I BLINKED IN THE DIM LIGHT, utterly shocked at the change to my surroundings. A moment before, I’d been in my bedroom, and now, here I was, sitting in a chair in a foreign room in front of a stranger.
“Do you know where you are?” he asked me.
“No,” I said, more than a little frightened. And then I remembered, and my hand flew to my chest. There was a slight burning feeling there where the knife had struck me, but nothing like it’d been a moment before.
“Lily, you’re breathing a little too hard. Try to slow it down for me,” the man said, his voice even and calm, as if attempting to soothe me.
It took me a moment to realize he was speaking to me and there was something very familiar about his voice. I squinted at him. He looked a great deal like our guidance counselor, Mr. White, but much older.
“Who are you, and where am I?”
“I’m Dr. White,” he said patiently. “And this is my office.”
“Dr. White?” I repeated. “Are you any relation to Mr. White? The counselor at Chamberlain High?”
Dr. White pulled his head back, as if I’d shocked him. “How do you know about that?”
“About Mr. White?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Because he’s my counselor at school. I just talked to him, actually.”
Dr. White studied me; he seemed somewhat startled. “What did you and Mr. White talk about, Lily?”
I frowned. “My name is Amber,” I told him, so confused by all this. “Am I in a hospital?”
I looked down at myself and realized that I was in strange clothes. I was wearing light-mint–colored jeans that were entirely too tight and sitting too low, and the silk blouse I was wearing had an odd neckline. Then I turned my attention to the room I was sitting in, which was nice enough, but there was something off about the style. It seemed a little futuristic for my taste. And then I noticed a woman sitting quietly behind me. She smiled when I took her in. Her appearance startled me, too, but mostly because she wore her hair so flat, almost like something out of the seventies. I had the sudden urge to tell her to go see Momma for a better, more flattering haircut.
“Hello,” I said to her.
“Hi, honey,” she replied. “Focus on Dr. White, okay?”
I turned back to the doctor only to see that he now looked…stricken. “What?” I asked him.
“What…What did you say your name was?”
“Amber,” I reminded him. “Amber Greeley.” He sat back in his chair, his eyes wide, but there was something even more unsettling there…disbelief? “That’s my name,” I insisted. Why didn’t he believe me? I looked toward his desk, but all I saw was some futuristic-looking metal plate with a white apple on it, that looked like the Apple logo on my dad’s computer, but absent the rainbow of colors. Clipped to the top was a round ball with a black lens in the middle. At first I thought it resembled a camera, but it was entirely too small. “Don’t you have my chart or something?”
Dr. White cleared his throat and said, “Yes, I’m sorry. I misspoke. Amber, can you tell me today’s date?”
It came to me immediately. “May twenty-seventh.”
“And the year?”
“Nineteen eighty-seven.”
“And your address?”
“One-seven-one Beverly.”
“Tell me about yourself,” he said next.
I took a deep breath; where to start? “Well, I’m an only child, and my parents are really cool, except my dad can be a little goofy sometimes. He likes to try and square dance with my mom in public places. It’s so embarrassing.”
Dr. White sat forward, and put his elbows on the desk. “That would be embarrassing,” he said. “What else?”
“Um…I’m a senior,” I said, trying to gather my thoughts. For some reason my mind felt a little foggy, as if I’d just woken up and was trying to recall the details of my dream, but couldn’t. “I have an amazing boyfriend, and two best friends.”
“What’re their names?”
“Spence is my boyfriend—well, actually, Ben is his first name and Spencer is his last name, but everyone calls him Spence. And Britta and Sara are my best friends.”
Dr. White shook his head ever so slightly. It seemed as if he didn’t quite believe me. “What’s Britta’s last name?” he asked.
I thought it a weird question, but I answered him anyway. “Cummings,” I said. “But we usually call her Britt.”
“You mentioned a Mr. White from your high school, Amber—”
“Do you know him?” I asked him again.
“I do,” he said.
“I knew it,” I told him. “You look a lot like him. Is he your son?”
Dr. White nodded. “He’s the one who referred you to me,” he said. I blinked. I didn’t remember Mr. White telling me he was sending me to a doctor. “Mr. White told me that he also worked with one of your friends. Do you remember?”
“Britt,” I said. “She’s obsessed with thinking she’s fat, and she’s always on a diet. She’s starting to get really skinny again, and Mr. White has been talking to her about it.”