by Carian Cole
Britton leans forward, his small eyes narrowing even more. “One more time, what were you doing out there?”
When I don’t answer, the younger detective—Nelson, I think his name is—impatiently pushes a pen and a pad of paper across the table to me. ”Just write down your answers, then. We can’t sit here all day.”
I grab the pen and write quickly: I live up there. I walk every morning.
They exhale simultaneously and exchange glances.
“And you just happened to stumble upon a girl in a hidden hole in the ground?” Britton’s voice is dripping with sarcasm.
I nod but write: Yes. I heard a noise. It was the dog.
“What dog?” Nelson asks, frowning.
The girl’s dog.
The detectives glance at each other. “We didn’t find any dog,” Nelson states firmly.
It ran off. It was there. It was making a strange noise. It was debarked.
“Debarked?” Nelson reads my words out loud, confusion on his face.
I shift in my chair and scribble some more. It’s when a dog’s vocal chords are severed so it can’t bark.
Nelson raises a suspicious eyebrow. “And you know this…how?”
I read a lot.
The detective tilts his head to the side and smirks at me. “Maybe you’re the one who took the girl. Maybe the guy who’s dead is the one who was trying to save her. That’s what everyone is thinking.”
A demonic laugh comes out of me, and while not deliberate, it’s fitting.
Stop fucking with me, I write. I didn’t do anything.
“We don’t like you, Tyler,” Britton states coldly. “We don’t like your creepy ass living in the woods, and we don’t like your fucked-up face riding that piece-of-shit motorcycle through town in the middle of the night and annoying the good people of this nice, quiet town.”
I lean back and chew the inside of my cheek then grab the pen again. There’s no law against being ugly, living in the woods, or riding a motorcycle at night.
Nelson scoffs. “There is a law against murdering people, though.”
It was self-defense. He pulled a knife on me. He had that girl in a hole. Ask her. Check the evidence. You guys know how to do that, right?
“Well, that’s the funny thing,” Nelson drawls. “Maybe what you have is contagious because the girl won’t talk.”
I don’t blame her. Most conversations aren’t worth having.
Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to two assholes, I write.
Nelson looks up from my writing and glares at me. “Watch yourself, buddy. Why were you chasing her when the officers found you? Why was she screaming get him? Care to explain that?”
I wasn’t chasing her. We were chasing her dog that was running away.
“Nobody saw a goddamn dog,” Britton says, his voice rising. “What we have is a dead man who left a widow and two kids, a junkie that strangled him with his bare hands, and a scared shitless girl running through the woods that was supposedly found in a hole in the ground after being missing for ten years.”
Fuck off. I’m clean. I want a lawyer.
I snap the pen in half and throw it at them. I’m done with this bullshit.
It’s then that I recognize Nelson as a guy I went to high school with. Ten years hasn’t been so good to him, taking most of his hair and the muscular build he had when we were on the lacrosse team together. He hauls me up out of my chair and, the next thing I know, I’m thrown in a cell, where I pace like an animal until my oldest brother, Toren, can get a lawyer to come fix this mess for me. As I walk the perimeter of the small cell, my thoughts wander back to the girl in the woods. The terrified look in her eyes and the way she held onto that dog will haunt me for the rest of my life.
I can’t shake this eerie feeling in my gut that I’ve seen those eyes before.
4
Holly
My parents are picking me up from the hospital today, after two weeks of being questioned, stuck with needles, examined endlessly, bathed, and given IV fluids, medications, supplements, and food several times per day. It’s been exhausting and frightening. I went from living a life where I would go weeks at a time with no human interaction at all to having people practically on top of me all day long. Several times I’ve found myself wishing I was back in the dark, cold room with Poppy, my books, and the television. My time there was easier.
Most of the time, that is. When I was alone.
It feels strange wearing the jeans, sweater, and shoes that Mommy brought for me a few days ago. The clothes I had on when the man took me were all I had until they no longer fit and became too thin, torn, and dirty to wear anymore. After that, I was given an old white shirt to wear and a pair of his sweatpants. Nothing else. Now I’m hyperaware of the texture of the denim against my legs, the boots squeezing my feet, and the tag of the sweater scratching the back of my neck. I wish I could take it all off.
I nod and awkwardly shake hands with the hospital staff and police officers who have all come to say goodbye and wish me well. I try to smile at them and parrot back what I know they expect me to say in response. I’ve learned a lot from watching them these past few weeks. They mean well, but I know I’m just a project to most of them and an object of curiosity for the rest. Everything has felt stressful and surreal. Like being wheeled out of the hospital right now in a wheelchair, which the doctor insisted on. Is this real? I glance around when the hospital lobby doors magically open, and a whole new world is revealed to me like a huge television screen. So much is here. Colors, sounds, smells. All of it rushes back to me as if screaming, remember me? My eyes catch on everything: cars, buildings, more people, and movement everywhere I look. Fear and panic grip me with each moment, but I allow my father to push me—he and my mother unaware of the silent scream inside me.
