by Tara Sivec
“You didn’t hear anything about that night, right? Like, maybe some of the workers were here and saw something?”
He shakes his head, but still doesn’t turn to face me. I start to call him on it when he suddenly turns and leans toward me.
“You know I care about you, right? And I’d never let anything happen to you?” he asks.
I nervously rub my hands up and down my arms, feeling agitated by what his words do to me. Nolan and I have spent every day together since my mother’s death. Because my father has locked himself in his office, he hasn’t given the grounds crew a list of jobs that needs to be done, like he usually does every morning when they get here. After the first day when they finished with all of the obvious things that needed taking care of, they didn’t figure it would make sense to come all the way out here and have nothing to do. They left, telling me to have my father call them when he wanted them to come back to work.
Much to my surprise, when I woke up the following morning and came outside for some air, Nolan was sitting on the top step of the porch waiting for me. I tried to brush him off, ignore him in the hopes that he’d go away, but he wouldn’t give up that easily. I didn’t want to like him. I didn’t have time to waste looking forward to his visits. I was too consumed with my newly discovered personality, enjoying the thrill of behaving however I pleased, without having to worry about consequences. I still had secrets to uncover and memories to remember and being with Nolan was simply not on the agenda.
I thought it would be easy to push him aside because I didn’t like the way he made me feel. When he spoke to me so soft and sweet, when he looked at me like he was interested in what I had to say, it scared me deep down to the very core of me. I wasn’t afraid of being chased through the woods, almost drowned, and having my mother aim a loaded gun at my chest. I’m not afraid of my memories that show me the horrible things that were done to me, the awful words that were said to me, and I know I won’t be afraid of what’s yet to come, when it all clicks into place and everything makes sense. All of those things strengthen me and push me to keep going, get to the bottom of everything, and show them all, whoever they are, that they can’t ignore me any longer.
One look, one word, one brush of Nolan’s hand along my bare arm, and I want to get up and run as far away as possible. I hate the way he makes me feel, but at the same time, I crave it. I realized my fear comes from being afraid of the unknown. No one has ever looked at me like he does, no one has ever spoken to me like he does, and I don’t know how to handle it. I can easily deal with the anger and hatred, the pain and misery. I’m used to those things: they’re a part of me and the more they’re thrown in my direction, the stronger I feel and the harder I fight.
I don’t know how to deal with someone being genuinely nice to me. It’s foreign, and it’s strange, and it puts me on edge. After two days of trying my hardest to pick fights with Nolan by calling him names, belittling him, shoving my hands against his chest, and doing whatever I could to try and get a rise out of him, I finally had to give up and just deal with the discomfort.
Instead of answering his question about knowing if he cares for me and that he wouldn’t let anything happen to me, I change the subject before I do something stupid and pathetic like cry.
“I need your help with something today,” I tell him, pushing myself up from the dock to stand over him.
He shields his eyes from the sun as he looks up at me. “Please tell me you need help moving out of your room.”
I smile and hold my arm out toward him. He wraps his warm callused hand around mine and I pull to help him up, quickly dropping his hand when he’s standing in front of me before it makes me feel like running in the opposite direction. I need the use of his muscles today, and I don’t have time to run away like a child.
“As a matter of fact, I do,” I tell him as we walk back up to the prison.
Nolan has been begging me for days to move out of my bedroom and into the spare room. He is completely grossed out that my mother’s blood still stains the window and walls of my room, and he doesn’t understand why I continue to sleep there every night.
Even with my confusion and overall uneasy feelings about being treated with kindness and respect, there’s still something about Nolan that makes it impossible for me to shut my mouth when I’m with him. He’s easy to talk to, and he never once looks at me in disgust or judgment when I speak to him, even when I’ve told him some of the more strange and awful things I’ve remembered. I told him about my dreams, the flashes of memories, the realization that something very bad happened to me growing up, and even everything my mother said to me before she took her own life.
If he isn’t going to leave me alone and I’m going to continue being a glutton for punishment by hanging around him, the least he could do is help me figure everything out and try to make sense of the things my mother told me. As we walk side-by-side through the grass up to the front porch, just remembering how everything unfolded that night makes my breath come out in short, angry pants. My hatred for her grows even stronger when I replay the drivel that came out of her mouth, not even having the decency to finally tell me everything I was missing before she selfishly shot herself. Instead, she spoke in riddles that didn’t make sense and now became yet another puzzle I’d have to figure out. I stomp so hard up the stairs, I’m surprised the old wood doesn’t crumble beneath my feet.
Nolan puts his hand on my arm, stopping me when we get to the top of the stairs. “Are you okay?”
I quickly wipe the anger from my face, shaking out my clenched hands, and smile up at him.
“Perfectly fine,” I reassure him.
I’ve opened myself up to Nolan, more than I felt comfortable with, but I drew the line at letting him in on the thoughts and feelings that run through me and stimulate me. A girl needs to have a few secrets and something tells me that informing Nolan I dream of blood and death and fantasize about revenge and hate and hurting people wouldn’t go over very well. Maybe I’ll tell him everything some day. Maybe when I’m finished using him to help me uncover the missing pieces, and I no longer need him, I’ll show him who I really am.
