by Paula Stokes
“What do you mean?”
“Dressing your wounds, sitting next to you on the plane, even up here right now. These are more than just moments to me.”
“I don’t understand.” Jesse moves his hand closer to mine on the railing.
Another surge of pain jolts through me. Before, he would’ve just taken my hand. Now he’s afraid to. He needs for me to be the initiator. He needs for me to make even the tiniest moves, because otherwise he’s going to feel like he’s forcing himself on me.
I can’t make all the moves. But I can make this one.
I take his hand, twine my fingers through his.“Let’s just say you didn’t totally blow it,” I say. “I don’t know how we’re going to end up, but I still think about you … like that.”
Admitting my feelings is like letting go of a dark secret, like popping a balloon that’s been increasing in size, crushing my heart, blocking out the rest of my organs.
He loves you, Rose reminds me.
“But you’ve been acting so distant.” Jesse stares down at our hands.
“That’s because the way you feel is scary, Jesse. I don’t want to hurt you worse than I already have. Even Baz pointed out that I’ve been sending you mixed messages.”
Jesse rubs his thumb across the pointy bone in my wrist. “Baz is an idiot.”
I smile. “Maybe, but he’s right. We’re like magnets, you know. Only I’m spinning, so I keep pulling you in and then pushing you away. I like you, but then you hurt me, so I run. I like you, but then something makes things feel impossible, so I turn away. And you. You’re so constant. Your orientation never wavers. You feel what you feel and you want what you want without hesitation or doubt. God, I envy that. I feel like if someone stripped away my hesitation and doubt that there’d be nothing left.”
Jesse tucks a lock of hair back behind my ear, his fingertips lingering on my jawbone for a second. “It’s okay not to know what you want.”
“I know what I want, Jesse. I remember thinking the night of the Phantasm break-in how if we were normal, that instead of gearing up for a heist we’d be ordering pizza and watching movies together. I would love to have that life. I just don’t know if it’s going to happen. I feel like you became more normal and I’ve become less normal. Maybe we don’t fit.” My voice trembles. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to fit with anyone.”
“But you want to fit? With me?”
I look up at the sky again. “Yes.”
“Come here.” Jesse wraps me in a hug, pulling me in tight against his chest. His arms threaten to crack my ribs.
“You’re squishing me,” I say, my voice muted by the fabric of his sweatshirt.
“Sorry.” He loosens his hold a little. “That just made me happy. You … make me happy.”
“I wouldn’t get accustomed to it,” I say, my face still buried in his chest.
He kisses me on the forehead. “Do you believe that people can change?”
“Of course.”
“Then maybe even if we don’t fit right now, we will someday in the future.”
“Assuming I have a future, you mean.”
Jesse steps back and regards me seriously. “You don’t really think you’re going to die here, do you?”
“I don’t know. When I left St. Louis, I was prepared to die. It’s probably greedy to want to find my brother, recover the ViSE tech, kill Kyung, and also get to live.”
“Any progress on finding your brother?”
“No. Baz said the Singing Crane Orphanage was closed down over a year ago and no one seems to know what happened to the paperwork. Right now he doesn’t have any other leads.”
“What about using social media to look for him?”
“I scanned through a lot of profiles for people named Jun Song, but I didn’t find him. Maybe I can dig deeper after we steal back the tech. If my brother is out there, I don’t want Kyung to find out I’m searching for him. No point in putting him in danger.”
“You really think Kyung would hurt him?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s hard to speculate about the safety of a boy who might not even be real.” I gesture back toward the center of the roof. “Let’s go again.”
This time Jesse attacks like I’m the enemy and I fight him back like he’s the enemy. His hits are solid. My teeth rattle in my gums. My bones pulse with pain. My counterstrikes are fluid, graceful. I am Winter, trained by Gideon to survive in any situation. There is no Kyung, no Jun, no missing technology. I am not a girl in pieces set on revenge, not at this moment. I am a deadly ballerina, facing off against an adversary.
After about a half an hour, Jesse holds up his hands. “All right. I’m done. I’m going to be sore all over.”
I lift up my hands in victory. “If you’re quitting, then I win.”
“You never would have quit, would you?”
“Probably not.” I smile.
* * *
Baz is sitting in the living room of the flat when Jesse and I tumble back through the door, achy and bruised. He rises up from the sofa and comes to stand in front of me as I’m slipping out of my shoes. He lifts my chin, looks at both sides of my face, and then examines my arms individually.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Just making sure Ramirez didn’t do too much damage.”
“What does it matter?” Jesse asks.
“How is Winter going to be able to blend in at UsuMed if she looks like a domestic abuse victim?”
I furrow my brow. “Blend in at … what do you mean?”
Baz smiles triumphantly. “Let’s just say I think I got you a job.”
CHAPTER 25
“A job at UsuMed? How?”
“Chung managed to access a list of UsuMed security guards with full badge clearance, but he also found a list of new hires slated to start next week, several of whom were from Cheonma Staffing. He went back to the Cheonma database and made copies of the information for a girl who looks enough like you that you can fill in for her.”
