Page 3 of My Infatuation with Isabella

I nod my head toward the kitchen. “C’mon, let’s go outside.”

Dana hops off the counter, and we walk through the kitchen and out the back door that leads down a set of stairs to a narrow alley outside. I sit down on the last step, and she sits beside me.

“What do you remember?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I woke up and mom and dad had already ordered breakfast and, um, there were flapjacks...and as I was about to sit down, I dropped dad’s orange juice all over my pajamas, so I went to the bathroom?”

She freezes, her breaths becoming shaky as her eyes glaze over. I keep wary eyes on her, watching her expression morph into panic and fear. I hear the same emotions in her voice when she speaks again.

“He...he locked me up in there.”

“No one locked you up,” I say, stroking her hand to remind her she’s safe. “The door jammed...and you couldn’t get out.”

That seems to settle her, and she nods. “I don’t...I don’t know how I got out. I don’t remember.”

“Dad called the hotel maintenance guy...He got there a little after me. By the time he got you out, you were hysterical.” I run a heavy hand down my face as the story gets harder to tell. “There was a screwdriver on the floor, and you...”

She clasps her hand over her mouth, shutting her eyes as a way of distancing herself. “Please don’t say I hurt him.”

“No, you didn’t hurt him, but I tried to get it out of your hand...and, uh...you sort of...got me in the arm.”

A look of absolute horror comes over her face. “I stabbed you?”

“It wasn’t bad,” I reassure her, lifting the sleeve of my T-shirt to show her the scar on my deltoid. “See? I’m fine. I just needed a few stitches.”

Dropping her head, her body slumps beside me, and I slide my arm around her shoulders to pull her in for a hug.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

“Don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault, yeah? You slip into this zone, and you don’t even know what you’re doin’.”

She groans. “I keep thinking that I’m getting better...”

“You are. That hasn’t happened in ages.”

Tears come without warning. She’s not just crying because she hurt me. She’s crying because she can’t remember any of it. It makes her feel out of control because chunks of her life are missing, and she can’t account for what she did during that time. I’ve been delaying having these conversations because I hate watching what it does to her. And the worst part of it is that she takes all the blame onto herself.

“I ruin everything,” she says after a long time. “I’m the worst person you could have in your life.”

“That’s not true.” I tighten my grip around her and kiss the top of her head. “You’re, like...the second worst. First place is reserved for Scott.”

“I agree. He’s awful.” With a deflated laugh, she pulls away. “So, Isabella thinks you just...left her there?”

“Yeah. Dad rushed me to the ER, and I didn’t have her number to call her. My phone was dead, so I called the hotel from dad’s phone, but...she had already checked out. I don’t know where she lives now, so I couldn’t track her down. Scott refused to give me her number because of some stupid pact they made.”

She lets out an exasperated snort. “You’re right. He deserves first place.”

“He does. Anyway, I had no idea how or where to find her, and the next time I saw her after that was a clusterfuck because we both ended up in the backseat of a police car.”

She goes quiet again. “She’s going to think I’m a lunatic if you tell her what really happened...and she won’t understand why I react like that unless you tell her thewholetruth about...what he did to me. If you just tell her I stabbed you with a screwdriver with no context, she’ll have this idea in her head that I’m some psycho before she even meets me. After what you told her in your last therapy session, all she’ll know about me is that I’m crazy and violent.”

If there’s one thing my sister actively avoids, it’s being labeled a psycho. She begged my parents to tell everyone that she was at boarding school because she didn’t want people to know that she was living at a psychiatric facility. She also doesn’t want people to know about her dissociative amnesia because she assumes that anyone who finds out these things about her will automatically slap thepsycholabel on her. No matter how many times we try to reassure her that she’s not crazy, and it’s not her fault, she’s so scared of being judged.

“Isabella won’t think you’re crazy,” I say, “but that’s exactly why we’re having this discussion. If you don’t want me to tell her, I won’t.”

“But then she’ll never understand why you just left her like that. I’m the reason you guys broke up the first time, too. You were with me. All your relationships have fallen apart because of me. I’m the reason you can’t be happy and?”

“Dana, listen to me. What happened between me and Isabella was not your fault. I was selfish, and I made stupid decisions because it was an overwhelming situation, andIdidn’t know how to handle it...so I just...I tapped out. I knew she’d ask questions about where I was, and I didn’t want to answer those questions, so I...avoided her. That was a stupid decision. I needed time to get my head right, and I thought she’d understand, but she didn’t. And I don’t know how I could’ve expected that when I hid so much from her. There’s no one to blame except me, so don’t think for one second that any of this is your fault. I suck at relationships because ofme, because of whoIam. I was so desperate to have something normal, and I tried to hold on to what we had so tight that...I ended up suffocating it.”

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