Healing/Redemption14 min read
My Other Me in the Red Dress
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I remember the exact number on the paper before I remember the way my hand shook holding it. "Seven twenty-eight," I said aloud even though no one else needed to hear it.
"You got seven twenty-eight?" The voice next to me sounded small and steady.
"Yes." I looked up. Her smile was fragile and terrible and real. "Thank you."
She shrugged. "You earned it."
I had earned the score with two bodies pulling in the same direction. One of us had always tried to please. The other had learned to survive.
My name is Lenore Schneider. I am the same face as someone else who lives inside me. We call ourselves two Lenores when we have to explain, and we never say either name without the other's permission.
1
The day I first met her properly was the day I was shoved toward a manure pit in school.
"You look at this," one girl hissed, "look how disgusting she is. Like the trash she is." They laughed.
I felt hands at my collar, cuffed. They pushed me. The smell was fat and choking.
I did what I always did then: I went small. I lowered my eyes and waited for it to stop.
"You wake up," a voice said inside my head. "Wake up, Lenore."
My body moved before I could think. She came forward—sharp and cold and fast. She shoved, kicked, shoved again. Her hands were quick.
"Kendall! Get off her!" A leader's head hit the muck and the world got very loud.
We were called into the dean's office.
"You assaulted students," the dean said. "This is serious." She read from a file with the practiced air of a person who had to pretend she didn't find us interesting. "We will have to consider disciplinary action."
My mother was already there when they called the home. Diane Schmitt came in and stood like a storm. She had been storms all my life.
"Shame," she spat at me in front of everyone. "Shame on you. You are a disgrace—"
My face stung with a hand I didn't raise. Then the other Lenore raised her head.
"She is a disgrace?" she said, slow and cool. "You are the disgrace."
My mother went for me.
The second Lenore moved first. She caught my mother's wrist, pushed her down. Then she walked out without a sound, a cold little smile at the corner of her mouth. The dean's face was pale like paper.
"Is there some diagnosis?" the dean whispered to my mother later, dragging her aside. "Does she have a condition? We should send her to a specialist."
I watched. I did not speak. She sat where I would have sat and crossed her legs like someone who belonged to the world.
2
Outside, the sky was wide and absurdly blue. The kids who had been cruel looked at us like we were an animal that might bite. Kendall Buchanan, the girl who had screamed for me to be pushed, glared so hard her face went red.
"You think you can hit me?" Byron Bryant—Kendall's protector—stepped forward in the classroom later. "You think you can—"
"Don't touch her." She was standing in front of me now. She lifted a pencil sharpener and drove it into Byron's palm with one smooth motion.
He screamed. Blood painted the air. The class stopped like someone had pressed pause.
Byron's parents came to school that afternoon full of rage. "You hurt my son," they yelled. "She tried to stab him!"
My mother wanted to force me to apologize in front of everyone. She grabbed my hair like she had done when I was small. She wanted to make me bow and beg.
She raised her hand. She moved to strike.
She stopped. She hovered. The way Byron's parents were all fury—how ashamed was my mother to be seen after yesterday? The other Lenore didn't touch her. She smiled and stepped back and let something else move for her.
"Get out," she said. "You people are clowns."
My mother fell on the floor. People gasped. Adults who used to look at me with thin, clinical disgust now cleared a space when I passed.
3
After that, no one tried to shove me into a corner the same way.
The change was not magic. It was a guard. I learned to occupy the space she left, the way a person learns to wear a different coat.
"You should be careful," she said once while we studied. "You can be quiet and safe, or you can be alive."
"What are you?" I asked.
She kept her eyes on the page but taught me. "I am someone who knows she will not be pushed. I don't speak much of myself."
She never said her name. She never said where she came from. She did not have to. She kept a distance like a shield.
When tests came, she sat with me. She watched my work like a hawk and corrected mistakes without a word. She was severe and calm. "Try that step again," she'd say. "Don't be lazy."
One afternoon she tapped my forehead with a pencil. "Don't daydream."
"I won't," I promised.
She would sometimes smell faintly of iron, like something with a wound. I would think about that smell and ask too many questions, and she would smile small and teach me how to breathe.
4
My mother needed a man who kept saying things he would not do. Byron's family had money and power in small pockets. My mother clung to it like rope. When he came to our house and raised his hands, when he hit her, I no longer walked past.
She was inside me then. She took the kettle, hit him across the skull, and his eyes filled with blood. The world went strangely quiet again.
"You hit your father," my mother cried, trying to explain me, trying to find a way back to chastisement. "You are crazy."
"Call the police," Byron hissed. "Call anyone. You are a lunatic."
She looked at him. She kicked him in the groin until he collapsed and screamed, and she walked out of the room clean.