“But what about when that girl shows up for work too?”
“Chung sent her an e-mail from an official-looking Cheonma Staffing account apologizing for the mix-up but saying the position had already been filled. She also received a generous wire transfer payment to make up for the mistake.”
“How can Winter work at UsuMed?” Jesse asks, slipping his hearing aid back in. “What if Kyung sees her?”
“It’s a temporary customer service job because they just launched a new line of blood pressure medications. Winter will be fielding English inquiries from physicians and sales reps and connecting them to permanent staff who can answer specific technical questions, translating as needed. I seriously doubt an R and D executive like Kyung spends a lot of time in the bottom tier of customer service.”
“Sebastian, you’re a genius,” I say.
“Doubtful,” he says with a smile. “But try not to amass any black eyes or busted lips before Monday, because that’s when you start.” He pauses. “And you’d better get to work on overcoming that elevator phobia, if you haven’t already.”
* * *
Unfortunately, that is easier said than done. It takes me until nighttime to work up the nerve to try. And then, even with Jesse by my side, when I approach the elevator, my heart starts galloping and my throat closes up. I would honestly rather be waterboarded than let those shiny steel doors swallow me up.
“I think I need to talk to my therapist before I try this.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Jesse says. “We still have time.”
I do a quick calculation as we both head back to the apartment. It’s about ten p.m., which makes it about seven a.m. in St. Louis. Maybe I can catch Dr. Abrams before she starts her day.
I call her cell phone and she answers but says she’s driving and that she’s booked all morning. “I can do a phone session with you at three P.M., if you want.”
I calculate the time difference. That’s six a.m. Seoul time. “
Sure, I can do that.” I set my alarm for five forty-five.
* * *
When I wake up to the soft chiming sound, I open my bedroom door and peer out into the darkness of the apartment. Everyone else seems to be still asleep. Good. I pull the cover from my bed. I sit on the floor and wrap the blanket around me like a protective cocoon. Then, a couple minutes before six, I call Dr. Abrams.
She picks up right away. “Winter. How are you?”
“I’m good, but I need your help. I need to get over my phobia of elevators,” I say. “I know why I’m afraid—my sister actually died in an elevator.”
“So you remember that now.”
“I do, but I still have a panic attack when I think of getting in one.”
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with you taking the stairs forever if you want, but if this is something important to you, you need to just take it a step at a time,” she says. “First, just stand and look at an elevator. Next, just go in for a few seconds and get back out. Do you have your antianxiety medicine with you?”
My eyes flick to the amber pill bottle on my nightstand. “Yes.”
“Good. Take one for this step if you need to. Then try riding one floor. Gradually work your way up to taking longer rides. And if at all possible, don’t work on this by yourself.”
“That’s basically what I thought I should do. No other tips?”
“Sorry. No secret shortcuts,” Dr. Abrams says. And then when I don’t respond she adds, “So how are you really?”
I wrap my blanket even tighter around my body. Part of me wants to spew out the whole story—that I shot the guy who killed Rose and Gideon and then ran away to find my brother, that Kyung stole the tech and I’m here in Seoul trying to steal it back.
“Winter?” she probes. “Are you still there?”
“I’m here,” I say. “I’m all right. But I’m struggling with the DID thing, with the idea of sharing my body with other parts of me.”
“It’s a lot to digest.” Her voice is free of judgment. “Especially finding it out at the same time as learning the truth about your sister’s death.”
“Right. It’s too much.” I pull in a sharp breath. “Sometimes it’s like I’m one realization away from exploding into shrapnel.” My voice cracks. “I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me about your suspicions.”
“Brains are funny things. Therapists have to be careful not to plant ideas. Otherwise sometimes we latch onto possibilities we are given, even though they’re incorrect.”
“That’s sort of what Gideon did to me,” I say. “He used the ViSE technology to try to make me believe that my sister was dead.”
“Are you still having hallucinations? Do you still see your sister?” she asks. I hear a shuffling sound on her end, like maybe she’s organizing some papers.
“No. I can feel the alters, though. Is there any way to keep them from taking control? Some sort of medicine I can take?”
“I’m afraid there are no medicines to suppress alters, Winter.” She pauses. “How do you know they’re taking over?”
I’m not going to tell her about the guy I killed in Los Angeles. “I’m missing blocks of time. Not anything major, but enough to know something isn’t right.”
She clears her throat. “Let’s back up a little. It’s been so long since we’ve had a full session. Are you still making ViSEs?”
“Not right now,” I hedge. “I’m not sure what’s going to happen with the club now that Gideon is gone.”
“Do you want to run it?”
I twist the corner of the blanket in my free hand. “I don’t know anything about owning a business.”
“You could take some classes at college, major in business if you wanted to.”
“I would like to go to college,” I say. “But I’m afraid. What if I dissociate in the middle of a class and make a scene?”
