That broke the ice, and I laughed a little. “Okay, so, like, where do I start?”
“Anywhere you want.”
So I did. I told him about my parents’ divorce; my breakup with Tanner; how he’d hooked up with my best friend; how we’d moved out here to live with my domineering grandmother, who decided to plan my entire future; about going to a brand-new school for my junior year and how I hadn’t made a single friend until yesterday when the hottest guy I’d ever laid eyes on asked me to hang out, and at the end of a short drive with him I’d had a full-on, completely humiliating panic attack and blacked out.
“Whoa,” Dr. White said, that pen still sliding up and down and over his knuckles. “That’s all kind of intense.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Okay, so is there anything else that’s been happening? Your mom said that you’ve been having a recurring nightmare. Want to tell me about that?”
I’d purposely left out the dream—and a few of the other really freaky details—because, again, I didn’t want to appear too cray-cray on the first visit. But it felt good to talk about all the other stuff, so maybe I could tell him just about the one dream, and leave out the other super-freaky nightmare I’d had during that nap I’d taken before heading to the salon. I figured revealing one glimpse into my clearly disturbed subconscious per session was probably best.
As I told Dr. White every detail of the dream where I was in the field searching for the boy, he stopped twirling his pen and sat forward slightly. He seemed intrigued.
“How long have you had this dream, Lily?”
“Since I can remember.”
His brow furrowed. “How old would you say you were the first time you had it?”
“I think I was, like, four.”
Dr. White sat back in his chair again and tapped on the armrest. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“Huh,” he said.
“What?” I asked, afraid I’d just revealed that I was someone who should be sent off to the asylum.
“It’s quite unusual for a four-year-old to have such a vivid dream where they are represented as an adult.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, the dream has never changed…until two nights ago, actually. It did change a little.”
“How so?”
“Well, instead of it starting out in the field, it started out in my high school.”
“Really?” he said, his brow lifting. “Where in your high school?”
“In a hallway, but I couldn’t find the exit. Every time I turned a corner I ended up in another section of the school that I didn’t know well enough to find my way out, but eventually, I found the exit and, when I ran outside, the field was totally on fire.”
“I see,” he said, jotting another note. “Have you ever noticed that this dream occurs more often during certain times of the year?”
“I almost always have it in the spring,” I said. “Well, except for this time. This is the first time it’s come up in the fall, but usually, it’s every spring in, like, late April or early May.”
Dr. White pursed his lips.
“That’s interesting,” he said. He slowly made a long note on his pad, and then he inhaled deeply, as if gathering his thoughts. “It’s quite remarkable, really. The fact that the dream has been occurring for all of these years, with such consistent regularity, and without significant changes to the events within the heart of it is intriguing. The subconscious speaks through images, and it’s most vocal when we’re asleep, so dreams are like a visual dialogue of what’s going on in our minds. The thing that is absolutely fascinating to me is that you began having the dream when you were four. By all rights, even if your subconscious was capable of creating such a complex dream with so many adult themes at that time, it should have evolved over the years, morphed into something else.”
“So what does that mean?” I asked him.
“Well,” he said, sitting forward and setting aside his legal pad and pen to clasp his hands in front of him, “normally, I’d recommend seeing you for several sessions to help you work through the most troubling symbols in the dream, and by talking them through, help you figure out what they mean, and make peace with your subconscious, so to speak, which, hopefully, would be how we’d be able to get them to stop. But all I need to do is take one look at you to see that you’re exhausted to the point that you’re having panic attacks, and otherwise you’re having a hard time functioning. I think a more aggressive approach might be in order.”
I frowned and shook my head. I was afraid he’d say something like that. “I don’t want to take any drugs,” I told him. I’d said as much to my mom, too.
He smiled. “I wasn’t going to suggest a prescription, Lily. Not unless your mom pushed for it.”
That surprised me. “Then what?”
“I’d like to try hypnotherapy.”
“Hypnotherapy?” I repeated. “What? Like, you’re getting sleeeeeeepy?”
Dr. White offered me a sideways smile. “Not quite like that, but you’re close. It could be very effective in your case, because through hypnotherapy we would be able to speak directly to your subconscious and find out what, exactly, it was trying to tell us.”
It sounded creepy. I shifted in my chair, envisioning Dr. White dangling a pocket watch in front of me.
“Your mother would be present, of course,” he told me, as if reading my mind.
That helped, but still it sounded weird. “I’m not gonna cluck like a chicken every time a bell rings, will I?” I’d seen a YouTube clip of a Vegas act where a professional hypnotist made some poor guy from the audience do that for nearly ten minutes.
“No,” Dr. White said with a smile, but I got the feeling he’d been asked that before. “I promise not to make you do or say anything embarrassing. We’re just going to speak directly to your subconscious by bypassing your more dominant conscious mind. That’s all hypnosis does—it takes a shortcut around the conscious mind to find out what’s truly at play here.”
“When would we do it?”
“Given the fact that you’re not sleeping and you’d prefer not to take a sleep aid, I’d suggest right now.”
“Now?”
“I have time if you do.”
“Can my mom really come in?”
