“But when he lets me go,” she said, “I’m going to come back, and I’m going to get you, and then we’re both going to leave. Forever. We won’t ever come back. Do you understand?”
I nodded, but I wasn’t sure I did. I couldn’t help but ask.
“Why now?”
“Because Ben, we can’t keep letting him do this to us. We have to leave here, and he’s not going to be the one to drop us off on our driveway.”
I searched through my memory for everything I knew about Jeremy and how he had kept us here. Except for the beginning, which was really, really bad, he hadn’t done anything mean at all. He’d given me most things I’d asked for, more than my mom ever did, and I sort of liked living here. Deedee and Dodo don’t come around much anymore, but I don’t want to just abandon them. What happens if I have to leave before I get to say goodbye?
I thought of one more thing then, and it made my tummy hurt a little bit. “What about Jeremy?” I asked her. I knew right away that it was the wrong thing to say.
“What about him?” she said, in a mean way. “He’s done enough to us.”
Still, I didn’t know what she meant. He hadn’t done all that much to us, really. Sometimes he would even read me stories at night. When Vi wasn’t around, I would call him Jer. He had asked me to, after all. I didn’t think Vi would like it though so I kept it hidden, like a secret.
There wasn’t anything I could do to change Vi’s mind. If this was the plan she had decided on, then it was what we were going to do. I definitely wasn’t going to stay here without her.
“Well, when are you going to leave?” I asked. I figured I had a right to know all the details, plus I needed to make sure I had time to pack and say my goodbyes.
“Tonight. I’m going to run to the corner store, wherever the nearest one is, to rent a movie or buy some chips, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Just something small, so that I won’t be gone for too long and I can come right back so that Jeremy will think that’s what I’ll always do. If I can get that over and done with tonight, then tomorrow morning, you and I can leave here for good. We have to trick him. Okay?”
Her eyes were so big when she said this. I didn’t think I had a choice but to nod my head to tell her this was not okay, but close enough.
She nodded back at me, stood up and started to walk out the door.
“Ben? You can’t say a word about this. You need to pretend you don’t know a thing about it, like you don’t even know I’m leaving here tonight.”
“I won’t,” I said, but it was a lie. I was going to tell Deedee and Dodo, because I had to explain to them why I wouldn’t be coming back. But I didn’t know if Vi would get that, and besides, I knew she was really talking about Jeremy.
Vi left my room then, and I heard her walk down the hall to Jer’s bedroom. She shut the door behind her. Mom never let her have boys in her room.
I went downstairs. I tried to start looking closely at everything, because who knew how many more times I was going to see it.
Outside, it was a sunny day. It would be sort of nice to spend the summer here, with all the flowers and the space to run around. I tried not to cry.
I looked for Deedee and Dodo. I really needed them. I tried whispering for them at first, but that didn’t work. They lived deep enough in the forest that they definitely wouldn’t hear whispering. I tried shouting, over and over. I kept yelling. I stopped caring if Jer or Vi heard me.
Deedee and Dodo never came out. They ignored me, or they’d gone off someplace else, to some other little boy who needed them.
I never saw them again.
30
Violet clenched and unclenched her fists as she left Ben’s room to head back to Jeremy. He knew she was upset. The key would be to convince him somehow that she wasn’t anymore, that she understood why he had lied. She wanted to make sure their agreement still stood, and that she would be allowed to leave as planned. As long as she came back.
Knocking on his bedroom door, Violet peeked in and saw Jeremy standing in the corner, facing the door in wait for her return.
“Hi,” she said softly. Her breaths were short and shallow, and she had to focus on inhaling and exhaling so that her heart would slow, so that her words might come out less shakily.
He replied with an equally quiet, “Hi, Violet.”
“I went to the fence,” she admitted, because it was obvious that she had. “I went past it. I wasn’t even sure if I believed that it wasn’t real. I kept bracing for the shock.” She harnessed herself; the details weren’t necessary.
“I’m sorry,” Jeremy said again, as he always seemed to.
“It’s okay,” Violet said, trying her hardest to sound convincing. “I mean, there were a lot of lies, for a long time. But I understand why you did it.” The words were thick on her tongue.
“You do?” he asked. He didn’t sound at all sure that she did.
“I do,” Violet reassured him. “I get why you needed safeguards to keep us here. We needed to think we were being forced to stay so we wouldn’t leave. I didn’t think I was going to admit this,” and she didn’t, “but I used to look into that camera and do things I thought you would see. I tried to send you messages so you’d know how I was feeling.” Her hands unconsciously rose to the necklace around her throat.
“It used to make me sad and frustrated that you didn’t seem to notice, so at least now I know why.”
Jeremy wanted to ask what she had done in front of the camera, what she had wanted him to know. But he didn’t. He knew he had no right.
“I put those in there because I needed you to think I had control over you. I needed you to stay.”
Violet’s heart felt heavy, and her stomach as if it had been gutted. Before that day, awareness had been slowly slinking through the deepest folds of her brain, but she had always pushed the feeling away. The knowledge would have sunk in on its own, eventually. She hadn’t needed him to tell her. But hearing him say the words out loud, knowing that there had been no chains around herself or Ben at any point made her feel useless, stupid, tricked. She felt robbed. He had stolen her ability to realize she could leave. She wanted to scream at herself for not seeing that she’d always had the option to.
