Now You See Her (22 page)

“Funny,” I said.

“What?” Dr. Lopez asked.

“Nothing. Just funny,” I said. Some things you get to keep to yourself. Thank heavens there are no security cameras in your mind.

It took me a while to admit it, but Dr. Lopez turned out to be a pretty good person. Still, the way she explained a borderline personality, when she really got into it, sounded pretty much to me like anyone else. How I feel and act toward other people, she told me, is up to me. I don’t really need to believe psycho bull. I just have to walk the walk. I’m going to do that.

Dr. Lopez said one clue to how I am is that I don’t care enough about other people’s feelings. I lack compas- sion. She asked me why I would ask my grandmother to make mittens for Logan when she had arthritis. Well, I told her, I didn’t know how to knit!

“But you’re not the center of the universe, Bernadette,” she said. “The usual thing would be for you to think of her possible discomfort first, and your need for the mittens second.” That exasperated me for a long time. It was like for a psychologist, she had trouble con- necting the dots. She asked me dumb question after dumb question. She asked me why I don’t plan Christmas presents for my family. I still don’t get that. I don’t have a job. I don’t have any money. Like, what does she expect me to do? Make cards with crayons that say “I Love Mommy”? I’m seventeen now, after all. But after she brought it up, I took money out of my bank account, with my father’s permission, and I sent all three of them gift certificates to Techno World last Christmas, so they could buy themselves CDs or movies. And they came here to spend the weekend with me, and brought me a computer, with all this software like games and encyclo- pedias because we can’t use the Internet in here—and new running shoes and a bunch of books and a down comforter. I liked all the stuff, but Dr. Lopez said that a girl with “more feelings” would show how grateful she

was for all the things they gave me. She says I need to go out of my way to give more than I take.

I didn’t “take” anything, so far as I could see. If some- one gives you a down comforter, are you supposed to get all choked up? Are you supposed to give it back? My running shoes were totally worn out.

These “extra feelings” she talks about I didn’t get. And I still don’t entirely. I didn’t know how people get “more feelings.” Dr. Lopez said, “Take your brother, Carter. The problem with his knee. That’s a good case of what I mean.”

Carter was this big soccer star, but then he ripped out his knee last year and that was the end.

My mother called and said he was totally devastated. And I said it was lousy, really too bad. But that wasn’t enough.

Dr. Lopez got me to make a project of caring about Carter’s disappointment, even though it was
Carter
who wasn’t getting an athletic scholarship to Boston University, not me. She said if I was brought up to know that I wasn’t completely the center of the universe—I found her repeating that over and over kind of insulting at first—I would very naturally “empathize” with my own brother’s disappointment. After all, I’ve had losses in my life, too. Big-time. More than a knee surgery.

So, my assignment was to write to Carter and call

him. And, the thing was, he really appreciated it.

He wrote me a letter that I did find sad. He said this was the most attention I’d ever paid to him and that it was really nice of me. He’s going to major in business or law now. He’s going to be a sports agent, he says. I call him on the phone now. I make a point of it once a month. I have to tell you, it’s okay. Carter’s actually a pretty nice person. He’s funny, and he has a weird out- look on life, which I like.

I never even knew him. All those years.

It’s not like I’m all crazy about him. But I’m getting to know him, and I have to admit he’s more like me than anyone else is, since we have the same parents. Which is a good thing. Dr. Lopez was right that caring gets people to do nice things for you. People like you more for car- ing than they like you if they just admire you. I think I need that right now. Plus if you have a brother or sister, you can compare notes on how strange your parents are. And my parents are definitely strange, especially now that they have to straight-up cope with a daughter who’s a certifiable nutso.

My parents were pretty heavily into what
might
be, instead of what really was. It’s tempting to let them pre- tend I’m at a prep school. But I have to keep a tight hold on fantasies and make sure that they don’t get mixed up

in my mind with reality.

I probably did do that. I don’t do that now.

The reality is, even though I’m a
patient
at Taylor Hill, I’m also a senior now, and a student who got a 1450 on her SATs. I got accepted by the University of Michigan and by Northwestern. I was pretty stupid when I was an actor. But since I had nothing else to do at Taylor Hill, I started hitting the books. And this memory of mine turned out to be very, very useful. I realized that it could be put to other uses than learning song lyrics and monologues.

The SAT score is not a “grandiose fantasy,” by the way. Not like thinking I was chosen to play Juliet.

I still have crying jags when the Tony Awards or the Academy Awards are on. But I know I can’t go there in my mind. I really shouldn’t watch them. It’s like an alco- holic going to bartending school.

According to Dr. Lopez, I still have a ways to go, and I’ll always be a little like I was. People like me don’t “get better.” They don’t have pills for me. But I can “recog- nize” how I am. I can understand why, like, my parents didn’t do me any favors paying too much attention to me for having talent. It taught me to respond to people in ways that weren’t normal. I get that now. Dr. Lopez taught me that too much attention is just as bad for a child as too little.

And she totally nixed even the idea of me going to college in Michigan. Dr. Lopez said that going someplace where I might be tempted to relive that wasn’t healthy.

If I go, on deferred acceptance in a year, she said I need to go to Northwestern.

