Eden's Echo

He’d kill me if he ever found out the real reason I’d left, where I’d gone, or who I was with. The guilt welled up like it always did, and I shoved it from my mind. These things were nothing new, the inner turmoil, the lies. They’d been a part of my life for so long that I’d almost forgotten what it felt like, to tell the truth. No one likes a liar, but for me, lying was something of a necessity because telling the truth would get me a guaranteed, one-way ticket into a padded room. Lord knows it wouldn’t be the first time. I didn’t want Drew to think I was—crazy, but lying to him wasn’t an option any more than not seeing him at all. Dad would just have to kill me if he ever learned the truth of how I was spending my free time.

“What was your first memory,” Drew asked, still searching for moving objects in a star-splattered sky.

I glanced at my forbidden companion as we lay on the hood of his car. I should’ve expected a question like that. He wanted to know more about me, just as much as I needed to know more about him, but how was I supposed to explain that my first memory wasn’t mine—it was Echo’s.

He wants your first memory, Eden, not my last one, so tell him. Echo’s voice, with its all-knowing wisdom of sixteen years, bounced around in my mind, carrying notes of reassurance and encouragement. I was pleasantly surprised when answering Drew honestly wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.

“Fear—the first thing I can remember is fear.” I focused on the distant memory, allowing it to pull me into its embrace as I let the statement hang in the air between us. Talking about myself made me feel vulnerable, and being vulnerable made me want to lie.

He hiked a surprised brow, probably over the vagueness of my answer, “Well, what were you scared of? Do you remember?”

I learned early on in our friendship that Drew liked to have a complete understanding of everything, which is why we were playing the game of question and answer in the first place. I saw him studying me out of the corner of my eye, felt the prickly fingers of anxiety weaseling their way in, and prayed he couldn’t see how uncomfortable I’d become. I needed to focus on something else—anything else. As I glanced at his face, our gazes locked—time seemed to slow and narrow into that moment.

The light of a half-moon reflected off his eyes. He held me in their earthy hue, luring my body into shifting closer to his. Endless depths of moss green with subtle flecks of gold kept me captive, as my heart fought to escape my chest. The heat coursing through my body threatened to burn me from the inside out, and my breath caught as he leaned closer. Goosebumps skittered across my skin, and desire bloomed at my core as his hand, warm and strong, reached for mine, wrapping it in a possessive grasp. The simple gesture triggered a full body flush that tingled through me as his free arm snaked around my waist and pulled me across the remaining expanse of the cool, metal hood. We were a few inches apart when humid, Drew scented air flitted over my face as his breath hitched, and the pulse at his throat quickened. I felt him closing the distance at a slow, steady pace. Our first kiss—my first kiss, was hanging on the edge of his lips. I wanted to let go, but fear speared up and robbed us of the moment.

A large part of me wanted to dive in feet first and let Drew claim my first kiss right there on the hood of his car. To hell with what my dad said, the consequences of being sent away be damned. Even with all those emotions and thoughts whispering temptation in my ear, I knew a kiss would just make me want Drew that much more. Like Eve’s apple in the Garden of Eden, Drew was my very own forbidden fruit. My only saving grace was the conscience I was raised with. The one that’s conservative, modest, and ever-present saying, this isn’t going to happen this soon. That same conscience ruthlessly jerked me out of the fantasy the rest of my being was trying to run with. My heart plummeted in disappointment as I abruptly turned my attention to the stars again. Despite my dad’s warning echoing in my head, my heart and soul still wanted Drew. My conscience was the only thing standing in my way.

The strong warmth of his hand gently squeezed and then reluctantly released my now sweaty palm. It was his way of acknowledging that he knew I wasn’t ready. His disappointment mirrored my own. I heard it in the resigned sigh that followed. Inwardly, I cursed myself for being so scared of something I wanted so badly and for letting the threat of my father’s wrath define what was right and wrong. I grudgingly returned to where my mind was before the pull of my heart—and hormones took over.

“If I had to guess, I’d say I wasn’t even a year old, and I was falling. You know that sensation you get when you go over a steep hill in a car too fast, and your stomach drops? It felt exactly like that. I could hear myself screaming—a baby’s scream of terror. The falling came to a sudden stop, but by then, my fear was running wild, and my eyes hurt from being squeezed shut.”

When Drew laughed, I stopped mid-story, glanced over, and wondered what he found so funny. The vibration of his chuckling rattled the hood of the car as he glanced at me. His smile faltered when he noticed the annoyed expression I was wearing. I failed to see anything funny about my first memory, especially since I still had nightmares of falling because of it. It didn’t matter that I always woke up a millisecond before I hit the ground. Heights still scared the piss out of me.

Shifting uncomfortably, he cleared his throat, “I’m sorry, Eden, please go on,” then leaned back against the windshield and began searching the night sky again.

I didn’t think we’d be able to see what we were looking for. How could we? According to Drew, not only was the space station about two hundred and fifty miles above the earth’s surface, but it also traveled as fast as seventeen thousand miles per hour in its orbit around Earth. Reaching over, he tugged on my arm with an affectionate smile.

