by Tara Sivec
The secrets are hidden in the walls of this prison. They will destroy you before they set you free.
I slam the book closed, squeezing my eyes shut to block out the words, even though I can see them swirling around behind my eyes, angry and shouting at me to pay attention, to see what’s right in front of me. My bedroom door suddenly flies open, and I quickly toss the journal under my bed and out of sight as my father races over to me, squatting down so we’re at eye-level.
“Ravenna? Is everything okay?”
I focus on the concern in his voice and the worry in his eyes, instead of the words I must have written as a warning to myself before the accident. Why did I write those words repeatedly? What kinds of secrets are hidden in my home?
I look at my father in his perfectly pressed navy blue suit and his slicked-back hair and I wonder what could possibly be so horrible about the truth that someone would want to do me harm to prevent it from coming out.
“Who am I, Daddy?” I whisper brokenly, letting my head thump back against the wall.
I don’t know why I’m even asking this when I know he won’t be honest with me. I’ve been avoiding him ever since I heard him fighting with my mother, afraid of the man who would speak so angrily to his wife and then smack her across the face when she tried to argue with him. Have I ever heard my parents fight before? I wrack my brain trying to dredge up memories from my childhood, but all I can see are those stupid family photos that adorn our living room. I can’t access even one solid memory of the three of us together, behaving like a normal, happy family should. All I can think of is the way my parents have acted ever since I woke up, the way they avoid each other at all costs, and the way they stare at everything in the room but each other when we have dinner together. The only memory that screams in my mind so clearly is the one I recaptured when I saw the photo on our mantel. Why did that photo in particular fill me with such hatred and rage toward my parents?
I watch as my father’s shoulders tense, and I try not to flinch when he reaches out and brushes a strand of hair from my eyes that must have come loose during my momentary outburst earlier. Tucking the strand behind my ear, he cups my cheek in his palm.
“You’re Ravenna, my beautiful, wonderful daughter,” he tells me softly. “The same person you’ve always been.”
“Just keep reminding her who she is and everything will be fine.”
The words my father spoke to my mother play on a loop in my mind, and I can feel my temper begin to flare. My hands clench into fists in my lap and I feel my fingernails digging roughly into my palms.
“I know it’s frustrating, but the doctor said it would take time,” he reminds me with a placating smile. “Just stop trying to force things, or you’ll make it worse.”
I’ve heard these same words so many times in the last few days that I want to smack his hand away and scream in his face. I want to grab the lapels of his suit jacket and shake him until he stops feeding me the same bullshit and is honest with me. How could things possibly get any worse? Every time I close my eyes, I’m afraid a new memory will pop up, leaving me scared and even more confused, and now I have a journal that I don’t even remember owning, let alone writing in, missing all of its pages except for the one with a scary, cryptic message in it. Is there really something worse than this reality?
“Do I know how to swim?”
He looks startled by my question but hides his surprise with a chuckle, dropping his hands from the side of my face.
“Goodness, no! We could barely get you to take a bath when you were little.”
He closes his eyes for a moment, and his face looks peaceful as he most likely reminisces about my childhood.
“Why was I so afraid of the water?” I ask softly.
He opens his eyes and sighs, waving his hand in the air as if he’s brushing off the question.
“Just a little accident that happened when you were little. It really wasn’t that big of a deal,” he answers, giving me a tight smile as he rests his arms on his knees. “These silly questions aren’t going to help. All you need to do is get back to your normal schedule, spend your days just like you always did, and things will fall into place.”
It enrages me that he thinks my questions are silly. Why is figuring out the parts of my memory that I’m missing considered silly? Why is trying to understand who I am a waste of time?
“Why can’t you just be honest with me?” I whisper desperately.
He pushes against his knees with his palms to stand up. Sliding his hands into the front pockets of his suit pants, he jangles the loose change in there and stares down at me.
“I don’t know what you expect me to say, Ravenna. Why would you think I’m not being honest with you?” he asks me with a frustrated sigh.
“Why was I in the woods that night?” I immediately fire back, refusing to back down.
He squares his shoulders and lifts his chin. “Your mother and I have already told you we don’t know.”
“Fine, you don’t know why I was out in the woods in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm,” I reply sarcastically. “Then who found me? How did you even know I was hurt and to call the doctor?”
It never occurred to me to ask this question until now. The only wooded area on our property is on the other side of the lake, more than an acre away. If that’s where I got hurt, how would anyone have even known to look for me out there, unless they saw me leave the house? Unless they were following me.
Unless they were chasing me.
I can see myself running as fast as I can through the dark woods, tripping over tree roots and stray branches. I can almost feel my heart pounding in my chest as I run away from something, but it’s not because of fear. I’m proud of something I’ve done, and I’m angry that I’m being forced to run away from it instead of confront it.
