The Other Girl

Dr. Leighton: “Lanie, did you kill Jeremy Rivers and Irina Hollis?”

“No. Of course not.”

Her features pulled together in disappointment, and that wounded me. That was the first time I realized my mentor was fallible. I became desperate to make her believe me.

“I don’t remember that night,” I told her, my voice pleading.

“Why do you think you can’t recall?”

I shook my head.

“You had defensive wounds, Lanie. A cut on your face. Bruises around your neck. You were discovered not too far from the crime scene that morning, in shock. How do you think this all happened?”

Fury bit my nerves. It was a dull ache that throbbed at the back of my head, a sharp violence trying to break through the darkness. A name triggered, conjured, from the oblivion of my mind.

“Irina got around, did you know that?” I crossed my arms. “There was a rumor about her and the drama teacher, just saying. Maybe somebody should question him.”

Or any of the other, many girls that Jeremy had wronged.

She sighed. “And who is that, Lanie?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Mr. White or Whitmore or something like that.”

“You’re deflecting.”

My defenses flared. “I gave you the truth.”

“Truth is what the mind makes true.” She took out her prescription pad. “Do you know what delusional means, Lanie?”

That was the first day I ever questioned my sanity. How horrible, that it should stem from someone I trusted more than any other. Up until that moment, I had never doubted my own thoughts and mind.

I began taking the medication my mentor, my only friend, prescribed to me.

16

Verity

Ellis

Truth is what the mind makes true.

Dr. Leighton has given me priceless advice over the years. She always explains life and psychology in a unique way that relates to me so I can understand. I hear her voice now telling me to take a step back, observe the situation objectively. Trust my instincts. I’ve come so far, have worked so hard to be free and to find love…I can’t give up now.

I open my medicine cabinet and grab the bottle of pills.

The truth of our existence is based on perception. I know this. Everyone who has ever walked the earth has lived in a creation of their own perceived reality. Just like the cosmos are creating new existence in space, turning the void of nothing into matter and energy, the human mind is constantly altering our reality.

The clock in the hallway ticks away, the sound abhorrently loud, but the hands are stuck on that dreadful time.

Nine-eleven.

The number of times Jeremy and Irina were stabbed.

The psychology of this torment would state it’s a manifestation of guilt. Yet, I feel no guilt for the past. My actions didn’t place me in that psychiatric facility; a jury did—a jury of people misled by other brainless people in authority over a young, troubled girl’s life.

I might have been disturbed on some level when I entered—but it was the years inside that changed my course, that created the woman who I am now.

The bottle in my hand feels heavy, weighted by the choice I have to make. Just as Alice had to accept her perceived real