“Maddie Asherford.” Her tone carries a warning as she reaches to turn the oven timer off as it buzzes. “You’re a good person. You’re just confused because you can’t remember anything—all the good stuff you did.” She pauses. “Preston said you’ve been a little uncooperative the last few sessions. Is there anything you want to talk about?” she asks, reaching out and petting my head again. “Anything at all.”

Anger flares up inside me. “Preston’s not supposed to be talking to you about what goes on in therapy,” I say in a low tone that startles us both. I’m not even sure why this is bothering me so much. “It’s confidential.”

She flinches at the tone of my voice and her hand stops moving over my head, but remains there. “I asked him to tell me today if you were doing okay or not, considering you’ve been a little out of it at home.”

“You have no right!” My voice cuts through the air like a knife as I tighten my jaw and lean against the countertop.

“I have every right, Maddie, and you won’t talk to me like that. I’m your mother and everything I do is to help you, whether you can see that or not.” There’s this plea in her eyes, begging me to stop. “Please start trying to act like the daughter I used to know again. It feels like I haven’t seen her in weeks.”

I want to say a million things to her, tell her everything. How I feel. How I walk around in this world, being told what I was, how I used to act, yet no one understands that that person doesn’t exist anymore. She died the moment she woke up in the street, bloody, mangled, and a bundle of confusion. And that I don’t believe I was ever a good person considering how fucked up I am now. I think, like humans in general, she believes what she wants to believe because it helps her sleep at night and be able to get out of bed in the morning.

“Fine, mother. I’m a good girl and I’ll do what I’m told.” It’s the biggest bunch of bullshit. I can only be what I can be and right now that’s a mixture of a lost girl named Maddie, who wonders why she ran out in front of the car in the first place, and a girl named Lily who wants to believe that I chose to forget all of my memories for a reason. Someone who isn’t good and bad. Who rebels yet sometimes wants to obey. Breaks rules and follows. Craves danger and fears it. Basks in the darkness and embraces the craziness living inside her and who sometimes cries over it.

My mom looks partially convinced then hugs me and returns to the kitchen to take out the next sheet of cookies from the oven. “Call me if you need anything.”

“I will,” I say, stepping toward the door, the toe of my shoe slipping into the sunlight, me inching my way to freedom. Lily starts to stir inside me. Let me out. Let me out. I need to breathe. I take another step and then another, waiting for my mom to say anything else. When she starts to hum under her breath, picking up the spatula on the countertop to scoop the cookies up, I know that the conversation has ended and I’m dismissed. I swing open the back door and hurry outside into the frosted driveway where my car is parked. I try to keep Lily still inside me for just a few minutes longer. Try to keep myself contained. Just enough so that I can get out of the driveway and down the road to the corner. She’s restless and by the time I’m pulling into the driveway of a quaint antique shop on the corner, I’m practically hyperventilating in my seat to get out of these stuffy clothes and into something else.

The lights are off in the building, the closed sign up. I leave the engine running as I hop into the backseat, tousling my fingers through my hair, freeing my gel sustained locks. I pick out a nasty clump of it and flick onto the floor. Then I kick my shoes off, remove my pants, and unbutton the stuffy shirt, breathing the fresh air in with each button unfastened. When I shuck it off, I feel like I’ve shed off all my skin and air can finally get to my pores, only it still feels like there’s a layer of dirt on my skin, filthy, disgusting. I can breathe again. I feel both disgusted and pleased with myself for feeling this way. Confliction. It’s become my middle name.

Beneath the banker-like attire, I’m wearing a short, tight, black Metallica shirt and leather pants. I’m a biker chick today and maybe tomorrow I’ll be mod. I change my look quite frequently. Play different characters, trying to discover my true identity, feel a spark inside me that says hey, that has to be me. But as usual, I feel disconnected so I’m guessing I wasn’t a biker badass in my previous life.

After I adjust the shirt into place over the massive scar on my side, I get back into the driver’s seat. Road rash, I was told, scraped quite a few layers off my ribs and left a massive, gnarly scar about the size of my fist. It’s sort of hideous, but there are worse things in life. I also have one on the palm of my hand where I was gripping the object that cut open my skin. It kind of looks like a burn mark with these weird diamond shaped patterns attached to a long thing line that teethes out at the bottom and when I squint closely at it, I can almost make out the number fourteen in the center of it.

Once my outfit’s in place, I reach under the seat of the car and grab the duffel bag I keep hidden there. I take out my leather collar and matching bracelets, hoop earrings, and my lace-up boots. After I put them all on, I apply red lipstick and kohl eyeliner, and then grab my pack of cigarettes, feeling inner peace for the first time today, free. Glancing in the rearview mirror, the confusion in my eyes from earlier has settled as I light up my cigarette. Smoke encircles my face. I’m smiling at the same time tears are rolling down my face. I feel darkened. Sedated. Just like my soul. But as I pull away, heading to my secret spot to see my secret friend, I feel even more hope of some sort of peace for the day because where I’m going I can be anyone. Good or bad.

Maddie

I discovered this place about a year after the accident. I was having a hard day, because I felt like I was about to fall out of my skin. I’d spent hours listening to my mother recollect memories of me as a child. Good ones, her eyes so full of hope and by the time she was done, I wanted to end it all. Throw myself out the window or run into the street again. Not exist in the confusion that had taken over me. But I talked myself out of it—or Lily did, anyway.

But I had to get out of the house and away from my mother’s smothering, so I took a joyride. I was sixteen and technically didn’t have my driver’s license yet, but I could drive. And boy did I drive. Up and down the town, through the neighborhoods. But it wasn’t enough. I needed to go someplace further, away from everything, where I could breathe again. So I headed down the highway toward the foothills with no real destination in mind and ended up on a turnout on a dirt road that wove through the trees. The area seemed familiar, but then again all the foothills looked the same.

Eventually the road came to a dead end, where the trees opened up a little and I got a full view of the town below. Nearby, surrounded by dead grass and dying flowers, was a log cabin. I found it fascinating to look at, out there in the trees, untouched. It was beautifully haunting and I instantly fell in love with it and everything that it represented. And my love for the place only grew when I discovered Ryland living in it, a guy who seemed just about as broken as me.

At first he didn’t seem too fond of me just walking into his house. Quite honestly, I’d thought it was vacant when I’d entered and was startled by the fact that someone was living in the minimally furnished house. But Ryland is a minimal person, something I quickly found out and thankfully I quickly wore on him enough for him to let me keep visiting, because the cabin—he is my sanctuary.