My father sighs in frustration, the sound pulling me out of my thoughts. “I can’t answer your questions, Ravenna. I was busy working in my office, and I heard your mother scream. I ran downstairs and saw you unconscious on the floor, and I immediately called the doctor.”
It doesn’t escape my notice that he told me he can’t answer my questions, not that he didn’t know the answers to them.
Unfortunately, even his partial answers are the same my mother gave me, and they don’t help me at all. She was getting out of the shower and heard a noise downstairs. She came down and saw me lying in the middle of the floor, sopping wet, covered in dirt and leaves, with scratches all over my arms and a head wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding.
“Why does everything I remember feel like it’s the exact opposite of what you and Mom tell me?” I question.
He immediately stops playing with the spare change in his pocket and silence fills the room. I hate that I’m sitting on the floor at his feet, feeling so small and insignificant when he towers over me so commanding and in charge, ignoring everything I ask him as if the questions I have aren’t worthy of an answer. I want to stand up to him, yell in his face, and poke his chest with my finger, but I find myself glued to the floor as the mask of indifference on his face quickly changes to one of fear. His eyes widen and he bites down nervously on his bottom lip, much like my mother did when I walked in her room and caught her crying.
“Have you remembered something, Ravenna? What have you remembered?” he asks in a rush.
His concern would be touching if I felt like he was doing it for my benefit, instead of trying to figure out if I’ve remembered something I shouldn’t. Something that would prove he really has been lying to me and he knows what happened.
Because he saw it happen, or because he was the cause of it?
Once again, I’m left wondering what could possibly be so bad that my own father doesn’t want me to know the truth.
Maybe I haven’t been avoiding him lately because I’m afraid of him and uncomfortable around him ever since I heard him yelling at my mother. Maybe I’ve been avoiding him because I’m afraid of how he makes me feel
in his presence. When I’m in the same room with him, I feel my mistrust of him growing so strongly that it’s almost suffocating. A daughter should trust her father and know without a shadow of a doubt that everything he does is to protect her, but when I look at him, sometimes I feel nothing but anger and disappointment. I feel as if this isn’t the first time he’s ever let me down.
Right now, if someone were to ask, I could recite a laundry list of things my father has done to prove his love for me over the years, but that’s all it would be…a list. I don’t have the memories that should go along with those things. I don’t remember sitting on his knee while he read me a story, I don’t remember him holding my hair back while I blew out birthday candles on a cake, and I don’t remember splashing around in puddles in the driveway. I’ve seen the photos in the albums and hanging on the walls, but I can’t remember them. I should be able to remember the smell of the smoke from freshly blown-out candles; I should remember the soft sound of his melodic voice as he read to me, and I should be able to feel the mud and the water splashing against my legs in the driveway. Why do I know things but I can’t feel them?
“Ravenna!”
He calls my name again, obviously impatient that I haven’t answered his question. He wants to know if I’ve remembered anything. If I really were the good girl, the perfect daughter, the wonderful daughter they keep telling me I am, maybe I’d do as I’m told and stop forcing things and asking questions. Maybe I’d push aside all of my crazy thoughts and strange glimpses into memories that confuse me and just go about my life, content to believe whatever they tell me and not worry about things I can’t remember. Maybe I’d learn to love the color pink and stop getting headaches every time my mother braids my hair too tight.
“The secrets are hidden in the walls of this prison,” I tell him in a monotone voice, repeating the words that were written in my journal.
I watch as the color drains from his face and instead of being horrified with myself for finding pleasure in his fear, I let it travel through me, igniting me and making me feel alive for the first time in days.
My father slowly backs away from me, his eyes never leaving my face.
“I’ll just let you get some rest. I need to get back to the tour,” he informs me as he bumps into the wall next to my bedroom door.
He gives me a tight smile before he turns and leaves my room, closing the door behind him.
“My name is Ravenna Duskin. I’m eighteen years old, I live in a prison, and I’m pretty sure I’m not a good girl.”
Chapter 7
After my father left my room, I tore the place apart, looking for the pages of the journal that had been ripped out. I don’t know why those pages are missing, and I don’t like it. Finding nothing hidden in any nook or cranny anywhere in my room, I searched the only other room upstairs that wasn’t locked or occupied—the kitchen—and found nothing. My father had been working in his office and my mother was holed up in her room so those two areas would have to wait until they left and the spare bedroom would have to wait for me to either pick the lock or find the key in my father’s office. Making a quick sandwich in the kitchen since I had no desire to sit through another silent, awkward dinner with my parents, I ate outside on the front porch and enjoyed the peace and quiet with nothing but the sounds of birds chirping and frogs croaking.
