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Peering more closely at the pictures, I search the young Alice’s face and body. There’s a shadow on her left elbow that seems to match the pigmented maze Alison and I share. I study the same spot on the elderly Alice, but there’s no birthmark.
“That’s it!” I point to the pictures. “There and there. Alice had a birthmark that matches mine and Alison’s when she was a kid, but she lost it as an old woman.”
Jeb holds both pictures up to the light. “Could be the photo was retouched.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
Jeb reaches for the energy bar on the seat beside me, tears the wrapping, and curls my fingers around it—unspoken insistence that I eat. “Are there any answers in the book?”
Chewing a bite of granola, I flip through page after page. I trace a finger over Alison’s blurred notes in the margins while Jeb holds the flashlight. “There might’ve been, if these were legible.” I reach the end, past the sketches and final pages, and am just about to put it away when Jeb tugs it out of my grasp.
“Look here.”
If he hadn’t pointed it out, I wouldn’t have noticed the blank page bent in half and glued to form a pocket against the inside of the back cover. I dig out a folded piece of paper. It’s old, yellow, and wrinkled.
The word Deathspeak is scribbled across the back, followed by a trail of crooked question marks, then a handwritten definition. Deathspeak: the language of the dying. One can only speak it to the one who was the cause of one’s ill fate. It is the final recompense, to appoint a task that the offender must either carry out or die himself.
Jeb and I look at each other. I unfold the paper so we can see what’s written inside. I know after the first sentence that it’s something I wish I’d never laid eyes on. Yet I can’t look away …
November 14, 1934: On the date of mental evaluation, Alice Liddell Hargreaves is an eighty-two-year-old woman of petite height who was brought in by concerned family members. According to relatives, her mental state began deteriorating months ago, when she awoke one morning with no recognition of her whereabouts and only a vague sense of her identity.
The psychologist conducting the interviews notes that the patient is preoccupied with i
Patient is not oriented in physicality or place, with a marked impairment of time, inclined to melancholy dissertations over the loss of the seventy-five years she claims to have been locked in a birdcage in “Wonderland,” having been “seduced by a statue boy at the age of seven to dive into a rabbit hole.”
The examining psychologist attributes this to a grandiose delusion originating from a childhood given to vivid imaginings that were fed by the Liddell family’s close friend Charles Dodgson, a.k.a. Lewis Carroll. Patient has fallen back on these fantasies to account for her selective memory loss.
Inasmuch as the patient exhibits the following symptoms: (1) grandiose delusions and selective amnesia, (2) marked diminished interest or pleasure in social interactions unless socializing with bugs or plants, (3) absence of appetite; prefers only fruit and desserts and refuses to ingest nutrition unless drink is served in a thimble and food on a birdcage tray—she is diagnosed as suffering from Mania and Schizophrenia.
Recommended treatment: electroshock twice daily—natural voltage administered by applying an electric eel to the head. Supplement with psychiatric counsel until all delusional lapses are contained, memory is reinstated, and mood of the patient is elevated.
I shove the report at Jeb.
He watches me. “Are you okay?”
How do I answer that? My great-great-great-grandmother tripped so far into her psychosis that she couldn’t remember her past or present. The thimble and birdcage-tray idiosyncrasies are too close to Alison’s teacup fetish. The consistency disturbs me.
Could something else be going on … not a delusion but a manipulation? Is that why Alison is so into the Alice charade? Whatever it is, it’s obvious that she’s headed for the same fate as my other ancestors.
“Do you see why I can’t let her go through with those treatments?” I point to the paper. “The date of Alice’s death. She died just two days after the report. The shock treatments must have killed her!”
I yank my dreadlocks out—ignoring the rip at the roots of my hair—and fling them into the ocean. I’m done fighting my resemblance to Alison. Since we’re teammates in this bizarre game, we might as well look the part.
Jeb pulls me off the seat to sit me beside him, but the boat rocks, and I end up falling into his lap. We both freeze. When I start to ease off his legs, he holds me there. My heart hammers; I can’t deny how amazing it feels to be so close to him. Ignoring the alarms going off inside me, I give in and press my cheek to the soft knit of his tank, my arms folded between us. He strokes my hair as I snuggle beneath his chin, legs curled in the fetal position.
“I’m scared,” I whisper. For more reasons than I can say.
“You have every right to be,” he answers softly. “But we’re going to get back home. We’re going to tell your dad everything. With both of our accounts and this lab report, he has to believe.”
“No. This only proves that Alice was as crazy as he thinks Alison is. In the end, she didn’t even remember getting married and having a family. Even with the living evidence of children and grandchildren around her, she still didn’t remember.”
Jeb is silent.
“I don’t want to end up in a straitjacket,” I say, holding back a sob. “With every memory I’ve made lost … or so meaningless it could belong to someone else.”
Jeb’s arms tense around me. “That’s not in your future, Alyssa Victoria Gardner.” He’s never called me by my full name. He says it like my dad would, loading power into every syllable, which is exactly what I need.
“What, then?” I ask, hungry for any crumb he can spare.
“You’re going to be a famous artist.” His voice is deep velvet—soothing and sure. “You’ll live in one of those artsy, upscale apartments in Paris with your rich husband. Oh, who just happens to be a world-renowned exterminator. How’s that for a twist of fate? You won’t even have to catch your own bugs anymore. That’ll give you more time to spend with your five brilliant kids. And I’ll come visit every summer. Show up on the doorstep with a bottle of Texas barbecue sauce and a French baguette. I’ll be weird Uncle Jeb.”
Uncle Jeb? I like the idea of him always being in my life. But as I stare at his ribbed tank and envision those circular ridges on his chest—a tragic dot-to-dot of each time he accidentally spilled a drink or left a toy out for his dad to trip over—I’m floored by how fast old feelings sweep in. Though fabric hides the scars, I know every one by heart. I’ve seen them countless times when we’ve gone swimming together or worked in his garage. I dreamed about them in sixth grade, about how it would feel to trace each one with my fingertip.
Right now, I’m wondering the same thing. How it might feel to heal his wounds with my touch.
“Not an exterminator,” I blurt against the pulse pounding in my neck.
“Huh?”
I pause. “I’m going to fall in love with an artist. And we’ll have two kids and live in the country. A quiet life, so we can hear our muses and answer when they call.”
Tipping up my chin to meet his gaze, he gives me a tender, starlit smile—one that melts my insides. “I like your version better.”
His mouth is so close to mine, his breath warm, sugary, and tempting, but thoughts of Taelor and London resurface. I can’t let my heart get stolen by a guy who’s hot for another girl, or be the kind of person who steals another girl’s guy. I’ve already stolen money from Taelor and I’ve let this go far enough. I slip off his lap, my net skirts scraping his tuxedo pants.