Nolan jogs across the porch and opens the front door, holding it wide so I can enter. I walk past him and continue moving toward the stairs, making it halfway up when I realize he’s not following behind me. Looking over my shoulder, I find him standing awkwardly at the base of the stairs with his hands in his pocket.
“If you’re going to help me switch rooms, it would help if you’re actually in the rooms with me,” I remind him.
He still doesn’t move up the stairs toward me. Instead, his eyes dart nervously around the hallway and then beyond me up the stairs.
“What’s the problem?” I ask, trying not to let my irritation show.
“I’ve never been upstairs in the living quarters before,” he tells me.
“Okaaaaaaay,” I reply, drawing the word out in confusion.
He huffs out an irritated breath, pulling his hands out of his pockets to cross his arms in front of him. “Look, this is a little weird, even knowing your father is probably comatose in his office. He doesn’t like me, I don’t like him, and he would kill me if he found me upstairs. If he found me upstairs in your bedroom, he would revive me just so he could kill me again.”
I laugh, rolling my eyes at him.
“Stop being such a chicken. You have no reason to be afraid of him,” I tell him, turning back around to continue upstairs.
“Don’t be a chicken, you knew this day would come. You should have spent more time being afraid of me, instead of hurting me.”
I stop suddenly on the stairs, not realizing Nolan finally followed until he bumps into my back. He asks me something but I block him out, trying to concentrate. I close my eyes, repeating the words that just popped into my head, over and over, hoping to retrieve something else along with them. Did I say them? Did someone say them to me? Where was I? How old was I?
Just like always
, my mind shuts down like someone slammed a door in my face. I let out a frustrated sigh and open my eyes, continuing the rest of the way up the stairs.
“Did you remember something else?” Nolan asks softly as he moves next to me when we get to the top.
I wave him off with my hand and head to my bedroom.
“Nothing important,” I lie, entering my room and taking a look around, trying to figure out what to move first.
“Good God,” Nolan mutters, stopping in the doorway.
His eyes are wide and his hand comes up to cover his mouth. I open my own to ask him what his problem is, quickly snapping it shut when I realize that little trip down memory lane distracted me so much that I almost forgot Nolan has never been up here before. I’m so used to staring at the huge dark stain on my window and walls that I forgot it would probably be disturbing to someone else. I wait for him to ask me why I haven’t at least tried to wash some of it off, especially the window where most of the blood and pieces of brain matter landed.
He walks up next to me and puts his arm around my shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. “This is awful, Ravenna, I’m so sorry. If you want to go in the other room, I’ll clean it up and get everything out of here, so you don’t have to be in this room any longer.”
I try not to fidget uncomfortably with the heavy weight of his arm over my shoulder, and I press my lips together tightly before I’m tempted to admit everything to him. I let him continue to assume I’ve been so distraught that I couldn’t bring myself to wash away the evidence of what my mother did. It’s probably best I don’t tell him that I never washed the window and wall because lying here in bed at night with my bright overhead light on, it calms me to stare at the mess my mother left behind. It helps me fall asleep staring at the dark red splatter, trying to find hidden shapes in the dried splotches.
The only reason I’m moving out of this bedroom is because it represents everything I’m not. It’s a daily reminder of the girl my parents tried to fool me into being. And I’m getting tired of Nolan begging me to move out several times a day.
I shrug out from under his arm and move over to my dresser. “I’m fine, Nolan, really. Let’s just get this done so we can move on to more important things.”
I open a drawer and start pulling everything out of it while Nolan goes to the bed, sliding the top mattress off and tipping it to the side before pushing it across the floor to the door.
“So what’s the plan? I’ve been thinking about everything you told me and I can’t make sense of any of it,” he tells me as he pushes the mattress out of the doorway and into the living room.
I dump the pile of clothes in my arms onto the floor and follow him out so I can point out which room I’m moving to. I walk along the tipped mattress he holds up and stop short in front of the spare room.
“Shit. I forgot the door is locked,” I complain.
Nolan leans the mattress against the back of the couch and comes up next to me. He squats down and studies the doorknob for a few seconds. The doors and matching hardware up in our living quarters are still the originals from when the prison was first built. The knob is made of thick glass, framed with an oblong brass filigree backplate that requires a skeleton key to open—a skeleton key that is on a key ring in my father’s locked office.
“What kind of clothing hangers do you have in your closet?” Nolan asks, tilting his head to the side as he studies the lock hole.
“Just regular wire ones I guess.”
“Can you grab me one please?” he asks. “I think I might be able to pick this thing.”
Jogging back to the room, I grab a hanger from the pole in my closet and hurry back to Nolan. Taking the hanger from me, I watch as he unbends the curved top of the hanger until it’s pointing straight out. He sticks the end into the keyhole, and after a few minutes of jiggling it around inside, as well as a couple of muttered curses under his breath, I hear a loud click. Nolan stands, tossing the hanger to the side, and turns the handle, pushing the door open.
