by Mere Joyce
“Maddie, I’m so––” Wesley begins, but I hold up a hand to cut him off.
“Except for my feet,” I continue. I have to swallow a few times, my throat is so dry. I let go of Wesley’s hand, and pull my legs up in front of me. “He never let me wash off my feet. He wanted that to be the record of his presence, I guess. In all the time I was with him, I never once got to wash off my feet.”
I remember the times I tried, the way his slick hands gripped my ankles, holding them back from the water. My stomach rolls dangerously, proving my former assumption about having nothing left to throw up wrong. I swallow again, and wait for the painful sickness to calm itself while I study Wesley. His expression is one of stupefied dismay, but there’s intent and interest in the corners of his eyes.
When I can breathe well enough to keep the bile from rising up in my throat, I reach down and unlace my shoes. Wesley opens his mouth, on the verge of protest, but then he closes it again and watches me in silence. I wonder if he’s doing it out of respect for my story, or out of curiosity for what I’m going to show him.
I slide off my sneakers and roll the socks down my ankles, over my heels, and pull them from my toes. The tops of my feet look normal, pale flesh with blue veins visible under the skin. But then I tilt my feet up, exposing the soles to Wesley. He looks mortified.
The bottoms of my feet are still stained with paint. Greyish, brownish, greenish coloration tints my skin, marking my private hell in a lingering scar. When I was in the hospital after my escape, they scrubbed at my feet, desperately trying to wash all of the paint away, but some of the color stuck. Months later, it’s still there, faded, but not gone. Eventually, it should wear away completely. But the damage is permanent. Now, and forever, this piece of me belongs to The Painter.
I lower my feet, and sigh again.
“So do you see why I can’t paint?” I ask wearily. After the strain on my nerves, being sick, and showing Wesley my feet, I’m drained. I lean myself in against the bench seat, the backing incredibly soft against my cheek. “Every time I see a painting, a brush, a canvas, I see him. And I feel him. I feel the horrifying tickle of the brush on my skin, as he painted me day after day after day. So can you understand why I have to get rid of art, in order to move on?”
I expect him to nod, to apologize, or tell me how sorry he is I’ve suffered so much.
Instead, he shakes his head.
“No, I don’t,” he says. I can’t believe the words are coming out of his mouth. I want to snap back a defensive response, but I keep my lips shut and let him continue. “He violated you, and it’s awful it happened, and it’s worse he used your own passion against you. But painting is your life, Maddie. It was before, and I believe it still is. It’s even the reason you were taken, wasn’t it? Because you were an artist, a painter? Like he wanted to be.” He shrugs his shoulders, looks down at his hands. “I’m not a psychiatrist, so I don’t know if I’m right. But it seems to me if you stop painting, he’ll have stolen your life from you. If you stop painting, he wins.”
I open my mouth to reply, but I have no response to give. I want to tell Wesley he’s wrong, but the truth is, I’ve never considered his viewpoint before. I bested The Painter when I learned how to break my bonds, when I exercised in private, when I forced the lock on my door and barged out of the house while he was away. I bested him when I told the police, led them to his house, led them to him. I thought I was done having to battle him. It had never occurred to me we were still at war.
Do I have any fight left in me? Could I best him again, if I dared to try?
Wesley puts a hand on my leg, and we look at each other. I push myself up and slide over to him, burying my face in his chest as he envelops me in his arms. He kisses the top of my head, and I reach up to kiss him once on the neck. Then I nestle back into him, and we stay wrapped together until my therapy session is supposed to be over.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
That night, we do more than sit together in the pretty silence of a parking lot in spring. After Wesley drops me off at home, I go upstairs to take a shower. The water steams the entire bathroom as I pull back the green-striped curtain and step under the scalding stream. I love hot showers. I missed them terribly in the years I received only lukewarm, and sometimes downright cold, baths. Hot water is purifying. I never feel as clean as after I’ve had a long, hot shower.
