The man stares intently at the computer screen as he responds. “Go get Layla for Willow so I can show you both the video.”
I gladly push back from the table. I walk up the stairs, wondering what the video is going to show. And why does he need Willow in Layla’s body to play it back to me?
I think Willow needs to stay out of Layla from this point forward. There’s not really a reason to take over anymore. We’ve told the man everything. Layla has been through enough.
Part of me wants to untie her and let her leave so she’ll be put out of her misery, but the room is quiet when I open the door. Willow has already taken over Layla again.
It’s probably for the best. I feel too guilty to face Layla right now.
“It isn’t right—what we’ve been doing to Layla,” I say. I untie the knots and loosen the rope.
Willow just nods in agreement. When I’ve released her hands, she wipes at her eyes, and I notice for the first time she’s crying.
“What’s wrong? What did you find out?”
“I don’t know what any of it meant,” she whispers, her voice catching in her throat.
Then she’s off the bed and past me and out the bedroom door. She’s walking with urgency in her steps. I rush down the stairs behind her, and when I get to the kitchen, she grabs my phone from the man. She shoves it into my hands like she doesn’t want another second to pass without me seeing the video.
My hand is shaking, so I lay my phone on the table as the video begins to play.
I see myself on the screen, and right when I say, “I’m ready, Willow,” on camera, there’s an instant change in me. My posture stiffens. My eyes open. I look down at my shirt and then hear the man’s voice when he says, “Willow?”
My head nods up and down.
It’s so strange . . . seeing myself do things I don’t remember doing.
I turn the volume all the way up on my phone so I can hear the conversation he had with Willow while she was inside my head.
“What do you feel?” the man asks Willow.
“Worried.”
“Don’t be,” the man says. “I just want to clear up a few things. I need you to try and see everything from Leeds’s point of view right now. Can you see his thoughts? His memories?”
Willow nods.
“I want you to go back to the day Leeds and Layla were shot. Do you have that memory?”
“Yes.”
“You can see that day from his point of view?”
“This feels wrong,” Willow says. “I shouldn’t be in him. It feels different. I only want to use Layla.”
“Give it one more minute. I just have a few questions,” the man says. “What did Leeds feel when he heard the gun?”
“He was . . . scared.”
“And what did Sable feel?”
Willow doesn’t speak through me for several seconds. She’s silent. Then, “I don’t know. I can’t find that memory.”
“Do you have another memory of that moment?”
“No. Just the memory Leeds has. I remember what happened before he heard the gunshot, but not during.”
“What happened before?”
“He was in his bedroom with Layla, packing for a trip.”
“What about after that? What’s the next memory you have that doesn’t belong to Leeds?”
“There isn’t one after that. All these memories belong to Leeds.”
“Okay,” the man says. “Almost done. Let’s back up. Go back to the night Leeds and Layla met here.”
“Okay,” Willow says. “I have that memory.”
“What did Leeds feel the first time he looked at Layla?”
She blows out a steady breath. Then she laughs. “He thought I was a terrible dancer.”
“Okay. Good. You can leave him now,” the man says.
In the video, my eyes flick open and I’m staring directly at the camera again. Then the video ends.
I lock the screen on my phone and fall back into my seat. “You asked like three questions,” I say, waving my hand toward my phone. “How did that even help?”
The man is still staring at my laptop. Willow is pacing the kitchen behind me, biting her fingernails again.
This entire thing seems pointless. I’m ready to call it quits and get Layla out of here when the man looks up at Willow and says, “Why did you say he thought you were a terrible dancer?”
She looks from him to me. “Because that’s what he felt in that moment.”
“But you didn’t say Layla was a terrible dancer,” he says. “You specifically said, ‘He thought I was a terrible dancer.’ You referred to yourself as Layla when you were in Leeds’s head.”
“Oh,” she says, her voice a faint whisper. “I don’t know. I can’t explain that.”
The man motions toward her chair. “Sit down.”
Willow sits.
“According to Layla’s medical records, they had to resuscitate her after she was shot. Once before paramedics got her into the ambulance. And again at the hospital.”