I smile up at him as I walk by. “A gentleman and a handyman. Very nice.”
He returns my smile, and I quickly look away before I start to like it too much.
My feet suddenly come to a stop in the middle of the room when I see a dark blue hard-side leather suitcase with white trim, lying on its side in the middle of the bed. This time, I don’t even need to concentrate to pull the memory into focus. It slides right into place in my mind like it’s always been there and I move to the bed silently, running my hand over the side of the familiar piece of luggage.
“This will be your room. Dinner is in an hour, so you can hang up your things in the closet while you wait. You will be on time and you will respect the rules while you’re under this roof. You have one chance to prove yourself. Screw it up, and you will regret it.”
Tossing my luggage onto the neatly made bed, I wisely keep my mouth shut as he turns and leaves the room, slamming the door closed behind him.
“Thanks for the lovely welcome, Ike. We’ll see who’s the first to have regrets,” I mutter under my breath before flopping on top of the bed.
I bounce a few times on the mattress while I look around the room. It’s different from what I remember but that’s no surprise. Of course they’d erase every trace of their mistake as soon as it was out of sight.
Shoving my suitcase out of the way, I lie on my back with my hands behind my head and stare up at the ceiling, having no intention of unpacking my things. They’ll find out soon enough that I’m not going to follow their rules.
Closing my eyes, I go over the plan once more in my head. I can’t make any mistakes because it has to be perfect.
“Perfect, perfect, perfect,” I whisper softly.
I smile to myself when I finish chanting their favorite word.
“Enjoy your little perfection while you can, because I’m going get rid of it, once and for all.”
Grabbing the handle of the suitcase, I pull it to the edge of the bed and move my hands to either end of it, flipping open the gold snaps holding it closed.
I feel Nolan come up behind me, the front of his body brushing up against my back while he silently looks over my shoulder. The lid of the suitcase creaks as I slowly open it, staring down at the contents with a smile on my face.
“Why did you put all of these clothes in a suitcase in another room and keep the stuffy, boring dresses in your closet?” he asks in confusion.
Glancing down at myself and the one pair of jean shorts I hacked off, paired with one of the “stuffy” dresses I turned into a crop top by cutting it off from the waist down, I smile as I look back inside the suitcase.
I hated those dresses, but I put them on every day because I was told they were what I loved and what I always wore. I forced myself to accept what I was told, even though it didn’t feel right, and I didn’t recognize the girl in the mirror.
“I have no idea,” I finally answer Nolan as I pull every item out of the suitcase.
This time, I don’t really have to lie to him. I remember being in this room, and I knew what would be in this suitcase before I even opened it, but I still don’t remember anything else.
Right now, it doesn’t matter. Pulling out ratty and well-worn jean shorts, miniskirts and tank tops, bell-bottoms and crop tops, I spread them out all over the bed and stare at the items before me. Confidence flares inside me with the knowledge that yet another gut feeling I had that conflicted with what my parents told me turned out to be correct.
“My name is Ravenna Duskin. I’m eighteen years old, I live in a prison, and I can finally dress the way I’m supposed to.”
Chapter 14
Pacing back and forth in the hallway while I wait for Nolan to get here, I try to come up with a way to get my father out of his office. I need to get in there and look at the picture my mother mentioned. I’m sure most of what she said to me that night in my room was utter nonsense from a delusional woman, but maybe not all of it. I won’t know for sure until I
can get to the picture and see if it makes me remember anything.
There’s a knock at the door, and I race over to it and quickly throw it open. My shoulders drop and I let out an annoyed sigh, leaning my shoulder against the doorjamb and crossing my arms over my chest.
“What are you doing here?”
Trudy stands in front of me with her long blonde hair curled up at the ends and a wide yellow headband keeping her bangs pulled back on top of her head. She’s wearing a short yellow dress with a full skirt and capped sleeves, like a perfect ray of sunshine. It’s so pathetic I want to throw up on her black and white saddle shoes. Maybe she’s really my parents’ long-lost daughter. She certainly dresses the part.
Trudy holds out a bright orange Pyrex dish with a daisy painted on the white lid and smiles brightly.
“We just heard about your mom. I’m so sorry, Ravenna. My mom made a tuna casserole for you and your father. You haven’t returned any of my calls lately so I thought we could hang out and talk.”
Keeping my arms crossed, I stare down at the dish in disgust. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
I push off the doorframe, stepping back inside to close the door in her face. Trudy moves fast, sticking her foot in front of the door to stop it from closing.
“Look, I know your mom died, but that’s no reason for you to be so nasty to me when I’m just trying to help,” she says, tucking the dish under one arm. “What’s happened to you lately, Ravenna? One minute you’re my friend, then you’re mean to me, then you’re normal, and now you’re back to acting weird.”
She pauses in the middle of her speech to look me up and down from head to toe. “Also, that outfit you’re wearing is trashy.”
Maybe the black high-waist shorts that barely cover my butt and dark blue crop tank top that shows off a strip of the pale skin of my stomach are a bit much when I’m just going to be wandering around a prison all day, but this is who I am and Miss Trudy Sunshine better watch her mouth.
