I crouched near the ground. Voices were all around me, some of them real, some of them all in my imagination. Emma was grumbling at me, "I swear, they're about to see you!" while Lana was assuring me that I was hidden perfectly well. A guard was trotting back and forth, singing a simple song, and getting too close for comfort. I was about to ditch the whole plan. Who values riches more than life? Lana had talked me into this,
telling me that this would be a piece of cake. She had explained how low security this museum was, but now I was being to doubt her matter-of-fact way of speaking. Emma was whispering doubts into my ear, and they were much easier to believe. How easy it would be to climb the tree I'm leaning on and to simply fly away.But was the guard really threatening me? Maybe he always walked right past this spot. Lana was insisting that he was half-blind. Emma was insisting that I would be caught. I didn't know whom to trust. I didn't know what to do. So I looked at the clearing in front of me, looked at the guard with his back turned to me, and looked at the dirt beneath my feet. "Come on, you can do this, Corinne…" was being whispered into my left ear, while "It's not too late! You can save yourself!" came through the other. I was sick of choosing whom to believe.
So I listened to myself. My thoughts held Emma's doubts, but Lana's ambition. I was a murky mixture of the two, pulling myself into two entirely different directions. I suppose my job was to figure out which was stronger.
Lana. Of course Lana would win, when in my past had she not? I jumped up and ran for the door. And just as always, the door was locked.
"Okay, well this is great," I muttered to myselves. "Oh, it's too late." Emma muttered, while her counterpart was shouting at me to pick the lock. "With WHAT?" "Oh, I'm sure in that ugly mass of hair you have a bobby pin or something equally classic or stereotypical." "Actually, no." "See! I told you!" Emma said, and a sort of thwapping noise followed her comment.
"Ow!" squealed Lana.
"Quiet! They'll hear you!"
"Oh, Corinne has screwed us over already."
"Shh! It's not over yet! Well, it is… but… oh, dear…"
"Do your better thirds a favor and shut up, Emma."
"I could say the same to you…"
"No you couldn't, you're all happiness and sunshine. You'd say 'please, can you keep it down a little?'"
"That's not true! I can be positively horrifyingly mean…"
Lana snickered, "I'll believe it when I hear it, Emma 'darling'."
"Shut your mouths." I muttered to the both of them, "I'm so sick of the both of you! Let me do what I please."
"We are," they replied in unison.
Then the guard came back around the bend.