“What is this?” I whispered, more to myself than anyone else. I was still conscious not to make any noise that would get me caught.
“Who said that?” asked a voice I had never heard before as the body I was in jumped up and started looking around the room in a blind panic. The room was carpeted, with a few posters of strange men in costumes and metal suits taped to the wall. There was some kind of desk to one side, with a small lamp at one corner. On the desk were books that I had never seen before, and papers of some kind littering the top of it. There were also dressers along another wall, and a strange basket that seemed to be one huge spring held together by some kind of mesh fabric. There appeared to be clothes in this large spring basket, making me think it was a place to hold dirty clothes until they get washed. I couldn’t see the kinds of clothes in it, not with the way the eyes were darting around wildly, looking for me.
“Stop!” I whisper quickly. “You’re making me dizzy!”
“Who are you?” the voice asked, sounding no less panicked.
My mind scrambled to come up with an answer. I was afraid to give my real name because I was feeling embarrassed at having been caught. I also worried about what would happen to me if he found out who I really was. Would I get into trouble? Would he tell Jack and Billi what I had been doing? If Jack and Billi found out, I’d be in so much trouble! They’d probably wear their arms out whipping me!
Hell and blast! I hadn’t meant for him to hear me! It’s never happened to me before!
I gave him the only name I could think of that wasn’t actually mine. “Call me Jane,” I tell him.
“Jane?” the voice asks, sounding skeptical.
“Jane,” I say with more conviction. “Now, who are you?”
“Me?” the voice squeaks.
“You,” I demand.
“I’m Tommy!” he says, sounding only marginally calmer.
“Hello, Tommy, it’s nice to meet you,” I tell him, hoping this is the right thing to say. Benjamin has given me some lessons on the outside world, but I’ve never had a way of testing his teachings until now.
“Um, hi Jane!” Tommy says, still looking around. “Where are you?” he asks. I can feel his eyes going wide as they dart around the room.
“Um…” I hesitate. How do I explain this? “I’m sorta in my room and in your head…”
“In my head?” he asked, breathing harder, fear taking a tighter grip on him.
“Don’t be afraid!” I tell him quickly. “Please!” I add, hoping this is enough to calm him down.
“What are you doing in my head?” he asks, a little calmer, but still nervous.
“I don’t get out much,” I admit. “I found this car at the playground…”
“You found my car! I thought I had lost it for good!” he says, sounding excited to get it back. “Let’s meet and you can give it back to me!”
“Give it back?” I ask, starting to panic. I couldn’t lose my prize! What would I do without it?
“Yeah, you know, since it’s not yours?” he tells me, sounding like he can’t believe that I would want to keep something that wasn’t mine.
“Please! Can I keep it?” I pleaded, getting desperate. “They don’t let me out often and this is the only way I can see what’s going on… outside…”
“Are you a prisoner?” he asks, sounding concerned. It’s almost enough to make me cry. Here’s Tommy, this complete stranger who has known me for all of a few minutes, and he’s more concerned for me than the people that are supposed to be my parents!
“Kinda…” I tell him, feeling embarrassed. “But don’t tell anyone! Please! If they found out, they’d punish me! And what would you tell anyone, anyway? That a voice in your head told you about this?”
“Yeah…” Tommy acknowledges. “I guess you’re right. Nobody would believe me… But, how are you doing this?”
“It’s just… kinda something I can do…” I tell him reluctantly. “I don’t know how or why…”
“Cool!” Tommy says with a tone of awe. I can feel the smile on his face as he thinks about it. The word ‘superhero’ comes to his mind, but I don’t know what it means.
“Tommy?” I ask, to bring his attention back to me. “Would it be okay if I spent some time with you, like this, at night?”
Tommy is quiet for longer than I’m comfortable with and I can feel the thoughts going through his head. I try to ignore the thoughts of losing his privacy and whether he’s going crazy. I’m desperate for somebody to talk to and for information on what goes on beyond the small house I’m confined to, but I can also understand the need for privacy, having been subjected to Billi watching me on the toilet and scrubbing me with a brush in the shower.
“Is there a way to let me know you’re there?” he finally asks.
“How about if I go ‘ring ring’ when I do it?” I asked, thinking of the old phone we have in the house that I sometimes hear. I was feeling hopeful, but willing to agree to any demand he might make of me.
“Like a phone?” he asks.
“Like a phone,” I confirm.
“Cool!” Tommy enthuses once more. For some reason, a picture of a bald man in a wheelchair flashes through his mind… I decide not to ask him about it… yet…
“So that’s a yes?” I asked, trying not to sound as desperate as I was.
“Definitely!” he answers with a chuckle.
Relief floods through me hard enough to almost make me sob.
“Thank you, Tommy,” I tell him, briefly feeling tears down my cheeks before returning to Tommy.
“You’re welcome, Jane,” Tommy says happily before going back to his bed and returning his attention to the TV show.
“So,” I say to break the silence and redirect my focus to something that won’t make me break down. “What show is this?”
“It’s a procedural called ‘The Thin Blue Line’ and it’s one of my favorite shows,” he informs me.
