And
when I got
them
, I still wasn’t satisfied
,
still only saw the bad
.
“I know I tell you this all the time, baby, but you have the wrong idea about what life is like outside of this house. The movies we have are old. People don’t live that way anymore, and I doubt there is even such a thing as college now. I have to go out there three, four, times a year. It’s horrible. Trust me.”
I cried on my tiny guitar. It was 1:30 in the afternoon. I’d missed the sun at its highest point, but as I played in harmony with the father I thought I was fighting for, I decided that fight was far from over. I wouldn’t let us die here.
Sophia knew I’d need her to save me again.
“Gavin?” Mom said, staggering through the door. He jumped up and ran to her.
“Sweetie, you could have hurt yourself on the stairs.” She wrapped her arms around him, crying and apologizing. “You didn’t even cut me today, baby. It’s fine.”
Today? Didn’t cut him today? Oh, God.
Their kiss quickly turned into something I didn’t care to see. They weren’t making out, but the tears and her loose limbs made it entirely too intense.
“I’m going to check on Snowflake,” I said, walking past them with my eyes on the floor. “Feel better, Mom.” She slurred a thank you.
It was up to me to make her better. Strong like she was before.
I walked around our house, memorizing our photos, kissing the ones that tugged at my heart the most. I had to say goodbye to this life, break out of this house, and find my way to the sun.
I heard Dad carrying Mom downstairs as I said goodbye to my family’s photographs.
She was still apologizing and telling him how much she loved him. Until they went to bed, I wouldn’t be able to search for a way out. I’d save that for later.
I closed my bedroom door and slipped the necklace from its hiding spot. I pulled it over my head and tucked it into my shirt. I searched my now neat room for shoes, not remembering seeing a single pair last night as I cleaned.
“You don’t have shoes because you’ve never been outside, idiot.”
I sat on my bed and tried to scheme. Nothing came to me. I got the feeling I’d think a lot better next to Snowflake, like she’d calm me down and inspire me with her beauty like she always did.
“No, she’s not real. This life isn’t real,” I said, still running towards her stable.
She greeted me at the door. I pressed my cheek against hers. It felt like she understood my pain. She bent slightly, telling me to hop on. In one motion, I jumped onto her back with my legs at her sides. I wanted to cry again when I remembered how long it had taken me to learn how to get on without a saddle.
“Snow,” I said, as she trotted around the stable. “Dad has to have tools or something somewhere. I could try to open a window. There’s one in the basement, isn’t there?” She grunted. “Right … tried that. Silent alarm.
Red flashing lights.
I remember.”
I remembered Mom bursting into the basement, screaming and crying as the lights flashed. She didn’t come out of her room for days after that.
“I would only need a minute, Snow.” She jerked forward and sped into a run. “Right, if I’m fast enough.” She slowed again, and I chuckled. I loved having these conversations with her. “But Dad probably hid his tools since I did that.” I sighed, remembering that I’d used a fork in my last attempt.
She sped towards the other end of the stable, fierce and fast, but gentle enough that I barely budged on her back. She was trying to cheer me up.
I gave in and closed my eyes, flying through the air on the back of my best friend.
My only friend.
The only one I’d ever have. My heart deflated as I rode. I felt time slipping away, taking the Christine I knew with it. The girl who lived here and rode this horse was stronger inside of me. Her pain was mine.
Her hopelessness too.
I’d been caught every time I’d tried to leave. Why even bother? My only hope was their deaths. After I fragmented my already broken mind by burying them, I would break out of this house, with a head of gray hair, and find a human friend at college. According to all of my favorite movies, that was where friends were.
And sororities and fraternities and parties and fun.
And nachos at games.
Dad always made me nachos when we watched old football games. But now I knew the endings to them all, so it wasn’t fun. With my gray hair, I’ll watch one in person.
With nachos in my lap.
And I wouldn’t know who would fumble the ball, or whose ankle would twist, or which team would leave with their heads hanging low, trying to be gracious while they shook hands with the winners.
At that point, I’d probably have to fall in love with an old professor instead of a frat boy. I’d seen a movie once where a student fell in love with her teacher. The guy went to jail, but … I would be old, so it would be okay.
My eyes flew open. I’d seen more movies than the old ones set in high school or college or cartoons. I’d seen countless ones with Emma.
