October 15, 7:24 p.m.

Hello, Notebook. I went to classes today. I dragged through them, but I went. I didn’t see Sarah, needless to say. Jules said she wasn’t in any other class, either. I got in and just dropped. I’ve been crashed since noon. When I woke up I found out that my phone was dead and set it down on the charger. It wasn’t there for fifteen minutes before it rang.

I damn near killed myself getting to it, but it was just Tony. He sounded upset.

"Chris? Where have you been?"

"Sleeping," I answered fuzzily. "My phone was dead."

"Chris, I talked to Julie today about your girl."

"Julie who?"

"Jules!" he said impatiently. "I just nosed around a little; it’s not hard with her. She told me some things that got me thinking."

I was trying to wake up, but it was happening slowly. "What did she tell you?"

"Chris," he said, in the tightly held voice of one who is struggling not to be angry, "if you wanted me to make a diagnosis, you should have told me everything. Why didn’t you tell me she was an actress?"

"It didn’t seem important."

"Everything is important. Especially when said actress is playing things like Lady Macbeth and the wicked witch in Snow White!"

I snapped to attention then. "Tony…dark side…" was all I could manage, but he understood.
"Yeah. It looks like she knew she was incomplete too, and she’s been trying to tap that part of her…I mean, what’s Lady Macbeth all about if not desires and ambitions and cruelty? And she’s succeeded, Chris! That’s the thing. If she was a bad Lady Macbeth, fine. I’d understand why she was so strung out still. But she kicked ass and took names, according to Jules. So why the recent hysterics?"

"I…I don’t know…"

"Her subconscious, man! It’s come back to haunt her. When you banish something, you remove it completely, seal it off. But that’s not learning how to control it. Sarah sealed off that part of her mind, and when that didn’t work, she tried to open the door a crack and let some of it slip through. But she had never really learned to put that part of herself in its place, and its over running everything again. Paging Dr. Jung," he added blackly, and I heard him take a cigarette puff.

My phone started to beep. I was losing power.

Tony talked faster, hearing the beeping. "She’ll try to banish it again. It won’t mean anything this time. She doesn’t honestly want that part of herself gone because she knows she can’t live without it. But if her fantasies take control of her, that could mean something like insanity, Chris. She has to see the middle ground. Otherwise, you’ll lose her."

"Then what do I do to stop her?"

"Sit tight. I’m on my way over."

"Why?"

"I haven’t lost a patient yet," he said, and then my phone died again.

It’s 7:40 now. No sign of Tony yet, but I know he’ll be here. And there’s storm kicking up. A thunderstorm. In the middle of October.

--Chris

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