‘That guy you call Wildboy in your journal, and his family. You made them up, and you think they’re real.’
‘No,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘I couldn’t have.’
A pained look crosses Rob’s face. ‘You’ve made up people before,’ he says quietly. ‘Ali Bhatti?’
‘How did you . . .?’
‘I’ve been getting all your posts since we were thirteen,’ he says, like it’s obvious. ‘I know all about the Cultural Outreach Club, and about the mental hospital. Your New York friends couldn’t shut up about how you went crazy. I was waiting for you to talk to me about it when you were ready.’
All I can do is stare at him.
‘I didn’t tell anyone here any of that stuff,’ he assures me defensively.
I stand up. ‘I didn’t make Wildboy up,’ I say. I start pacing. Thinking back. ‘You were there,’ I insist. ‘You came and got me in the woods. You must have seen his camp.’
Rob’s face falls with compassion, and it only makes me angrier.
‘Last night!’ I yell. ‘You came and got me right outside their camp and brought me back here and gave me my pills and sat down at my desk. You were there, in the woods!’
‘Me? In the woods?’ he asks carefully.
Rob hates the woods. He never goes in them. I sink back down on to the bed. I’m scared to breathe. Scared to move.
‘I was here with your grandparents, waiting for you, as usual, when you came back. You couldn’t speak. You looked traumatized, and your grandparents told me that schizophrenia runs in the family and that you take antipsychotics for it. I brought you upstairs to give you your medication. When I saw that the dates on the bottles were from over a month ago, but still almost full, I knew you hadn’t been taking them.’
‘No. You found me,’ I say weakly. I look up at him. He’s shaking his head.
‘I just appeared out of nowhere and found you in the middle of the woods?’ he asks doubtfully. ‘How could I know where you were?’
‘You followed me,’ I accuse, but we both know I’m grasping at straws.
‘Magda? Have you ever seen things that weren’t there?’ he asks. ‘Have you ever seen people who weren’t there?’
I freeze and nod slowly, thinking of Rachel. ‘Dead people. People who’ve died because of me.’
He smiles at me, like this admission means I’m getting somewhere. ‘If you’ve seen that, then why is it so hard to accept that – off your medication – you’ve imagined seeing living people?’
I open my mouth to answer him, but I have no answer. There’s only one answer. I never hallucinated dead bodies when I was with Bo. Because I was hallucinating him. I look down at my journal, and now I can really see it. It’s filled up. I can remember writing in it now. I wrote in it every day. If I c
an repress that, what else have I done without knowing it?
‘Oh my God,’ I breathe. ‘What did I do?’
I run to the closet and open it. My clothes are in a rumpled heap. So much blood. How could I have ever thought that was normal?
‘But, it wasn’t really you, right? It couldn’t have been you,’ he says, his voice trailing off into a whisper. But he knows. I look over my shoulder at him.
‘I don’t remember,’ I whisper back. ‘I don’t know.’
Rob takes my hands and guides me back to the bed. He sits next to me and turns my hands over in his, noticing them. We both see the scratches and bruises peppering my forearms. Like I’ve been in a fight.
‘There has to be another reason for all of these cuts, right?’ he asks. He’s begging me for some kind of explanation, but I don’t have one.
‘Hiking?’ I say uncertainly. But I’m shaking my head because I know that doesn’t explain this. Hiking doesn’t explain the soreness in my back and arms.
Rob just looks at me.
‘What did I do?’ I say again, my voice sliding up. I’m becoming hysterical, I know it, but I can’t seem to stop. I press my hands against my mouth, trying to stuff the crazy back inside.