I shake my head. I won’t let her get away with this. I want her to smack me again. Beat me up so she’ll leave marks for people to find. Blake isn’t stupid. He’ll figure it out. She reaches over with her left hand and pushes on my jaw bone. An excruciating pain radiates to the back of my head. She does it again. The pain is so great, it makes me feel like I’m going to pass out, but I hold on. She tosses the pills back on the nightstand. She’s so furious she’s shaking. Her hands are clenched in fists at her side.
She picks up the pillow next to me. I twist back and forth.
“Mom! Mom!” I scream. This time my voice is louder. My strength is coming back.
She smashes the pillow on my face. My arms and legs thrash against the ties binding them. My body screams for oxygen. My chest is going to explode and spray pieces of me all over the pillow. Black fills the edges of my visions. Darkness is coming. I stop fighting and let it cover me. I’m not scared any more.
Just like that I can breathe again. I gasp for air as Mom screams, “Get away from her!”
Mom grabs Sarah and flings her off the bed. She crashes to the floor and springs back up like a cat.
My lungs are burning.
“How dare you? How dare you?” Mom inches closer to her, her face contorted in rage.
Sarah’s face twists in pain. “You love me! I know you love me. She ruined everything and you just let her. She doesn’t even appreciate you.” She starts grabbing things off my dresser and throwing them at Mom. She rips the posters off the wall, screaming incoherently.
Mom doesn’t take her eyes off her. She fingers the ties around my wrist; her other hand against Sarah’s chest. “Ella, I’m going to untie you and when I do, you run downstairs and call 911.”
But it’s not going to work. The ties are too tight. She can’t untie them with one hand. Sarah shoves Mom aside and bolts for the door. Mom leaps up and grabs her by the hair, snapping her back. She pulls her into the room and slams her onto the floor. She gets on top of her, pinning her arms back and sitting on her stomach. Sarah screams like she’s possessed. Spit flings out of her mouth. Mom holds on. She bucks her around, but Mom doesn’t let go. Finally, she goes limp. The room stills. Sarah starts to sob.
“But you love me. You know you do. How can you do this to me? Please, Jocelyn, please. I’m a good daughter. I am.” She sounds like a little girl.
Mom’s voice is calm and steady, “Sarah, I’m going to untie Ella now. You aren’t going to move. Do you hear me?”
She doesn’t respond. She lays there like she’s dead. Mom inches her way to me. I watch Sarah while she unties me. She curls herself up into the fetal position.
“Ella, go call 911,” she says.
Sarah whimpers on the floor. “I’m sorry, Jocelyn. I’m so sorry. Please, give me another chance. Please. I just didn’t want to leave you. Please. I’m your daughter.”
I hear Mom’s voice behind me as I hurry downstairs, “You are not my daughter.”
ELLA
(ONE MONTH LATER)
They arraigned John today. There’s not going to be a trial because he worked out a deal with the lawyers. They took the death penalty off the table if he agreed to life in prison with no chance of parole in exchange for identifying the girls and leading investigators to the bodies. So far, they’ve uncovered six. He swears that’s all there is but I don’t believe him.
Blake asked if I wanted to make a statement at his sentencing but I refused. I never want to see his face again. Mom, Paige’s parents, and some of the other parents of the dead girls are going to read letters to him, though. Mom tries to connect with the other parents but they don’t return her efforts. They resent her because I’m alive and their daughters are dead. It’s too hard for them.
Paige’s parents had a nice service for her. It was closed casket. There were so many people, they couldn’t all fit inside the church. Her real dad showed up and she would’ve liked that. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was wracked with guilt for missing out on her life and not having a chance to make it up to her. They asked me to read the poem, “I’ll Lend You a Child,” and I cried through every line. We didn’t go to the reception. There were too many people and I hate crowds now. Instead, we went home and watched reruns of Modern Family. I have to be careful about TV because I never know what will trigger a panic attack.
Mom is back at work and last week I went back to school. She drove me there just like the old days except things still don’t feel real. Everything feels plastic like I’m living in the movie set that used to be my life. I still haven’t made it through a full day. The bell signaling the end of classes makes me jump out of my skin and I hate the way everyone pushes and shoves each other in the hallways. There’s too many people. Too many hands. Sometimes I freeze. Other times, I throw up. My new therapist, Dr. Hale, is meeting with the administration on Tuesday to talk about making special accommodations for me. She wants to work out a way for me to leave my classes a few minutes early so I can avoid the mob. She’s also going to let them know I need to sit in the back of the classroom so I can see all the doors and nobody’s behind me. I have to be against the wall so nobody can take me by surprise again.
I meet with her twice a week and I’m slowly starting to like her. We’ve started doing a type of therapy called Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavior Therapy. She says it will help with feeling like I float. I’m covered in bruises again because I constantly bump into things. Mom laughs and jokes about me being clumsy but Dr. Hale says it’s because I’m not in my body. Randy agrees with her. She calls it dissociation and says it’s what people do who’ve experienced horrific abuse. She calls once a week and emails me too. She’s proud of me and encourages me to keep doing the things Dr. Hale suggests.