At the hospital later, when the doctors called it "dissociative identity disorder" on their forms and wrote words like "delusional" in their notes, I knew better. I knew I was two people sharing the same body.
"No mental illness," she said to me once as we sat under a lamp. "This is survival."
5
She was rough and gentle at once. She taught me to answer back to my mother. She taught me to say no. When she said no, the word had edges.
"Say it," she said.
"No."
"Good. Say it again." Her voice was small. "No. I will not kneel."
I felt the word like a small sun in my chest. It warmed me. It made me stand a little straighter.
"Do you want me to go?" she asked bluntly one January night. "I need a day alone."
"Take it," I said. "Please."
"Fine." She smiled, thin and dangerous. "One day."
She took the day. She took the day and went out in a red dress we had never owned. She came back with food and a new laugh and a softness in her eyes that surprised me. "You should buy something pretty," she told me. "You should own a color."
6
She never told me who she had been before she started living in me. She never told me if she had a past with someone like Byron. She only taught me the rules of staying alive in a world that wanted us tiny.
"Only one thing matters," she would say while we practiced problem after problem. "Getting out. Get to a place where people don't own you."
She pushed me to study. She pushed me until I placed third in the province. The school that used to look past me now looked like a set of eyes opening. Professor Pascal Jaeger came and stood in front of our class and marked me with a look that said, finally.
"You should be proud," she said. "They will see you the way you are. They will not touch you the way they did."
"Thank you," I said. "For pushing."
"Don't thank me," she said. "Thank yourself."
7
The day the national results came we were both quiet.
"You made it," she said finally, half a whisper.
"So did you," I told her.
She looked at me, and for the first time I saw something like relief fold her face. "May I have one request?" she asked after a long beat.
"Anything."
"Let me use your body for a day."
"Yes."
"I will not hurt you."
"Okay," I said. I did not tell her that I might never have let her go.
She smiled, and it was a small soft thing that made something loosen inside me. She was colder to the touch than a person should be, but she was warm in ways that mattered.
8
We bought a red dress.
I had never worn a dress before. I had always been careful of sleeves and long pants, always hiding the scars on my arms.
"Do you like it?" she asked in the shop as she twirled. The dress was cheap, but it looked like courage.
"It's beautiful," I said. I meant it.
We walked around the city like two thieves stealing small pleasures. We ate snacks we had never been allowed. We walked into a boutique and tried on things. She watched me with a kind of tenderness I had never learned to accept from anyone.
On the rooftop later we laughed. I wanted to ask all the questions then.
"Are you going to leave?" I asked.
"No," she said. "I'm here."
I wanted to ask her where she had been when I was small, where she had learned to be sharp and unafraid. I wanted to ask if she had been alone.
I didn't. I let the sky fill my answers.
9
She was patient with me and protective. She had a language for making me brave. "Practice," she told me. "Ask questions. Don't seduce pity."
We entered university. People called me brave. A boy named Milo Flowers smiled like it was easy to be kind.
"Hi," he said once when he walked me back to the dorm. "I'm Milo."
"Lenore," I said.
He took my hand like a human offering of warmth. He held it without asking permission. "Nice to meet you," he said.
We built a life. She let me have it. Sometimes at night I would wake and feel both of us breathing, two steady rhythms.
10
Time is odd when two people live inside one life. I graduated. I married Milo in a small ceremony under rain-soft clouds. My mother came, carrying a new kind of quiet. She had sent small amounts of money to my account over the years. "Happy birthday," the note had said. A gesture that confused me.
"Why?" I asked the woman who had once called me names and thrown plates. She looked like someone ashamed but trying.
"I changed," she said. Her voice shook. "I cleaned houses. I stopped gambling. I don't say certain things anymore."
I did not know whether to forgive. I let time do some of the work.
"Thank her," the other Lenore said once. "She is trying."
11
Years passed. We had children. Milo called the other Lenore "my brave" and pressed his lips to my shoulder like a blessing. I told him about being two, because he should know.
"Is that scary?" he asked.
"It was," I said. "At first."
He looked at me as if he wanted to take pieces of me gently in his palms. He did.
12
People with cruelty in their youth sometimes get their comeuppance by living the remainder of their days small. Other times life has a way of offering a very public moment where the truth becomes visible. I had not planned any public spectacle.
But the world is messy and honest and sometimes it gives a stage.
It happened on a clear spring day at our university's ten-year reunion. They invited alumni to speak. The main hall was filled with people from old classes—faces that had once been dangerous. Kendall Buchanan, older and perfectly made up, took a seat near the front. Byron Bryant, who had once been a boy who could make a room vicious, sat beside her with his arms crossed.
I had returned to give a short speech about resilience. Milo stood at my side steady.
