Violet didn’t close her eyes. She looked right at him. He looked right back. Eyes that big couldn’t be bad, could they? All she saw was desire and adoration. There was no evil in them. In that moment, she could think of no good reason why she should not be in that bed.
When it was over, Jeremy took deep breaths and looked at Violet nervously, worry etched all over his face. She only nodded. She didn’t want to say anything more, too busy focusing on her body humming. She hadn’t come but was close; she could have gotten there but he was out of her too quickly. Jeremy read her mind, or seemed to.
“Can I touch you?” he asked.
“Yes.” There was no reason for her to say no, not after they’d come so far. She guided his fingers and rose above him, on the precipice she had been dangling near. It didn’t take long before she fell off the edge. Her body convulsed and released.
“Oh, god,” Violet said out loud, unable to help it.
“Was that okay?” he asked with genuine curiosity. Violet could hear its depths.
She nodded and found herself searching for reasons to go back to her room. There were a few, but not enough to deter her from the warm body next to her, sticky with her sweat and his.
“Jeremy?”
Nothing.
“Tomorrow is the day,” she pressed.
“I know,” he said after an uncomfortable moment. “I know it is.”
He had been thinking about it constantly. Hadn’t been able to get it off his mind. Two things could happen if he released her. She could disappear, leave with Ben and be out of his life forever.
But. There was another option, a hope that clung to life in the back of his mind, silently pulsing in the background. The other option was that she would stay. He couldn’t convince her; there were too many months of her life he had already decided for her. Now, it was back in her hands. He thought about what it would feel like, to see her come back up the driveway after he let her go. His own beautiful boomerang.
He would love her. Everyday, he would tell her so. Fresh flowers would be always on their table, and he would have picked them for her. He would remember all of the important days. They could create their own family. Ben could grow up there. Soon enough, his little Jeep would be replaced with a big one. Images flashed before him like a premonition.
Stop, he told himself. Sleep. There was nothing else he could say to convince her to stay. Her mind had to be made up by now. It was out of his hands.
That’s when he fell asleep next to Violet, pressed against her side in a way that was increasingly familiar. She was already sleeping, the steady rise and fall of her chest giving it all away.
When he opened his eyes in the morning, Violet was already staring at him.
“So what’s going to happen?” she said, propped up on the arm behind her pillow.
“I’m going to let you go,” he said, too simply.
“I know that.” She sounded impatient. “But what will that mean?” She held up her wrist with a questioning look.
He nodded. “I’ll take the bracelet off. I’ll deactivate the fence so you can come and go whenever you please. The cameras, all of it, it’ll be gone. This will be a normal house. And we can go grocery shopping and to the movies and out for ice cream.” He knew he sounded like he was pleading. It didn’t bother him, because he was.
“And Ben?”
“His bracelet will be gone too,” he reassured her. “You’re both free to do whatever you please.”
Jeremy wanted to keep talking, as if his words would wear down some resistance inside of her. He had one last weapon, a morsel he could feed her that might change her mind about him forever.
“Violet?” he began. “If we’ve decided that you’re now a free agent, then there are some things I should tell you.”
Her face looked puzzled. Not worried, but curious.
Jeremy took a deep breath. “I don’t actually have to cut off your bracelet. Or remove the cameras.”
Violet started shaking her head before he could continue. “No,” she interrupted. “No. They’re going. We agreed.” Her voice began to rise and he held his hand out to calm her.
“I know, I know that was the deal,” he said. “But the thing is that you can still leave the property with those bracelets on. They’re made of magnets and rubber.”
“I don’t understand,” Violet said slowly.
“Violet, they were never tracking devices. I was never keeping tabs on where you were. I just needed you to think I was so you wouldn’t leave.”
His words were met with silence. Her eyes shifted from him to her wrist. She started to rub at it, slowly, massaging it. Quickly, her hands became vicious. They grabbed and tried to rip it off her wrist.
“No,” she said again. “That can’t be right. I wore this fucking thing every day, every night.” A battle between confusion and anger began inside her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I know it was wrong, but I didn’t know how else to keep you here. I needed us to be together.”
“So you gave me a fake bracelet and forced me to wear it like a dog, so I would know I was yours? No,” she said. She couldn’t stop. Jumping off the bed, she stormed to her bedroom. Her stomach was turning and she thought she might be sick. First, she needed to check something.
Pushing her door open, she looked up at the camera watching over her bed. The camera she had posed for, time after time. The camera she had dreaded and desired and feared and fucked. For months. She climbed on top of her shelf to reach it. She grabbed. Pulled, ripped with all her might. When that didn’t work, she wriggled it until it came loose.
The stucco crumbled and the device came off in her hands. She hopped down and stared at it closely. There were no wires. No cords at all. The red dot that had been perpetually on, the one that told her Jeremy was watching, that red dot was not part of the camera. Using her nails, she chipped off the black paint and saw the tape underneath. Just a red light. A battery-operated red light that signified nothing. The camera wasn’t recording her and never had been.
