Page 35 of Won't Back Down

We’d never talked about any of this before. There’d always been a huge invisible Keep Out sign. I didn’t want to traumatize her any further, but since she was opening up a little, I had a few questions.

“What’s the last thing you remember from that night?”

“Playing in the surf with the dog. Then it’s a big blank until I woke up to you.”

“What about the storm rolling in? The party breaking up?”

Willa shook her head. “Nothing.”

I thought back, considering. “That was at least half an hour before I went to look for you.” What the hell had happened to her in that span?

“I broke your rule.”

“What?”

“You told me not to leave the beach without one of y’all.”

“You remember that?”

“Everything before is very clear. From you helping me sneak out, to all the ground rules you laid out.” She straightened to meet my gaze. “I wouldn’t have broken them without a good reason. I wouldn’t have gone into the water without a good reason. I just… don’t know what that was.”

I stroked the hair back from her face. “I believe you.”

The list of what teenaged Willa would have considered good reasons was remarkably short. I could only think of two. To help an animal in trouble. Or to help a friend. What if she’d gone into the water after Gwen? What if I’d managed to save Willa and let Gwen die? The thought of it made me physically ill.

Willa reached up to cup my cheek. “I’ve thought of it, too. It was a fucking miracle you managed to save me. If she was out there, there was absolutely no way you could have gotten to us both. And there’s no evidence she was there. It’s all pure conjecture because I can’t remember, and this is the kind of shit my brain throws out to torture me. So don’t you dare take that on, too. You saved my life. Period. You’re still saving it.”

I hoped that was true. And I hoped for her sake that someday she got answers that would vanquish the thought monsters.

With a twitch of her shoulders, she let her hand fall back to her lap. “Anyway, I don’t know how much of this they’ll get into with the petition. This is all my perception of what I went through, and no doubt they’ll have documented my unstable memory. There’s no one to corroborate. It’ll be my word against the professional opinions of the doctors there. They’ll have case notes. The fact that I left against medical advice. I’m not entirely sure how we combat that.”

“They won’t have anything current. They won’t have the truth. We will.” I cupped her cheek. Her eyes were full of remembered pain and fear and a whole host of emotions I couldn’t read. “No one is going to get to you. No one is ever going to make you go back to that place or anywhere like it. You will never have to face those people ever again.”

I’d do anything to make sure of it.

CHAPTER 17

WILLA

Isat in a patch of sunlight beside a window that opened onto what counted as a green space. A grassy patch with a few spindly trees. Bare of leaves this time of year, nothing disguised the anemic reach of their skeletal branches toward the swatch of open sky above. The trees hadn’t quite given up the fight for freedom. I couldn’t say the same for most of my companions.

They sat in corners or huddles or shuffled around the common room in the slippers that were as close as we came to real shoes. Everything in here was neutral—white or gray or beige. Lifeless. As if the place itself were sucking the will to live out of all of us.

I didn’t know how much longer I could stand this and stay me.

The familiar rattle of the medicine cart pulled my attention from the window. Step. Step. Rattle. Pause. Step. Step. Step. Rattle. Pause.

I kept my head down, hoping the orderly would pass me by. I didn’t want the pills that made me feel like a zombie. I’d begun hiding them in my cheek, weaning myself off, but I wasn’t sure I could pull that off in here.

Step. Step. Rattle. Pause.

“Time for meds, Wilhelmina.”

They never called me Willa here. That was my father’s doing. “That’s your name. I gave it to you.” As if by contributing half my DNA, he had a right to dictate who I was.

I curled in on myself, praying that turtling up would somehow protect me.

“Wilhelminaaaa.” The orderly’s sing-song voice seemed to echo in the abnormally quiet room. He shook the little paper cup full of pills.

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