My hand clutches so tightly to the banister that my knuckles turn white and my arm starts to shake. A sharp shooting pain stabs into my skull and nausea churns in my stomach. My skin breaks out into a cold sweat and before I know it, the shaking in my arm has moved through my entire body.
Don’t ask the next question.
Keep your mouth shut and walk away.
Don’t ask.
Don’t ask.
Don’t ask.
“What was the doctor’s name?” I whisper, the words leaving my mouth all on their own and I’m unable to stop them.
“His name? It was Thomas. Dr. Raymond Thomas.”
“Stop fighting, just let go, it will all be over soon.”
“Why do you make me do these things to you?”
“It will only hurt for a little while.”
Burn.
Pain.
Stab.
Poke.
Prod.
Just let me go in the water. Why can’t I go in the water?
“The water is for good little girls who do as they’re told.”
I hate you. I’ll make you pay. I don’t deserve this.
It will all be over soon because I will kill you.
Everything around me goes dark and I feel myself falling, mumbling to myself before I let go.
“My name is Ravenna Duskin. I’m eighteen years old, I live in a prison, and I’m full of hate.”
Chapter 12
“I’ll be good, I promise!”
I scream and claw and fight at the arms wrapped around my small body, but it’s no use. They don’t love me. They never loved me. They’re tossing me away like garbage.
“This is for your own good.”
I hate them, I hate them, I hate them.
“Please don’t make me go!”
I bite down hard on the arm around my neck, dragging me away. My teeth pierce the skin and blood fills my mouth.
The shouts of pain, curses, and yells are muffled, and I barely hear them. The warm metallic taste in my mouth fills me with hunger and rage.
I laugh when I’m roughly shoved away and smile when my body hits the ground. They stare at me in fear and horror and it makes me happy. I can feel the blood dripping down my chin and I lick it away like a drop of ice cream.
“You are a bad little girl.”
This time, I let them yank me up from the ground and pull me away. I’ll come back, and I’ll make them pay. They did this to me, and they will pay.
My eyes pop open and I have to blink a few times to make them adjust to the dark. I feel blankets around my body and a pillow under my head and realize I’m in my bed, my dresser and the open door to my bathroom coming into focus in the shadows. I lie here for a few minutes, letting myself fully wake up before I start thinking about what happened.
I was talking to Dr. Beall. He said something I didn’t like. It made me remember something, but what was it? I close my eyes and picture myself standing on the stairs, looking down at the doctor. He was telling me a story, and it was about my childhood. I remember feeling sick to my stomach, and I wanted to make him stop talking, but I couldn’t.
A name! He said a name and I hated it. Just the sound of it made me feel like someone was hurting me. I squeeze my eyes closed tighter, trying to pluck the name forward, trying to keep picturing myself on those stairs but everything in my head suddenly disappears like a brick wall has slammed down, blocking me from what I need.
The hairs on the back of my neck suddenly rise and my eyes fly open, realizing I’m not alone in my dark, quiet room. I slowly roll over and turn my head to the side, my heart pounding in my chest when I see a dark figure standing next to my bed staring down at me. It makes me remember that night in the woods, lying on the muddy, wet ground and looking up to see a shadow hovering over me. Is it the same person here to finish what he or she started?
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
The words are soft, barely a whisper of sound, and my heart thumps loudly in my chest. I remain perfectly still in my bed as the shadow leans closer, the light from the moon shining through my window finally allowing me to make out who it is.
“I didn’t know. I’m sorry,” my mother whispers again.
Her voice is full of anguish, and I hear her sniffle and realize she’s crying.
She doesn’t move any closer, just continues to stand in the shadows staring down at me.
“It’s my fault. It’s all my fault. I was so weak and he was so strong,” she rambles quietly. “I made a mistake, and everyone suffered. I didn’t know. You have to believe me, I didn’t know.”
I stay quiet and still, letting her unload her guilt and make her confessions, even though I have no idea what she’s rambling about.
Gazing at her in the darkness, I watch as she turns away from me, moving to the window to stare out into the night in a daze. The moonlight illuminates her profile, and I see tears fall like a river down her cheeks. I notice that she’s clutching something in her hands, holding it against her chest, but the light from the moon isn’t strong enough for me to make out what it is.
“My daughter, so beautiful and perfect and good. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have believed him. I should have seen the truth all along. It hurts so much. Oh my God, it hurts. I deserve this; I understand that now.”
So far, that’s the only statement she’s made that I can understand and agree with. The secrets, the lies, the dreams and memories I have of so much pain…she was the cause of it. She and my father both were, and they deserve to suffer as much as I have.
“I have to make this right. I have to stop the pain,” she whispers, bringing one hand up to swipe away the tears.
With her palm pressed against her cheek, the moonlight glints off the object still clutched in her other hand against her chest and I can clearly make out what it is now.
I jerk my body up and kick the covers off me, scrambling off of my bed on the opposite side of where my mother stands, moving so quickly that I stumble to the ground, my knees smacking roughly against the hardwood.
