Page 8 of The Locked Ward
She’s lying. I just saw proof.
A moment ago, Georgia shuffled into the room, her eyes dull and her movements sluggish. With her lank hair and shapeless paper scrubs, she bears little resemblance to the chic, graceful woman I saw in photographs and videos.
Then she whispered her desperate message to me, and as her eyes fixed on mine, I saw complete awareness in them. It was as if she raised the cover of a trapdoor an inch and allowed me to peer into a secret compartment in her brain.
Behind her vacant expression is a razor-sharp, supple mind that she wielded full control over as she told me I had to get her out or she’d be killed.
Is she lying about that, too?
“Who is going to kill you?” I whisper.
She doesn’t reply. She’s perfectly still now, her mouth slightly open, her eyes downcast. She has latched the trapdoor again.
I search her face for answers. Instead, I find traces of myself: We both have a faint constellation of freckles across our cheekbones.
We both have attached earlobes, and I see the markings for double piercings on hers.
I have the same markings. The list tallies as my breath quickens: Her eyebrows are straight, like mine.
She reaches to scratch her nose, and she does it with her left hand.
When I have an itch, that’s the hand I use to scratch, too, because it’s my dominant one.
Only 10 percent of people are left-handed. Georgia and I are among them.
Dizziness crashes over me. I can’t look at her face any longer.
I drop my gaze lower. Her nails are painted the shade of a ballet slipper, but on her left hand, the nail of her index finger is broken to the quick.
A vision flits through my mind: Georgia lifting the heavy sterling-silver paperweight—it was reportedly four pounds—and smashing it into her younger sister’s temple.
“I didn’t do it,” she repeats in a faint, breathy whisper, and I flinch. It’s as if she can peer into my mind, as if she is watching the violent scene play out along with me.
“Who did it, then?” I ask.
“Find out,” she whispers. “Help me.”
Who are you? I want to ask. She’s intensely familiar and a stranger, all at once. Something inside of me knows her, remembers her. Because as odd as it is to be in this alien, disturbing place, on some deep level, it also feels exactly right.
“How do I know you’re really my sister?” I ask.
Instead of answering, she does something so eerie, I rear back against my chair, trying to get farther away from her.
She reaches up, her hand slow and deliberate, and curls a few strands of hair around her index finger. Her eyes lock on mine as she pulls down her hand, stretching the hairs tight. I feel pinned into place; she seems to be sending me a strange, silent message.
She pulls her hair even tighter. It has to be painful, but she doesn’t flinch or react. The tip of her finger is turning white from the circulation being cut off.
I wait for the aide to stop her from hurting herself, but her movements are so small and slow he probably doesn’t realize what she’s doing.
Her wide, unblinking eyes stay trained on mine as she gives one final tug, yanking out her hairs by the roots.
Then she rubs her fingertips together, and I see the red-gold strands drift to the floor.
“Test them,” she whispers.
Georgia slowly begins to rise, and in a flash, the muscular nurse darts into the room, inserting himself between us. But she merely turns and begins to make her slow, unsteady way back out. She disappears down the corridor.
I look down at the hairs glinting on the white linoleum floor. A DNA test would definitively prove Georgia’s claim. That must be what she meant.
I lean forward and pick up the thin strands of hair, suppressing a shudder as they tickle my skin like the touch of a spider’s legs.
“Miss?”
The muscular aide has returned and is standing by the door. His message is clear: My visit is over.