The Other Me

I was twelve years old the first time I saw her, the other me.

I was sitting on a damp beach towel in the backseat of my stepdad's Range Rover next to Buddy, my golden retriever, and we had just pulled out of the crushed seashell parking lot onto Gulf Drive. My mom was in the front seat breastfeeding baby Theo, and my stepdad was in a bad mood because he was out of beer.

We were all in a bad mood. I was sunburnt, thirsty, and mad at my mom for saying no when I asked if we could go out for ice cream. My stepdad, Tony, was in a bad mood because he was missing out on football. Mom was in a bad mood because she'd spent the entire afternoon taking care of my baby brother, Theo, who had done nothing but cry and fuss the entire time we were at the beach.

As we joined the line of cars waiting to get off of Ana Maria Island, Theo started screaming, and Tony turned the radio up to drown him out.

Mom said in a shrill voice, "Is it too much to ask to have a little peace and quiet during the drive back home? You woke him up!"

"I'm missing the game, Dorothy," he said.

My real father was out of the picture, and had been out of the picture ever since he had been committed to the psych ward of South Florida State Hospital when I was three. My stepfather was old and wealthy. Tony had made a lot of money developing Palmer Ranch and Lakewood Ranch, two of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Sarasota, and my mom was fifteen years his senior and was not his first wife. Theo was his one and only child; it wasn't until I was older that I understood the rumors surrounding my mother.

I wrapped my arms around Buddy and turned my attention to the world outside the Range Rover as Theo screamed from the front seat, and Tony and my mom argued over the sound of the baseball game.

​

And then I saw the other me.

She was standing on the sidewalk staring straight at me with a smile on her face. The smile wasn't quite right. It wasn't a friendly smile. She looked exactly like me with the same long, dark hair. Same oval-shaped face. Same eyes.

I shuddered despite the July Florida heat, and scanned the parking lot and sidewalk around her, trying to see who she was with. She didn't appear to be with anyone. The line of cars ahead of ours began moving, and I lost sight of her.

It was easy to forget what happened that day. I told myself that I was overtired from the sun, that I'd imagined the whole thing. Everyone knows that when you are lying safe in your own bed, staring up at your glow-in-the-dark stars that are stuck onto your ceiling, it is easy to forget unsettling things that happened when you were outside; and that when you are twelve years old, you believe that the world is mostly a safe place, and that adults are trustworthy, and what you see is all there is. You look forward to adolescent things such as ice cream on Friday nights, birthday parties on Saturday afternoons, and shopping for back to school clothes every August. You hope that your sixth grade crush will be in your same homeroom again, and your biggest fear is that your parents will stop caring about you, and that no one will like you.

The months and years passed. I had a normal, average life up until my graduation from high school.

It was the summer before my freshman year of college. I had been accepted to the University of Florida, but my parents thought it would be good for me to have a real job.

“It will give you perspective, honey,” Mom said.

"Whatever money you earn this summer, I'll double it for your pocket money for school," Tony said. "Should get you through your first semester."

So I got a waitressing gig at a tourist trap out on the island called Tortuga Grill.

One hot and muggy July night, I was walking out to my car behind the Tortuga Grill after my waitressing shift. It was parked near the dumpster under a tall street lamp. I was halfway there when I heard the squealing of car tires. I jumped out of the way just as a black SUV sped up beside me. The driver slammed on their brakes, blocking the way to my car. The driver jumped out of the SUV and came at me so fast I didn’t even have a chance to scream for help.

It was the girl that looked exactly like me. Except she was dressed in all black and moved differently than I did; she moved like an assassin.

She grabbed my arm. Her hand burned the bare skin on my arm, and the pain was white hot like fire. The pain shot up my arm to my chest, and it felt like my lungs were on fire. I couldn;t breathe, couldn’t say anything. My eyes watered. I started to black out from the pain. My knees gave out, and I doubled over; I was sinking to the ground, helpless.

I stared up into my own face, and the image of myself smiled malevently down at me as she squeezed tighter and tighter with both fiery hands. The pain from her touch took control of my senses.

I blacked out.

When I came to, it was the next morning. I was in my own bed, in my pajamas, with zero recollection of how I’d gotten there or where I had been for the last nine hours.

“We were all in bed when you came home last night,” my mom said when I asked her later. “Why is everything okay? You weren’t drinking and driving, were you?”

