You’ve got to do better than that.
I had no idea what to say. I’d just discovered something he wanted me to find years ago, but all I felt was anger. Anger at him for leaving, anger at him for lying, anger that, after all these years, I was still angry.
“Time for me to leave?” I asked.
His gaze moved back to mine. “No.”
A cold cloud of awkwardness settled in the room. His presence seemed to fill the empty spaces, making it a tight fit for me. Why wouldn’t he leave me alone? I had come here to spare him the misery of my company, and to spare myself the pain of his.
“Do you need to use the room or something?” I asked.
He opened his mouth to speak, but thought the better of whatever he was about to say and closed his lips. A flourish of emotions passed over his face, but the distance quickly returned. He glanced back at the desk and curiosity flickered through his eyes. And then, he walked further into the room.
There was a sort of grace to his step, one that made him seem light and agile despite his strength. He continued past me and paused at the desk, thumbing the cover of the book I’d been trying to read.
One corner of his lips turned upwards as he glanced at me. “Aren’t you tired of this one yet?”
At his grin, something snapped inside of me. “What I’m tired of is you. Quit acting like everything’s fine when it’s not. You’re nothing but a liar. And if I’d actually known you were going to be here, I never would’ve come.” The heat inside me burned with fury I couldn’t contain. “I hate you.”
My words slapped the grin from his face, and I wanted to take them back.
He stood tall and unmoving, hard eyes locked on mine. I tried to ignore the sharp fingertips of guilt that were already poking at my heart. He had deserved it because all of it was true. Every last word.
You could’ve left out the part about hating him. You know that’s not true.
But I’d wanted him to hurt. Hurt how he’d hurt me. Guilt dug into my chest, deeper and deeper.
Alex’s gaze bore into mine with a fire I didn’t understand.
The sound of footsteps echoed down the hall.
Alex didn’t look at me as he walked to the door, his movements sharp. With his back towards me he hesitated, fingertips lingering on the doorknob. He turned it and left, the door closing behind him.
I stared at the door. The room suddenly felt empty and cold as a mass hardened in my stomach, the weight pulling down my heart. What had I done? I should’ve been happy—happy that I just let the world’s biggest jerk have it.
So why did I feel so guilty?
Cicero and Sonya entered the library, followed by my dad. Their eyes darted around the room, probably expecting Alex to be with me. But thanks to my unfiltered words, I doubted he’d ever come near me again.
But that was what you wanted.
“Ready to go?” Dad asked.
“Yeah. Sure.” I heard my own words as though someone else had spoken them. I flipped off the lamp near my window-seat and returned the flashlight, ignoring the curious looks on their faces.
Cicero and Sonya escorted us to the front door where we all hugged and said our goodbyes. Sonya insisted I visit her more often, and with honest intentions I said I’d try. We both knew “try” was all I’d do, but she had to say it, so I’d know how much she cared.
As Dad and I walked out into the drizzled night, I glanced back, searching the windows. But all of them remained dark and deserted. There was no sign of him, not one.
Our drive home was silent and contemplative. Dad seemed preoccupied with thoughts of his own, his jaw fixed as his eyes focused on the road ahead. I was fine with that because I had enough to think about, like that room. The spinning globe and strange manuscripts and portraits. What did it all mean? And what had Alex wanted me to find? Better yet, why hadn’t he told me about any of it when we were kids?
Regret crept upon me. I didn’t know why, because I had done what I’d planned all these years: told him exactly how I felt. That should’ve been my closure—my vindication. But I felt even more unsatisfied than before I’d assaulted him.
You didn’t give him a chance to explain.
He’d had plenty of chances.
Maybe if you‘d kept your mouth shut, he would’ve explained everything.
Dear conscience, shut up.
But what if that was his intention, seeking me out in the library? Maybe he wanted to explain, or maybe I could’ve confronted him about it. Gotten some real answers about that day once and for all.
The day I was fifteen and he was seventeen.
It had been a slow progression, but I’d sensed it. I’d known him like I knew myself—better in some ways. We had shared everything, talked about everything, and depended entirely on the other as an accomplice in the small world we’d lived in. There had never been any barriers between us. Not until he had started creating them.
At first I thought it had been a figment of my imagination. Then one day, reality punched me in the gut. Dad had been off to the Andersons and I had the grand idea to go and surprise Alex. When we had arrived, I crept up the hardwood staircase, careful to skip the seventh, creaky step, all the way to Alex’s room. It had been tough catching Alex off-guard, but I’d mastered it after years of practice. Not telling him I would be coming over was the key ingredient. It had been the one time I could get him in a chokehold so secure even he couldn’t break free.
His door had been cracked open just a few inches and he had been talking to someone. I had peered through the crack. He was on the phone. This would be simple. Just as I had adjusted my stance to lunge, I froze. He’d said my name.
