Dr. White told me to close my eyes and take some deep breaths. Mom sat in a chair behind me, and I felt better for her presence. I listened to Dr. White as he talked me through creating a space in my mind where I was very relaxed. He told me what the room would look like, where to put the furniture, and then he had me take a seat in the room I’d created in my mind. It was an odd experience because the longer I listened to his soothing, calm voice, the easier it was to imagine myself in this room. By the time I’d taken a seat in the imaginary chair, I could practically feel its warmth and comfort. I felt myself closing my eyes and starting to drift. There was a slightly dizzying sensation, and then I was out like a light.
I woke up to someone gently shaking my shoulder.
“Lily?” Dr. White said.
Blinking, I sat up with a start. “Oh!” I exclaimed. “God, I’m sorry! I think I fell asleep!”
Dr. White stood up straight from his bent over position. He looked…concerned. “How do you feel?”
I blinked again. “Uh…fine. Sorry,” I apologized again, rubbing my eyes. “I was just so tired….I didn’t mean to ruin it.” I twisted a little in my chair and saw Mom sitting behind me. Her expression made me do a double take. She looked shaken and upset.
“What?” I asked her. “Mom, what’s the matter?”
Instead of answering me, she got up, moved her seat next to me, and took up my hand to kiss it and squeeze it tight. Something was off, and my pulse ticked up.
“What happened?” I demanded.
Dr. White took a seat in his chair. “Lily, what do you remember from being hypnotized?”
I frowned. “What do I remember from being hypnotized? I wasn’t,” I told him. “I mean, I fell asleep, right?”
“What was the last thing you remember?” he pressed.
I sighed, frustrated. Mom squeezed my hand again, and it rattled me that both of them were acting so weird.
“I…I remember sitting in that chair you told me to put in the room we built in my mind, and then I laid my head back and closed my eyes like you told me, and then I fell asleep.”
Dr. White’s gaze shifted to my mom, and I didn’t like the pensive expression he wore.
“Lily,” he said next, and I thought his speech sounded a little too careful, like he was speaking to someone frightened or crazy, “do you know who Amber Greeley is?”
That took me by surprise. “Amber Greeley?” I said.
For just a moment my mind went blank, and I felt goose pimples line my arms. I knew full well who Amber Greeley was, but why did Dr. White want to know if I knew about her? “She’s that girl who killed her boyfriend thirty years ago.”
Mom’s hand jerked slightly. “How do you know that?”
Before I could answer, Dr. White said, “Lily, is that all you know about Amber?”
My brow furrowed as I looked back and forth between Mom and Dr. White. Something was going on, but they weren’t telling me. It was creepy and unnerving.
“Why are you asking me about her?” I demanded.
“I’ll tell you,” he said. “But first, please answer my question. It’s important.”
I sighed. “Well, I read an article about the boy she killed, and it mentioned that she was his girlfriend and she’d killed him the night of their senior prom, and then she committed suicide.” I didn’t tell Dr. White about getting my hair done by Gina, who was Amber’s mom, because I still didn’t know why he was asking me about her.
He studied me for several seconds before he said, “And that’s all you know about her?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, exasperated. “Why?”
Dr. White wiped his brow. I noticed that he’d broken out into a slight sweat, and although he tried to cover it, I swear he, too, looked rattled. “Do you have a birthmark, Lily?”
I turned to Mom again. Her eyes were big round Os, and she stared at Dr. White in a way that seemed to ask him how he knew.
“Yes,” I said as she nodded.
“Where?” he asked.
I put my hand over my sternum. My shirt covered the blemish, but I knew exactly where it was under my fingertips. “Here.”
Dr. White nodded. “What scares you the most?” he asked me next.
I was starting to get really impatient with him. What the hell was going on? “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Please. Indulge me, Lily,” he said.
I sighed again. I was getting really freaked out. “What scares me?”
“Yes. What’re you afraid of?”
I shrugged. “Well, ever since I was a little kid I’ve been really afraid of knives.”
Dr. White sat back in his chair, and his gaze went to Mom. Her eyes welled up, and tears began to spill over down her cheeks as she nodded her head. “When she was little she used to hide them,” she said in a choked whisper. “We’d find them under the sofa, outside hidden in the dirt, behind the bookcase. It was the oddest thing, because she didn’t like us using them and she couldn’t be in the same room with us when we did.”
I half smiled at the memory. I’d been a little weird when I was a kid. But then I focused on Mom’s expression, and how frightened she seemed. “Please tell me what’s going on.”
“You fell into a deep hypnotic state, Lily,” Dr. White said. “And when you did, you seem to have divorced yourself from being Lily Bennett and you became Amber Greeley.”
My mouth fell open. “I became Amber Greeley?” I repeated. “What does that even mean?”
Dr. White moved to the side of his desk and tapped at the computer to bring up the screen. There was a frozen image of me there, and I remembered that he said he was going to record the hypnosis session.
“I think the only way to tell you what happened is to show you.”