Looking back, Violet realized she should have known all along. She should have realized it was an illusion. But that’s the thing about hindsight.
Summoning up every last bit of gumption she had hidden inside, scraping up the last residual layer of revolution, she threw her shoulders back. She would not let him know what was going on in her head. Never again.
“I know that now. But Jeremy, you don’t need restraints to keep us here. You don’t need to use force or threats. This is home to us now. This is it. We could leave now, but where would we go?”
It had to be obvious she was lying, didn’t it? She was sure he wouldn’t buy it. She regretted her words instantly, but he didn’t question them. He bought them, invested in them. The muscles in his face seemed to relax; his eyes became softer. Violet could see it.
“So this is where we want to stay,” she continued to lie. “But now that I know there aren’t any chains holding me here, I really want to leave for a moment. I just want to get in my car and go for a drive and remember what it feels like to be able to choose to stay or go.”
He looked so sad, then. “How do I know you’ll come back?”
“Because,” she said confidently, as she was about to tell the truth. “I promise that I will come back. You have my word. And I know there’s no way to prove that to you until you let me leave. But I can’t come back if you don’t let me go.”
“Where?” he asked. Jeremy had visions of her travelling the country, driving further north to find herself in the cold territories above, returning months later to tell him about a world he had never seen.
“To the corner store,” she said simply. “Just out and about, so I can buy something, see people, say hello to someone.”
“Oh,” he said, relief
registering on his face clear as a billboard. “The thing is… You have to be careful about where you go and who you see. I don’t know if it’s the best idea if people know you’re living here with me. There would be a lot of questions. I wouldn’t want anyone to take you away.”
She wondered if he could sense the irony of his words. Somehow, she convinced a smile to play on her lips. “I know that, Jeremy. I don’t want to mess this up for us. I’ll pretend to be someone else, and I won’t tell anyone where I’m going or where I’ve come from. Don’t worry about that. To be honest, I just want to go and buy a treat. Do you need anything?” Violet joked. “Because I could pick it up for you.”
“Oh. So you want to go soon, then?” Jeremy asked innocently.
“Yes, I do,” she said. “So much has changed and I just, I really want a moment to myself. But I won’t be gone long. I’ll be back before you even know I left.”
Of course he would notice she had gone. Her absence would weigh on the house like a plague. The air would feel denser, more difficult to breathe, less colourful without her inhaling it. But he needed to come to terms with the way their situation had changed.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll give you your car keys back. I trust you.” He looked right at her, and Violet was surprised at how uncomfortable it made her. She shouldn’t feel guilty about what she was about to do to him.
The date was June 2. Almost a year had passed since she had last seen her car keys. Jeremy reached into the drawer beside his bed. The very drawer Violet had been sleeping next to for the past few weeks. She didn’t want to know what sort of things he kept in his bedside table, but cursed herself for not thinking to check there for the keys. She’d never really looked at all.
Would someone who truly wanted to leave, she wondered, who was genuinely attempting to plan an escape, forget to think about how to get their car back? Later, she told herself. Worry about that later.
Jeremy dropped the keys into her hand gently; more accurately, he lowered them. Violet spotted her house key.
How simple it would be to get in the car and drive to her mom’s house, to unlock the door, walk in and announce she was home. She knew she couldn’t though, not without Ben. Her mom would never let her leave to come back and get him. And she couldn’t risk that.
“Thank you,” Violet said, hoping he heard the sincerity behind her words. “This means a lot to me.”
“You know where your car is, right?”
She shook her head. He had mentioned once that it was in the barn, but she’d never gone looking for it. Another stab of guilt.
“It’s in the barn,” he repeated simply. Not hidden, not buried or sunk. Just sitting inside a barn. “The big one, towards the back. Not the mouse house, the bigger one.”
She knew where, and nodded her head to let him know. How had she never peeked in there before?
“Do you think it’ll run after sitting for so long?” she asked. Almost a year is a long time for a car to sit abandoned, especially through a Canadian winter.
“It should be fine,” he said. “I checked on it every now and again and there were never any problems.”
“Okay,” she said, incredulous that even Jeremy had thought to check on her car and she hadn’t. “Where’s the closest convenience store?”
Looking around, Jeremy found a paper and pencil and began to draw her a map, a grid surrounding the prison whose gates were about to open. Violet wished he would write instructions instead. Her mind never mapped out anything; her brain didn’t reconstruct lines to remember where streets met and led. Directions were simpler, like a recipe to follow.
When he finished, he handed her the napkin he had tattooed. “It’s just called Bob’s Corner Store. There’s not much in there, but I’m sure you’ll find something.”
“And how long will it take me to get there?”
“Maybe ten minutes?” he guessed. “Fifteen?”
No wonder no one had found them, fifteen minutes from the nearest vendor called Bob’s Corner Store.