My eyes searched the grounds in front of the prison, hoping for a glimpse of Nolan. It seems weird to be seeking out the person I’d spent the last few days being afraid of, but at this point he might be the only person here I can trust. It’s impossible to fear someone who went out of his way to save my life. If he was the one who hurt me or wanted to do me more harm, he could have easily just let me jump in the lake. Or he could have pushed me. I was so busy imagining the feel of the cool water on my skin that I never even heard him come up behind me.
Not finding him anywhere in my sight line, it occurs to me that I don’t hear the sound of the lawn mowers in the distance or men’s voices chatting as they work and I realize everyone must have gone home for the day. He always seems to be watching me and waiting for me any other time I’ve gone outside and, of course, now that I actually want to talk to him, he’s nowhere to be found.
As I continue eating, I flip open the photo album I brought outside and placed on the porch next to me. Under a few of the photos from my childhood, there is a small white strip of tape with my mother’s pretty cursive script, explaining what certain photos are.
Ravenna’s tenth birthday!
Ravenna learning to ride a bike!
Christmas morning with Ravenna!
Each photo I look at fills me with unnatural anger at the happy, smiling child I see on the pages, and I don’t know why. Shouldn’t I be happy seeing proof of how normal and wonderful my childhood was? Instead, I want to rip each photo from its clear plastic sheet, tear them all into a thousand pieces and scream that it was all a lie. I hate the child in the photos. I hate that her life looks so perfect in black and white when the reality of living color is the exact opposite.
On the last page, I see one photo by itself in the middle: a picture of both my parents fishing in the lake, and looking toward the camera with smiles on their faces. Off to the very edge of the photo, at least a hundred feet from my parents, staring at the water with wide, frightened eyes is ten-year-old me. Under the picture my mother has written: A day of fishing! Poor Ravenna won’t go near the water, as usual.
With a heavy sigh, I slam the album closed and toss my half-eaten sandwich on the plate, my appetite suddenly gone. Scooping up the album and my dish, I head upstairs to put the dirty dish in the kitchen sink, and then wander into my bedroom, tossing the album onto my bed.
I stare at the mess I made of my room and decide to leave it for now as I flop down on the bed on my back, staring up at the ceiling. An idea pops into my head and I quickly roll onto my stomach and lean over the edge of my bed, reaching underneath for the journal I quickly tossed there when my father came in. I’m tired of feeling that, at any moment, the things I’ve remembered are going to slip right from my grasp. Even if the journal is missing a bunch of pages that could possibly give me answers, there are still a few blank ones left where I could write things down that I’ve already figured out. Like how I hate pink, hate having my hair braided, hate all my clothes, and I don’t know how to swim. How quickly I get angry when something makes me mad, even though I’m supposedly sweet and good, and how I have memories of feeling so much pain that it takes my breath away. So many things that don’t add up, but maybe if I write them down and look at them long enough it will all come together.
Feeling around blindly with my hands, I come up empty. Scooting my body more over the edge, I lift up the bedskirt and stare underneath my bed at nothing but an empty floor. Someone took my journal. I was only out of my room long enough to search the kitchen and eat a quick dinner. As far as I know, the only two people here right now are my parents, since the handful of tour guides, the receptionist, and the grounds crew have all gone home for the evening. My parents are the only ones who could have taken it, but why? It’s not like there was anything useful in it, since half of the pages were missing. I didn’t even remember that I’d kept a journal, so how would they know of its existence and where it was located?
When I hear the click of heels moving across the living room floor in the direction of my room, I groan and quickly push myself up on the bed, curling my legs under me and wait for my mother to barge in. I’m sure my father has told her all about how I behaved earlier, and she’s most likely going to give me hell for the way I acted with him. As the minutes ticked by after my father left my room, I replayed what happened over and over in my head while I searched for the journal pages. Even I realized my behavior was strange, no matter how good it felt, no matter how right it felt. I probably should have gone to him and apologized. I’m sure the “old me” would have done it, but I couldn’t apologize for something I wasn’t sorry about. I’m so tired of faking ev
erything and trying to be the girl I just don’t know how to be. Nothing feels right about any of it. I’m supposed to be good and polite and not ask questions when everything in my head is telling me to be bad and loud and question everything.
My door swings open and I lift my chin, filling myself with confidence for the scolding I’m sure to get. She can go right ahead and yell at me, and when she’s through, I’ll ask her what the hell she did with my journal.
My mother takes one look around my room at the mess I’ve made, tossing clothing out of every drawer of my dresser and chucking shoes and other miscellaneous items out of my closet, and huffs in annoyance.
“What on earth happened to your room, Ravenna?” she asks, as she bends down and picks up a pile of socks and underwear right next to the door, walking over to one of my open dresser drawers and depositing everything inside.