“Yeah, my mom said she’s on her way, but I’m not supposed to know,” he had said to the person on the other end. “No, she still has no idea…it’s hard for me…I’ve been pretending since we were kids…my parents are making me.” Pretending? About what? I had been afraid to keep listening but I couldn’t pull myself away. “I’m trying to figure out a way to tell her before I leave…I go insane when I’m around her…”
The floor had creaked beneath my foot as I’d shifted. Alex had spun around in his chair. I could still see his face: surprise, guilt, fear, worry. He had hung up the phone and hurried to me, his true feelings already masked by tenderness, but it had been too late.
“What’s wrong?” he had asked, searching my face.
He had been prodding, trying to see if I’d heard what he said. I had told him I didn’t feel well, and he had believed me. After a hasty goodbye, Dad took me home.
I didn’t cry often. With a dad gone most of the time, and no real mother figure, I never learned how to deal with emotion. I walled it off, burying pain deep inside, but that night the pain was so immense that even the Great Wall wouldn’t have been able to contain it. My tears came, and came. The entire night.
Once my tears dried up, I built an impenetrable barrier around my memories of him, tucking them away far from reach. I never saw him again. I never heard from him either. To me, that only confirmed the fact that he had never cared about me, our friendship, our conversations, our time together. He had pretended because his parents made him. But he had pretended so well, and I had been a fool.
That was the first time in my life I ever truly felt alone. Sure, I had been left alone most of the time, but this had been different. It left me empty and hollow, the shell of a human. If someone had punched me, I doubt I would’ve felt it, and I had wanted someone to punch me, to take the focus off the invading emptiness inside. Anything but what I had felt then.
Dad would sometimes talk about Alex, even though I never asked. Alex had gone to study abroad, far, far away from here, while showing great success in ventures unknown to me. His parents—and my dad—were so proud.
After that incident, I stopped going to the Andersons. It brought back the happiest moments of my life, which were now tainted with the poisons of pain and bitterness.
“What’s going on over ther
e?” My dad broke the silence.
I realized we were almost home, winding past the empty fields that encased me all my life. “Nothing.”
“Oh, really?”
I was twirling my hair again. I dropped my hand. “Did you know Alex was going to be there?”
Dad licked his lips as he flexed his grip on the steering wheel. “Last minute.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“If I told you Alex was going to be there, would you have gone?”
I opened my mouth to argue and then glared out the window. “No.”
“Then do you blame me for not telling you?”
“Of course I blame you! There was no reason for me to go.” Dad opened his mouth to speak but I cut him off. “And don’t say it was because of Sonya. I barely got to talk to her.”
He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I wanted…or hoped, that you might talk to Alex. Move on from whatever it is you’re still upset about. He’s not the same person, you know. Neither are you. You could at least give him a chance.”
Without a doubt, when it came to issues between Alex and me, my dad took Alex’s side. That was where my conscience learned it. “I did talk to him.”
Dad arched a brow. “Maybe we need to have a discussion on the definition of ‘talk’, because you hardly spoke all evening.”
“We talked in the library,” I said. “When you were busy with Cicero and Sonya.”
“Must have been quite the conversation since he didn’t meet us at the door when we left.”
I shut my mouth and stared out the window again. It was useless. I loved Dad, but he inferred way too much about things and I wasn’t in the mood to talk about what happened. “Look,” I started. “I’m sorry. It was…hard for me, seeing him again. It’s been so long, and—”
“Princess.” His tone turned soft like it usually did before he was about to lecture me on something. I braced myself. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t hurt from the past. Pain isn’t unhealthy, but if you keep it too close it fathers bitterness, and bitterness will eat away your soul like poison.” He paused. “Your mother always told me that, and she knew from experience.”
The moment he said the word “mother”, I forgot about the lecturing and looked back at my dad. I expected to see pain etched across his face, but instead the deep creases in his forehead vanished and his lips held traces of a smile. I studied him, waiting for him to revert to his usual state of despondency when it came to my mother, but it didn’t come. Instead, he kept talking about her.
“You look just like her.” He glanced at me. “And I don’t need to remind you that she was a beautiful woman, but it was her loving and honest heart that made her the loveliest woman I’d ever known. To this day, I’ve never met her equal.”
That hurt a little. I prided myself in honesty, but loving? My track record wasn’t looking so hot, this evening included.
His next words were so quiet I almost didn’t hear them. “I was a changed man after I met her.”
Considering his unusually nostalgic mood, maybe he’d tell me this time. “How did you meet her?”
My dad shifted in his seat. “Traveling. But that was a long time ago.”
His smile disappeared, his forehead re-crinkled, and he focused back on the road ahead.
Or…maybe not.
My dad ended every discussion about anything important to me during, well, my entire life, and now I was starting to reach my threshold for dealing with it.
The clouds huddled over the mountains, as if they were ready to attack. We turned down our long country road in silence, while my irritation amplified. We couldn’t talk about my mom; we couldn’t talk about my future. He, and my conscience, always took Alex’s side, like I was the problem.
Frustration simmered beneath my skin. He wouldn’t tell me anything. He wouldn’t let me go anywhere. He was gone all the time. And because he was so overprotective, I had been forced to live in the middle of nowhere my entire life without prospects of an exciting future—any future. Worst of all, I was forced to admit all that to Alex—the boy who'd just spent the past three years studying abroad with friends so interesting he had no need of me. What a successful life I'd led. And what a bright future.
