Your face turned splotchy and wet, with thick tears streaking down your cheeks.
The situation only got worse as your grades didn’t conform to your plan and the blame game got going. Everything and everyone （everyone, that is, other than you） was responsible for your imperfect scores. The teacher is stupid. I never got the assignment. And so on.
That’s when Mom began to worry that your dedication to academics had moved from commitment into the realm of obsession. You demanded to quit concert band—no time to practice, you said. Next, you dropped karate and field hockey for similar reasons.
I overheard Mom tell Dad your behavior wasn’t normal. Dad said, “Well, we don’t exactly know what’s normal for her, do we?” The unknown had always been his greatest fear about you.
Mom said she was going to take you to see a doctor, and I knew that meant a psychiatrist. O’Reilly, I think was his name—he diagnosed you with anxiety and depression, but Mom didn’t think that was the root of your issues at school or at home. This behavior came out of the blue, she kept telling him. But you were entering the teen years, and adolescence can bring on rapid changes in brain chemistry.
O’Reilly’s answer was a course of medication, and for a time, it seemed to help. You resumed playing clarinet, but when you couldn’t master a new piece with ease, you once again announced your intention to quit concert band, this time for good. Dr. O’Reilly added OCD to your growing list of conditions, which went hand in hand with a growing pile of pills in all shapes, colors, and sizes.
Once you entered the world of docs and diagnoses, of pills and ed plans, Maria entered your orbit. She was one of those kids—a troubled, dark, disturbed loner type. You two ended up in eighth-grade Spanish together, and the connection was instant. It’s like you each possessed some built-in radar for uniquely wired minds.
Even back then, Maria stood out. She dressed differently and didn’t seem to care much what anyone thought or said of her. She wore all black, dyed her long hair black, and wore so much eye shadow around her eyes that she looked more like a raccoon than a witch, which I know is the look she was after. She always wore bright red lipstick, and I don’t think any other kid in middle school had a nose ring, either. All this plus her whiter-than-white skin—she looked to me like a walking corpse. But you didn’t care one bit about Maria’s appearance, and honestly, that’s admirable.
Her nicknames—Firebug Maria, Torchy, Burning Woman （a play on Burning Man）—never fazed her. Her give-a-damn was busted. Maria was into witchcraft, that Wicca thing, something I don’t think you ever bought into—or maybe you did, who knows? Maybe there is an alter I haven’t met who tried his or her hand at casting spells.
As the protective older brother, I would tag along with you two sometimes because I didn’t trust Maria. Wasn’t hard to see why she made me uneasy. Remember that day you took me up to her bedroom, the summer before you started ninth grade, six months before you two got arrested? Her room looked like the souvenir shop at the Salem Witch Museum. The walls were plastered with tapestries and posters featuring pentacles, the talisman used in magical evocation. One hanging in particular stuck out to me—a Star of David, with interior spaces decorated in a combination of Hebrew letters and weird rune symbols. I didn’t know what to make of that, but it was eerie nonetheless.
She kept a collection of knives and swords in her bedroom （knives and swords at thirteen years old, and her mother said nothing about it—what gives?） but they were for “ritual purposes only,” or so Maria said. Now I’m wondering what kind of rituals she was conducting up there.
Of all the strange items in Maria’s bedroom—Tarot cards, weird jewelry, incense, melted candles （which blew my mind—she was a fire bug, and her mother allowed her to have matches?）—the strangest of all was her black metal cauldron. What teen girl has a cauldron? Your friend Maria, that’s who.
Her bedroom smelled like potpourri from The Twilight Zone. We didn’t stay long, thank God, but I did get a Tarot reading from her before we left. She said I was going to be very well known. I’m thinking if she’s right, it’ll be because of you, Penny, and this film of mine.
Once you got your new diagnosis of DID, Maria became even more enamored with you. I think she tried conjuring up new alters using eye of newt, or whatever herbs and spices were required to make her magic work.
You let Maria meet them all. Penny was too quiet for her. Ruby made her giggle. Chloe could be annoying but helpful with homework. The girl Maria loved the best though, without a doubt, was Eve. I couldn’t tell if you’d bring out Eve when you and Maria were together because you couldn’t control it, or if you were playing Maria the same way you may have been playing us. Either way, when you were with Maria, it was almost always as Eve.