My mother doesn’t pay me any attention; she just continues to stare out the window. The only movement she makes is to pull the object away from her chest, pressing the length against the side of her head, pointing it up at the ceiling.
I should be afraid that my mother came into my room in the middle of the night, mumbling nonsense as she holds a gun in her hand. I should scream for my father, shout for help, run out of the room as fast as I can. Clutching onto the edge of my mattress, I slowly push myself up from the floor and face her head on. She looks so sad and full of apology, small and miserable with her shoulders sagging in defeat, and I smile in the darkness that she’s falling apart right in front of my eyes. I ran away that night in the woods and look where it got me? A fractured mind that no one wants to help me fix. I refuse to run away this time.
I’m not scared of this pathetic woman; my head is too busy filling with memories of her looks of disgust, the slap of her hand, the vitriol she screamed at me, the blame she placed on my shoulders for the actions she was responsible for, and how easily she could pretend like I didn’t exist.
My heart doesn’t beat in fear: it thumps in anger. How dare she come in here, dumping her guilt all over me to try and clear her conscience? She’s had plenty of time to make amends and now that the truth is unraveling, now that I’m starting to put things together and refuse to believe their lies, she decides it’s time for honesty.
“You never loved me,” I finally speak.
She doesn’t move or make any indication that she heard me. My memory is still spotty, large chunks of time are still unaccounted for, but I know the words I say are true. I can feel their certainty ringing through my mind just like it did with knowing I can swim. For days I tried to tell myself my memories were wrong. It made more sense that I might be crazy than to think my entire life is a lie and my parents were just perpetuating it.
“It was me out by the lake,” she whisp
ers, ignoring my statement.
She suddenly throws her head back and laughs, the sound bouncing off the walls in my small room.
“I had to see. I had to know for sure and I was right.”
My mouth drops open in shock, not at her admittance of what she did, but the sound of glee in her voice.
“You pushed me in the lake,” I mutter through clenched teeth. “What exactly did you have to know for sure? If you had the courage to try and kill your own daughter?”
My body vibrates with rage and I want to vault over my bed, wrap my hands around her neck and squeeze and squeeze until her face turns red and every last breath leaves her body. I keep my feet firmly planted where they are because right now I want the truth more than I want to hurt her.
My mother lets out a huge, tired sigh and finally turns to look at me, carelessly waving the gun around by her head.
“I’m sorry you had to pay for my sins and my weakness,” she tells me in a robotic voice. “I just had to see. I had to know for sure that I was right. I felt bad as soon as I saw you go under, wondering if I’d made a mistake, but I didn’t. You came up and you proved me right. I ignored what was right in front of my face because I just wanted it so badly. I was blind and I was stupid, but I’m going to fix all of it now.”
She speaks so quickly that it’s hard for me to keep up, but I do, and I get the truth I’ve been waiting for. My own mother tried to drown me. I glare across my bed at her, refusing to cower when she turns the gun and aims it right at my chest.
“I’m sorry. This is the only way I know how to fix things. This is the only way I can stop the pain,” she tells me sadly.
“You are a coward,” I growl at her. “You are weak and pathetic. You can apologize all you want, but it means nothing to me. I’ve remembered things on my own, no thanks to you and Dad. I drove myself crazy with the thoughts in my head that didn’t match the lies you both told me. The only thing you accomplished by pushing me into the lake was waking me up to the person I really am. I deserve the truth, Mother.”
Her hold on the gun falters and it lowers a few inches, pointing at the bed instead of me. Knowing I have a little more time before everything ends pushes me to keep going.
“I deserve to know why all I can remember is pain and hate when this house is filled with happy memories of a loving family that obviously never existed. Tell me the truth. TELL ME THE DAMN TRUTH! ALL OF IT!” I shout in fury.
She whimpers painfully, bringing the gun back up where it was.
“It was real… all of it was real. We were happy… we were so happy. I made up for my mistakes and everything was perfect… everything was just as it should be. I should have known better. Secrets never stay hidden no matter how deep you bury them. Mistakes will always come back to haunt you and get their revenge.”
Her body is wracked with sobs, her shoulders shaking with the force of her cries, each breath out of her mouth punctuated with whimpers and mournful whines.
“My perfect, beautiful daughter. I can’t do this anymore. It hurts too much. You need to find him. You need to talk to him. You’ll see him, and you’ll understand. It will all make sense then,” she cries.
“I need to find who? Dr. Thomas?” I ask, vomit rising up my throat as soon as I speak his name, the name Dr. Beall said to me, the one my mind wouldn’t let me remember just moments ago when I woke up. It flies off my tongue with ease, and I hate it. I hate the name. I hate the person. I don’t want to remember.
Go away, go away, go away!
“He only did what we asked. We thought it was right. We thought it would make everything better,” she whimpers.
My hands come up to my head and my fingers clutch tightly to my hair, yanking it as hard as I can until the pain brings tears to my eyes. I need the pain. I need the hurt. It’s the only way I can think clearly. Nothing she says makes any sense. She’s talking in circles, and I want to scream in frustration.