No messages on my phone, no charges on my bank account, nothing appeared to have happened during the time that I was blacked out.

From that day on, I was always looking over my shoulder, always paying attention to who was around me. I didn't see her again, but I could sense her somewhere nearby, somewhere outside of my waking consciousness. It was akin to the feeling you get when you sense there is a spider on your wall the split second before you turn and see it with your eyes.

(i couldn’t sleep i laid awake all night watching the shadows and sometimes i wandered towards the light)

The summer wore on, and I continued to work at the Tortuga Grill. I refused to park in the back, and made sure someone walked with me outside to my car at the end of my shift. I started wearing long sleeved shirts and jeans everywhere so no one could jump out and touch my bare skin easily. And in the middle of the Florida summer, I looked crazy.

Which of course got people at work talking about me, talking about how weird and paranoid I was. And I stopped going out, and I lost my appetite, and I couldn’t sleep- was too afraid to fall asleep in case she found me somehow. My best friends stopped texting me because I canceled on them every time they tried to plan to hang out. Everyone seemed to avoid me everywhere I went.

My mom and Tony would stop talking when I entered the room, but I could hear them talking about me when they thought I wasn’t around, things like, "Her father started sleepwalking all the time, I thought he was going to kill himself or me," and “he was dangerous when he got into a certain mindset, it was like he was possessed,” and "we need to find a better therapist."

It was no surprise then that they sent me to a well meaning psychiatrist who wore too much lipstick and checked her phone way too often during our sessions. She smiled reassuringly, scribbled a few notes down on her yellow legal pad, and prescribed me sleeping and anxiety medications. I flushed the pills down the toilet. I refused to sleep, and yet, some nights were a blur; in the morning, I couldn't remember things.

Some mornings, I woke up in random places around the house, and didn't understand how I got there. My mom became frightened of me, I noticed she seemed to avoid me. My little brother Theo was the only one who treated me normally, but that was because he was just a kid. Kids are innocent.

(i could see a diamond light and i wanted to follow the light)

When summer ended, all of my friends went to start their freshman year of college, but I deferred my enrollment for a year. I continued working at the Tortuga Grill, and stuck to my routine.

My mom and the therapist tried to convince me to take all these antipsychotic drugs, but that summer was my eighteenth birthday, and they couldn’t force me to take the meds.

They also couldn’t keep me from visiting my biological father anymore. A legal adult, I could go to the facility where he was kept and request a visit. No one could stop me.

“This is a terrible idea, honey. Please don’t go visit him, I have kept you from seeing him all these years for a reason,” Mom begged me.

I put on an extra layer of clothes for the visit to the facility; a trench coat, a scarf tied around my neck, and boots that laced up past my ankles, and at the last minute, I grabbed a pair of gloves. It was late September and 95 degrees outside. I didn’t care.

The facility was a drab brick building built in the eighties. There was a barbed wire fence surrounding the building, and the floors inside were a pale yellow linoleum. It was a sad looking place. When I mentioned my father’s name to the receptionist, her eyebrows raised so high that I thought they would leave her forehead. “He never gets visitors,” she said. “I’ll have to check with his doctor first.”

Permission granted, the nurse led me to the door of his hospital room. It was a steel door with a double plated glass window in the shape of a diamond. The light shone through the window, and it reminded me of something, but I couldn’t remember what. Through the glowing diamond, I could see him sitting on a chair, watching TV. The nurse knocked on the door, but he didn’t look up.

“He doesn’t say much,” she told me as she unlocked the door, and ushered me inside.

“Brian, your daughter is here.” The nurse turned to me. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Georgina, after his mother,” I said, staring at the man who had given me half of my genetic material, and yet was a complete stranger to me.

“Brian, Georgina is here to see you.”

My father looked up. He had my dark eyes and an oval shaped face, but he had the slack look of someone who had lost touch with reality a long time ago.

“Mama?” He said.

“No, Brian. I’m your daughter,” I said.

“I don’t have a daughter,” he said, waving his hands violently. “No, you see. No. They wouldn’t let me. Part of my contract. Not allowed to have a family. It was a weakness they could use against me, they said. Dorothy never forgave me for it.”

“You and Dorothy had a daughter. I’m her,” I said.

We locked eyes, and I saw a dawning look of recognition light up in his eyes.

“You’re Georgina. Of course, I remember. Have you seen her yet?”

“Who?”

