Page 9 of Child of Mine

“You still with me?” Jess asks.

I shake my head to clear it. “Sorry, I get lost inside my head sometimes.”

With an easy laugh, she says, “Tell me about it.”

Swallowing past the panic that rises whenever I crack open the door I slammed shut after I had Lilah—the only way I could figure out how to protect her from my past—I make myself say, “I’ve always been fascinated by how other people’s brains work. Wondering if anyone’s is at all like mine.”

“Me too. It’s one of the things I love about acting,” she says. “Like you get to try out being in a different brain. A different set of thought patterns, different emotional habits.”

“True,” I agree, deciding to just jump in the deep end. “So, when I was on the soap, I was a bit of a party girl.”

Ha! That’s putting it mildly,the party girl herself says.

“Surrounded by hot guys, I can imagine,” Jess says.

“Yep. That and a lot of other temptations.”

You can’t tell her about the addictions,the good girl warns.You’re not allowed.

She’s right, but I think I can skate over the details and still get Jess’s opinion. “I was also pretty much unsupervised after I hit sixteen, and I had a hard time figuring out what was right and what was wrong. At some point, it was like my conscience split in two.”

“Like an angel and devil in the old cartoons?”

“Kind of like that, yeah. One didn’t want me to do anything risky, and the other wanted to takeallthe risks. I ended up kind of reeling from one extreme to the other—staying out all night and then feeling bad about it and working really hard to be good.”

“That must’ve been a little crazy-making.” Jess’s voice is full of compassion.

Unlike the mom group, she’s not pressing me for sordid details, which makes me want to tell her more. “You could say that. At some point…”

In rehab,a voice sing-songs.

But she can’t say that,the other cuts in.

“I, uh, named them,” I confess.

“Oh, that’s an excellent idea,” Jess says. “I should name mine. What do you call them?”

“I call the virtuous one Izzy.”

“Like you when you were a teenager?” She nods slowly. “I can see that.”

“Yeah? It sounds kind of crazy when I say it out loud.”

“Uh-uh.” Eyes on the road, I catch a firm headshake in my peripheral vision. “I think my therapist would say it’s healthy. What about the other one? The naughty one.”

“She’s Quinn. I mean, half the people I partied with called me that anyway. It was easier not to correct them.”

“Wow. That’s perfect. So, your preadolescent self and the character you played for… how many years?”

“Nine.”

“That’s a long time to live in a character’s head.” She faces me, tucking her left leg under her. “You must’ve given her some sort of backstory, right? To motivate all that bad behavior?”

That’s right,Quinn sniffs.I’m not just a mean girl. I’m a risk taker. It’s good to take risks sometimes.

I took risks too,Izzy insists.

Quinn rolls her eyes.In gymnastics.

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