When She Was Bad

8

The little office, scarcely large enough to contain Dr. Irene’s desk at one end and the couch at the other, held a world of memories for Lily. Here, fifty minutes at a time, two or three times a week, she’d spilled out her hopes and fears, her childhood nightmares and adolescent insecurities-in a sense, she’d grown up in this room.

But as she sat waiting on the couch while Lyssy and Dr. Irene conferred in the hallway, Lily felt far from nostalgic. Just knowing that Dr. Irene was out there discussing her future with a man she scarcely knew (as far as Lily was concerned, their entire acquaintance consisted of a twenty-minute stroll through the funny little park in the middle of the Institute) made her stiffen with resentment. People were always making decisions for Lily, and yet things could hardly have turned out any worse if she’d decided for herself-or flipped coins or consulted a Ouija board.

Of course, at the heart of her resentment, as always, was a white-hot hatred for what her parents had done to her, and for this abominable disease of hers-but not, oddly enough, for Lilith. Instead she found herself admiring what little she had learned about the alter, who seemed to be everything she wasn’t: fearless, remorseless, resourceful, and above all, capable of protecting herself.

“Lily? Lily, we need to talk.”

She looked up. Lyssy was limping toward her, looking smaller than ever in the oversize white T-shirt and the button-fly jeans with the cuffs turned up. Dr. Irene had just sat down at her desk on the other side of the room and was putting on a pair of old-fashioned acoustic headphones the size of earmuffs.

“Pump up the volume,” Lyssy told the doctor. “I need to hear the squeaking from here.” Then, to Lily, as he sat down next to her: “So she can’t listen in on us.”

“Why not just leave her out there and close the door?” They were both whispering; between whispers, they found themselves listening for the tiny, tinny music leaking out from the psychiatrist’s headphones.

“Because we can’t trust her not to turn us in.” He leaned in closer. “Lily, you have to decide whether you want to come with me or stay behind with her.” He saw her glance across the room. “Dr. Irene can’t help you with this one-it’s a decision only you can make.”

“Why would I want to go someplace with you?” said Lily without thinking. “I hardly even know you.”

He winced; there was a sadness in his gold-flecked eyes she regretted having put there. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I keep forgetting you’re not Lilith. You see, me and her, we were kind of…you know, we were kind of in love. We were going to go away together as soon as we got hold of those bikers’ money. Only like I told you before, there was the accident with the radio in the hot tub, and you were like a zombie or something, so I brought you here instead so Dr. Cogan could fix you up.”

“I know, I know-you told us all that.” Except the part about Lyssy and Lilith being in love. Were they also lovers, in that other sense of the word? Lily wondered. Had that man had sex with her body? It was almost too weird, and definitely too uncomfortable, to contemplate.

“But there’s one thing I didn’t tell you the truth about,” Lyssy continued. “That part about how Lilith said Max and Kinch killed all four people at the Corders’? That’s what we want the cops to think. That way you could go free, while one victim more or less isn’t going to make much difference to me as far as my sentence goes.

“But Dr. Cogan says the cops can probably tell from our fingerprints and stuff who killed which victim. So I figured that before you decided whether to come along with me or stay behind, you needed to know that it was Lilith who killed the woman in the bathroom-that’s what she told me, anyway. She said she-”

“No, don’t!” cried Lily, covering her ears with her hands. “I don’t want to hear about the details.” It wasn’t guilt-she felt precious little of that. Some shock, maybe, and a mounting sense of panic as the full import of Lyssy’s revelation began to sink in. Still, she couldn’t help feeling it was like one of those mystery movies where the main character has an identical twin who does all this stuff the other twin gets blamed for.

Only an alter is closer than a twin, Dr. Irene was always saying-it’s a part of you, a part of yourself that had broken off when your psyche was shattered. Lily glanced over at the psychiatrist, who was tapping her long, russet-brown fingernails on the desk in time to whatever music she was listening to, and suddenly it occurred to her how much easier it would be if she could just give up and let Lilith take over-and how much better for all concerned.

The thought was kind of scary (for Lily, not being in consciousness was a little like what she imagined being dead would be like: the world goes on, but you’re not there) but also tempting. She pictured herself waking up somewhere in the future, the way she’d awakened this morning, or in the airplane the other day, and looking around in confusion at palm trees and a white-sand beach, straw huts and turquoise reefs; on the patio table next to her there’d be a colorful drink with a tiny umbrella in it.

Where am I? she’d ask, and Lyssy would reply, A safe place. We made it, Lily-it’s all over but the happily ever after.

Then Lyssy’s voice yanked Lily back from her daydream. “Me, I’m already looking at life without parole, minimum,” he was saying. “If I’m lucky. Lethal injection if I’m not. So basically, I’ve got nothing to lose. I don’t know what they’d give you for just one murder, but if you want to take a chance on coming with me, I’m pretty sure it won’t make any difference to your sentence.”

“Do you think we really have a chance of getting away?” Lily asked him.

“More of a chance than we have if we don’t do anything, if we just sit around here waiting for a knock on the door.”

“What I still don’t get is why you want me to come with you. You’d probably stand a better chance alone. And it’s not like we were ever lovers-that was Lilith, not me.”

“But I fell in love with you first,” he blurted.

She thought she’d misunderstood him. “You what?”

“Fell in love with you-with this you-the second I laid eyes on you in the arboretum.”

“But-but why?”

“I don’t think love has any whys,” Lyssy told her. “It just-” He broke off, cupped a hand to his ear. “Hear that?”

Footsteps on the front porch, then a clanking sound.

“It’s all right,” said Dr. Cogan, who had taken off her earphones when she saw they were listening for something. “It’s just the mailman.”

The footsteps receded. “We’re almost done here,” Lyssy told the doctor. “Would you mind…?” He waited until she’d donned the headphones again, then turned back to Lily. “The sooner we get going, the better our chances.”

“But we can’t just drive away and leave Dr. Irene-she’ll call the police the second we’re gone.”

“Does that mean you’ve decided to come with me?” Lyssy tried to keep his voice casual, though his heart was in his throat.

“You said it yourself-what do I have to lose? But what about Dr. Irene?”

“Oh, I can handle that,” said Lyssy happily.