"You’re being a very happy girl. Did you enjoy your anniversary, friend?"

Chapter 21: Mayo II

"Mayo" — the name arrived on its own, without me calling for it.

I touched my heart; my heartbeat was irregular. While memories began striking me — a burst of moving images.

"Mayo," I whispered again, placing a hand on my neck. "A year without seeing you, without hearing you." I squeezed the bag, looking at her feet on the pavement — feet that disappeared when I looked up. "Why today — I don’t understand it, it makes no sense."

I kept walking, almost as erratically as she had.

"Was it a lovely date?"

"What a great boyfriend Nolan is, friend."

"Shut up! Shut up!" I shouted, covering my ears. Though it was useless — it kept hammering against my brain. "I was supposed to have forgotten you to protect her. You’re not supposed to exist anywhere in Ryne’s mind, and I am Ryne."

A hand touched my cheek, lifting my gaze, drawing close to my ear. "Call me Ryne Moore," it reminded me, feeling my throat close.

In that instant, everything felt like a bolt of silence while my eyes closed. I tried to understand something, but every step I took broke the floor. In that moment it was the only thing Mayo allowed me to see.

The broken and fragile nature of her world, breaking mine with every step she took. This was her noise. Her disgusting and cruel noise. "So this is what you felt, Ryne," I managed to formulate. "When you sobbed and demanded to die."

I looked at my hand — the hand with which you squeezed our neck. "I just don’t understand," I whispered. "Why it started affecting me." But when I saw my hair on the other side of my face I realized something. "My noise... how you controlled it."

I let go of the bag with the sandwich, sinking into the explosive sea of her growing voice. Every word seemed to increase in volume, taking up far more space in my head than it should.

"I was supposed to have forgotten her," I tried to justify. "To have erased her existence to protect you."

But there she was. Shouting good things in my ear. "You’re being a very happy girl."

She repeated it again. I shaking my head while throwing the bag in the trash. I don’t know if it was my imagination, but that made her smile — and she went quiet for a minute.

Which allowed me a silent walk. Her following me in the shoes she had bought. When I tried to see her, she wouldn’t let me. She disappeared before I could try.

I stopped at the hardware store corner.

I pressed my hand against the wall, breathing slowly.

Since Nolan’s death I hadn’t had a single trace of noise — almost two weeks without feeling it, and now this. A voice I hadn’t asked for, from someone who shouldn’t exist anywhere in my head, installed there with the familiarity of someone who never left, just waited.

"Why today?" I repeated quietly.

There was no answer. Only the sound of her imaginary footsteps retreating — those shoes I recognized better than her face, moving along the cold pavement.

That made me smile a little. I continued on my way.

"I’m glad — Nolan is a very good boyfriend."

"Are you two already thinking about a wedding, Ryne?"

"Let’s go to a masseuse, Ryne. His fingers are incredible."

"Ryne, can I borrow your sweater?"

"Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne."

Slap.

I struck both cheeks with my hands, painting them red again. The way she always did when my noise infected her.

Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne. Ryne.

But to my misfortune, physical pain didn’t work.

Mayo’s noise wasn’t like the noise from my past. This one was different. More physical, more mine — and the worst part is I know where it was born; it was just blurry.

I arrived at the office four minutes early with a full head. The reception was empty — Elena was even missing. I ignored it; I had another matter at hand right now.

I knocked on the office door. "Come in," said Dr. Roy.

I entered.

She was in her usual place. Notebook open, pen in hand, the white lamp pointed at the couch with that punctuality that never failed.

"Hello, Mrs. Roy," I held onto the door frame, watching her pull back by instinct. "Today is going to be a different day."

She tilted her head, recovering the step she had lost. "Why, Miss Moore? Did something particular happen?"

"You could say so," I closed the door. "And I’d be glad if you listened."

She nodded, gesturing toward the armchair. "Take a seat, Miss Moore, and calm down a little."

"Of course, of course," I sat down.