“There were two of you,” he said. “Have you seen her?”

“Brian, that’s enough,” the nurse said, sternly. I watched as she pushed a red button on the wall.

“She’s perfect, just like you,” my father said. “Dorothy didn’t understand my work.”

“He’s having an episode,” the nurse said. “Sorry, but you need to leave immediately.”

Two more people came into his room, two men. One of them was holding a syringe. They pushed me outside, and I reeled backwards away from their touch. The door to his room slammed shut. I watched them through the diamond shaped window. I saw them wrestling him onto his hospital bed, and strapping his arms down. I could tell that my father was shouting, but I couldn’t hear anything through the closed door, and it dawned on me that the rooms were soundproof.

I never told my mom or my therapist about what happened in that room. I never returned to visit my dad. Now I was certain that the other me would return, and I was tired of constantly looking over my shoulder for her everywhere I went.

I started falling asleep again at night, and I would sleepwalk. I would wake up in the yard, in the bathroom, on the sofa, or outside my parents’ suite. Sometimes in Theo’s room in his bed beside him.

My mom would find me asleep outside the door to her room, and she began to beg me to take the medication that the psychiatrist had prescribed. One time, I woke up with a kitchen knife in my hand. No one saw it but me, thankfully. I started locking myself into my own room at night by placing a chair in front of the door.

Fall turned into winter, but in Florida, all that meant was that the rainy season ended, and the humidity let up.

It was the holidays, and I was feeling extremely lonely. Out of pity, my best friend from high school invited me to a Christmas party she was throwing. I went to the party dressed in my long black clothing, and it was clearly a mistake. I guess they didn’t think I would actually go, because when I entered the room, everyone stopped talking for a second.

In an instant, the moment passed, and the conversations resumed, but no one approached me. I helped myself to spiced apple cider and listened to the conversations around me.

"Can you believe she rushed? What was she thinking? We all know she can't afford that lifestyle."

"I can't believe the quarterback of our high school football team is dating someone from Tulsa. She's not even in a sorority."

"Right? Did you hear about Emma?"

"Yes! I heard that her father is pulling her out of school for a semester."

I wandered off to use the bathroom, and when I was walking back to the party, I overheard them talking about me.

“She looks so creepy. I heard that her mom is terrified of her.”

“I feel sorry for her. I mean, her dad is in the psych ward upstate.”

“I don’t feel sorry for her. Her parents are so rich, and she’s a waitress. Why doesn’t she do something with her life?”

“She’s a freak. What is she doing here?”

“My mom made me invite her.”

I left the party.

I drove all the way to Ana Maria Island to the spot where I’d first seen the other me all those years before, when I was just a happy go lucky kid, riding in the backseat of the car after a day at the beach.

I parked my car, turned the headlights off, and cut the engine. I waited.

Before long, I heard the passenger door open, and someone slid into the seat beside me. The door slammed shut. I continued to stare straight ahead.

“What did he say?” A familiar voice asked from the darkness.

“He asked me if I’d seen you.”

“What did you say?”

“The nurses dragged me away from him.”

“Of course they did.”

“He said we were perfect. Who are you?”

“I kill people who ask stupid questions.”

“You know why I’m here?”

“Yes.”

We sat in silence for a while.

She spoke first. “You had to be willing.”

“Will it hurt?”

“Not this time.”

“What do I do now?” I asked.

“Go home. Get a good night’s sleep.”

“I don’t sleep. At least, I try not to.”

“Well, let yourself fall asleep tonight.”

I heard the car door open, and she slipped out into the night.

I drove home through the dark streets. At our gate, I punched in the key and watched as the gate swung open. Inside, I wandered through the first floor of the house. I kissed Buddy on the top of his scraggly head, and I went up to the second floor to kiss Theo goodnight. Theo was fast asleep with his TV still on. I wanted to kiss my mom on the cheek one last time, but I thought about how my father had been alone in the psychiatric hospital for all those years with no one to kiss him goodnight, and my heart felt cold. I went to my room, and I closed the door. I climbed into bed, and I closed my eyes.

I fell into a deep sleep.

(a diamond light pattern shines through the panes of glass on the soundproof door of the hospital room. inside that hospital room lives a scientist, and the government paid a lot of money to make him forget his old life, forget is ex-wife, forget their two children that are not exactly human.)

When we woke up the next day, we were not the same.

We were better.