by Nicole Thorn
It had been about ten minutes since my last call, and I looked out the window as I waited for another. The man I talked to had lost his wife to cancer, and he wanted someone to talk to. We spoke about his granddaughter on the way and how his son had a hard time with the recent loss as well. Everyone was hurt, and I felt better when I could make someone else feel better about their own pain.
I thought about ways to get more hours at the center when my phone rang. My heart jumped at the surprise and how damn loud the phone sounded. I blinked half a dozen times as I reached for it. I hit the answer button and held it to my ear.
“Hello,” I said, attempting to sound cheerful. “My name is Layla. What’s yours?”
The girl on the other end sniffled, and I heard her breathing into the receiver instead of speaking. I couldn’t tell if she was too upset to speak or too scared. I was used to both.
“Sweetie,” I said. “Can you tell me your name?”
“Z-Zelda. My name is Zelda.”
I leaned on my desk, resting my hand on my forehead. “Hi, sweetheart. Would you like to talk to me about why you called?”
Her hesitance to talk wasn’t something that was unfamiliar to me, but it still made me nervous every time it happened. Silence wasn’t a good thing. Bad things happened in the quiet. In those moments before we escaped The Dollhouse, the whole place had been so damn quiet. I stood by my door waiting, and I could never forget what that felt like.
Zelda spoke up again, but I could barely hear her. “My boyfriend,” she said. “He died a few days ago.”
Oh, no. I could feel it; this wasn’t going to be an easy call. Grief was always the worst, and I’d just gotten finished speaking with a grieving husband. There was literally nothing you could say to make it better. You couldn’t bring people back, and that was all they wanted. The old man had wanted to talk to someone, but I wasn’t sure this girl had the same intentions.
“I’m so sorry,” I told her.
Before I could start attempting comfort, she cut me off. “We’d been together since we were ten. We were talking about prom four fucking days ago, and now he’s gone forever.”
“Zelda,” I said. “I understand what you’re feeling.”
“Do you?” she asked, cutting me off again. “Did your boyfriend die? Did you have your entire lives planned out? Your kids named? And did you spend every single day with him? Do you know what it’s like to have every single thing in your world get destroyed in the time it takes to misstep and fall down a flight of stairs?”
I shut my eyes, trying to think. “I can’t imagine what you’re going through but know that you’re not all alone.”
“Is your boyfriend alive?” she asked with acidity.
I suppressed a sigh. “I don’t have a boyfriend, Zelda. That doesn’t mean I can’t sympathize with you.”
“It does,” she said, less aggressive and defensive. “He was my best friend in the world, and I’m never going to have that again. I’m not going to get to wake up next to him or watch the look he gets in his eyes when I say something he thinks is cute. I lost everything, and unless you know what it feels like to have what I did, then no, you can’t sympathize.”
“I can,” I said, thinking of Bennett immediately. “I don’t have a boyfriend, but I have someone I love very much. If I lost him… I’m not going to say I don’t know what I would do. I know very well what I would do. I’d lock myself in a room and never leave it. I doubt I’d get out of bed or want to see the sun anymore. Thinking about it is miserable, so give me some credit. You called me for a reason, right?”
Zelda sighed. “I… I thought talking would make it better. If I said some of this out loud, I thought that I could get some of the ugly feelings out.”
Finally, we were getting somewhere. “I’ll listen to anything you have to say. If you want to tell me about your boyfriend, or how you’re feeling, I want to listen.”
Shockingly, she went for it. I listened to her pick a story about her boyfriend Graham and her when they were kids. I got to listen to how they met and those unsure times that they had before they figured it out. She told me about how happy their parents had been when they’d started dating and how they’d called their future in-laws Mom and Dad already. It sounded like the ideal situation. As Zelda told the story, she laughed, and she sounded happy when she talked. I even laughed with her when she told me about when he’d tried to do something special for their third anniversary. He’d almost lit her couch on fire with candles, and they had eaten cake while they’d sat on the floor.
Zelda told me about the future they’d planned out and how they had wanted to live in the woods away from people. Her boyfriend had joked about them living in a treehouse and having a bunch of woodland creatures as pets, and they’d would spend hours talking about things that wouldn’t happen, but they had wanted anyway. It was really there, all planned out.
I could picture the long hours spent talking about this kind of thing because Bennett and I lost so much time doing the same thing. We talked about book plots and weird things his characters could do, and it always slipped into him and me. Stupid stuff about having pet alligators and an army of porcupines. We were a couple of weirdoes, and I loved it. Zelda had that, and it was gone now.
But she was still able to laugh when she thought about the two of them, and that was great. It meant she knew that there was hope of getting better, and that it hurt now, but it wouldn’t hurt forever. Eventually, it wouldn’t feel like the world ended.
“Thank you,” she told me. “This was good, talking to you.” Zelda sounded quieter, like she was half awake. “I like remembering him.”
I smiled. “Good. It’s good to remember the people we’ve lost. It keeps them with us.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I wanna be with him.”
“I know you do.”