I shampoo my hair into a foamy lather, and pile the strands into a large soapy bun on the top of my head. I use too much shampoo. I’ve observed this before, but now, seeing the half-empty bottle we just bought, the knowledge disgusts me. I need to cut my hair.
While my head sits buried under a mound of shampoo, I grab my bath puff and pour body wash over it. Then, I scrub. I scrub my skin to get rid of my day––to erase the boredom of school, the unease of seeing the endless posters for the Art Showcase. I scrub off Klara’s session, and the idiotic attempt of bravado I shared with Tim. I brushed my teeth at the sink before undressing, but under the shower’s stream I scrub at my face, wiping away the vomit, the tears.
I scrub it all away, and my only regret is Wesley’s touch, his kiss, his embrace, washes down the drain with all the grime.
I rinse the soap from my body, the shampoo from my hair. I’m red from the water and the forceful scrubbing, but I feel clean, refreshed. Well, almost. There is one part of me that never feels completely unsoiled.
As the hot water starts giving way, I slink down and sit in the tub. Slowly, I pull back one leg, bending the foot so I can see the sole. I haven’t taken a look at my feet in a while. It’s an unpleasant reminder of my captivity. An unnecessary one, too. My skin tingles enough with the memories as it is.
The color’s lighter than I expected. It’s there, certainly, the dull mix of ugly shades still making the skin look withered and sick. But it’s more faded than I imagined. It could be my mind recalling the stain in unrealistic levels of intensity. Or maybe the paint’s just, slowly, washing away. I think, possibly, I can even see a small glint of white skin beneath the grey-brown-green muck.
I sit in the tub and scrub the bottoms of my feet until the water turns cold, my fingertips are pruned, and my feet ache. It’s a good feeling, a clean feeling, and I close it up within me, glad the rest of my heat-pinked skin has returned to its normal paleness so no one will worry I’ve developed a destructive habit. It’s not destructive. It’s not an obsession, not a cry for more attention. It’s a cleansing process, a detox required on the murkiest of occasions. It was required today, and when I finally turn the shower off, even my feet feel relatively clean.
It’s too good of a result not to celebrate. I brush my still-wet hair and twist it into a tight bun, and then I put on one of Autumn’s pairs of yoga pants, and a purple sweatshirt with pink hearts I bought for two dollars at a clearance sale when I was twelve. Mom gives me permission to travel alone the vast distance from my front porch to the one next door, and I head out.
Wesley is surprised when he opens his door and sees me standing on the other side. Surprised, but not unhappy.
“Do you want to order some pizza?” I ask. I’m supposed to be eating a nice dinner of sea bass and wild rice with my family tonight, but at this moment, pizza sounds irresistible.
“Yeah, I do,” Wesley smiles, and he opens the door further to let me in.
Wesley’s house is warm and masculine, everything decorated to suit the tastes of two guys. The foyer is a deep red, with dark wood floors invoking the atmosphere of a professor’s personal study. Wesley’s dad is laid-back and better suited to a natural color scheme and casual decorating, but the house was designed before the Cole family moved in.
We go into the living room. I plop myself on the worn leather couch as Wesley grabs the phone and dials the pizzeria’s number.
“Usual?” he asks, and I nod, astonished he still recalls what my usual is. We haven’t had pizza together since my return, but without pause Wesley orders a large pizza with extra cheese, mushrooms, a
nd hot peppers. I didn’t know ordering pizza could be attractive, but hearing him on the phone melts me. I tuck my feet under my legs, and smile up at him as he ends the call and joins me on the couch. We look at each other, and within the space of half a second, the large living room shrinks into something cozy and close.
“Thank you for being around, Wes,” I say. I don’t want this evening to be a morose one, but this needs to be said. “It means a lot.”
“Thanks for letting me be around,” he replies. “Thanks for being here now.”
It’s like we’re back by his van, and this time, my mouth is minty fresh. I don’t obsess about the situation, the consequences, or the reality of where I am and why. I simply lean in and press my lips to Wesley’s. He doesn’t hesitate in kissing me back, and I’m glad.