"You will speak for five minutes," the organizer told us. "Keep it clean."
She—my other self—touched my hand as we stood. "Say it like this," she whispered.
I had not meant to make it a spectacle. But rehearsed or not, truth is a kind of power.
I walked onto the stage in a red dress. I had not worn it since the rooftop. It fit like an armor.
I started with a simple sentence. "When I was seventeen, they tried to kill my future for sport."
A silence followed the bluntness. Heads turned. Kendall gave a small, sharp laugh. Byron sneered.
"You think you can—" Byron mouthed, then stopped because the microphone said otherwise.
I read my speech slowly. It was full of small facts. "They shoved me into a pit," I said. "They filmed me. They posted my body on the school's message board. I was called names by my mother in front of teachers."
"You're bringing old drama," Kendall shouted. Someone behind her made a sound like a cough.
"Hold on," I said. "This is not about drama. It's about accountability."
I clicked a button. A large screen dropped down behind me. I had taken months to gather things. Messages, screenshots, small pieces of evidence—both audio and images. I had copied files from a long-buried camera, I had saved messages that men had sent to my mother boasting about cruelty, I had saved a recording of a voice that I recognized now as the one who laughed when I fell.
The first clip played. It was raw and small. The classroom noise, the rough hands, the voice that had called me trash. The hall went cold.
Kendall's eyes blazed. She stood up. "You can't—" she gasped. "That's edited!"
"That isn't edited," I said. I walked the stage. "Here's the second clip. Here's the message Byron sent to his friend bragging about how he and others laughed while I bled."
The second clip played. Byron's voice was smug and young. Then he shifted in his chair now, older and smaller.
"You were minors," someone in the back whispered. "How long—this is over ten years ago."
"It's not over for me," I said. "It never was. I carried these things like poison."
My voice felt steady. My other Lenore was there, a presence that made my spine straight. People started to murmur. Some reached for their phones. Someone took a video. A woman near the aisle whispered, "I remember you—my child told me to look."
Kendall's face was changing. First red, then pale. She tried to form a sentence. "You made this about you. You made us look stupid."
"Look at your hands," I said. "You used them on me. When you filmed me you made me smaller. Today you are sitting in my house as a mother. You are still choosing to look away."
She stood, ready to storm the stage. Byron rose too—his face a mask of outrage and fear. My mother was watching from the audience; she had come, finally, for reasons I could not parse.
"You're a liar," Byron shouted. "Those files are nobody's proof."
I clicked another button. An audio file played: a voice I had recorded years ago—Byron's father boasting about paying for silence, about how "girls like that" could be made to disappear from family life. The room gasped. People who had once avoided eyes now looked like witnesses to a crime.
Byron's expression cracked into denial. "That's fake. That's edited. You have no right—"
"I have the right to say you did wrong," I said. "Look at what you taught other boys."
At that point, the dean, who had once looked at me like a nuisance, stepped forward. She had watched the clips with her fingers pressed to her lips.
"This is being investigated," she said. For a long second, it felt as if the world was catching its breath.
Kendall sat down. She was shaking. Byron made a half-step toward me, then his face collapsed under the pressure of more eyes.
"Why are you doing this now?" Byron said finally, all his anger boiling into a thin, undignified plea. "What do you want?"
"Public truth," I said. "I want them to remember that they are not small people when what they do is big. I want them to know the sound of the things they said."
A crowd gathered near the stage. Phones lit up like a field of tiny eyes. Someone took a photograph. A woman in the front row—Brigitte Han, someone who had laughed when I failed—suddenly covered her mouth and sobbed. People around her started to whisper. "Oh God—"
Byron's face fell apart. "You're ruining me," he said. "My job—my family—"
"You ruined me," I said simply. "You made me believe the worst things about myself. You taught my mother how to hate me."
He tried to reach toward me as if to touch me, but Milo stepped forward and blocked him. Milo looks calm when he is furious. "Back up," he said. "Stay away."
Crowd reactions changed from curiosity to a kind of hot attention: murmurs, shutter clicks, people whispering accusations.
Byron's arrogance became desperation. He lunged for me then like a cornered animal.
"Don't you dare!" Milo roared. He shoved Byron. Others grabbed Byron. His hands were flailing. Kendall tried to speak, but her words were small and hollow. People were recording, taking pictures, the sounds of phones like an orchestra.
"Stop!" Byron shouted as security pulled him up and two students held Kendall back. His face crumpled from indignant bravado to stunned terror as the hall's eyes turned on him. "This is a lie!" he howled.
"You're telling the truth now," someone shouted from the audience. "We remember!"
The dean took the mic. "I will open a formal investigation," she said, voice firm. "Anyone who acted criminally will be reported."