Zelda sighed, and I heard lightly the sound of water splashing. “It doesn’t hurt… It should. It feels… feels like it should.”
I blinked. “What? Him being gone? Of course that hurts.”
“Hmm… No, not that. I was thinking.” She sighed again and paused. Everything she said came out slowly. “He was everything. My whole future. I really don’t want one without him.”
No! No, no, no. “Zelda,” I said carefully. “You should want one. You should think about what Graham would want for you. Wouldn’t he want you to be happy and move on?”
“Yes,” she said. “I think he would. A long… long life with someone else. But I don’t want that. I want him.”
This was bad talk. Very, very bad, and I needed to nip it in the bud. “Honey, do you live close by?”
“What?” She made a sound. “Why?”
“Just tell me where you live.” I reached for my phone and set it on the desk to pull up the number pad, ready to dial 911, and send them to her. “Zelda?” I said when she didn’t answer.
“Mmm,” she mumbled. “I’m so tired. I have to hang up now. Thank you for listening to me, Layla. Graham would have liked you lots… I have to…”
She stopped talking, and my stomach turned. “Zelda? Zelda! Where are you? Tell me where your house is!” I shouted, and eyes were on me from the other people in the room. I ignored them, and yelled at Zelda again. I begged her to tell me where she was.
The call ended when her phone slipped into the water.
hey found her in the tub,” I said, my voice hollow. “Fully dressed in her pajamas. She did it while we were talking. While I was listening to her laugh and sound happy. I don’t understand.”
My stare was locked on the window behind Dr. Hastings’ chair, and I watched the wind blowing on a skinny tree, making it lean so badly that I thought it would snap in half. I hoped it would. I wanted it to break, and I wanted the remains to lie there on the ground like they were nothing. Because they were just that.
Dr. Hastings didn’t even have his notepad on his lap. He crossed his legs and watched me when I turned my head again. “Something like this cannot
really be understood, Layla. Emotions aren’t reason. They are the opposite of order and sense. Zelda was hurting, and she didn’t see a way out, so she took her own life.”
“I know that,” I said, barely not hissing at him. I didn’t mean to, but everything came out hostile. “I know she’s dead.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m trying to explain to you that this is over. You can wish and pray and curse all you want, but that girl will not wake up tomorrow morning. And that is not your fault.”
My eyes stung as I quickly looked away from him and at the wall. I tugged at my sweater, hoping it would distract me as I cleared my throat. “How is it not my fault?” I asked. “She did it while we were talking. She was laughing and telling happy stories. I wasn’t paying attention.” I shut my eyes, and tears overflowed, falling to my cheeks. “I should have been paying attention.”
He let the room fall silent for so long that I almost forgot where I was. In my head, I sat in someone else’s room. I was on a bed, and I leaned on a warm body. That body held me, and I was told that everything would be okay. I wouldn’t feel like this forever. In my head, I believed him.
“You take on much more than you deserve,” the doctor told me, making me open my eyes. His were soft as they watched me. “You regret too much for a girl so young. It would do you well to let go of some of this.”
I smiled bitterly. “And what is it that you think I’m regretting?”
“Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?” He uncrossed his legs and leaned on the arm of his chair. “How about the night you girls got out of The Dollhouse?”
My eyes narrowed. “What about it?”
My anger didn’t frighten him in the least. “You thought it should have been you that killed your captor. You’ve told me as much before.”
“So?”
“So.” He sighed. “In your eyes, I believe you see your actions as cowardly. You made your sister do what you couldn’t do, and now she carries it with her and will for the rest of her life. You believe that you did something wrong that night.”
I nodded. “I did.”
“No,” he said softly. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Why do you believe you did?”
“Because it shouldn’t have been Riley that had to kill him. It should have been me.”
“Why? Why do you think you’re so damn special?”
I blinked in reaction to his out-of-character tone and word choice. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” he said, voice cold. “What makes you believe that it should have been you?”
I stammered for a moment, trying to catch my footing in my own sentence. “I… I don’t know.”
“You do,” Dr. Hastings said. “You have a reason in your head, so tell me.”
He was right because I did know why I felt the way I did. I tried to explain as best I could. “Because I’m the one who hated him the most. He beat me hardest, and I know he regretted taking me. It was always him and me, and Riley is too soft for what she had to do. She’s not made for that kind of hateful act.”
Dr. Hastings kept his voice softer now, scrutinizing me. “You think Riley is weaker than you are.”
“I didn’t say that,” I snapped, sitting up straighter. “Don’t put words in my mouth.”
He held his hands up defensively. “I was going with what you said today. You think that you’re tougher than her. That your anger makes you somehow stronger.” He lowered his hands and raised his eyebrows. “Honestly, none of you girls should have had to kill a person. You were put into an ugly situation, and you all did the only thing you could have.”
I rubbed my eyes and set my hands back on my lap. “But it still shouldn’t have been Riley,” I said, my voice cracking.
Dr. Hastings smiled. “Layla, you see everything through muddy waters. There was and is not a weak girl among you four. Killing someone does not make you brave. What makes you brave is that you survived when I know you didn’t want to.” His eyes flickered quickly to my wrists. “Every single day that you woke up and put one foot in front of the other, you were brave.”
