“I think you might be crazy,” I said.
“Wiser minds than yours would agree,” she said. “Next one: procrustean.”
“Bed.”
“Pan.”
“Echo.”
She frowned. “Echo?”
“In one version, Pan wanted her, and she said no, and so he had his followers tear her apart. But the earth loved her, so it kept her voice in the stones and the trees and the caves. To cut a long story short.”
“Wow,” she said. “You taught me something. Doesn’t happen often. I was going for pipes, or Dionysus.” She looked at me funny.
“What is it?”
“I knew I recognized you, that first time. You go the library, right?”
“Ye-e-e-s. You?”
She did a comical big-eyes thing. “Are you serious? No. But I pick up books for school sometimes. Books are expensive shit. Anyway, you’re a big reader, huh?”
“Yes. I mean, I was.”
“Risperidone stop you reading?”
I nodded.
“Told you, you have to get off that stuff. Yeah, I saw you, I remember now, you had a load of books … about murder or something?”
“Yeah.”
“Light reading.”
“It was … you know what, forget it.” It had made so much sense at the time—the idea that the voice was a victim of the Houdini Killer, a remnant left behind. If I said it now it would just sound insane.
“Well, anyway, I like you,” she said. “You’re okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah.” She reached into a front pocket of her skinny jeans and handed me another card. Her dark eyes were warm on mine, like black asphalt heated by the sun. “E-mail me if you want to hang out.”
I glanced down at the card. It had a silhouette of a girl sitting on a chair, legs wide. Under her, embraced by her legs, was: CAM GIRL. GLAMOUR. PRIVATE PARTIES.
INSTA: @jerseygirl95
There was no phone number, just an e-mail address: jerseygirl95@_____.com I looked up at her.
“She’s a ******* whore,” said the voice, but not loud, as if it were coming from the other side of the parking lot, by the Dumpster and the trees, shimmering in the heat.
“Oh yeah,” she said. “I forgot to mention, I’m a glamour model. Or, you know, aspiring. It would drive my dad crazy if he knew. Which is a big part of why I do it.”
DR. REZWARI (making notes on her pad) Do you ever hear the voice now?
ME: (lying) No.
DR. REZWARI: You’re sure?
ME: (lying) Yes.
So, you see, it wasn’t just you I lied to.
I checked out Paris’s Instagram feed—I know how to do that; I’m not a total Luddite. It was basically photos of her in bikinis and underwear, sometimes modeling things that had obviously been sent to her free, and I was surprised to see that she had 39K followers.
Paris liked to take her clothes off, clearly, but she was smart. Or maybe I should say, and she was smart. To avoid any implication of contradiction.
She loved books. She loved knowing stuff. She was a college student.
I liked her.
The voice did not like her. It called her “that ******* whore” and other stuff that was even worse. But it didn’t say much when she was around, and it didn’t threaten me about seeing her; it didn’t say much ever those days, and when it did it was kind of dulled, as if coming from the other side of a window. Looking back, I think that was not just the risperidone working, it was also because the voice knew that Paris was offering a different way of dealing with things, one that didn’t involve drugs. The voice hated the drugs, because they muffled it, suffocated it, a pillow over a mouth.
EDIT: I hated them. The voice is me. I understand that now. Even you probably do, just from reading this. But I didn’t then of course.
I guess it was maybe a week after I saw her at the hospital that I e-mailed Paris. I hadn’t seen you much—even though Dr. Rezwari kept telling me to get to know you. It wasn’t easy. You were working most of the time, or you were hanging out with Shane. You would wave to me, but I didn’t feel like you were interested in me or anything; in fact I was convinced I had offended you by being cold when we spoke, and not accepting your offer of a ride.
So I just lay in bed or sat in the kitchen or whatever. I’d just spent a whole day sitting in Dad’s study watching millipedes crawl all over a log, and my brain was mush. I had the impression that I was locked out of my own body, floating somewhere above it.
I wanted to feel stuff again.
I set up an address: echo@_____.com
And I e-mailed Paris one word:
HELP.
It was a Thursday. The day when the voice support group met. I think unconsciously I knew that. Paris e-mailed me back exactly fifty-seven minutes later. When you are watching millipedes crawl, you are very conscious of the passage of time. Her e-mail said: CALL ME. 800-555-5555
I took out my cell and dialed the number.
“Jerseygirl95 here, I’m wet and in front of my camera and—”
“It’s me, Cass.”
“I know. I was just ******* with you.”
“Oh.”
“Sorry. Tell me. What’s up?”