“You’re too far away,” he said, pulling at the sleeve of my baseball tee a little harder.

Heat rose in my cheeks, and a ball of fuzzy flutter overtook my stomach. I wiggled across the windshield and ended up exactly where I wanted to be—comfortably settled in his arms. Dad was determined to make sure I kept my virginity intact until I was married, by all means necessary. The temptation that was Drew might very well make him fail. With all my physical reactions to his nearness and the presence of my overbearing morals, it made me question my affections and urges. Were they the real deal? What if they were simply Wonderlust, yet another doubt good ol’ Dad had drilled in my head when I was barely starting to look like a woman instead of a young girl. He’d said, “Any feelings you think are love before you turn twenty-one aren’t really love. They’re just lust.” I reined in the lustful, curiosity, and the feeling of shame that quickly followed.

If Dad could hear my thoughts, I’d definitely be a goner. The thought trotted through my mind, and I mentally shivered over the possibility.

But he can’t, and I won’t say anything if you decide to bend his little rule. What’s life without a little rebellion?

I inwardly rolled my eyes and directed my thoughts toward the same place.

Echo, even if you wanted him to, he wouldn’t hear you, because only I can, remember? You exist only in my head. Besides, the reason Dad is so strict is because of what happened to you. He is terrified your history will repeat itself with me. Talk about living in someone else’s shadow. You and I are nothing alike.

You know what they say, Eden, “Great minds...”

At that, I laughed mockingly within the confines of my head. Unlike you, Echo, I’m responsible and think things through. You didn’t then and still don’t.

I am too responsible, Echo whined, and I do think things through. You wouldn’t be here with this boy right now if I hadn’t.

Oh, you did, the resentment I felt toward her rolled through me, sweeping any tact I may have used with her swiftly away, then why are you dead, Echo?

My challenge was met with silence—I sensed her withdraw into the deeper recesses of my mind and instantly felt guilty, something I knew she felt too because of how our emotions were tethered and intertwined.

Placing a kiss atop my head, Drew distracted me from the conflict within. He held me close, and I let the comfort his embrace brought wrap around me. Sighing, I joined him in the hunt and continued with my memory.

“Anyway, the next thing I heard, but just barely above my terrified shrieking, was a man’s deep rolling chuckle. I opened my eyes because I knew that laugh. Staring up at me with a big grin, was my dad. He was holding me above his head at an arm’s length. I didn’t know it at the time the memory was in the making, but he’d been tossing me up and catching me. While that seems harmless enough, it scared the crap out of me. To this day, I still have a horrible fear of heights and am scared to death of falling.”

Drew’s eyes sparkled with amusement as he tried to resist laughing and failed. “That’s a good first memory,” he mused. “Hey, look, there’s the International Space Station. Do you see it?” As I leaned in to rest my head on his shoulder, he pointed to a moving speck of light.

Following the line he was drawing with his finger, I saw it cutting a path through the night sky, not at breakneck speed like a shooting star, but fast enough to stand out. Glancing over, I couldn’t help but smile when I saw the goofy look of elation plastered to his face. His enthusiasm for anything beyond the earth’s atmosphere was contagious. Everything inside me went soft as the passion he clearly felt for astronomy shone in his reaction. His obsession burned bright, and it was hard to not love that.

I can see why you’re so enamored with him. Echo’s girlish giggle bounced around in my head. He’s not hard to look at either.

Echo, please don’t start—not right now. It was at times like this that I was thankful for the fact that no one else could hear her.

Echo had been in my head for as long as I could remember. It wasn’t until I was three that I told my dad about her. Needless to say, it worried him, and shortly after my fourth birthday, I started seeing Janet, my children’s counselor, twice a week. It was then that my life began its complicated arc. It took Janet four years to finally settle on a diagnosis for me, and even then, she was uncomfortable with it, Dissociative Identity Disorder, otherwise known as Multiple Personality. I suppose it made sense, well kinda. No one condition had ever been able to sum me up, which made me somewhat of a question mark medically, but it was the closest. Except for the fact that I knew I didn’t have multiple personalities. Why? Because I never became Echo or answered to her name. I only ever heard her voice in my head. Echo had been able to take over my physical actions, moving, talking, and everything in between in the younger years of my life, and that was what had driven the diagnosis home. The other diagnosis considered was schizophrenia, which was more than a stretch. So multiple personalities it was.

I shimmied further down until my head was resting on his chest. His heart was beating a steady rhythm, if not a little fast. My guess—he was either excited or nervous, possibly both. I knew I was. His natural scent clung to his shirt and made my body respond in ways I couldn’t control. My gut stirred with desire as I breathed him in. Nothing on the planet smelled as good as Drew. Until earlier in the year, I would never have thought I’d be on a date with Drew Graves. We were worlds apart in the social hierarchy of high school. To put it bluntly, I’d thought he was entirely out of my league. He perused around, a social butterfly, and I—well, we’ll just say I was socially awkward. We sat in silence, watching the space station, as I let my mind take me back to the moment when everything changed.