“I don’t think that will happen. Try to remember that your alters aren’t working against you, even if it sometimes seems like they are. It’s not their job to humiliate you or make your life difficult. If they show up, it’s because part of you truly needs them in that moment.”
It’s a good point. As far as I know, Rose never took over during the day unless I was in danger. “What you’re saying makes sense. I guess I just worry. Will I ever be normal again?”
“There’s a wide range of normal when it comes to DID. Some people eventually fully integrate while others only partially do, but they learn to function normally despite the presence of alters. The important thing here is that healing requires treatment.”
“I know, but—”
“If you want a clinician with more experience, I can give you some names,” she continues.
“It’s not about experience, Dr. Abrams,” I say. “Do you think I could improve with just outpatient sessions? My memories of the hospital are terrible—being sedated, being restrained. I don’t want to go back to that.”
“Those are crisis interventions, Winter. If you checked yourself into an inpatient setting, it wouldn’t be like that. There’s the place in Arizona—”
“Gideon told me about it. I know you’re right. I know I need help. And I promise I’ll make some decisions as soon as I get back home.”
She sighs. “You’re not alone, are you?”
“No. I’m staying with … friends.”
“That’s good.” She asks me a few questions about where I am and what I’m doing that I answer as truthfully as possible. Then she asks, “Are you dating anyone?”
I pause. I don’t even know how to answer that. “I wasn’t expecting the questions to be this hard.”
She laughs. “It’s my job to challenge you. It’s part of getting better.”
“There is a guy. I like him, but I have a lot of questions about that too.”
“Such as?”
“I got close to him once when I was dissociating. We did things I’m not sure I would’ve done as me. Will I ever be able to…”
“Enjoy intimacy?”
“Yes. Is that part of me broken forever? The part that loves?”
“There’s nothing wrong with the part of you that loves,” Dr. Abrams says. “It’s the part of you that accepts love you need to work on. But don’t push yourself. Eventually, it’ll feel right.”
“I hope so,” I say.
“I know so,” she says. “And if he’s the right guy, he’ll wait until it feels right.”
“Oh, he’ll wait. He’d probably wait forever. That’s another problem I have. I feel guilty letting him wait when I’m not sure I’ll ever be the girl that he wants.”
“Have you told him this?”
“Yes. Recently, in fact.”
“Does he know that you were trafficked as a child?”
“Yes.”
“And he knows about your DID?”
“Right.”
“Well, those are two very serious things. So if he hasn’t left, then it sounds like you’re already the girl he wants. Are you just worried you might not love him back?”
“Maybe,” I whisper. “He told me he loved me, but I couldn’t say it back. Is it cruel to let someone hang on if you don’t feel the same way?”
“Winter. No relationship progresses at exactly the same speed for both parties. Granted, not a lot of men are willing to be that open. But you should respect that he is and let him decide if and when he needs to walk away. After all, you wouldn’t want him to make that decision for you, would you? No one should choose for us when it’s time to let go of someone that we love.”
I think about how angry I was at both Jesse and Gideon for doing that very thing—making the decision to take Rose away from me. “You’re right,” I say. “Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome. I’d love to see you back here when you return to town. Or if you’re going to be gone for an extended period of time, we can continue to do phone sessions or possibly via the Internet?”
“I don’t plan on staying here,” I say. “I
can make an appointment when I return to St. Louis.” If I return.
“Well, good then. I look forward to hearing from you.” She pauses again. “You’d tell me if you were in trouble, right? I could find someone to help you wherever you are.”
“I know,” I say. And then, “Good-bye.”
I wish it were that simple, that I could just go home and let Dr. Abrams take care of me, forget about Rose and Gideon and Jun and the ViSE equipment. I wish I could just start over. But even as I think those thoughts, dark parts of me start pulsing and swirling. I can’t start over until I finish what I came here to do. I can only hope there will still be something left of me to start over, once I’m done.
One more chance for rebirth. One more chance to finally do things right.
CHAPTER 26
Someone knocks gently on the door to my room.
“Come in,” I say.
Jesse peeks his head in through a crack. “I thought I heard you talking in here.”
“You did,” I say. “I did a phone session with Dr. Abrams.”
“Oh. Cool.” He slips into the room and shuts the door behind him. “How’d that go?”
I don’t answer for a second. I just study Jesse, from his rumpled hair and scarred face to his NFL T-shirt and pajama pants, to his bare feet. He is so comfortable in his own skin, comfortable sharing himself with me. Dr. Abrams was right when she said most men wouldn’t be so open.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” He takes a step back toward the door.
“I’m just glad you’re here,” I say softly.
“Me too.” His cheeks redden slightly. “Do you want me to try to make breakfast again?”
I shake my head. “How about I try this time?”
“Okay.” When I make no move to crawl out from my covers, he points over his shoulder at the door. “I’m just going to go so you can get dressed or whatever.”
“Thanks.”
Jesse disappears into the hallway and I slide out of my blanket cocoon. I toss the cover back onto the bed and change into a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. I pull my hair back into a ponytail.