And action movies with blood and gore with Nate.
This was not my life.
It was getting harder to remember that.
“Baby,” Mom said. Snowflake slowed and took me to the door. Well trained, she bowed and I hopped down. She trotted away and lay in a far away corner of the stable. “Dinner’s ready.”
“What time is it?”
“Seven. Dad came in to give you lunch, but he said you were in one of your zones with Snowflake.” Wow. I did not feel all of those hours fly by. “Do you want to eat in here? Your Dad said you were really upset. I could bring you a plate so you can stay with her.”
Feeling desperately out of time, I grabbed Mom’s hands to plead with her. “Don’t get mad, Mom, but I really need to go
outside.
Just for a second.
Tomorrow at noon.
Please?”
She sighed and her face twisted to a frown. “I can’t handle this today. I’m tired. I’m sick. I just can’t do it.”
“No, Mom. See that’s the problem. You’re never sick like this. Not in our real life. You left Dad. You took me to a school and we just met a few months ago. None of this is real.”
“This is a new low, Christine. I’ll come back when you’re not out of your mind.”
She turned to leave and I grabbed her. “No! I’m not. Kamon and a wizard named Devin opened a portal and I went through it and changed one of your memories. I made you tell Dad you were pregnant with me. In real life, you didn’t. You left him and killed Fredrick Dreco and Julian.”
Her eyes were wide and horrified. She tugged her arm from my grip. “How do you know about them? Have you been listening at our door again? We told you to stop.”
“No. I know this because I lived it. Yesterday, we didn’t live like this. Sophia knew I’d do this. She told me how to fix it, and I need to be outside with the sun and use this necklace.”
I pulled it out of my shirt and held it to her eyes.
She grabbed my face. “Please stop, baby. You are scaring me.”
“Look at it!”
“There’s nothing there.”
I dangled it closer to her eyes, and she looked right through it, not seeing it at all. That was why she’d thought I was naked in the pool. She couldn’t see things from our past life.
“Well … how else would I know that Sophia was your maid when you lived with an agent named Mona?” I asked, since she couldn’t see my evidence.
She kissed my forehead. “Because we’ve talked about it thousands of times,” she whispered. “I’m going to tell Daddy to bring your plate, baby. You know I can’t deal with you like this.”
She stormed out of the door, and I lay next to the only soul in this house that understood me, and she couldn’t speak outside of her grunts and neighs.
Later, Dad lectured me about getting his beloved wife worked up while I ate. I apologized and kissed him goodnight. Hopefully goodbye. He turned out the lights in the stable on his way out, assuming I was sleeping in here. I stretched out next to Snowflake, holding the necklace. Of course Sophia wouldn’t make it easy. Of course I’d need to pull off the impossible to fix this. I didn’t even own shoes, and I needed to get outside at noon before my memories dissolved. Or else-
Shoes
! I had shoes! And a knife tucked in one of my boots. I’d taken them off by the pool. Even though I wasn’t any closer to getting out, somehow the boots gave me a little hope, a little more fight than I had before. I ran to the pool. They were still there with the knife inside. I threw them on and ran back to the stable, and straight into Mom.
It took all the energy I had not to jump and look guilty.
“Don’t make me resort to listening to your thoughts. I don’t want to do that. I want to trust you.”
“You can trust me. I just thought I left something at the pool…” I glanced down at my feet and so did she. She didn’t see the shoes. Thank God. “I was writing a poem before I got in.”
She sighed. It took almost a minute, but she smiled and relaxed her grimace. “I’d love to hear it some time. What was it about?”
“Snowflake.”
She smiled harder. “Of course it was.”
She opened the stable door for me, and I went in.
“I love you, Mom,” I said.
“I love you too. I know after a day like today, you usually want your space, so when you’re ready to see us, come find us, okay? We’ll stay out of your way, but if I hear you in the halls …” She closed her eyes and paused, straining like she didn’t want to continue. “You know we don’t want to lock you in. We really don’t. So don’t make us.”
“I won’t,” I whispered.
My heart didn’t stop pounding until well after she’d walked away from the stable doors.
I lay down in the corner Snowflake seemed to want to be in. It was colder than the rest of the stable. Chilled air floated in from behind her.
