The Dreamhouse

by Thorn, Nicole

  I smiled, but it lasted less than a second. I was thinking about Bennett. He texted me and said he was writing all day. So I guess he wasn’t up for a day out. It was snowy anyway, and I knew he didn’t like that very much. He didn’t know how to have fun.

  “Of course.” I smirked at her as I threw my legs over the arm of the chair. “You just love a good romance, huh?”

  Her ears dropped when she looked away, pretending to not know what I was talking about. Riley was a sucker for lovey-dovey stuff, and Wilson was more than happy to go along with it. They were so sweet together, and it made me feel at ease to see at least one of my sisters slipping into normal life. Now I needed to work on Adalyn.

  Riley closed her coloring book and set it aside with her colored pencils. She stood, and straightened out her purple and black striped dress. “Maybe we can pick up the kids later and take them out to build snowmen. Wilson hasn’t had the time, and I know Jude and Welly really wanted to.”

  I eyed her. “You think your parents are going to let you take Maxwell out?”

  She made a face.

  Her parents were… I didn’t want to say awful. But kind of awful. They thought that they knew what was best for her, and it literally got her killed. Riley was lucky that those kids found her and got her breathing again. I blamed her parents entirely for making her feel as trapped as they did. We lived in a prison for seven years. The last thing we needed was more time locked up.

  “We’ll see,” Riley said, snapping out of it.

  A rapid knock on the door made me groan obnoxiously. Riley laughed at me and went to answer it since this was her house after all. I was not obligated to adult here. Mwahaha.

  “Yes?” my sister chirped at the woman standing on her porch.

  She dressed casually in jeans and a sweater that covered her neck. Dark hair had been tied up into a no-nonsense bun, and I already didn’t like her. She looked rigid, for all the dressed downness of her. My eyes narrowed in her direction.

  “Hi.” She smiled. “I’m Lykke Yorke.” She extended her hand, and Riley awkwardly shook it. “I’m looking for Riley Cain.”

  My sister scrutinized the woman. “For?”

  That was my cue to get off my ass and form a barricade. We did not like strangers. It was kind of a bad thing for us. I kinda learned to hate strangers who knew my name after they start asking for my autograph when I was at dinner with my family.

  “Yeah,” I sneered. “For?”

  “Layla Hall?” the woman asked me.

  Damn. I really wish I kept my face out of the press. “What’s it to you?”

  The woman smiled stupidly. “I’m with Red Star Productions.” She promptly handed me a card, then Riley. “I was sent because we were interested in you girls.”

  “You could have called,” I said, deadpan.

  She still smiled. “We like to be a little more personal than that. We would like to set up a meeting with the three of you survivors.” Oh, fuck. “My company is interested in purchasing the film rights to your story.”

  I opened my mouth to destroy her, but Riley put her hand on my arm, telling me to shut my cake hole in the only way she could. “Ma’am,” she said with calm I couldn’t dream of. “We’ve had a lot of offers, but we’re not selling. Thanks for your time.”

  When the door started to close, the Lykke bitch put her hand on it, propping it open. “Wait. I think you girls are misunderstanding something.”

  My arms crossed, and Riley did not touch me this time. “Oh, enlighten us then.”

  The woman somehow managed to keep her sickly sweet tone as she made her point to us. “Your story is out there, girls. There is nothing stopping someone from changing the names and writing a tell-all or producing some made-for-TV movie about the four of you. What I’m offering is to get it straight from the horse’s mouth. We want to know everything, and we want your story told.”

  This record was so old that it skipped. This bullshit was what convinced us to do the TV interview in the first place. We didn’t want the lies, so we told the truth. We didn’t realize then that they would do that anyway. We told everyone what happened, and they still told lies. They embellished. They humiliated us. The best we could do now was keep ourselves from more of a mess.

  The woman mentioned a movie about us and wasn’t that peachy. It was bad enough living with the articles and whispers of worse things to come. Books, movies, TV shows. Why was tragedy so fucking entertaining to people? Why would someone want to sit down and see four children being tortured?

  “Everyone wants to know about The Paperdolls,” the bitch said.

  Those words… I was so sick of them. It was like we weren’t even real to these people who called us paper dolls. That was what we were in that bunker, but we weren’t that anymore. We were fine.

  We were fine.

  “We’re not interested,” Riley told her. “We don’t need to be made into a movie. I think we’ve put our family through enough.”

  Lykkie didn’t budge. “But imagine how many more people you could reach if you allowed us to do this. You could help people who are going through trauma.”

  I scoffed. “And make a few bucks too, huh?”

  She must have missed my tone. “Quite a bit. We’re willing to offer you girls a substantial amount of compensation for your troubles. We want you to be producers on the picture. You can come to set, and tell us if we’re missing any details.”

  A set… She was talking about recreating The Dollhouse and making us go and tell people how to perfect it. Like it was a room she was decorating. Did she not understand what this was to us? How that place was our home? How we lived and almost died there? Money seemed to make her think that anything she wanted was available to her. How very wrong she and her people were.

  Riley took a small step back, and I could see in her eyes that she wanted to run away. She needed someone to protect her from this woman, and I was the only one around.

