Then he smiled and said maybeyou should do my neck the same way

“What’s that?”
“To tell the judge what you did.”
“Confession,” she said. “It’s a fancy word for confession?”
“I guess it is.”
“All these words they use.” She laughed softly. “At least I’m learningstuff.”
“Probably not the way you wanted to.”
“That’s for sure…lawyers, cops. I don’t even remember who I told what.”
“It’s pretty confusing,” I said.
“Totally, Doctor. I have a thing for that.”
“For what?”
“Confusion. Back in Phoenix—inhigh school—some people used to think I was an airhead. The brainiacs, youknow? Truth is, I got confused a lot. Still do. Maybe it’s because I fell on myhead when I was a little kid. Fell off a swing and passed out. After that Inever really did too good in school.”
“Sounds like a bad fall.”
“I don’t remember much about it, Doctor, but they told me I was unconsciousfor half a day.”
“How old were you?”
“Maybe three. Four. I was swinging high, used to love to swing. Must’ve letgo or something and went flying. I hit my head other times, too. I was alwaysfalling, tripping over myself. My legs grew so fast, when I was fifteen I wentfrom five feet to five eight in six months.”
“You’re accident-prone.”
“My mom used to say I was an accident waiting to happen. I’d get her to buyme good jeans, and then I’d rip the knees and she’d get upset and promise neverto buy me anything anymore.”
She touched her left temple. Caught some hair between her fingers andtwisted. Pouted. That reminded me of someone. I watched her fidget and itfinally came to me: young Brigitte Bardot.
Would she know who that was?
She said, “My head’s been spinning. Since the mess. It’s like someone else’sscreenplay and I’m drifting through the scenes.”
“The legal system can be overwhelming.”
“I never thought I’d bein the system! I mean, I don’t even watch crime stuffon TV. My mom reads mysteries but I hate them.”
“What do you read?”
She’d turned aside, didn’t answer. I repeated the question.
“Oh, sorry, I spaced out. What do I read…Us magazine. People, Elle, youknow.”
“How about we talk about what happened?”
“Sure, sure…it was just supposed to be…maybe Dylan and I took it too far butmy acting teacher, her big thing is that the whole point of the training is tolose yourself and enter the scene, you really need to abandon the self, youknow, the ego. Just give yourself up to the scene and flow.”
“That’s what you and Dylan were doing,” I said.
“I guess I started outthinking we were doing that and I guess…I really don’tknow what happened. It’s so crazy, how did I get into this craziness ?”
She slammed a fist into an open hand, shuddered, threw up her arms. Begancrying softly. A vein throbbed in her neck, pumping through cover-up,accentuating a bruise.
I handed her a tissue. Her fingers lingered on my knuckles. She sniffled.“Thanks.”
I sat back down. “So you thought you were doing what Nora Dowd taught you.”
“You know Nora?”
“I’ve read the court documents.”
“Nora’s in the documents?”
“She’s mentioned. So you’re saying the false abduction was related to yourtraining.”
“You keep calling it false,” she said.
“What would you like me to call it?”
“I don’t know…something else. The exercise. How about that? That’s reallywhat it started out as.”
“An acting exercise.”
“Uh-huh.” She crossed her legs. “Nora never came out and told us to do an exercisebut we thought—she was always pushing us to get into the core of our feelings.Dylan and I figured we’d…” She bit her lip. “It was never supposed to go thatfar.”
She touched her temple again. “I must’ve been whack. Dylan and I were justtrying to be artistically authentic. Like when I tied him up and wrapped therope around myself, I held it around my neck for a while to make sure it wouldleave marks.” She frowned, touched a bruise.
“I see it.”
“I knew it wouldn’t take long. To make a bruise. I bruise real easily. Maybethat’s why I don’t do pain very well.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m a crybaby about pain so I stay away from it.” She touched a spot wherethe scoop neck of the T-shirt met skin. “Dylan feels nothing, I mean, he’s likestone. When I tied him up, he kept saying tighter, he wanted to feel it.”
“Pain?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Not his neck at first, just his legs and arms. Buteven that hurts when you go tight enough, right? But he kept telling metighter, tighter. Finally I screamed at him, I’m doing it as tight as I can.”She gazed up at the ceiling. “He just laid there. Then he smiled and said maybeyou should do my neck the same way.”
“Dylan has a death wish?”
“Dylan’s a freak…it was freaky up there, dark, cold, this emptiness in theair. You could hear things crawling around.” She hugged herself. “I said thisis too weird, maybe it wasn’t a good idea.”
“What did Dylan say?”
“He just laid there with his head to the side.” She closed her eyes anddemonstrated. Let her mouth grow slack and showed a half inch of pointed, pinktongue. “Pretending to be dead, you know? I said, ‘Cut it out, that’s gross,’but he refused to talk or move and finally it got to me. I rolled over to himand touched his head and he just flopped, you know?”
“Method acting,” I said.
Puzzled stare.
“It’s when you live a role completely, Michaela.”
Her eyes were somewhere else. “Whatever…”
“How soon into the exercise did you tie him up?”
“Second night, it was all the second night. He was okay before that, then hestarted punking me. I was letting him because I was scared. The whole thing…Iwas so, so stupid.”
She folded wings of golden hair forward, masking her face. I thought of ashow spaniel in the ring. Handlers manipulating the ears over the nose to offerthe judge a choice view of the skull.