Dr. White got up and crossed the room. He opened the door and called to Mom. A minute later he was explaining what was going to happen next. She seemed uncertain.
“Will this really work?” she asked him.
“It might,” he said. “At the very least it’s worth a try.”
Mom looked at me. “You really want to do this?”
“If it’ll get rid of the nightmare and let me sleep?” I said. “Let’s do it.”
She smiled, but she still looked worried. Turning back to Dr. White, she said, “Okay, then.”
Dr. White explained how the whole hypnotizing thing would work. I’ll admit I was really skeptical. I mean, I wasn’t even sure that hypnosis was a real thing.
Dr. White also explained that he would record the session on his laptop so I could have it as a reference should the dream continue to interrupt my sleep.
“We’ll attempt to re-create the dream in your hypnotic state, and once we do that we’ll alter it so that it’ll become something pleasant, rather than a thing that upsets you to the point of waking you up,” he said.
“Okay.” I rubbed my palms against my jeans. I was anxious to get started, but also nervous.
Dr. White told me to close my eyes and take some deep breaths. Mom sat in a chair behind me, and I felt better for her presence. I listened to Dr. White as he talked me through creating a space in my mind where I was very relaxed. He told me what the room would look like, where to put the furniture, and then he had me take a seat in the room I’d created in my mind. It was an odd experience because the longer I listened to his soothing, calm voice, the easier it was to imagine myself in this room. By the time I’d taken a seat in the imaginary chair, I could
practically feel its warmth and comfort. I felt myself closing my eyes and starting to drift. There was a slightly dizzying sensation, and then I was out like a light.
I woke up to someone gently shaking my shoulder.
“Lily?” Dr. White said.
Blinking, I sat up with a start. “Oh!” I exclaimed. “God, I’m sorry! I think I fell asleep!”
Dr. White stood up straight from his bent over position. He looked…concerned. “How do you feel?”
I blinked again. “Uh…fine. Sorry,” I apologized again, rubbing my eyes. “I was just so tired….I didn’t mean to ruin it.” I twisted a little in my chair and saw Mom sitting behind me. Her expression made me do a double take. She looked shaken and upset.
“What?” I asked her. “Mom, what’s the matter?”
Instead of answering me, she got up, moved her seat next to me, and took up my hand to kiss it and squeeze it tight. Something was off, and my pulse ticked up.
“What happened?” I demanded.
Dr. White took a seat in his chair. “Lily, what do you remember from being hypnotized?”
I frowned. “What do I remember from being hypnotized? I wasn’t,” I told him. “I mean, I fell asleep, right?”
“What was the last thing you remember?” he pressed.
I sighed, frustrated. Mom squeezed my hand again, and it rattled me that both of them were acting so weird.
“I…I remember sitting in that chair you told me to put in the room we built in my mind, and then I laid my head back and closed my eyes like you told me, and then I fell asleep.”
Dr. White’s gaze shifted to my mom, and I didn’t like the pensive expression he wore.
“Lily,” he said next, and I thought his speech sounded a little too careful, like he was speaking to someone frightened or crazy, “do you know who Amber Greeley is?”
That took me by surprise. “Amber Greeley?” I said.
For just a moment my mind went blank, and I felt goose pimples line my arms. I knew full well who Amber Greeley was, but why did Dr. White want to know if I knew about her? “She’s that girl who killed her boyfriend thirty years ago.”
Mom’s hand jerked slightly. “How do you know that?”
Before I could answer, Dr. White said, “Lily, is that all you know about Amber?”
My brow furrowed as I looked back and forth between Mom and Dr. White. Something was going on, but they weren’t telling me. It was creepy and unnerving.
“Why are you asking me about her?” I demanded.
“I’ll tell you,” he said. “But first, please answer my question. It’s important.”
I sighed. “Well, I read an article about the boy she killed, and it mentioned that she was his girlfriend and she’d killed him the night of their senior prom, and then she committed suicide.” I didn’t tell Dr. White about getting my hair done by Gina, who was Amber’s mom, because I still didn’t know why he was asking me about her.
He studied me for several seconds before he said, “And that’s all you know about her?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, exasperated. “Why?”
Dr. White wiped his brow. I noticed that he’d broken out into a slight sweat, and although he tried to cover it, I swear he, too, looked rattled. “Do you have a birthmark, Lily?”
I turned to Mom again. Her eyes were big round Os, and she stared at Dr. White in a way that seemed to ask him how he knew.
“Yes,” I said as she nodded.
“Where?” he asked.
I put my hand over my sternum. My shirt covered the blemish, but I knew exactly where it was under my fingertips. “Here.”
Dr. White nodded. “What scares you the most?” he asked me next.
I was starting to get really impatient with him. What the hell was going on? “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Please. Indulge me, Lily,” he said.
I sighed again. I was getting really freaked out. “What scares me?”
“Yes. What’re you afraid of?”
I shrugged. “Well, ever since I was a little kid I’ve been really afraid of knives.”