“Snow, what is that?” I wedged my hand between her side and the wall, feeling the wind brush against my fingers. “A vent?”
The Christine who lived here knew that she’d trained Snowflake to sit here.
To hide something.
“Up, girl,” I said. She obeyed and strutted to her stall. The sand was thinner beneath her. I brushed a layer away and found a pink and yellow school bag. I remembered crying for it. I’d wanted a bag to take to my school down the hall like the normal kids had on the movies. Mom had manifested it for me. And I’d hidden it in the stable … because it held things I didn’t want my parents to see.
I opened the sack.
I had several bottles of water, a loaf of bread, huge chunks of cheese – the kind Mom hated and wouldn’t notice missing from the pantry – and a mess of ham. None of the food was spoiled. Then I remembered I replenished this bag once a week in the event I ever escaped. “I’m a genius.”
I unearthed the bag. It covered a hole. No, it covered the tunnel I’d been burrowing all year. I remembered finding my way to a vent, which was both triumphant and tragic.
I wedged my arms through the tiny straps of the bag.
“Snowflake,” I whispered. She came on command. “I have to check this out. This could lead to the sun tomorrow.” I kissed her nose. “I’ll come back, but stay right here until I do.” I used pillows to make lumps under my blanket. I slid through the hole and she capped it off with her body, like she knew the drill.
I crawled into the metal vent. Reluctantly, I listened to the part of me that knew where I was. I could navigate this path with my eyes closed.
I needed to be extremely silent because I would crawl over the living room. Twice when I’d done this, Mom and Dad were in there watching their favorite movie. I never understood why they wanted to watch that creepy lady in
Misery
torture that guy over and over again. Sort of like how they could watch me suffer over the years.
Quietly lurking in the vents, I heard Dad laughing below me.
“It was a green shirt. Lime green,” he said.
“No, it was blue. I’m sure of it. It was our second date, you don’t remember that,” Mom said, laughing just as hard. Pushing on inches more, I could see them on the sofa through the vent opening.
“I was so in love with you already that I memorized what you wore that day. And it was a green shirt, honey. I can even tell you the last time you wore it. When you left it in San Juan, on the beach.”
They made awkward eye contact that made me want to vomit on them from up here. “Oh … yeah,” she said, giggling and kissing him. Nothing upset me more than my parents when they were like this. I used to love watching them together. It was like watching characters in a movie.
True love, perfect love.
Until
my
love for them spoiled, fermenting into something hateful enough that I wanted to escape and leave them here to rot. Because as much as I loved them and knew they loved me, I knew they wouldn’t hesitate to chain me in a room if it came to it.
They’d be destroyed over it, cry and scream and fall into more pieces than Mom’s sedatives could fix, but they’d do it. She was weak and he was weaker, and they’d allowed an enemy she used to have to keep us locked in this hellhole.
I rolled my eyes and crawled away as quickly as I could without making a sound. With me safely tucked away in the stable, nothing would stop them from – in their words – engaging in Mom and Dad time in the living room. I shivered, still not close to getting over walking in on them when I was nine, or the sex talk that followed, or that I never got the brother or sister they promised me. I guessed they didn’t want to torture another child.
I crawled over the
kitchen,
suddenly aware that this was the farthest I’d gone through the vents. I usually turned around now, but I couldn’t today. I wanted to get outside … because I’d always wanted to.
The air smelled different, fresher. The sound of water and wind – rain – hummed in the vent. I’d never seen real rain before.
Wait … I had. I’d sat in it. Ate in it.
At school in my real life.
I clutched that Christine with wet and shaky hands, threatened with being forgotten forever.
I took a deep breath to gather myself, to gather her, but chuckled instead. Rain smelled … wet. Just like I imagined it would. Slowly, I poked my fingers through the metal shutters. The rain dropped on my hand, like someone was crying on me.
And now
I
was crying, because I’d done it. Found a way out of this house. Years of longing led me to pull on the vent that looked to be just wide enough for me. It didn’t budge, screwed to the wall. I tried my fingers, then nails,
then
I searched myself for anything small and hard enough to fit into the screws.
A small voice, that sounded calm and rational, told
me to crawl back to the stable and use the time between now and noon to plan my next move
. But … why wait when freedom was so close?