My friends try really hard to be there for me, but they don’t know how. I don’t blame them because it’s not their fault. I wouldn’t know how to talk to me either. I’ve turned into a loner, preferring to be by myself or with Mom. I’m not sure it will always be that way, but right now, that’s how it is. They keep begging me to run track this spring and tryouts are coming up in a few weeks, but I’m not going. My running days are over.
Mom hasn’t pressured me to do it. She’s started respecting my choices and boundaries about things. She’s doing her own therapy and it’s really helped her work through her own pain and give me the space I need to heal. She’s finally accepted that we can’t go back to how things were and our job is to figure out what our world looks like now. She took me to the salon to get my hair done in a cute pixie-cut. She said I could shave it again if I wanted, but I’m not going to. I’m definitely keeping it short, though. I might even dye it red for something different.
I don’t know what I’d do without Mom. My moods are like a roller coaster and she rides them with me without complaining. She lets me rage if I need to or holds me tight while I sob. Sometimes when it gets really bad and I go to the dark place where I can’t move or speak, she just sits with me until it passes without saying a word. At night, she hovers outside my door. Even though I can’t see her, I know she’s there. I promised her I’m done drinking, but it’s going to be awhile before she trusts me again.
I still can’t talk about what happened to me. I just can’t. It’s too big and doesn’t have words. Instead, I will myself to forget—his voice, his face, the way his cold hands felt on my body. Some days it works. Other days it doesn’t.
Sarah’s locked up in a psychiatric facility until she’s twenty-one. She worked out a plea bargain with the lawyers too. They didn’t charge her for helping John kill the girls or what she did to me. They didn’t want to punish her because they say she’s a victim too since she was a kid when he took her and brainwashed her. They blame everything on her Stockholm syndrome. Randy petitioned for her to be rehabilitated in a locked mental health unit rather than go to prison and the judge agreed. I still don’t feel sorry for her. I never will.
Mom still does, though, even if she won’t admit it. Sarah w
rites her letters almost every day. Mom hasn’t written her back. She says she won’t, but I know she still cares about her. It eats her up inside, the way the whole thing went down. She says she’s past it, but she’s not. She hasn’t let it go because even though she doesn’t write her back, she still reads her letters and doesn’t throw them away. She keeps them in a locked box and sometimes I catch her reading them when she doesn’t think I’m looking.
SARAH
(ONE MONTH LATER)
This place is supposed to be a punishment, but it isn’t so bad. I’ve definitely lived in worse. I have my own room and I can decorate it however I want. I’ve filled the walls with my drawings to keep my spirits up. Most of them are of me and Jocelyn.
My room is locked and so are all the other rooms on the unit. You have to knock to get let in and out. Most of the kids freak out when they first get here, but not me. I’m used to waiting to get let out. They have an intercom they make announcements on and every time it plays, I keep expecting it to be John’s voice.
The food isn’t as bad as I thought it’d be. We all have a job on the unit and I asked to help out in the kitchen. Staff didn’t let me at first. I had to start out with cleaning the bathrooms, but I did such a good job that it didn’t take them long to allow me to work in the cafeteria. They don’t let me make any of my own dishes yet. I have to follow their menus but my therapist is open to letting me have one night a month where I get to make a dish. I’m looking forward to it. I think I’ll make my pesto chicken.
Everyone under eighteen has to attend school and I go to the learning center every day. I’m studying to take my GED. Once I do, I can start taking college classes if I want to. I could be halfway through my bachelor’s degree by the time I get released. Most of the kids complain about having to go, but not me. I like it. Yesterday, I passed the reading portion and it won’t be long before I pass the science. Math is the one I’m most worried about, but one of the education aides has been spending extra hours tutoring me.
Everything operates on a points system and you have to earn enough points to be allowed certain privileges. I’m already on Level Three. Some kids never get off Level One. Level Three means I get to go outside for an hour every day and it’s beautiful. There’s trees everywhere and a huge garden with multi-colored flowers. I’ve started reading up on all the different kinds. Once I earn enough points, I can help out in the garden. It’s going to be a great way to pass the time.
I still miss John even though I tell my therapist I don’t. He’s in prison and never getting out. He confessed about the girls and led the police to the graveyard. I still can’t believe he’s the one who broke. He was always so worried about me, but he didn’t even have enough strength to follow his own rules. There’s a chance he might end up in the same correctional facility as my dad and I laugh every time I think about it.
It turns out Ella was a fighter. She surprised me. It’s not the first time, though, and probably won’t be the last. You never know which side of the spectrum they’ll fall on.
As much as I miss John, it doesn’t compare to how much I miss Jocelyn. I write her every day. At first, all I did was apologize again and again for my behavior, but after a while, I ran out of apologies. Now, I just tell her about my day and the things I’m learning. I talk to her about how much I’ve changed. So far, she hasn’t written back, but she will. She just needs time.
I have to be here for another three years, but three years really isn’t that long. It will be over before I know it and I’ll be free—totally free. The first thing I’m going to do is find Jocelyn.
Like what you read? Check out the other books by Lucinda Berry here.
To be notified of upcoming releases and sales, please subscribe to the Lucinda Berry newsletter: Subscribe
One of the best ways to compliment an author is to leave a review. You can post your review here: Review Appetite for Innocence
Appetite for Innocence: A Dark Psychological Thriller Page 24