The University of Michigan is too close to where the abduction happened. Okay, fine! I’m not supposed to describe it that way, even to myself. It didn’t “happen.” I did it! I’ll always be the girl who did that. Fine. It pisses me off that this has to be the first thing anyone ever knows about me. I’ll, like, probably never be famous for anything the way I was for disappearing myself. That was
two years
ago. But okay! That’s how it has to be, or I’m going to be living in a room with bars on the windows for the rest of my life, which I don’t plan to do, please.

The very reasons I
wanted
to go to college in Michigan would make it “toxic” for me, according to Lopez.

When she said that, I wouldn’t speak to her for a week. I just sat and stared at her in my sessions, and she sat and stared back. She’s a pretty tough nut. But so am

I. I knew what she wanted me to say. Then, okay, finally, I did. I said, “It’s too close to where I faked my abduc- tion. I wouldn’t be safe mentally.” And at last, she gave me that big, pretty smile and a pat on the arm.

She said, “Good job, kiddo.” I might be like a dog performing for liver snacks, but her smiles meant a lot to

me then. And they still do. They keep me going. They keep me from slipping back. They reassure me that there’s a future out there for me, that I have brains and other talents. He’s on TV now, by the way. Logan Rose. In the show
Guilty Conscience
, the one about this guy who’s a medium who can tell if someone has committed a crime, just by being in the same room as that person. I watched it once. I was specifically not supposed to, but how could I not do it? The writing is godawful, and there’s always one scene where Logan has to come out in a wife-beater, even though there’s absolutely no plot reason at all for him not to have a shirt on. I’ll bet he makes a crapload of money; and I know girls, even girls here, who have posters of him in this idiot cowboy hat and boots he wears because the show takes place in New Mexico. He supposedly got, like, his powers because of something that came down from the sky, a little shiny pebble or something he picked up when he was a baby. You know,

like Roswell, the alien crash place, in New Mexico.

So subtle.

I’m not supposed to think of things in terms of “plot.” I’m supposed to think in terms of stories that are fac-

tual, because what I want to be now is a reporter.

I think.

I mean, it seems interesting enough.

That’s how I rationalize that I still have my clippings.

I know it’s not the real reason. But I lay the plastic envelopes with the clippings from all the newspapers and the
People
magazine, which had pictures of me in the roles I played when I was a child, under shelf paper in my drawer. I’ve been moved to a dorm where they don’t need security cameras, because I’m not a risk to myself. So I can have a little privacy. And I don’t think it’s going to put me over the edge to have my clippings. Do you?

Plus, I wasn’t really ever a risk to myself.

Not like Suzette. She got out last year, but she’s back now for a return engagement. She’s got so many cuts she looks like you could pull on her arm and her skin would open, like a window blind. I am glad that I’m not Suzette. She used to fascinate me a little, like a ghost or a witch would entice and scare you all at once, you know? But now, I just feel . . . I feel sorry for her! I feel sorry for Suzette.

Anyway, why I think I might want to be a reporter is that now when I look at those stories, I don’t just think about me, but about how the people who wrote them got to ask everyone about all their secrets, to see things that regular people don’t get to see. If I become a reporter, I’ll be in on things. I’ll get to go to crime scenes, which I find semi-interesting. It’s a kind of power, you know? I need to feel some power. I have lived “in a place” (as Dr. Lopez would say, and she doesn’t mean a city or

a town) where somebody else got to say what I ate, where I slept, what I did, even what I said. And I’d like to live in a place where I make the decisions. I know reporters have bosses who tell them what to write about, but they don’t tell them exactly how to write it, the exact words to use.

That was the lousy part of being an actor. I never got a chance to be anyone but someone else. I never got a chance to say words that were my own.

The good part was, oh God, the good part was the applause. The total focus on me. The adoration. Being noticed in a way no ordinary person ever is. How do you live without that, I asked Dr. Lopez just last week? How do you live without that if you’ve had it? What can ever take its place?

She sat there for a long time. Then she got up and came over and put her arms around me, and she’s not the huggy type. She sighed, and it was the one time that she was like a mother-type person, even though she’s not really old enough to be my mother. She hugged me tight. She said, “The applause had to come from inside you.

That’s how it is for most of us, for ninety-nine percent of the world. Someday, Bernadette, no one will have to tell you when you’ve done something well, because you’ll hear the applause inside.”

About the Author
‌

is the
New York Times
bestselling author of
THE BREAKDOWN LANE
,
TWELVE TIMES BLESSED
, and
THE

DEEP END OF THE OCEAN
, which was also the very first book picked by Oprah for her book club. In addition she has several children’s books to her credit:
BABY BAT
’
S LULLABY
;
STARRING PRIMA!
;
READY
,
SET
,
SCHOOL!
; and
ROSALIE
,
MY ROSALIE
.

Jackie lives outside Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband and eight children. You can visit her online at www.jacquelynmitchard.com.

Visit
www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Also
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ALL WE
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NOW OF HEAVEN
B
A
B
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B
AT
’
S LULLA
B
Y REA
D
Y
,
SET
,
SCHOOL!

ROSALIE
,
MY ROSALIE

STARRIN
G P
RIMA!

Credits
‌

Typography by Larissa Lawrynenko

Cover art © 2007 by Luca Zampedri/Nonstock/Jupiterimages Cover design by Hilary Zarycky

Copyright
‌

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

NOW YOU SEE HER. Text copyright © 2007 by Jacquelyn Mitchard. All rights reserved under International and Pan- American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader January 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-183629-9

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