But I’m right here, she points out. You could just ask me.
You’re not real. You’re just a part of me. This is the real Laurel. What if she doesn’t match . . . you?
Then don’t read it, Laurel-in-my-head suggests, and say you did.
Dr. Hancock will ask me questions about the specifics. He’ll test me on them. And besides, part of me is very, very curious—
I touch the first page.
Pretend it’s a bit of archival record you’re evaluating, Laurel suggests.
I turn the first page and note the date: June 11, the first day of our group. Like me, Laurel had gone home and begun the journal that Esta had asked us to write. From the first line I learn that Stan made her go just as Peter had made me. Also that the alternative for Laurel had been going back to a mental hospital, something I hadn’t known. Poor Laurel. I can understand how scared she’d been to end up someplace like here. And then I realize that Laurel must have been in multiple hospitals, and all of that is part of my record now. No wonder Dr. Hancock is so ready to see me as a mental case; I have the history of one.
I read on and laugh at Laurel’s name for Esta: Estrogena. But then I find her name for me. Doormat Daphne.
I’d only just met you, Laurel-in-my-head wheedles. And you’ve got to admit, you were acting like a wuss, letting Peter push you around. And I was kind of a bitch. I’m even mean to Kate Spade!
She’s right—I’m right—I can’t fault Laurel for thinking I was a doormat. Surely she must have felt differently about me as we started spending time together. I turn to the second journal entry. She still calls me Doormat Daphne but at least she thought Esta’s shame-chant was as awful as I did. And though it still stings to read her say she thought her Chloë was prettier than mine—
What mother doesn’t think her child is the most beautiful?
—I am surprised and touched that she envied how I looked at my Chloe. Of course I looked at her with love! I loved her even before I knew I did! I can feel that tug in my uterus now, just thinking about her. I feel bad for Laurel that she didn’t feel that way and forgive her for that catty comment about wetting myself—
Gee, thanks!
—and turn the page to journal entry number three.
At first I’m heartened that she’d found something I’d said in group interesting, but then I’m startled to see that it was actually something she had said: All the voices sound sensible at the time—
Are you sure you didn’t say it?
—and then I read her description of our first playdate. I had a pathetic little life, she couldn’t wait for me to leave, I was “plump.” Even Stan called me a mouse.
I say at the end that you’re “the realest person I’ve ever met.”
When I turn to the fourth installment (the last entry Dr. Hancock has given me) I find that it doesn’t get any better. I was a “project” for her, a hobby to amuse herself with because she was bored in Westfuckingchester—
Maybe pretending not to care is my defense system.
—and she needed to look normal. Well, she wasn’t. I see that now. All the time that I thought we were becoming friends—best friends—she was using me and making fun of me behind my back—
I was sick!
—and amusing herself by making me cut my hair like her and wear the same clothes.
No one made you do that.
The worst of it is that I was so invested in the friendship that I wanted to help her. I applied to the job with Schuyler Bennett to show Laurel her options.
Really? Are you sure you didn’t apply for yourself?
And then she goes and kills herself in my bathtub! Why would she have done it in my house except to say one last fuck-you to Doormat Daphne? She must have known how devastating it would be for me to come home and find her in my tub, dripping bloody water all over my ticky-tacky house—
I thought we’d decided I was murdered.
—because she was a selfish, entitled, monster!
I throw the pages of Laurel’s journal into the air and get up so quickly the chair falls back to the floor with a loud bang. As the pages flutter down I grab them and tear them into pieces, tossing the bits into the air so that they rain down like confetti. Ripping feels so good I decide to keep going with my sheets and pillowcase, which are so thin and threadbare they tear easily. Where are your gazillion-thread-count pima sateen sheets now, Laurel?
I stop at the mirror, which is metal, unbreakable. It reflects back a distorted picture of a bloated face. The face of someone who has drowned. A monster. “Look at what you’ve turned me into!” I scream.
It wasn’t me—
“Shut up!” I shout, covering my ears with my hands. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
I’m still screaming it when the orderlies come in to restrain me. They have to wrench my hands away from my ears. Hanks of hair come with them. Blood and bits of flesh. I don’t care. I will rip my ears off before I listen to any more of that bitch’s lies. But when I’m finally pinned and lying on the floor, one cheek pressed to the cold tile, the other under an orderly’s knee, all I hear is the roar of the ocean as the tide comes in to claim me. Laurel is gone.
Laurel’s Journal, July 9, 20—
I’ve been thinking a lot about that summer on the Cape, the one when Mommy fired my nanny and we were supposed to have all this mother-daughter time together. Only I don’t remember spending that much time with Mommy. She slept late in the morning, so I would get up and go down to the beach myself. The morning was the best time for shell