“Okay,” she said, trying to sound accountable. “So if I drive right there and back, it should take me about half an hour. Give or take five minutes in the store, I’ll be back within 45 minutes. Does that sound reasonable?”
She hated that she was asking him, as if was any of his business how long it would take her to drive her own car to the store. But Jeremy seemed to like it very much, as Violet had planned.
“That sounds very reasonable,” he said. “Ben and I will be waiting for you when you get back.”
Reaching deeper into the drawer, he pulled out her wallet.
“Just don’t use your credit card, okay?” She nodded.
Violet fought the urge to jump to the next part of her plan. Oh, and by the way, maybe I could take Ben for a drive tomorrow. I think he’d really like that. But she would wait until she got back, within 45 minutes, as promised.
Instead, she held up the keys. “Let’s see if I still know how to drive!” she joked.
Walking out to the barn, she opened the large door that concealed her car. There you are, she telepathically communicated when she finally saw it.
The engine ran just fine, and as natural as if she had been driving every day for the last ten months, Violet began her way down the driveway. Her stomach turned at the memory of the last time she had been in this car. Excitement should have washed over her entire body, but she was leaving Ben behind, and she would be right back where she started within the hour. Not much had changed, not yet.
Jeremy’s map was markedly accurate. His lines looked as if he’d used a ruler, all drawn to scale. Wide-eyed, Violet crept along the road, remembering the feel of the brakes and taking in the world around her.
Bob’s Corner Store soon loomed before her. Getting out of the car, Violet felt an urge to turn and run. It had been so long since she’d made small talk with a stranger and she wondered if it was something you could forget how to do. The thought of talking to unknowns didn’t excite her one bit. It scared her. What would she say? What if they recognized her and reported her to the police?
As she entered the store, Violet was relieved to see a teenaged cashier flipping through a magazine disinterestedly while snapping chewing gum. She thought it would feel like Christmas; out on her own, able to choose anything she wanted. Finally to use the change that had been sitting in her wallet for almost a year. She grabbed a chocolate bar and a bag of chips from the narrow aisles. They could have been anything. She found herself in front of the cash register, waiting for the bored girl to look up and notice her.
A few seconds passed. What was proper etiquette here, Violet wondered? She couldn’t recall. Should she clear her throat? Or should she stand patiently, quietly waiting for the girl to look up? She decided to go with the latter. When the cashier finally did look up, it wasn’t with apology. Violet got the sense that the girl had known she was there all along, but couldn’t tear her eyes away from the latest celebrity gossip. That’s another thing Violet hadn’t missed about the real world – how shitty people can be. She found herself craving the rocking chair on Jeremy’s front porch. She fought the instinct to run.
“Hi,” Violet offered.
No response. The girl rung through the two purchases and put them in a bag.
“Thanks,” Violet said on her way out of the door. She breathed a sigh of relief once back in the open air.
Violet checked the clock when sat back in the car. She’d been gone about twenty minutes. She probably had enough time to take a joy ride; to use Jeremy’s map-instead-of-directions and take a different route home. But she didn’t. She drove back the same way she came. When she pulled back up that drive, fighting the guilt that came with it, only thirty-five minutes had passed. She was early.
Nearing the house, Violet wondered if she needed to hide her car in the barn again. She chose not to, parking in a way that would make it easy to drive off very quickly. Leaving the car, she almost forgot her bag of goodies and grabbed them at the
last second. She was out of practise for running errands. Violet saw Jeremy standing in his bedroom window. She wasn’t sure if he knew she’d seen him; she didn’t let her eyes linger for long. Instead, she locked the car door and walked up to the house, as if it was the most natural thing for her to go out into the world and come right back.
Jeremy was heading down the stairs to meet her as she walked in the door.
“Welcome back,” he said with obvious relief.
“As promised,” she replied. “And ten minutes early!” She was trying her hardest to make light of the situation. She wanted it to be no big deal that she had just been the farthest away from Jeremy that she’d been in months.
“Good job,” Jeremy said. “Did you have any trouble finding the place?”
“Not at all, your map was great. I ended up buying some snacks. You hungry?”
Her words had their intended effect. Jeremy’s face lit up like a sunrise. “Starving.”
“Good,” she said, and led them to the kitchen. “It felt nice to be on the road again. What’s Ben up to?” she asked casually, lining up her segue.
“He’s in his room, as usual,” Jeremy replied. “I wonder if he wants a snack.”
Violet swatted her hand in the way that means, Nah. “Don’t worry about him,” she said. “But I was thinking, though, it might be nice for Ben to get out a bit tomorrow too. I could take him for a nice scenic drive, I still have that map in my car.” She fiddled with her corner store bag. “We wouldn’t need to go far, just long enough for him to get some fresh air. He’s always loved going on country drives.”
She could see Jeremy turning the idea over in his mind. There wasn’t a real reason why he could or should say no. They had an agreement.
Just to reassure him, Violet said it out loud. “I have every intention of coming right back,” she said, “I just know he’d really like to go for a drive.”
Jeremy couldn’t resist. He had a weakness for Ben, the same weakness most people got when they saw his brown eyes. There was a depth to them, something not innocent but not guilty.
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