Violet started to shake. With rage, with embarrassment, with rejection. How dare he, she thought. Jeremy had no idea what it felt like to be a prisoner in a house and a bedroom you were trying desperately to make your own, just to survive. Every night she had spent in there, that fucking red light had stared her down, making her feel like the victim sometimes and the villain others. Judging the movements she made and the ones she couldn’t.
And it was all a lie.
“No,” she moaned. Tears streamed down her cheeks. The fence was what she thought of next. The electric fence that would buzz them if they crossed the line, like cattle in the field waiting to be slaughtered. She had to find out if that, too, was a lie.
Slamming her door as hard as she could, she walked down the hall and saw Jeremy standing next to his bedroom door. She wouldn’t look at him. He didn’t dare try to stop her; he couldn’t even move.
When she got outside, Violet gasped in the early morning air. It felt cool and crisp in her lungs. She realized she’d been forgetting to breathe. Depriving herself of something basic that she needed to survive, as Jeremy had been doing to her for months. Left leg, right leg, she felt the need to look down at her limbs and engineer their stride. She couldn’t get them to move at the right speed, to step forward at the right angle. The world was about to knock her over, or her knees were about to give out. Either way, she felt she would soon be on the ground. She followed the gravel driveway that wound its way down the property. The last time she’d been on that road was the day she’d driven them there. She hadn’t tried to escape, not even once. Too much could have harmed her if she did.
Running seemed out of the question, but she pushed for it. Left leg and right leg began to move faster, almost in rhythm. Her breathing matched her pace. She needed to be on the edge of it all, to see the boundaries that Jeremy had carved for them so long ago. It took time to get to the end of the drive. Her frenzied mind began to convince herself there
was no way out; that they had been locked away so long that the rest of the world didn’t exist anymore. She imagined rounding a bend and seeing the very house she was running away from.
Because she was running away from that house. It was something she had never done before. It felt strange and scary and her lungs were burning, but she couldn’t stop. She sobbed but it caught in her throat, sounding stunted and shallow like a child gasping between cries.
And there it was. She saw the end. How had she not wanted to come back down there? Why hadn’t she sat, cross-legged, every day waiting for someone to drive by? Why hadn’t she?
Her run down the driveway felt like a punishment, a kick to her body for every time she hadn’t tried to escape. Her SOS sign that she so long ago had begun still lay unfinished and stagnant in the yard. Her fear that Jeremy would find it had been too great; he would realize she’d been spending too much time in one spot. He would have found it. Except that he wouldn’t have. He’d never known where she was, there had never been a red dot mapping her strides over the property.
The road. Looking back and forth, she searched for the fence, and it was there. She did see it; there was a fence. It was wooden and traced the outside of the property. From her walks and explorations, she’d seen it; she knew it existed. But she had stayed far away, just in case.
Now, she stood before it, panting and crying. A minute passed. She was frozen in fear. It had been so long since she’d crossed that line. What would happen to her if she did? What would happen if she didn’t?
Her legs found a way to move forward. Her toes lingered just behind the fence line, but she took a deep breath and hopped over it. Bracing herself for a jolt through her body, Violet’s eyes hid underneath her eyelids. She waited.
There was nothing. Opening her eyes, she found herself faced with a road going in two directions, both of them away from here. No scrapes or bruises or aches were on her body. Turning around slowly, she looked back from where she had come. That’s how simple it had been. She had put one foot in front of the other, and she had crossed that deadly boundary. That arbitrary boundary. Counterfeit. Make-believe.
Her knees gave out then. They couldn’t hold her any longer. She sunk to the ground and landed in the gravel. It should have stung, but it didn’t. Still, no feeling sunk into her body, only a void. On her knees wasn’t low enough. Falling forward, both elbows struck the ground. Her head went down with them. Over and over, she slammed her forehead into the gravel. Little bits of rock lodged themselves into her forehead and then fell out, leaving small dents behind. Some were sharp and stuck.
Animal cries escaped her. Her throat opened and sounds from the deepest parts of her emerged. Sobs she hadn’t let out for fear of Ben hearing, or Jeremy.
She had been shackled to this place, but not by anything from this earth. It hadn’t been chains that kept her there. There were no locks, but without locks, there were no keys. How was she ever to escape if she couldn’t find the key that would set her free? Where was her release?
Violet lay on the ground, face down. She couldn’t think of moving, of what would happen next. What she was to do, what she would tell Ben. When she returned to the real world, would she tell everyone? Jeremy hadn’t kept them there. She had kept them there, in fear of things that didn’t exist.
What would everyone say? The newspapers, the police reports? When she was questioned, what could she tell them?
“Did he tie you up?”
“No.”
“Ever?”
“Just when we first arrived.”
“Did he lock you up?”
“Yes. At first.”
“For how long?”
“A couple of weeks.”
“And then, he unlocked you?”
“Yes.”
“So what was stopping you from leaving?”
“Fake cameras, rubber bracelets and phony fences.”
They would judge her. That poor little brother who didn’t know any better while she refused to find a way to get him home. People would pass her in the street and furrow their brows, shake their heads with distain.