I didn’t settle in the way I usually did — ankles crossed, hands on my stomach. I sat straight. Dr. Roy noticed. I know because she took a second longer than usual before speaking.

"Before we begin, I’d like to ask you one thing," she started, writing what appeared to be a title. "How was your anniversary, Miss Moore?"

"Good," I answered. "I enjoyed it quite a bit."

She wrote something down. "Did you rest well last night?"

"Yes, one could say so. I slept at my father’s house."

She raised an eyebrow. "Your father? I didn’t know he lived here."

"No, no, no. When I say my father I mean Mr. Arrit," I tried to clarify. "I spent my anniversary with him playing board games. But I don’t want to talk about that today."

Another note. "And what do you want to talk about?"

I stayed quiet for a moment. I sighed, looking at the doctor. "I’m confused."

The doctor looked up from her notebook. "Confused in what way?"

"In a way I don’t recognize," I answered. "I’ve never considered myself a sentimental person. But these past few days I’ve felt weak." I paused, looking at her. "It’s as if she were still making my decisions."

"Who are you referring to?"

"To me," I said. "Because of me — I no longer feel like myself. And because of that, there’s someone in my head now. Someone I would never have allowed in."

"Someone from the past?"

"Yes."

"Someone who hurt you?"

I thought for a moment.

"Not me," I answered. "But now it feels personal."

The doctor laced her fingers over the notebook with that posture of hers when she shifts modes.

"What you’re describing," she said, "that unexpected return of a figure from the past associated with a specific date, has a name. It’s called involuntary emotionally-activated memory. It occurs when the brain establishes a connection between a present stimulus and a previous experience without the person consciously deciding to."

"I don’t remember anyone doing anything to revive it," I let out. "I just slept happily."

But as I said those words I noticed it — tears sliding down my cheeks. "No matter what happened to me, what changed," I began, slipping from the chair.

"Are you alright, Miss Moore?" she asked, while my hands barely held the floor.

The tears slid from my cheeks, dripping from my chin. "Does that mean I’ll never be able to be happy?" I asked with a broken voice, looking at her. "Every time I smile will I suffer like this?"

She hesitated to come closer — understandable after I had told her I was a killer — but in the end she extended her hand. Had she just accepted me?

"Of course you’ll smile again," she said, helping me up. "You just have to get through this setback." Swallowing, she handed me a tissue. "Like it or not, I’m legally your psychologist — it’s my job to help you."

I felt her hand squeezing mine harder than usual, as if she didn’t want to let go. "Why do you want to help me?" I asked, looking at the floor.

"Because I see redemption in you," she finally answered. "You are also someone who lives and feels — your tears are proof of that. So take a seat; I’m listening."

Real or false, tears work the same. The origin of these didn’t matter — I was only thinking about one thing, something that cheered me up a little. I won.

"Miss Moore," said the doctor, with her eyes fixed on me. "Who was that person to you?"

I closed mine, remembering details of her that would tell me she was part of me. As I did, I heard her. Not her exact voice — but the feeling of her voice; that way of speaking that took up more space than it was entitled to, that arrived before she did and stayed after she left.

"She was my friend."

And in the moment I said it, something in the office lost its shape.

"Do you have any memory of her?" she asked, now as background voice.

I was no longer on the couch. I was behind the café bar, a quiet Friday, with Nolan’s jazz playing from my phone and the sound of the neighbors filling the tables. The smell of coffee and spices, the light of the decorative lamps, everything in its exact place.

"And in front of you?"

"And in front of me, leaning on the bar with that carelessness of hers, a dark-skinned girl."

Her eyes, with pupils completely black — like obsidian stones, shiny and opaque at the same time. She held her coffee with one hand and spun slightly on the stool with the other.

"I’m glad to see you again, RyneRyne," Mayo told me, with that smile of hers that didn’t ask permission. "You’re being a very happy girl. Did you enjoy your anniversary, friend?"