  I got between this woman and my sister, and I stood our ground for the both of us. “We don’t want what you’re offering, and it’s sick that you want to exploit what happened to us for entertainment. How about you go find another fucked-up story to make into a movie? Because we’re not here for you to make a quick dollar.”

  With a sigh, the woman took a step to the porch from where she’d wormed her way closer to us. “I think you are making a bad decision here,” she said, dropping a little sugar from her voice. “It would take nothing for us to change up your names and a few details. But people would be more interested if we had the real thing instead of a knock off. Maybe even a cameo. The fact is that your story is gonna be told no matter how you feel about it. If we don’t do it, someone else will. And there are all kinds of laws that can be danced around. You are not protected, so look out for yourselves first. You can have control if you go through us.”

  After taking everything she said into consideration, I smiled at her. “Fuck off,” I said before I slammed the door in her face.

  Riley shuffled over to the couch and sat down. Her legs went to her chest, and she wrapped her arms around them, tucking herself into a little ball as she slumped over.

  I hurried to her and sat down. “We’ll be fine,” I told her, putting my hand on her knee. “That woman doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

  My sister stared blankly at me, and all she could do was whisper. “She does. How many articles have been written? How many stories have you seen on the news? Anyone can make some knock-off version of what happened to us. Turn it into some horrible novel, or a movie. What happens if we have to see trailers on TV for our story but with a couple changes? How do we live through that?”

  I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t know what it would feel like to see trailers, posters… to hear more people talking about us. I could hear it in my head. Oh, how sad. Those poor girls. What a tragedy. What do you think he really did to them? I didn’t want that life. We were only just getting past some of the backlash for what we’d
already done. How much more were we supposed to take?

  “We’ll be fine,” I told Riley. “No matter what happens next, we’ll find a way through it. When have we not?”

  She looked at the scar on my wrist, totally visible to her. I put my hands on my lap so she wouldn’t have to see them anymore. “Layla,” she said grimly. “I don’t think any of us can claim we’ve gotten through anything.”

  “What?” My eyebrows pushed together as I tried to comprehend what she said. “We’re out, and we’re living our lives.”

  “That doesn’t mean we got through anything. We’ll never be done with any of this. It’s going to haunt us forever.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? It’s over.”

  Riley shook her head, watching me with what looked like pity. “No. It’ll never be over for us. This thing,” she whispered. “What happened to us, it’s who we are. We can’t run away from it, and we can’t ignore it. It’s burrowed into our skin, and it’s a part of us. Can’t you see that?”

  Riley didn’t know what she was talking about, and that was odd for her. Of course this was over. We were topside and free of that monster. How could she think this still hurt us? She was happy and with Wilson. Sure Adalyn still had a hard time, but she would get better. I was fine. I had my life on track, and nothing was wrong. But the way Riley looked at me had me feeling like I was crazy. I didn’t like it.

  “I should go,” I said, standing up. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Layla,” Riley called after me. “Wait.”

  I ignored her, throwing my shoes on and almost running out of her house.

  My feet slipped into a pile of fresh snow, and the ice stung me. Like a billion little pricks on my skin. I shivered and hurried to my car, trying not to slip and break something. Somehow having to scream for help wasn’t all that appealing.

  Sure enough, I skidded in the ice and slammed into my car. I only just caught myself on it and avoided a crash against the street. I panted, catching my breath as I stood shivering.

  I pressed my forehead against the top of the car and stood there, staring at my feet. All I did was blink numbly when I saw the blood dripping into the snow.

  wasn’t prepared for what was waiting for me when I woke up. My eyes opened, and I barely sat up when someone knocked on my door. I rasped out permission to come in, and the door opened up. My parents walked in together, and I could only assume the worst.

  “Morning,” I said as they walked closer.

  The looks they wore made me wish I was somewhere else. My night hadn’t gone well. Again, I’d woken up at four in the morning for no reason. I cried for an hour before I could finally close my eyes again, and all I experienced were nightmares. Most of them were things I couldn’t remember, but the few I could were painful to think about.

  Riley and Adalyn were in them, and we were all locked in a room I could remember all too clearly. The Bad Girl Room. Our hands were bound as we sat hip-to-hip on the floor. I couldn’t remember what we’d done to earn it or why Kylie wasn’t there. But the memory of my aching throat followed me when I awoke. In the dream, Master must have punished me. I could see myself against a wall, his hands around my throat. He rarely held me long enough to knock me out, but I always bruised. I think his goal was to scare me. He wanted me to obey.

  In my dream, I didn’t have a voice. Adalyn was as silent as I was, but it was by choice. Riley was the only one who could scream, and she didn’t stop the entire time. I reached out my bound hands and touched the walls around us. They crumbled at my touch like they were made of sand.

  But it was just a dream, and it didn’t matter now that I was awake.

  Mom sat on my bed, and my father leaned against the wall. My mom put her hand on my blanket covered feet. “Honey, your father and I were talking.”

  I could tell. “About?”

  My parents exchanged a look, and my dad took over for them. “You’ve been at the center a whole lot lately. We wanted to make sure that you were getting some fun time in.”