Maybe they would have her committed. They might try to test her sanity. It would be easier for everyone to believe if they thought she was crazy. It would excuse the many months she had stayed, passive and weak. It would be her fault, all hers, because Ben was too young to know better and Jeremy stopped restraining them long ago. He’d never even hurt them, never raised a hand to strike.
I could say he raped me, she thought miserably. I could say he forced me to sleep with him and that if I didn’t he would hurt me. And Ben. And my family. Poor little Violet, the sex slave.
But how could she stand up in front of someone, in front of the whole world, and tell them Jeremy had violated Violet? He had been gentle and loving and kind. He hadn’t hurt her in any physical way. In fact, he had hurt her less than many people in her life had. To think about telling the world otherwise made her nauseous. She realized that for the world not to hate her, she would have to hate him. She would have to summon up that old hatred and feast on it, force it on anyone who would listen. It was still in there somewhere; it festered and bubbled up from time to time. There had been no way to put out that fire completely, but it was a weak flame that flickered smaller and smaller each day. She’d have to feed it, the whole world would need to feed that flame.
Summoning an inner strength she wasn’t sure she had, Violet pulled herself up from the dirt. She straightened her knees, tentatively put some pressure on them, and sighed with relief when they held. There were a million directions she could have taken but the one she took as she turned and walked up that long, winding driveway was the only one that led her back to Jeremy.
29
Vi stormed into my room without knocking, or without even saying, “Knock, knock.” I knew that meant that something was wrong.
I’ll never forget the words she said to me next, how red her cheeks were when she said them, her hands holding both sides of her head and her hair.
“Ben, what do you say we go home?”
At first I wasn’t sure what she meant. We were home. Homes change, they come and go, I know this. I wasn’t sure which home she meant, especially since home wasn’t something we talked about a lot. Or at all.
I didn’t know what to say back to her. I needed more information. I asked her what she meant.
“Home, Ben. Home, to mom. Back to life, back to school, away from this place. Back to where we came from.”
A weird little part of me wanted to argue. Where I came from was a different place than where Vi had come from, and both of those places were different than where our mom lived. So we wouldn’t be going back to where we came from, not really.
“How?” She’d never mentioned anything like this before. We were always waiting, being silent and good so that Jeremy would learn to like us and let us go, that’s what Vi always said to me. I’d stopped even thinking about it. There were a couple of nights when I stayed up late in my bed and put my thumb in my mouth and thought about what it would feel like for my mom to walk into the room and rub my back as I fell asleep. That would’ve felt really good. But Jeremy wasn’t so awful. Really, I can think of tons of worse people who could have taken us. There are a million things he could’ve done to make this a worse prison. But I have a Jeep that I get to drive around like a grownup and I get dessert every night after dinner. This isn’t the worst home I’ve been in.
Vi started speaking really quick. The words were sloppy and slurred.
“Jeremy can’t keep us here anymore. You know our bracelets, the ones he told us would let him watch us wherever we went? They’re fake. They’re fake Ben, they’re nothing. Made of rubber.”
She looked so angry, and she kept pulling at her wrist. Next, she went to the corner of my room where the camera was. Really, I don’t mind it that much. I don’t do anything too weird in here, and Jeremy can see me when I’m outside of my room so I guess it’s okay that he wants
to see me when I’m in my room, too. But Vi hopped up on a chair and grabbed at the camera. My mouth fell open really wide. We’d never done this. Jeremy would be mad, wouldn’t he? Those cameras cost a lot of money, I bet.
“They’re not real, Ben! All of it, all of it was a lie! This isn’t a camera that records us. It’s not hooked up to anything. And the fence, there’s no electric fence Ben. It’s just a regular, everyday, ordinary fence.”
How could they not be real? Jeremy had to keep us here, and he had to have all of those things so we would stay in one spot. I knew the fence was real, I’d seen it. And I’d never gone past it so I was still okay.
“How do you know, Vi?” Maybe she had it wrong.
“He told me. It’s time for us to go home, Ben. Jeremy promised me that he would let us go and now he’s going to do it. Only, here’s the thing.” She squatted down on her knee. “Jeremy thinks we want to stay here. I told him, well, I let him believe that if he let us go and stopped keeping us here by force, then we would always come back. But when we leave here, we’re not coming back. We have to make him think that we are, but we’re not. Otherwise, he won’t let us out. He’ll put us back in the basement.”
Too much stuff ran around in my head. How could all of this be happening so fast when it had been months since this had even come up? I hadn’t asked questions in so long. I’m not even sure I wanted the answers. Part of me wished Vi would stop talking, walk out my door and leave me alone to play. But I couldn’t say that to her.
“How do we do that?” I asked. It sounded like maybe she had a plan and that I wasn’t really going to have any choice but to go along with it.
“The first time he lets me leave here, he probably won’t let you come with me. He’ll probably keep you here, just to make sure I come back. Because I would never leave you.” She grabbed my arm and I knew she meant it.
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