Eden's Echo

He let the silence fall between us, and for the first time since I’d started seeing Drew, I felt trapped. My heart rate picked up because there was no way to get out of this without lying. I could feel the sweat beading on my brow despite the cool air chilling my face. My breathing was shallow as I floundered with how to explain myself.
“EDEN!”
His elevated voice snapped me out of my inner mono-logging, and I looked at him in complete defeat. So this was where it was going to end. This was where he’d join the masses of people who thought I was nuts. “I don’t want you to think I’m crazy, but I don’t want to lie to save face either, Drew.”
“So don’t then, Eden. Who were you talking to?"
“I was talking to my mother. I was talking to Echo. Her soul lives inside my body, and she talks to me. She died, but she never left. Instead of moving on, she moved in.” I couldn't look at him, so I concentrated on the floorboard.
My head snapped up when he started laughing hysterically. I gawked at him in stunned surprise; there was nothing funny about what I’d said. He was laughing so hard that when he finally spared me a glance, tears were streaming down his face. I laughed nervously because he must have thought I was playing some kind of joke.
“I thought you said you didn’t want to lie to me, Eden.”
“I’m not,” I told him with zero emotion.
He wiped at his eyes and then looked at me again and saw that it was not a joking expression that was on my face. His smile fell, and all the humor that had lit his eyes vanished.
“Oh—you're serious!”
I nodded, and his lips parted slightly. I wondered if he’d ever let me kiss those lips now that I sounded like I’d lost my damn mind. He slowly turned back to watch the road, and we drove without words for at least five minutes. Finally, I couldn’t stand the silence anymore.
“Drew—say something, please!”
“What do you want me to say, Eden? I'm sure you know how that sounds. I knew that something was flying around school about you having multiple personalities, but—that’s not how multiple personalities work. You become someone else, not just talk to someone else, and the persona switches are obvious.”
“The rumor about my diagnosis is true, that is what I’m diagnosed with because it was the closest thing my Children’s Psychiatrist could come up with. I didn’t realize until I was older that I didn't actually have what I'd been diagnosed with. How do you know so much about multiple personalities anyway?”
He acted like he hadn’t heard a word I’d said. Instead, he seemed hell-bent on trying to convince—I don’t know who, that I didn’t have multiple personalities. It was weird. I’d never seen him obsess so much over a solitary point. So I sat back and waited for him to ride it out.
“Dissociative Identity Disorder has at least two distinct personalities that have control over someone’s life, yet with you, I've only ever seen Eden. There are different sets of mannerisms, posture, and ways of talking, yet all of that is a constant and the same with you! How the hell did you get diagnosed with something you are so clearly not?” He sounded like he was getting upset.
“Because the only other diagnosis that she could think of that even remotely fit was schizophrenia, do you think that fits better,” I asked curiously.
He looked at me like I’d grown two heads, and I knew the very thought struck him as absurd. If he knew half as much as I did about that particular disorder, then he’d know the ONLY qualifying symptom I had was hearing a voice in my head. Not multiples, but one singular voice.
“Let’s see hallucinations, nope! Delusional behavior, hmmm,” he said and looked at me sideways again.
I didn’t like it, and my heart sank with that single gesture. I was sure he thought I was delusional. After all, claiming your dead mother’s soul was trapped in your body and talked to you seemed a little delusional, all on its own. I couldn’t blame him if he thought that. I fought against the tears that threatened to start flowing at the possibility of him rejecting me.
“No, I can’t say that you’re delusional, you have a pretty sound presence of mind. Your thoughts and speech never seem confused, so, yeah, nope. That doesn’t fit either. That diagnosis would have been laughable at best,” he said with disgust.
“How do you know so much about these things,” I asked him.
He got quiet, and sadness overtook his features. His knuckles turned white as he gripped the steering wheel tighter.
“My father was a medic. It was the only thing I felt could bring me closer to who he was. If I knew the things he knew, then we’d have something in common other than DNA. We’d share a core interest in how the human body works. So I read everything I could get my hands on. Medicine and the human condition are the ONLY topics I read avidly,” he said with a barely noticeable note of longing in his voice.
“Oh…,” was all I could say.
“Okay, so if you expect me to believe you, I mean, can you prove it,” he asked me hiking a brow.
I laughed because that was hands down the funniest and stupidest thing I think I’d ever heard come out of his mouth. I was at a complete loss for words for a moment.
“How the hell am I supposed to prove that my dead mother lives in my head, huh? I’m the only one who can hear her Drew,” I said the slightest bit miffed.
The more I thought about it, the more I got mad until finally, mad wasn’t a good description