It's impossible to know another person, isn't it? To step past that locked door of their secretive inner self. Sure, you might suspect you can, even broadcast that suspicion to the world: My best friend and I are so tight that we finish each other's sentences.
But honestly, do you even want to know? What if science found a way—and science is always finding ways—to string two brains together? What if you could hear the running hum of your closest friend's thoughts? What if you find out she lusts to skin you alive, harvesting Kleenex-sized sheets of flesh to consume like Fruit Roll-Ups?
But I bet it would be a drabber truth. You'd find out she just doesn't hold that special space in her heart for you, the one you hold for her.
If that's what's in her head, it's better off not knowing, right?
". . . better to stay conned."
My voice is a dusty croak. Have I been talking to myself again?
You got to pull yourself together, Meadow. You'll never get into college acting like this.
Tony Soprano's sitting in the darkened office whose door faces the basin sink I'm slumped against. Kicked back with his shoes on the desk, legs crossed in a pair of khaki slacks, mustard-yellow bowling shirt, puffing on a Montocristo cigar.
Tony tsks. You're about as goofy as a bedbug, Mead. Smarten up, daughter of mine.
Apparently, my brain's summoned Tony out of some psychological backwater to push my gathering insanity away. Why my id chose a sociopathic New Jersey mob boss in my time of need is a question best left unanswered.
You're getting as bad as my great-aunt Wanda. Tony takes a haul on his cigar, its cherry glowing. She used to chase terriers around Liberty State Park, foaming at the mouth.
"I'm not your daughter, Mr. Soprano. I don't look anything like her." Hopping off the sink, I head down the tiled hallway to a set of double doors marked LOADING BAY. They're locked shut. Just a regular old Master Lock, the brand gracing lockers in schools crisscrossing this great land of ours. A pair of bloody combination wrenches lie on the floor. I'd scrounged them from a toolbox in the same office Tony's now occupying. For hours, or what feels like, I've been trying to use the wrenches to snap the Master Lock. Past these loading bay doors, unless someone's played another rotten trick, lies freedom. We find our heroine, one Margaret June Carpenter, picking up those wrenches for the latest in a series of futile attempts to escape her prison-which, just to get the facts straight, is the banquet kitchen of the St. Catharines Golf and Hunt Club. YouTube provided the idea. Some survivalist neckbeard in a flannel shirt. How to Break ANY Lock! I'd watched the video while tucked behind the industrial dishwasher, making sure the phone's volume was dialed way down.