“I always loved the picture your father has of our family that sits on the desk in his office,” she says in a faraway voice, her crying coming to an abrupt end as an eerie smile takes over her face. “The picture tells the truth. It knows all the secrets.”
Maybe I really am crazy and I inherited it from my mother. She is out of her mind.
Her eyes meet mine across the bed, and as I stare into them, I see nothing but glazed-over emptiness. I’m not even sure if she realizes the crazy things she’s said to me or if she’s so far gone that they all make sense in her twisted mind.
“I can’t live without you. I can’t pretend anymore. I need to be wherever you are but I don’t even know where that is,” she complains, her eyes staring right through me. “He lies. He lies, and he lies, and he won’t tell me, but I deserve it. He tried to fix what I did but it didn’t work. I’m you, and you’re me. We’re so alike that no amount of lying can change that. No more pain, no more lying. Talk to the picture, and listen to what it says.”
My mother sniffs loudly and swipes away the last of her tears. She wraps both hands around the gun to hold it steady, out in front of her body.
I let go of the mattress and drop my arms to my sides. I refuse to close my eyes. I want her to suffer as she stares into mine, the exact same shade of emerald green as hers. I want her to watch the life she gave me vanish from my eyes, and I want it to kill everything inside of her, knowing that this is all her fault.
“I love you, Ravenna. I love you more than you could possibly imagine, and I’m so sorry. We’ll be together again soon. Wait for me.”
Faster than I can take my next breath, she bends her elbows back, sticks the end of the gun in her mouth, and pulls the trigger. My hands fly up to cover my ears but I’m not fast enough. The loud explosion in such a small space rings through my ears, and I wince in pain, pressing my palms as hard as I can against the side of my head to make the pain stop.
My eyes are glued to my mother’s lifeless body until she slumps to the ground and disappears from sight on the other side of my bed. My gaze slowly tracks up the wall where she was standing just moments ago, stopping at the hole at the top of my bedroom window where the bullet must have gone after it exited the back of her head.
The room suddenly fills with bright light, illuminating every corner of the room, the dark shadows no longer able to hide what happened in here. I drop my hands from my ears, and my father’s screams suddenly surround me. I feel his hands wrap around my arms as he jerks my body around to face him, but my eyes never leave the hole in the window. I stare in fascination at the dark, wet splatters of dripping blood and pieces of my mother’s brains as they slide down the glass and splat on the floor.
“My name is Ravenna Duskin. I’m eighteen years old, I live in a prison, and my mother is dead.”
Chapter 13
“You’re sure you’re okay that your dad didn’t want to have a funeral?”
With my legs dangling over the end of the dock, I kick them lazily back and forth, staring at my reflection in the water below.
“What would be the point, Nolan?” I ask with a shrug. “It’s not like we have any family that would attend. My parents were both only children and my grandparents have been dead for years. My father also didn’t really want to advertise the fact that my mother swallowed a bullet. Not very good for the perfect little reputation he’s built around here.”
I laugh at my own joke, but Nolan just sighs in sympathy.
It’s been a week since my mother shot herself in my bedroom and a week of being ignored by my father while he locked himself in his office and sucked down one bottle of whiskey after another. The only reason I know what he’s doing behind that closed door is because each time he’d finish a bottle, he’d open his office door just wide enough for the bottle to fit through, clunk it down roughly on the floor, and then slam the door closed.
When I walked by the door on my way out here to the lake, I counted six empty bottles all in a clump right outside the door. I’m assuming he’s shoving them out of his o
ffice because his drunken mind thinks I’ll pick up where my mother left off and clean up after him. He can just keep right on assuming that because it will be a cold day in hell before I do anything for that man.
“I’ve never noticed that birthmark before.”
Nolan’s finger gently traces over the crescent moon-shaped birthmark the size of a fifty-cent piece on my upper thigh and goose bumps pebble my skin at his soft touch.
Swatting his hand away, I shrug and turn my face toward the sun. “I’ve had it since birth, hence, the name birthmark.”
He chuckles, and I close my eyes, instead of rolling them in annoyance that he didn’t notice the sarcastic bite to my words.
“Has your dad spoken to you yet?” he asks as he leans back on his hands, tilts his head up toward the sun, and closes his eyes.
“Nope.”
Pulling my legs up onto the dock, I twist my body to face Nolan, crisscrossing my legs in front of me.
“He said plenty to me the night she shot herself. I would be perfectly fine if he never spoke to me again,” I tell him, thinking about how my father cradled my mother’s body in his arms, screaming accusations and hatred at me. Even though it was obvious I didn’t pull the trigger, and I didn’t force my mother to do what she did, according to my father, it was still my fault. He cried and screamed, he mumbled nonsense, and then he screamed some more. When I got tired of listening to him, I walked out of the room and left him alone with his anger and misery.
“I know I’ve already said this, but I’m sorry for what’s happening to you,” he tells me softly.
“It’s not your fault. Right now, the only thing I care about is remembering what happened that night in the woods because I feel like it all started that night. Why was I out there? Who was out there with me, and how did I get back up to the prison?”
Nolan is silent and I turn my head to look at him. He’s looking off in the opposite direction, lost in thought.