Imposter all my life
Wandered round everywhere
Imposter all my life
Someday, I’m gonna get there.
Man, I can’t wait. I’m so excited I can already hear it.
Idohear it.
Iamhearing it.
I take a step toward the stage, then another, then another, until I’m close enough to see the face of the person singing, even though there’s only one person on the entire planet it can be.
Andrew.
Andrew is singing.
Andrew is singing my fucking song.
48Amelia Blue
Tonight, Edward doesn’t show up at my door, and I don’t flash a light at his. I’m not sure we’re still on speaking terms. I suppose it doesn’t matter. After I leave this place, I’ll surely never see him again.
I slip through my bedroom’s sliding glass door and make my way along the path between the cottages, toward the gravel driveway. For the first time, I think how absurd it is to call these cottages. They’re practically mansions.
According to the weather app on my phone, it’s supposed to snow tonight. The sky is violet, nearly as bright as daytime.
I point my flashlight at my feet, keeping my gaze trained on the beam of light, counting each step, each heartbeat, each breath. My hands are so hot that I slide off my fingerless gloves. I wipe my palms on my jeans, then tighten my grip on my phone. There’s an electric buzz in the atmosphere, the air itself anticipating snow. For a few steps, all I hear is the crunch of pebbles and leaves beneath my feet, but then there’s the sound of someone shouting and the brightness of headlights as a car pulls into the driveway.
“Here!” someone shouts, and at once there are hands on me, gripping me from behind. He—I don’t know who it is, but it feels like ahe—holds me tight, like he’d handcuff me if he could.
“I found her!” the man holding me announces, his shout so loud in my ear that I flinch.
I struggle to shove off the tight grip around my upper arms. A bright light flares in my eyes as someone holding an enormous flashlight comes running toward us.
“Amelia!” I recognize Dr. Mackenzie’s voice. She lowers the light. She’s wearing a puffy jacket and thick gloves, her voice muffled by the scarf wrapped tightly around her face. She tells the person holding me to let go.He steps away and I see that it’s Maurice, my chef. In the morning, there will be bruises where he gripped me.
“What are you doing outside in the cold?” she asks.
“What do you care?” I answer, knowing I sound like an angsty teenager. “You’re sending me home.” I reach into my pocket to pull out a cigarette and light it. “Anyway, I’m just having a smoke.”
“Have you seen anyone out here?” Dr. Mackenzie sounds frantic.
I’m taken aback. I’d been expecting my former doctor to admonish me for smoking, another bad habit she had no chance to rectify.
“Tall,” Dr. Mackenzie adds. “Blond hair.”
I recall the girl who crashed into me on the path between our cabins, the one with the bleach-blond bob and the heavily rimmed eyes.
“You mean the patient from the noisy cottage?”
Dr. Mackenzie doesn’t ask me to refer to her as aguestrather than apatient. Instead, she explains, “She’s missing. No one’s seen her on the property since before dinner.”
“I haven’t seen anyone,” I admit, and Dr. Mackenzie nods, gesturing for Maurice to resume the search. She doesn’t tell me to go back to my cottage. Perhaps in an emergency like this, there’s no time for that sort of precaution. Or perhaps, now that I’m not a paying customer, my doctor and her colleagues wouldn’t hunt for me if I went missing.
The woods fill with the sound of others calling the missing woman’s name. Dr. Mackenzie hesitates before adding her voice to the chorus, as though some part of her still thinks she can protect the other patient’s anonymity.
