Like the time, after her parents died, when she’d gone crazy with a razor blade and cut herself on her stomach. Lyle had found her bleeding and rushed her to the hospital. She still had the scars. They’d made her see a psychiatrist, but she hated the man’s questions and his annoying patient voice. Couldn’t he see that all she needed was for her parents to come back from their trip? When were they coming home?

Around that time, she found a mannequin sticking out of a Dumpster behind a Kohl’s department store. Her first. Ditty. She’d called her that, because she kept hearing that John Mellencamp song in her head – the one with the little ditty about Jack and Diane. She’d rescued Ditty from the garbage and taken her home, and Ditty had been a better therapist than any of the real live people who wanted to help her. She’d spent hours talking to the mannequin in her bedroom.

Everything.

Her mind. Her body. Her life.

‘Why did you take my file?’ she asked Justin.

You already know the truth.

Peach picked up the thick folder and left it in her lap. It took her a while to open it. When she finally did, she turned to pages in the middle. Somewhere around age six, she’d broken two bones in her right wrist. Funny, she didn’t even remember it. She waved her right hand as if she were a beauty queen in a parade, but her wrist worked fine, and she’d never noticed any pain there. Kids heal. She saw her mother’s signature on release forms for X-rays. Thinking about it, she had a vague memory of wearing a cast and of Deacon writing FRUITY on it.

More pages. Physicals. She remembered the cold steel of a stethoscope on her chest and how she squealed. The wooden stick on her tongue. Ahhhhh. Dr Smeltz poking her in the belly button. ‘You’re as fit as a fiddle with a hole in your middle.’ Herself, giggling every time.

Weird rash. ‘You shouldn’t touch those plants, sweetie, they’re poisonous.’

Prescription for Amoxicillin for a bad ear infection.

Chicken pox. ‘I’ve seen lots of tots with spots.’

Diarrhea.

Burn on her pinkie from touching a hot stove. She still had a whitish patch of skin there.

Pneumonia.

The notes on pneumonia were near the front of the file, because it was one of the last times she’d seen Dr Smeltz. She remembered getting sick in Tampa and Lyle and Deacon screaming at each other. She remembered the long drive home at night, the loud music, the weird sweet smell in the car, and then herself throwing up all over the back seat. Deacon, shouting at her.