Nearing the car, my parents try to take my backpack away again, forcing me to get out of the wheelchair and stomp my feet and cry until they back away from me and agree to let me keep it. They smile awkwardly at people staring at us in the parking lot. I’ll never let my backpack and my books go. Why can’t they understand I need the books, and I have to read them every day to stay safe? Besides, it’s the only way I can see the prince until he comes back again. I’ve told them this many times, but they refuse to listen and just shake their heads at me and tell me to calm down. I don’t care if they say my backpack and my books are old and dirty. They’re mine.
When Daddy opens the car door, I climb into the backseat and settle in the middle. I don’t ask where Zac and my new little sister are. In fact, I haven’t seen them since that first day at the hospital.
“Will Poppy be there?” I ask my parents from the backseat. Buckled in, as Mom put it.
I catch them exchanging an uneasy look that I can’t read as we pull out of the hospital parking lot.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, alarmed. “Is Poppy okay?” I was told Poppy wasn’t allowed in the hospital, so I’m sure he must be waiting at home for me.
My mother turns in the passenger seat to face me. Her blond hair is swept up in an intricate knot at the back of her head, and her eyes study me for a moment. She always pauses before she speaks to me. “Holly, Poppy’s gone to live with another family for a while. He’s safe, and he’s happy, and he’s being very well taken care of. I promise.”
I blink several times and gulp over the lump in my throat. “What? Why? Why isn’t Poppy coming home with me at my house?”
My father jumps in before Mom can answer. “We spent a lot of time talking to your doctors about everything that’s happened to you. You’re not going home yet, Holly.” He glances at me in the rearview mirror. “You will soon, but just not yet. You’re not ready.”
“Can I go live with Poppy, then?” His new home sounds really nice. But somehow, I’m not sure Poppy really is safe and happy. Something about my mother’s voice didn’t sound honest to me.
My heart sinks as Mommy firmly states, “No, Holly. That’s not possible—”
<
br /> “But why? Wh-where am I going?”
Back in the hole. Until you can be a good girl.
My mother touches my father’s shoulder, stopping him from answering me. “You’re going to be staying at a very nice place for a little while,” she says, not meeting my eyes. She gives me a quick, strained smile. One of many I have seen. From everyone. “It’s different, kind of like a hospital but not like the hospital you were just in. It’s also like a school, and there are small apartments, too. It will be like your own safe little world. It has everything you need. There are really nice doctors and teachers that will help with more…life things that you need to learn.”
I crinkle my nose. “Life things?”
“Yes. Like math, and reading, and social skills, coping, and behavior. Cooking and laundry. You’ll be around other people your age that have been through similar…experiences. And once you get better, you’ll even have your own little apartment and a roommate. A girl close to your age.” Again, my parents exchange a look, but this one I read perfectly; it’s one of discomfort. “A special doctor will talk to you about the things that…happened…to you, so you can feel safe and normal.”
Safe and normal? I’m not sure any amount of talking is ever going to make me feel safe and normal. “I don’t even know what that’s supposed to feel like, so how will I even know if I feel it or not?”
“Honey, you will,” she says, slightly exasperated. “That’s what the doctor is going to help you with. It’s what they specialize in. Don’t you worry.”
The familiar feeling of panic and helplessness starts to creep up again. “I don’t want any help,” I say emphatically. “I just want to go home and be with Poppy. Please…”
My begging is ignored. As usual.
“We know, and we want you to come home soon, but your father and I think it’s best that we take it slow.” My mother hesitates and shakes her head slightly. “We both have extremely busy jobs, we can’t be home during the day to be with you. Zac has his own condo with his girlfriend, and Lizzie has piano practice and gymnastics.” She rubs her hand across her forehead. “We just have to figure it all out. But it’s not far from where we live at all. Just across town, actually. We’ll visit you, I promise.”
Defeated, I pull my backpack across the seat and onto my lap, ignoring my mother’s look of disapproval. I might not know a lot of “life things,” as they said, but I’ve seen this on TV many times. They don’t have time for me. They’ve all moved on and built their lives around each other, and I’m just the oddball in the way now.
“I don’t need a babysitter,” I protest, but it comes out weak and immature, which I am well aware is something I need to work on to fit in. “I can find things to be busy at just like everyone else.”
“We know you can, Holly,” my mother says. She sounds almost too confident. Another quick, strained smile follows. “And you will. It’s just going to take some time.”
“And what about the prince?” I ask, worried that it might take him another ten years to find me again now that they’re moving me. “Are you going to let him know where I am?”
“Yes,” she says with an eye roll. “Now please, stop getting yourself all worked up over silly things. Look out the window, it’s a beautiful day.”
She turns back around in her seat, and both my parents stare out the windshield of the car as if I’m not even there, leaving me confused and forgotten.
Abandoned.
Beautiful day or not, I’m going from one prison to another. For so long I wanted to go home and be with my family again, and now that I can, it’s all gone. Time has taken everything away from me.
