda’s eyes looked empty on the day I saw her—as if she had nothing left. No joy, no hope, no one to care about her.

But the Moore sisters claimed to have loved her.

They’d acted like they cared about me, too—at least until a few minutes ago, when Cassandra’s words ripped through me.

Everything is whirling out of control.

Think, I order myself frantically. I try to remember anything I could have said to Cassandra and Jane that they might have misconstrued, which could explain their animosity.

But instead, my mind spins back in time, to when I saw the Amanda look-alike shortly after Amanda’s suicide. The Moore sisters just happened to be passing by that subway station as I clung to the post, trembling and hyperventilating. Feeling as terrified and unhinged as I do right now.

It had seemed like a miracle: What are the chances they’d be in that precise location at that exact time? And that they’d recognize me in an umbrella-carrying crowd, with my hair plastered over my face, after one relatively brief encounter? And that their meeting would be canceled, giving them a free hour to spend with me?

Almost infinitesimal.

Once I tried to look up how many people are in New York City during the daytime, when commuters flood in. The numbers are hard to verify, but one estimate put it at 175,000 people per square mile in Manhattan. And there are 472 subway stations in the city.

My breath comes more quickly as I grip the hard, cold edges of the sink.

Cassandra told me to stop following them. But they’re the ones who showed up against all odds.

The Moore sisters said the Amanda look-alike didn’t exist. But now they’ve turned me into one.

Nothing is adding up.





CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR



AMANDA