Kissing Wesley’s not like I thought it would be. It’s like my mind imagined kissing air, and I suddenly find myself kissing flesh instead. He’s much more solid, soft, warm. Much better. Dreams can’t compare to reality when reality is like this.
If I’d allowed myself to envision this moment more clearly, I might be disappointed by the awkwardness of our uncertain hands, our bumping knees, our wet tongues. I might be upset we were in his living room instead of on some moonlit beach under a million, impossibly bright stars. Maybe I’d be nervous about how, even though Wesley’s van is the only vehicle in the driveway, I’m not certain his father hasn’t parked in the garage, and he isn’t lurking about the house somewhere, getting ready to interrupt and embarrass us endlessly.
But I haven’t allowed myself to imagine this, have barely let myself acknowledge my desire for it. So everything is perfect. I kiss Wesley, and he tastes like pineapples, like the pineapple juice he likes to drink. And with his taste it dawns on me I’m not just kissing a boy. I’m kissingthe boy, the only boy I’ve ever wanted to kiss. And we’re not just kissing. We’re groping, pushing, frantically forcing ourselves closer as we moan and pant, and kiss again and again.
We kiss until the doorbell rings. I’m honestly not sure when it happened, but I find myself straddled over Wesley’s lap, and it takes us both a few long and breathless seconds before I can move off of him and he can manage to stand up. We don’t say anything, but the silence is not tense. It’s comfortable, and while Wesley is paying for our food, I rummage through his movie collection to find us something to watch.
I chooseLabyrinth, an old favorite of ours. We eat the pizza, along with the breadsticks and sodas Wesley also ordered. We sit side by side, and we talk, or we don’t, and it’s fine. More than fine. It’s amazing.
When we both reach for the last breadstick, we argue over who should get it, and settle on splitting it between us. As I’m ripping the hot bread in half, Wesley says my name like a sigh. I look up at him, and he gives me a shy smile.
“Is this normal?” he asks, and as I hand him his half of the breadstick, I shake my head.
“No,” I admit, “it’s not. But I . . . I’d like it to be.”
Wesley smiles. “So would I,” he says, and he gives me a soft kiss before we curl up together to eat our breadsticks and watch the rest of the movie.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
On Tuesday I skip my last two classes. It’s not an ideal situation. If my parents find out, they’ll freak. But the school won’t call, and I plan to be home well before Mom and Dad are.
I take the bus to the mall. It’s a warm day, but overcast, the kind of day threatening rain without ever delivering. I sit by a window near the front of the bus, and focus on its jostling movement until the vehicle pulls up to the mall’s stop. I walk through a department store and out into the mall itself, and then I make my way to the salon. It doesn’t look busy, but it takes me several minutes to approach the long, curved glass reception desk. When I finally do, a girl with sleek brown hair and a glittering stud in her nose eyes me carefully.
“Hi there, do you have an appointment?” she asks. Her expression is curious. She’s trying to figure out if she knows me.
“Uh, n-no,” I say sheepishly. “I-I was hoping you could just fit me in.”
The girl’s smile is less than friendly.
“We’re booked up for the entire week,” she says in a soft voice laced with cold sweetness. I nod as I run a hand through my hair. It falls limp against my back.
“Okay,” I sigh. I try to remember if there’s another salon nearby, besides the one used only by people over the age of 65. But as I turn away from the desk, another voice speaks.
“Are . . . are you that girl? The one who was kidnapped?”
I glance back to see who I assume is one of the salon’s stylists. She’s got hair clips stuck all around her belt, and she stares, not at me, but at my hair.
“Y-Yeah,” I say, uneasy under her gaze. It’s like she’s sizing me up, determining how great a task it would be to turn my useless strands into something worthy of her reputation.
“I can take her now, Natalie,” she says to the receptionist once she’s finished her appraisal. “My one o’clock cancelled.”
I raise my eyebrows in surprise. I’ve never received special perks like this before. Plenty of people have given me attention. Barraged me with pitying glances, or praises of my inner strength. But never has being me resulted in a free pass to the front of the line.