Dr. White sat back in his chair, and his gaze went to Mom. Her eyes welled up, and tears began to spill over down her cheeks as she nodded her head. “When she was little she used to hide them,” she said in a choked whisper. “We’d find them under the sofa, outside hidden in the dirt, behind the bookcase. It was the oddest thing, because she didn’t like us using them and she couldn’t be in the same room with us when we did.”
I half smiled at the memory. I’d been a little weird when I was a kid. But then I focused on Mom’s expression, and how frightened she seemed. “Please tell me what’s going on.”
“You fell into a deep hypnotic state, Lily,” Dr. White said. “And when you did, you seem to have divorced yourself from being Lily Bennett and you became Amber Greeley.”
My mouth fell open. “I became Amber Greeley?” I repeated. “What does that even mean?”
Dr. White moved to the side of his desk and tapped at the computer to bring up the screen. There was a frozen image of me there, and I remembered that he said he was going to record the hypnosis session.
“I think the only way to tell you what happened is to show you.”
I BLINKED IN THE DIM LIGHT, utterly shocked at the change to my surroundings. A moment before, I’d been in my bedroom, and now, here I was, sitting in a chair in a foreign room in front of a stranger.
“Do you know where you are?” he asked me.
“No,” I said, more than a little frightened. And then I remembered, and my hand flew to my chest. There was a slight burning feeling there where the knife had struck me, but nothing like it’d been a moment before.
“Lily, you’re breathing a little too hard. Try to slow it down for me,” the man said, his voice even and calm, as if attempting to soothe me.
It took me a moment to realize he was speaking to me and there was something very familiar about his voice. I squinted at him. He looked a great deal like our guidance counselor, Mr. White, but much older.
“Who are you, and where am I?”
“I’m Dr. White,” he said patiently. “And this is my office.”
“Dr. White?” I repeated. “Are you any relation to Mr. White? The counselor at Chamberlain High?”
Dr. White pulled his head back, as if I’d shocked him. “How do you know about that?”
“About Mr. White?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Because he’s my counselor at school. I just talked to him, actually.”
Dr. White studied me; he seemed somewhat startled. “What did you and Mr. White talk about, Lily?”
I frowned. “My name is Amber,” I told him, so confused by all this. “Am I in a hospital?”
I looked down at myself and realized that I was in strange clothes. I was wearing light-mint–colored jeans that were entirely too tight and sitting too low, and the silk blouse I was wearing had an odd neckline. Then I turned my attention to the room I was sitting in, which was nice enough, but there was something off about the style. It seemed a little futuristic for my taste. And then I noticed a woman sitting quietly behind me. She smiled when I took her in. Her appearance startled me, too, but mostly because she wore her hair so flat, almost like something out of the seventies. I had the sudden urge to tell her to go see Momma for a better, more flattering haircut.
“Hello,” I said to her.
“Hi, honey,” she replied. “Focus on Dr. White, okay?”
I turned back to the doctor only to see that he now looked…stricken. “What?” I asked him.
“What…What did you say your name was?”
“Amber,” I reminded him. “Amber Greeley.” He sat back in his chair, his eyes wide, but there was something even more unsettling there…disbelief? “That’s my name,” I insisted. Why didn’t he believe me? I looked toward his desk, but all I saw was some futuristic-looking metal plate with a white apple on it, that looked like the Apple lo
go on my dad’s computer, but absent the rainbow of colors. Clipped to the top was a round ball with a black lens in the middle. At first I thought it resembled a camera, but it was entirely too small. “Don’t you have my chart or something?”
Dr. White cleared his throat and said, “Yes, I’m sorry. I misspoke. Amber, can you tell me today’s date?”
It came to me immediately. “May twenty-seventh.”
“And the year?”
“Nineteen eighty-seven.”
“And your address?”
“One-seven-one Beverly.”
“Tell me about yourself,” he said next.
I took a deep breath; where to start? “Well, I’m an only child, and my parents are really cool, except my dad can be a little goofy sometimes. He likes to try and square dance with my mom in public places. It’s so embarrassing.”
Dr. White sat forward, and put his elbows on the desk. “That would be embarrassing,” he said. “What else?”
“Um…I’m a senior,” I said, trying to gather my thoughts. For some reason my mind felt a little foggy, as if I’d just woken up and was trying to recall the details of my dream, but couldn’t. “I have an amazing boyfriend, and two best friends.”
“What’re their names?”
“Spence is my boyfriend—well, actually, Ben is his first name and Spencer is his last name, but everyone calls him Spence. And Britta and Sara are my best friends.”
Dr. White shook his head ever so slightly. It seemed as if he didn’t quite believe me. “What’s Britta’s last name?” he asked.
I thought it a weird question, but I answered him anyway. “Cummings,” I said. “But we usually call her Britt.”
“You mentioned a Mr. White from your high school, Amber—”
“Do you know him?” I asked him again.
“I do,” he said.
“I knew it,” I told him. “You look a lot like him. Is he your son?”
Dr. White nodded. “He’s the one who referred you to me,” he said. I blinked. I didn’t remember Mr. White telling me he was sending me to a doctor. “Mr. White told me that he also worked with one of your friends. Do you remember?”