I looked down, tracing a scar with my fingers, feeling where the skin was raised in a jagged line. “And when we tried to end those footsteps?”
“You were still brave. You girls made a choice that you thought was right, no matter how you feel about it now. The word ‘brave’ doesn’t mean what you think it means. It’s not wielding a sword or being the biggest and loudest personality in a room. Being brave means that when something is scary, and you need to do it, you don’t let fear stop you. It wasn’t by your hand that your captor died, but you were brave enough to run when you felt like you were hopeless. Each and every one of you girls is brave. Dead or alive.”
I did not feel brave, no matter what he said. I would never lose my guilt over what I put on Riley, and I said as much to him.
“Why was it all on you and not Adalyn or Kylie?” he asked.
“I already told you.”
He shook his head. “No, you didn’t. You claimed it was personal. Was it not personal for the rest of you? He beat all of you, violated your bodies and minds. Put you through hell. Each and every one of you had just as much a claim to his murder, if we’re going with your thinking here. Your revenge doesn’t mean more than theirs.”
I opened my mouth to debate him, but I closed it again. I couldn’t fight him on this. He was right, and my revenge wasn’t more important than that of my sisters. We were all damaged by what Master did to us, and we all wore the scars.
I brushed my hand over my cheeks, drying some of my tears. “I feel like I should have done more.”
“I know. I know that you carry this on you. Riley, Kylie, Mary, Bennett, and Zelda. You feel like, somehow, you’re responsible for all of their pain and sorrow. Yet you don’t take credit for the good you did, and that is such a shame.”
“What… good do I do?” I asked. “Riley is a killer when I could have spared her, Kylie is dead because I wasn’t paying attention, Bennett still doesn’t think he’s worth it enough to let me keep him safe, Mary… Mary deserved better, and Zelda killed herself while I was talking to her. That was my fault.”
“No,” he said, leaning toward me. “None of this was on you. Kylie died because she wanted to die. Not because you didn’t see signs that she was purposely hiding. You didn’t see, and neither did your sisters. Is it their fault too?”
“No,” I said, sounding defensive.
“So just you?”
“I… maybe. I don’t know. But I don’t blame them.”
“And you shouldn’t blame yourself either.”
He didn’t know what he was talking about. He wasn’t the one who lost a sister, and he didn’t know what it felt like to be in The Dollhouse. That information was only known to my remaining sisters and me.
“What about Zelda?” I asked. “She called because she wanted to talk, and she ended up killing herself. That has to be on me.”
“You can look at it like that,” he offered. “Or you can look at it like she wanted to talk to someone because she was miserable. You put her in a state where she was laughing and enjoying memories that would have been otherwise painful. You gave her peace in her last moments when she had made her choice long before she called you.”
He couldn’t possibly know that. She could have been teetering before she called, and the memories made her so sad that she felt like death was her only option. She got in the bath fully-dressed, and I didn’t hear her turn the water on. She had to have made the bath before she called. I could have talked her out of it.
“It feels like it was my fault,” I admitted. “All of it. I can’t keep anyone alive… And Bennett…” I blinked and took a deep breath. “What am I supposed to do about him? He’s being beaten God knows how often, and he makes excuses for his mother. He thinks that because she’s nice sometimes that she’s not an awful person. One of these days, she could kill him, and that’s one more person gone.”
Dr. Hastings
adjusted himself in his seat as he cleared his throat. The little alarm that marked the end of my session went off, and he hit the button to shut it off.
“Bennett makes his own choices, Layla. You are right; his mother may very well kill him, but I don’t think that will happen.”
My heart raced with the abject horror now running through me at the very real thought of Bennett dying. “Why not?”
Dr. Hastings smiled. “Because he has you now. I haven’t met the boy, but I know his personality type. He’s loyal. When he loves, he doesn’t stop. And now he has you, and you are all the things he didn’t think he deserved, but he has you anyway. I think in time, he’s going to wake up and see the light. He’s going to figure out that he deserves better because he has you. You, Layla, will see your worth as well.”
Glancing at the clock, I decided I took up too much of Dr. Hastings’ time, so I stood up. I was done with this conversation anyway. “I think I should go now.”
The man looked at me like he was tired all of the sudden. “If you insist.” He rose and started walking me to the door. “I want you to think about what I said.”
He opened the door, and I smiled softly. “I promise I will.”
I don’t think he believed me.
I went right to Bennett when I was free because I didn’t want to go home. It was a long conversation with my parents the day before, once I was sent home, and I was almost too tired to sneak out and see Bennett. Once I got there, I couldn’t keep off of him. But at least I told him what happened after we were done. We talked about it for a long time, and then we fell asleep. The only time I smiled was when I saw the box of condoms that Bennett picked up. I guess it was a good idea that he got them since we clearly weren’t stopping, and getting pregnant wouldn’t have been great right now. My baby would be all messed up with me for a mommy. My dog would probably be better at nurturing, and he barked at leaves.