“Okay.” Natalie is not exactly pleased, but she pencils me into a ledger, anyways. Then she gives me an over-sweet smile. “Rebecca will see you now,” she says, and although I’m tempted to ignore her nastiness and slip quietly past the desk, I give her a snide smile of my own as I walk into the salon.
The interior of the salon is bigger than I expected. As we walk behind the front desk’s back wall, the room opens into a wide studio of green-tiled walls with shining equipment and circular mirrors before each of the client chairs. There are a few other patrons chatting to the stylists as their hair is cut, blow-dried, or wrapped in foil. Rebecca leads me to a chair away from everyone else, and I sit down across from my unnerved reflection.
“So what can I do for you today?” Rebecca asks. It’s a simple enough question, but the answer doesn’t come easily. I’ve told myself to get my hair cut over and over again. It’s long, lifeless, and a constant reminder of everything I hate about my current life. But letting go is pathetically hard. Just making it to this salon has taken months. Now, I have to make my next decision in a matter of seconds. I guess I should have planned this before, but I’ve been so preoccupied with getting here I haven’t bothered to worry about what hairstyle I’d like to have.
“I want to cut it,” I tell Rebecca. I stare at my pale reflection, my hair lying lifeless across my shoulders. “I want it cut, and I want to bring it back to life.”
Wesley was not completely right when he told me to get over The Painter by reclaiming my ability to paint. The solution to my problem’s not as simple as he seems to think. No one, my beautiful boy next door included, understands the ghosts seeping out of paintbrushes, the nightmares waiting in the lines of color streaking the canvas. To paint is to collaborate with my tormentor, to give in to his wishes. He took me because I was a painter, and if I paint again, I’ll be exactly what he wanted.
But even without art, I can still reclaim the rest of my life.
I want to move on from it. I want to have fun, to feel the sun on my face and delight in its warmth, not shrink back from the terror of a cold, remembered dark. If I ever intend to be truly light-hearted again, I need to make some changes.
It’s time.
In the mirror, I see Rebecca smile at me. Her black hair curves down to her collarbone, where a tattooed splattering of stars runs along the curve of her neck.
“I can do that,” she says with a confidence I crave. “Did you have any specifics in mind?”
“N-Not really,” I confess. Rebecca runs her fingers down my scalp, fanning out the strands. She tilts my head to the left, and then to the right. Her smile grows more conspiratorial, playful and full of mischief.
“Mind if I take the lead?” she asks. I can almost feel how much she wants to take over, how much she desires free reign. It’s passion I see in her scheming gaze, and I can’t refuse it.
“Go for it,” I say, taking a deep breath and offering a cautious smile of my own.
My heart thumps wildly as Rebecca makes the first few snips. I watch the blonde hair fall to the floor, and it takes effort not to cringe. But as she continues, I begin to feel lighter, like something more than just hair is being cut away.
The salon is noisy, overhead speakers vibrating with music I’m pretty sure would be more at home in a nightclub. I relax under thethud of the bassline, my tension slipping away with each cut Rebecca makes. I expected this to be an unpleasant experience. It’s not like I’ve never had my hair cut before. This time the situation is different, but after all my procrastination, I’m surprised and a bit embarrassed at how easy it’s turning out to be.
When she finishes the initial cuts, Rebecca turns my chair from the mirror, taking away my view.
“The rest is going to be a surprise. Are you averse to something new? Some color?” she asks. My eyes go wide, but her eager look makes me brave.
“Go for it,” I say again, and Rebecca claps her hands once before leaving to retrieve some more supplies.
I don’t get to see the result until the end. I sit impatiently as she cuts, colors, and shampoos my hair, and my nerves escalate as the hair-dryer heats my neck. I don’t want to look in the mirror and see someone who isn’t me. But I’m also afraid the difference won’t be enough, terrified I’ll see my hair and realize a new cut does nothing to hide my bland, hollowed out appearance.
“Okay, are you ready?” Rebecca says at last after the hair’s been thoroughly blow-dried. I’m not sure if I’m ready or not. But I nod, and Rebecca swivels my chair back to face the mirror.