  This wasn’t going to end well. “I like the center. I help people there.”

  “I know,” my mother said, voice like honey. “We want you to help yourself too. There are a lot of other people there that can answer phones. You can’t have that heaviness on you at all times.”

  I pulled my legs away and tucked them under me, not wanting to be touched anymore. “They need me. Those people that call need me.”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “I know you think that. This, all those lives, they are not on your shoulders, Layla.”

  I didn’t see it that way. What if one of my people called, and I wasn’t there? Then they might feel all alone, and I knew what happened when someone felt all alone. Bennett felt all alone, and it almost cost him his life. I couldn’t let that happen to someone else. I couldn’t let another meaningless death destroy lives.

  “It is,” I told my mom. “Every life lost because I wasn’t there is my fault. They can be gone in a second, and I could have changed that.”

  “No,” she whispered. “The weight of the world is not on you, and sometimes people don’t want to live, honey. None of that is on you. You’re a twenty-year-old girl. You should be out having fun with your friends.”

  What did she think? That I could tuck away everything I knew about the world and party it up? My eyes were wide open, and I saw it all so clearly. There was too much hurt for me to ignore it. It wasn’t fair that I was fine and so many other people weren’t. It wasn’t fair that this world was as dark as it was.

  I sat there, and the anger started bubbling up in me. So much of this was unfair. Not for those people with such hard lives and not for me. Why did I have to have eyes wide open? Why did someone steal me when I was a little girl? What the fuck did I do to deserve that? I was a kid, and I hadn’t done a thing wrong in my life. I wanted to play with my friends and my sister and be left alone. Then everything had been destroyed while I watched. My life was not fair, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.

  I sat back on my bed, and looked from both of my parents, my eyes accusing. “I’m doing what I want with my life. I’m making it mean something.”

  My father closed his eyes and inhaled. “Layla, you’re not hearing us. You need to make some choices in your life. Like what you want to do with it. If you want to keep doing this, that’s fine. You can be a social worker, or you can find another venue to explore.”

  “The point,” Mom said, taking over. “Is that the choices you make need to be about you and only you. Adalyn is working on her children’s books, and Riley’s helping her boyfriend run that shop. I don’t want you to fall behind.”

  I snapped at her, and I didn’t mean to, but my words came out harshly. “I work there too! What? You want me to pick up more hours?”

  Mom sighed and hung her head, rubbing her face. “You aren’t understanding.”

  “What am I not understanding?”

  “Layla,” my father stepped in. He literally took a couple steps closer to us, crossing his arms and staring me down. “Don’t talk to your mother like that.”

  I stood up from my bed, my hands balled into fists at my sides. “Don’t come in here and tell me I’m living my life wrong. I’m saving people.”

  “You’re not healing,” he said. “You’re trying to ignore what happened to you, and it’s not healthy. We gave you months, and nothing is changing. I don’t want you waking up in five years thinking that you’ve wasted all your time. I don’t want you finding out the hard way that you’re hurting yourself.”

  Why the hell did everyone suddenly decide I was off my rocker? I was the only stable one of my sisters, as sad as that was. We could hardly get Adalyn to leave the house, and Riley still broke down on a dime. I got out there and tried to help people. I’d already healed just fine.

  “I’m not hurting anybody,” I told my parents. “I’m doing what I have to do.”

  My father made me jump when his hand suddenly landed on m
y shoulder. “Layla, Kylie wasn’t your fault.”

  He may as well have slapped me for the way I started when he said that. The look in my eyes reflected his betrayal. “This isn’t about her. She made her choice, and she didn’t care about how we all felt about it.”

  We could have helped her, and she chose to keep us in the dark. I couldn’t let myself get hung up on this thing she did to us.

  “I know it wasn’t,” I said between my teeth. “She didn’t let us try and save her.”

  “That’s not the point,” Mom said. “Some people can’t be saved.”

  Bullshit.

  “We want you to see Dr. Hastings more,” my dad finally said. Oh, so that was what he was after. “If you won’t talk to us, then we need you to talk to him.”

  They cornered me like an animal. Did they not see that I would snap if they kept poking at me?

  “That’s my choice,” I decided. “And what I choose right now is to go to work and save some lives. If you have a problem with it, I think you should keep it to yourselves.”

  I left them in my room and went to get ready.

  I sat at my desk, tapping it with my pencil so hard that I thought I would snap it in half. Anxiety rattled inside of my brain, and I couldn’t focus on a thing today. That wasn’t very good for what I did. I hadn’t been on the phone yet, but I worried for when it happened.

  I made my way through my notebook while I waited for a call to come in. I caught up with six people so far, and one of them had to call me later. We had some nice talks, and it felt like they were really healing. That was the thing that my parents didn’t seem to understand. These people just needed to talk to someone that understood them. I was more qualified than most. I felt like a dick for how I was this morning, but I felt like I had no control over what I said. Like something took me over, and I Hulked out. It happened too often.

  I was on my last call before I decided I should try something new. I pulled up the number of one of the very first calls I got here. A girl named Mary who lost her father a few months ago. She was teetering on a razor’s edge, but she’d started a new semester at high school, and she’d made friends.