All of the anger and resentment I had kept submerged burned. It burned so hot that it melted the little filter I had.
“We need to talk,” I blurted as we pulled into our driveway.
“You suddenly remember what it means?”
“Dad, I’m serious. I’m eighteen! I just finished high school—alone. I don’t have college plans. I don’t have any plans because you refuse to talk about it.”
My dad pulled the Subaru into our driveway. The low thrum of the engine came to a halt, and the evening listened in silence.
“Fair enough,” he sighed. “I know I haven’t said much to you on the subject.”
“Much? You haven’t said anything.”
He continued saying nothing, his strong hands holding the steering wheel, and then he looked at me. I knew that look. I wasn’t going to win, not this time. Not ever. “Dad, please.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t give you my reasons yet.”
“But—”
“We’ll talk about this in a few years…”
“This is ridiculous!” I couldn’t take it anymore. “A few years? You think I’m going to just sit…in this house until you’re ready? Until you install thermal sensors throughout the world? You can’t protect me forever. I’m tired of my life revolving around yours. I’m leaving, whether you like it or not. This summer.”
He studied me with suspicion in his eyes. “Does this sudden outburst have anything to do with Alexander by chance?”
I threw open the car door and jumped out of my seat.
“Daria.”
I glared back at him. I couldn’t believe it. He was smiling.
“Where are you going?”
“To see Cadence,” I called over my shoulder. “Don’t worry, you can keep an eye on me through your video cameras.”
I had to get away. I felt Dad’s eyes on my back as I leapt over the fence and into our neighbor’s yard. And then there was nothing. Nothing but an expanse of brown grasses before me.
What was wrong with me? It wasn’t like my monotonous life was a new thing. I’d been dealing with it since I could say the word “cow.” It just took someone like Alex—doing all the things I’d always dreamed of doing—to expose my life for what it was, to illuminate my own misery, to remind me that I was a boring, mundane farm girl. Worse than that, I technically didn’t even live on a farm.
Cadence whinnied with excitement when she saw me. It seemed my taking Cadence for a ride was the only freedom either of us had. Her hooves pounded the ground, clumps of earth kicking up behind us as we ran. Air whistled past my ears as my braid whipped my back, my eyes watering from the chilled air. I’d always found peace through riding, but even riding couldn’t take away the strain this time.
I pushed Cadence harder.
We ran to the farthest corner of my neighbor’s property, the only side without a fence. It didn’t have a fence because it ended with a steep cliff. We stopped at the rim, and Cadence panted as I sat, breathing in the cool, damp air.
Reaching in my pocket, I pulled out Alex’s letter.
“I need you to do something—something that may help you understand.”
Understand what? And how was that room supposed to explain anything? All it did was form more questions, reminding me that he’d known all these years and never told me. But why would he? He wasn’t even honest with his feelings. Being reminded of his lies when I’d trusted him more than I’d trusted myself hurt all over again.
I crumbled the paper in my hand and threw it at the canyon. The wind grabbed hold with invisible fingers, lifting and carrying the wad farther and farther. Back and forth it floated through the air, away from me, taunting me, like Alex.
I sighed. Dad was right, again. My current circumsta
nces hadn’t changed. I knew this moment would come, that I’d have to take my future into my own hands, and I wasn’t really that upset that Dad wouldn’t help. I wasn’t happy about it either, but that wasn’t the problem. Right now, I was upset about Alex. For years I’d denied his memory rights to my thoughts. Now they attacked with a vengeance—stabbing and tearing at my insides. All this time they’d been idle, waiting for that opportune moment. Problems conspire with each other behind your back and when they unite against you, you don’t stand a chance.
A gust of wind ripped through the fields. Cadence whinnied, her mane a mess. The clouds above were dark. Very dark. I was so focused—so angry—that I hadn’t noticed them sneak upon me, and from the looks of things, I’d be lucky to return home only damp.
Cadence and I ran hard back to her stable as thunder cracked overhead, rumbling throughout the earth, a warning to those in its path. As I ran across the neighbor’s yard, large droplets smacked my forehead, coming faster and faster as I ran. And thicker. I reached the fence and leapt over, my boots squishing in mud on the other side.
I stopped in my tracks.
The car was there, in the same spot. But our house was dark. Too dark.
I sprinted across our small yard as rainwater spilled into my eyes, my boots splashing through small puddles soaking my pants. Our front door was cracked open, the space beyond hidden in shadow. My heart pounded in my chest. Something was wrong.
I shoved the door in, my breathing ragged as I scoured the shadows. “Dad?”
Scorch marks stretched like black veins across the walls and down the hallway, crumbles of charred plaster littered the tiled floor. What had happened? My steps shook, my blood raced.
And then someone grabbed me from behind.
Chapter 4
The Andersons
“It’s me. Calm down!”
Cicero released my arms and I stopped trying to tackle him. His eyes were hard as he held my gaze, his features tight with strain. I’d never seen him so serious. But what was he doing here? “Where’s my dad?”
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