Kendall's mouth opened. "You—" she began.
"Shut up," I said. I did not shout. I was tired of shouting. "You made me a ghost for ten years."
She fell apart. Her shoulders shook. She looked at the floor like someone whose mask had been removed. People around her whispered. Some scolded. "How could you do nothing?" a parent in the crowd asked. "Look at those files."
Byron's face turned from rage to bargaining to fear. He blinked hard, searched for an ally in the crowd, and found none. He tried the old tricks of blame and denial, then found his voice cracking. "I'm sorry!" he cried in the end. "I didn't mean—"
The words were gone. They fell like dry leaves.
He stood there, a man who had learned to use anger like armor, now standing in front of dozens of people with that armor gone. He pleaded; his father was called; people who had known his family stepped back. Someone took a video that night and uploaded it. By morning, the clips had hundreds of comments.
Kendall tried to stand tall. Her shoulders trembled. She said, "You made us look bad," but that sounded like a child throwing a toy.
The punishment was not a court sentence. It was worse and better in the way that small communities mete judgment: it was the ripping away of complacency. People who had been comfortable and cruel were now exposed.
Murmurs turned to hisses. A woman in the front row—someone whose child had been the subject of the old school gossip—stood and said, "I stood by. I didn't believe her because you told me to. I am sorry."
The ones who had laughed had to face their laughter. They tried to shape excuses; they failed. They split into people who tried to deny and people who finally admitted.
Byron collapsed into a chair. He could not meet anybody's eyes. "Please," he kept saying. "I didn't know—"
"You knew," I told him. "Knowing is the same."
Everyone watched him come apart. He sought laughter, found none. He pleaded for work and for family and for redemption. A woman near the aisle took a picture that was already being shared. People took photos, and instead of applause or jeers, there were questions. We were not a court. We were a community refusing to forget.
When the dean announced they'd start a review board, Byron's face crumpled into a mask of regret.
Kendall's breakdown was quieter. No one filmed her because she sat like someone who could not breathe. Someone who had been mean all those years now pressed her hands over her mouth and began to cry.
A circle of people formed who had once hidden their phones when I needed a hand. They came forward and apologized in private, after the speaking ended. The storm of witnesses turned into something messy: some apologies were awkward and late; others were the kind that shook the speaker.
It took three hours for the last person to leave the hall. People lined up to speak with the administration. A few pressed small envelopes into my hand—some mail, some old confessions—like contrite offerings.
Byron was escorted out by security. He reached back at the crowd with one last pleading expression and—when he saw the faces he had known for years—he looked like a man seeing himself for the first time in an honest mirror.
He fell apart on the sidewalk outside. Several of his former classmates passed him with faces of turned-away sorrow. Someone recorded a final clip of him sitting in the rain, his badge torn and his hands useless.
When it was over, Milo held my hand and squeezed. "You did it," he said.
"We did it," I corrected. She was there the whole time; I felt her in my bones like a steady drumbeat.
It was not the end of pain. But it was the beginning of a different life: a life where those who had been cruel had to answer in ways they had not practiced.
13
The days after the reunion were like being on both sides of a door. Some people I had known for years avoided me like the night after a storm. Others—strangers and friends—brought letters and small meals.
My mother called once and left a voice message. Her voice trembled. "I am sorry," she said. "I am trying."
"Are you?" I whispered into the darkness. It was not a question for anyone but me.
Over time, the sharper parts of my scars faded. The hand lines that had been raw became softer. I married Milo properly under a small sky. My mother stood in the back and wiped her face like someone who had learned to cry quietly.
14
Sometimes late at night, when the house is quiet, I feel two rhythms inside me.
"Did you ever wonder if you were real?" I asked her once as we ate midnight noodles.
She chewed quickly and said, "I am real enough to keep you safe."
"I love you," I said. I meant it. It was a strange and simple confession.
She smiled. "I love you too," she said. "You are mine to protect."
When my hair turned a little silver at the temples and my children went away to college and the house was larger and quieter, she came less to the surface and yet was always there.
On my sixty-third birthday Milo took my hand like he had on the first day. He looked at the lines in my palm and said, "You are a map and a miracle."
"I am two," I said.
He nodded. "Then both miracles."
When the final hospital bed smelled of antiseptic and the world grew the same size as the ceiling tile above me, she held my hand. "Are you afraid?" she asked in a voice that sounded like the sky.
"No," I said. "Not with you."
The light came. It was something like the rooftop with the red dress and the smell of cheap candy and the sound of a city that had learned to look. I took a breath and handed my body over to the place beyond.
She squeezed my fingers once more.
"Go," she said. "I'll be here. Remember we escaped."
I smiled. "I remember."
We let go together.
The End
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