Ingrid promised I wouldn’t be crazy like Edie, but I’m getting all worried about it anyway. I tell myself that anyone would feel crazy if someone else’s hand touched their skin and it felt like their own.
Anyone would feel bizarre if their heart raced beneath a bony chest they don’t recognize. Anyone would freak out if they looked at themselves but saw someone else staring back at them. A shiver runs up my spine and every hair follicle on my head tingles again.
I pull the mirror back far enough to see Edie’s full face. She’s as beautiful as she was the first time I saw her. I push her thumb across her chin and lower lip, and again I feel a sensation so foreign yet so familiar.
“Hello. Testin’ one, two, three. I’m in here somewhere.” I try to laugh but it turns into a sob, and I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I live in Marfa with my momma. I love fish tacos as all git-out.” But I don’t sound like me. “I love red cowboy boots, country music turned up real loud, and singin’ my heart out.”
The words are mine but are spoken from the lips of a stranger. I tell myself that everything will be okay and not to get emotional, but my emotions are like a tsunami crashing into me. My eyes ache and fill with actual tears. “I’m me,” I reassure myself. To prove it, I sing my latest lyrics. “I have a big heart and bigger dream… Big dreams that don’t fit in a small town… I’m outta here.” Edie’s voice cracks, and evidently, she can’t carry a tune in a tin bucket. I know I gave up on my dream of being the next Reba or RaeLynn—of standing on a big stage and belting out my music. I gave up singing in public, but like the beat of my heart and the breath in my lungs, it’s always come natural. I knew I’d lose some of me in this arrangement—okay, most of me—but I never thought I’d lose the talent God gave me at birth.
It’s not like I had a lot of time to think it through or sort it all out in my head. I guess I just figured I’d see something of myself in her. I guess I just assumed I’d have my singing, like always. I guess I didn’t want to believe I’d be so… gone.
“I’m Brittany Lynn,” I say into the mirror. Then my vision blurs and I can’t see anything at all.
9
I wake up with a headache from my crying jag. I’m still emotional, but things do get better when I get food. Real food—or real hospital food, rather. I have bacon and scrambled eggs and toast. And coffee. It’s not a horchata latte with cinnamon milk, or a macchiato, but it’s caffeine and that’s good enough for me.
Last night I was overwhelmed, but I’m in a better frame of mind this morning. My thinking is clearer, and I resolve to make a plan. I need to take baby steps. No more Edie overload. I need to get used to her voice before I try to sing my songs. I need to get used to the sight of her hands reaching for a spoon or a toothbrush before I reach for a mirror and see her mean eyes looking back at me.
It’s going to take time to feel comfortable living the life of a stranger. Other than her bullying me and me hating her guts, I don’t know much about Edith Randolph Chatsworth-Jones. I know she wore a blue slip when she was found in a bathtub, and that she ended up in the Limbo Lounge at the same time as me. I know she was selfish and entitled and had the same meanness as Dingleberry. I know she tried to talk me into selling her my path, and I know she thought she could blind me with dollar signs, and that I’d fall for it because I’m just a dumb cosmetologist. I know she was relentless in order to get what she wanted. I know that there must have been something so horrible in her life that she picked up a razor blade and cut herself. I know she was serious about it and waited until she was alone.
Dr. Perez checks in on me right after breakfast. He says my vitals look surprisingly good and he snaps on gloves to cut the bandages from Edie’s forearms. I gasp at the black sutures stitching together angry red slashes and delicate skin. Her left wrist suffered more damage than the right, with several ugly gouges like she was digging at her pulse.
“That’s a horrible sight,” I say just above a whisper. That might be Edie’s voice, but those are my words. So are “How could anyone do that to themselves?” The pain alone would have stopped most people after the first cut.
Dr. Perez looks back at me. “I heard you were having some memory lapses.” I remember that I have amnesia and don’t know what I’m supposed to say. So I just give him a blank stare like he’s speaking Borneo. Not that I know if that’s a real language or where to find Borneo on a map.
The nurse I mistook for Lois Griffin enters the room and the doctor turns his attention to her. “There’s still some weeping, but it’s not as inflamed.”
“Her color’s better.” She opens a tray of gauze and scissors. “And she ate her breakfast.”
He pours sterile water over some gauze pads, then cleans the stitches. Those might be Edie’s wrists, but I can feel the swipes of wet gauze, the sting of antiseptic; I suck in a breath. “Has she taken her medication?”
Medication? Edie’s on medication? I guess that makes sense.
“Right here.” She pats her pocket and pulls out four bubble packs. She pops out two capsules, one beige tablet, and a little blue pill. She puts them on my tray, then pours a cup of water.
I don’t want to take Edie’s medication—unless it’s something for pain. I’m a real baby, and I wouldn’t complain about some pain pills or a shot of something good or a morphine drip. “Which one of these is for pain?” Or am I not supposed to know about pain medication? I guess it’s too late now.
“Those are your psychotropics.”
The doctor puts some sort of ointment on the sutures and he and the nurse look at me like they expect me to pop those pills in my mouth. I pick them up and reach for the cup of water with my right hand. That seems to be enough for them and they return their attention to my wrist and continue to talk as if I’m not right here.
“She can take something for pain as needed.”
I pretend to swallow each pill one at a time. I drink the entire cup of water, then gingerly shove the pills under me. When these two leave, I’ll wrap them up in a tissue and throw them away. The last thing I need right now is psychotropics messing with my mind.
“Are her parents here?”
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
My parents are coming? No, wait. Edie’s parents are coming? She said they wouldn’t ever cut their vacation short for her, and it seems she was right. They were called yesterday and aren’t in a rush to see Edie.
“They’re staying at a vineyard and flying in from Napa Valley.”
“Staying at vineyards is my idea of the good life.”
Vineyards? That sounds fancy, like they swish wine in their mouth and spit it out. I’d never waste wine, and I don’t want to meet hoity-toity wine swishers. I’m not ready.