Page 7 of The Locked Ward

You can’t take your eyes off her.

It isn’t curiosity or desperation or envy. It’s more primal than that. A powerful current is arcing between you. She feels it, too. You can tell by the way her body jerks slightly, like she received a mild physical shock.

Maybe you feel it because she is your only hope. Or maybe it’s because she is part of you.

Mandy looks exactly like she did on the video you saw last month.

The private investigator who found her for you sat at her bar and ordered a soda.

A tiny camera on a button on his shirt filmed your sister filling the glass from the bar spigot, impaling a wedge of lemon on the rim, and sliding it forward, as if she were offering it to you.

You were mesmerized by her efficient manner and easy smile. You played that video again and again, greedily hoarding details about her: her neat, unpolished fingernails; her straight dark eyebrows over light gray eyes; the hollow between her collarbones.

And now she’s here. You have to walk past her to claim the chair opposite hers.

The aide who brought you matches pace with you, staying between you and your sister. It doesn’t matter. He can’t break your magnetic link.

As you pass Mandy, you inhale her scent. She smells fresh and clean. You don’t detect any perfume, but there’s the faintest hint of something citrusy, probably from her shampoo or bodywash.

You sit down, automatically crossing your legs at the ankle and bending your knees to one side, as you were trained to do from a young age.

You see her take in your paper top and pants and sticky-bottom socks before her eyes rise to your face again, drinking you in.

She looks anxious, uneasy. No. It’s more than that. She feels anxious and uneasy.

You know this because it’s as if you have slipped into her skin, as if your physiologies have seamlessly fused back together after being apart for three decades.

The aide takes up his post in the doorway, tilting his body to keep you within his line of vision. It would take him only seconds to get to you if you tried to attack your sister. Which you never would. Not this sister, anyway.

Mandy clears her throat. “Why did you ask for me?”

She’s direct, no-nonsense. She cut to the crux of the situation without any extraneous questions or attempt at small talk. Somehow you knew she would.

You need to play this moment carefully. Everything depends on it. You are supposedly in a dissociative state, which you learned about years ago because you wrote a twenty-page paper on it for a college psychology class.

The topic interested you, so you did your research and spent late nights crafting your paper. It turned out to be the most important thing you learned in college.

That paper may have saved your life.

You keep your facial muscles slack, your voice and body devoid of expression. You speak in a low monotone—too low for the watcher to hear. This message is for your twin alone. Everything depends on how she receives it.

“I didn’t do it,” you tell your sister. “And if you don’t get me out of here, they’re going to kill me.”