5
Holly
One year later
I feel numb as I’m once again sitting in the backseat of my father’s latest BMW, watching all the houses go by, as we enter the outskirts of town for my first visit home. I vaguely wonder if I’ll recognize my childhood home when I see it or if it, like everything else, will be different. There were many promises of me coming home for the holidays and weekends over the past year, but there was always an excuse, at the last minute, about why it wasn’t a good time or it couldn’t happen. After a while, I just accepted it and stopped looking forward to it. I got used to feeling disappointed. To be honest, I’m not even excited about the weekend visit I’ve suddenly been granted by my parents. I have my own schedule now, just like everyone else.
At least, being at Merryfield, I’ve watched less television. In fact, everything there was very regulated at first. My exposure to televised news, newspapers, and other outside influences was limited. The focus was learning and coping. And talking. Talking and talking and talking. I learned to cook, do laundry, and plant flowers and vegetables in a garden. I caught up on my education and found out that I was actually very smart. Sometimes the bad man would bring me school books during his visits, and he would teach me math and spelling. He would even quiz me randomly. I learned the hard way that he did not like bad grades. At Merryfield, I learned to share my feelings with a group, and I learned that, later, most of that group would whisper about me behind my back. They called me the Girl in the Hole. Thankfully, my roommate, who had named herself Feather, didn’t say bad things about me. She became my first, and only, friend.
The prince hasn’t come for me yet, but I know he will. I dream of him and his sky-blue eyes all the time, and each dream is more vivid than the last, with a little house in the forest, friendly bunnies, garden faeries, and singing birds. In my mind, Poppy is also there with his broken bark. It’s all there, the things that matter to me most, waiting for me.
“Here we are,” my mother announces in a singsong voice.
I snap out of my daze, my mind having gone blank the whole ride here. I still lose my sense of time often, hours, days and months merging together. For ten years I had no idea what day it was, or even what time of day it was. For me, time was segmented by what was on TV.
Gazing out the car window, I finally notice my surroundings. The artistic New England neighborhood, the perfectly manicured lawns, the big fancy houses. On TV, everything is perfect. Like what I see around me right now. In the TV shows, problems are always easily fixed, and doubt is merely a momentary inconvenience, quickly smoothed over and forgotten until it can be conveniently brought up again to create drama, only to be forgotten again. I’ve learned that real life isn’t like that at all. But sometimes I wish some of the fake world I immersed myself in daily was actually real. Then I would know what to expect. Nothing is predictable to me outside of Merryfield, and that’s one of the things I need to learn to cope with.
Wordlessly, I step out of the car as soon as it’s parked in the driveway and gaze up at the two-story brick house. It looks somewhat familiar to me, but I don’t remember all the brightly colored flowers in a perfect circle around the tree in the center of the front lawn or the stone walkway leading to the front door.
The warm fall sun beats down on me, and I’m sweating slightly despite the cool early afternoon breeze. I wipe my sweaty palms on my new mom-purchased clothes—a blue ribbed sweater, dark gray skirt, and black knee-high boots—while gazing up at the house. A few old memories emerge. They are hazy at first, then crystal clear. I’m bombarded with new sights and sounds, like the first day I left the safety of the hospital. I am, once again, a stranger in a strange land.
My father takes my small suitcase from the backseat, and I immediately take it from his hands. “I can carry it myself,” I say quickly, afraid they will take it away from me as soon as we get inside. He frowns, nods, and moves away after he slams the car door shut. He never seems to know what to say to me, and so he simply doesn’t say much at all. I don’t know what to say to him either, so I guess it’s all fine and this is just how things will be. At least for now. I hold on tightly to the handle of my suitcase and keep it close to my body as I tentatively walk forward.
My mother showed up three days ago with several new outfits for me to wear for my weekend visit home. I th
ought this was extremely strange as I already have new clothes, but she informed me I should always have lots of new clean, fashionable clothes for visits outside of Merryfield and she would take me shopping for more. Personally, I like my jeans, which Feather showed me how to distress and put little holes in, and my cozy sweaters and sweatshirts.
I’ve learned my mother is seriously focused on clothes. So much, in fact, that maybe she needs a week or two at Merryfield to discuss her worries about shirts and pants and the potential perils they could cause. I suggested this during our last family therapy session, and the idea was not well received.
My doctor says I need to learn to filter my thoughts and not just say everything I’m thinking. In the same breath, she also told me not to keep all my thoughts bottled up inside. I don’t like all the contradictory and confusing rules of social behavior. I just want to be me. In some ways, I think my parents expect me to be all trained up as a normal eighteen-year-old woman, with no defects at all from a deranged past, after my almost-one-year stint at Merryfield. I wish it could be that easy, but I’m still a work in progress, learning new things every day.
“Do you remember living here?” my mother asks as we walk toward the front door.
“A little…” I say, frowning and glancing around again, “but I don’t remember the flowers. And I thought the big front window was different.”
She smiles, and I know I’ve said the right words. I almost expect a little pat on the head for remembering correctly. “You’re right,” she says brightly.”We didn’t have flowers like this back then. We have a landscaper now who does all that. There’s also a pool in the backyard now. And all the windows were replaced a few years ago, so you’re right about that, too.”