****

Nine months before…

The lie I’d been living had finally caught up with me. As I hunched against the concrete wall under the bleachers, mud seeping through the hem of my jeans, a quote I’d read at least a thousand times skipped through my head, “And the truth shall set you free!” The only problem was, telling the truth at that moment would likely have made things worse—not better, and right then, I needed better.

The foul scent of cheap alcohol and the pungent odor of weed enveloped him as he staggered past the girls in his company to tower over my shaking form. They all laughed and mistook my trembles for fear, but I was shaking because it was mid-October and eleven o’clock on a Friday night. I was freezing, and the homecoming game had just ended in defeat for the second year in a row. Jennifer, my best friend, had just gone to get us some hot chocolate when Aiden and his feminine entourage took the window of opportunity to corner me. Bending down until he was inches from my face, he swayed and peered at me through cold, calculating, blood-shot eyes. Every other time he’d cornered me, it had simply been an annoyance, but this time something different—something darker, lurked in his eyes.

“Rumor has it that your freak factor just went through the roof. The word around school is that you have more than one person living in that head of yours, Garrows.”

Well now, isn’t he just a piece of work. He has no idea just how close to home he’s hitting, does he? The sassy sixteen-year-old voice in my head and the emotions being carried through my body because of it were not my own, and yet, I couldn’t agree with her more.

Aiden waited for a beat, and when I didn’t speak but instead stared at the mud I was standing in, he continued. “So, the rumors are true, you do belong in a nut-house. You do have different personalities, so who am I talking to now, or are y’all sharing the same name.”

“It’s called multiple personalities, Aiden,” Clarissa chimed in from behind him with an air of supremacy accompanied by a judgmental tone.”

Slowly, my gaze turned toward the grating cadence of Clarissa’s voice. I pinned a resentful glare to my Volleyball teammate because I knew she was more than likely the driving force behind what was about to happen to me. It was bad enough living in a small southern town that was predominately white when I wasn’t. What made it worse was the only other mixed girl my age, in the entire school, had an annoying habit of going out of her way to make my life a living hell.

“Are we done here, Aiden,” I said, facing him again, “because honestly, I have better things to do than sit here and listen to your arrogant, stupid…”

I was practically spitting the words in his face, when he shut me up by shoving me—hard, against the cold, damp wall of concrete. My head smacked into the wall, air whooshed from my lungs, and I couldn’t catch my breath as he lifted me off the ground by my neck. Panic ceased my throat as the trembles from the cold morphed into fear, racked tremors. Black spots drifted into my peripheral as my vision fragmented under the pain blooming at the back of my head.

“Aiden put her down!” one of the girls shrieked, “You’re killing her!”

He didn’t listen but instead slammed me against the wall again and again as the smell of whatever he’d been drinking, and blood flooded my senses. I dimly registered that the coppery scent was likely my blood.

Fight back, Eden!

Echo screamed in my head as if her demanding that I take action could somehow make me do just that. I clawed at the hands around my throat, trying to break his grasp. As the breath I struggled to take was being pinched off, I started flailing my legs around, trying, in vain, to wiggle myself free, but the black spots were getting bigger, and darkness was closing in. I knew if I passed out, I’d be as good as dead.

“Aiden—damn it! Aiden, let her go! What the hell are you doing,” a deep voice—a new voice demanded.

One moment I was on the brink of losing consciousness, and in the next, I was crumbling to the ground, gasping for air in a shallow puddle of mud. I vaguely heard the grunts and shouts of outrage coming from Aiden as his assailant fought him away from me.

“Dude, you’re drunk again. Just leave, I swear, leave, or this is gonna get ugly. Best friend or not—this time you went too damn far! She’s a girl—you’re beating on a girl! You crossed a line, Aiden. I don’t even know who you are anymore. Men don’t hit women! I’m done covering for you every time your drunken stupors land you in hot water. Now get before I do something I regret.”

I would know that voice anywhere because I’d been secretly crushing on its owner for years, and he didn’t even know I was alive. We ran with different crowds. My jeans were soaked and slick with mud as I tried bracing myself upright against the concrete wall to regain my breath. A warm hand touched my face, and I flinched away from it like I’d been scalded.

“Woah it’s okay, they’re gone, you’re safe. Can I call someone for you, Eden, or can I give you a ride home? I can take you to the hospital—whatever you want.”

I peered up into moss-green eyes and, to my surprise, saw genuine concern there. For a moment, I was rendered speechless, almost like being star struck. When I continued to say nothing and stare, Drew moved in and helped me the rest of the way to my feet.

“Well, are you going to say something,” he asked.

“You—you know my name,” I bumbled like an idiot.

With a grin, he started chuckling, “Yeah—yeah, I do. Why wouldn’t I? You’re one of the star volleyball players. Every guy in school with a pulse knows your name. You’re just—well, not very approachable, plus your dad is a cop.

****

Drew pulled me out of my bittersweet trip down memory lane when he said, “Okay, so next question.”