Page 146 of Dance of Thorns

I knowIlove him.

And nothing on Earth will ever take those truths away.

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DOVE

Obviously,I don’t remembera lotfrom my childhood. But one thing that didn’t get knocked out by the hit to my head is Agatha reading me the story of Rip Van Winkle—the mountain man who falls asleep under a tree and accidentally naps for twenty years.

That’s kind of how it feels to suddenly realize almost everything about your life is based on a lie, or at the very least a colossal case of mistaken identity.

That you’re not who you think you are.

That your life belongs to someone else.

I amnotDove Marchetti.

At the same time, I’m not really Lark Peltier, either.

That’s the tricky bit. It’s notjustthat I’m not the girl I thought I was. It’s notjustthat I’m someone else.

It’s the fact that that "someone else" is the sister of the girl I thought I was.

And if that’s notcompletely batshit confusingenough, here’s one more fun twist: the girl Iactuallyam is supposed to be dead. Meanwhile the girl I’ve beenexisting as, who everyone in my world but one man thinks of me of as,isdead.

What's the saying? Oh, yeah: it’s complicated.

Part of me wanted to just stay in bed all the next day and hide from the world. Those beauty ads that talk about being a “whole new you?” Turns out, waking up as “a whole new you” is abso-fucking-lutely terrifying. It becomes a sci-fi horror movie, or an episode ofBlack Mirror.

Do I tell people? Or do I keep living this lie, with all my friends still calling me by the name of a dead girl they never actually knew?

Hence, a huge part of me wanting to hide in bed for the day.

Or, you know, the next six-months-to-forever.

Bane was also on Team Stay In Bed, especially since we barely slept last night.

There was just too much to catch up on.

I told him about Oxford Hills Academy, in England, where my dad sent me to finish high school after I started to spiral in my senior year at Thornfield. I told him aboutthrowingmyself into ballet, there. My sister and I had religiously danced together our whole lives, and with her gone, it’s like I started putting in twice the blood, sweat, and tears to achieve the dream for the both of us.

I told him about therelentlesshours that took, and how Adderall eventually turned into cocaine. How whenthatstopped quietingthe nightmares and the survivors guilt I was drowning in, I found something that would.

I cried while telling him about heroin. About the two times I overdosed and only didn’t die because strangers brought me to ERs.

About waking up face-down on a hotel bed with no idea how I got there, two men I didn’t know trying to take off my clothes before I managed to run away.

About sleeping outside on a park bench in the rain, because escaping reality through getting high was more of a priority than shelter.

The abject terror of getting my blood drawn at a walk-in clinic to see if the needle someone shared with me had given me HIV or hepatitis.

Bane didn’t get angry—at least, not with me. He didn't judge, or tell me what I should have done differently. He just held me while I cried into his chest, telling him about the nightmares when I started detoxing in rehab.

The times I wanted to kill myself.

The times I tried.

Wanting to die because I didn’t know any other way to escape the darkness my mind had plunged into.