هویت

IDENTITY

CARLA’S BARELY IN the door before I’m on her with the letter. She reads it and her eyes widen with each sentence.

She grips my forearm. “Where did you get this?” “Keep reading,” I say. The charts and measurements will mean more to her than they did to me.

I watch her face and try to understand what is happening in my world. I’d expected her to dismiss the letter out of hand just as Mom did, but her reaction is … different.

“Have you shown this to your mother?” I nod, mute.

“What did she say?”

“That it was a mistake.” I’m whispering, hiding from the sound of my own voice.

She searches my face for a long time. “We need to find out,” she says.

“Find out what?”

“If it’s true or not.”

“How could it be true? That would mean—” “Shh, shh. We don’t know anything yet.” We don’t know anything? Of course we do. We know that I’m sick. That I’m not allowed to leave my house on pain of death. I’ve always known this. It is who I am.

“What’s going on?” I demand. “What are you hiding from me?” “No, no. I’m not hiding anything.” “What does this mean?”

She sighs, and it is long and deep and weary. “I swear I don’t know anything. But sometimes I suspect.” “Suspect what?”

“Sometimes I think maybe your mama’s not quite right. Maybe she never recovered from what happened to your papa and brother.” The oxygen in the room is replaced by something else, something thin and not-breathable. Time does slow down now and I get a kind of tunnel vision. The walls are much too close and Carla recedes away from me, a small figure at the end of a very long hallway. Tunnel vision gives way to vertigo. I’m unsteady on my feet and then nauseous.

I run to the bathroom and dry heave into the sink. Carla comes in as I’m splashing water on my face.

She puts her hand on my back and I sink under the weight of it. I’m insubstantial. I’m Olly’s ghost girl again. I press my hands into the porcelain of the sink. I can’t lift my eyes to the mirror because I won’t recognize the girl looking back at me.

“I have to know for sure,” I growl, using someone else’s voice.

“Give me a day,” she says, and tries to pull me into a hug, but I don’t let her. I don’t want comforting or protecting.

I just want the truth.