“Procedural?” I asked, feeling dumb.
Tommy, bless his heart, explains it enthusiastically without even a hint of derision.
I had done it. My mind had escaped, even if my body was still a prisoner.
Tommy would become my best childhood friend, yet we’d never meet in person…
Chapter 6
Reprieve
Life got… easier once I had Tommy. With something to look forward to, the pain and suffering of the day were… lessened. Tommy gave me hope, hope that it would get better, hope that I was no longer alone.
Don’t get me wrong, I still had, and relied on, Benjamin, but he has always been way too sympathetic to Billi for my liking. Try as I might, I could not muster up any sympathy for the woman.
But Tommy… Tommy was a sympathetic ear. I didn’t tell him everything, mind you, as I got the impression that he would want to do something more to help me, like calling the police. I worried that if he called the police, then they wouldn’t do anything about it, or worse, they’d tell Jack! According to Billi and Jack, they had a right to discipline me any way they saw fit, since they were my parents. Besides, Jack would tell me, that the police protect their own…
Who was I to question this? I was just a kid! What’s worse, Benjamin never disagreed with them, so I had no choice but to believe it, too…
If Tommy had called the cops, and the cops came to our house, and nothing happened to Billi and Jack, then my punishment would be extreme and I would lose the little bit of freedom I had left. As bad as my situation was, I had no trouble believing they could, somehow, make it worse. I couldn’t risk it. I was barely holding on as it was!
So, I begged Tommy not to call the police, or tell his parents, or anything besides keeping me a secret from the rest of the world. I could feel his distaste for the idea, but he didn’t want to push me. I got the impression that Tommy was almost as lonely as I was…
Tommy was a bit of a shut-in. He was a quiet boy that didn’t really fit in with anyone else. He said he didn’t make friends easily. I th
ink people just misunderstood Tommy… He didn’t have much to say to the outside world, but the world inside his head was rich with detail. It seems that neither of us was content with the world we lived in, but Tommy found a way to escape I had never considered. He created worlds based on the books he was reading or the TV shows and movies he was watching. He was obsessed with shows about time-traveling aliens, magical artifacts, and wizards.
Tommy and I had been friends for at least a month by this time…
I was in Tommy’s head when his dad came in to ask if everything was okay, since he seemed to be talking to himself quite a lot, recently. The man looked worried about his boy.
“I’m fine, dad,” Tommy said with an easy smile.
“It’s just that we worry about you,” the tall man that was Tommy’s dad said with a deep voice that was nothing but sincere concern. “When I was your age, I couldn’t wait to get out of the house and spend time with my friends.”
“I’ve got friends,” Tommy lied, his thoughts whirling around memories of having had this argument many times before. “We just hang out at school,” he continued, furthering the lie that I could hear and hoped his dad couldn’t.
“Oh?” his dad asked, skeptical but hopeful. “Who are they? I’d like to meet them!”
“Um,” Tommy hesitated, his mind running almost faster than I could keep up. “Well, there’s this girl, Jane…”
Tommy’s dad’s face lit up with joy as he exclaimed, “Oh? Jane?”
“Yeah! So what of it?” Tommy demanded defensively to cover up his embarrassment.
I felt like a voyeur and considered getting out of his head for something so personal as a fight with his dad, but I was enthralled by the scene playing out before me. If I had mouthed off like Tommy just had, I’d find sitting uncomfortable for days to come, but Tommy’s dad just laughed it off! The very idea of it was completely alien to me!
“Nothing! Nothing!” his dad said, all smiles and repressed giggles, holding his hands up in surrender. “So, is it getting… serious with Jane?” he asked, his eyebrows twitching in such a way that seemed odd to me, but that Tommy identified as being mischievous.
“No!” Tommy denied, feeling like a reflex for him. “I dunno… maybe…”
“Maybe?” his dad asked, his interest fully piqued.
“She’s just…” Tommy began. I held my breath with anxious anticipation and indecision. The angel in me was screaming to break the connection and give Tommy his privacy, but the devil part of me was insisting that I stay and hear what he thought of me.
I confess that the devil in me won out…
“She’s just,” Tommy began again, organizing his thoughts. “She was homeschooled and is a little… weird… but good weird!” he clarified.
“Good weird?” his dad asked.
“It’s like…” Tommy started, feeling for the words he needed, “like, everything is new to her, you know? She’s kind of clueless about some things, like TV, computers, and the internet, but when it comes to things like…” here he fumbled for something he could tell his dad that, in his mind, didn’t make me sound like a ‘nutjob’ whatever that was. “Things like… perseverance and determination, she’s like… some kind of… sage! Yeah, sage!”
“She sounds…” his dad hesitated, apparently searching for the right word, like Tommy had just done. “Interesting,” he decided.
“Yeah,” Tommy agreed. “She’s had it rough… her parents are really strict…”
I could feel the emotions welling up within Tommy. I could feel the concern he had for me and I could feel that he was struggling with a decision of whether he should tell his dad about me.
“Don’t!” I whispered frantically.
I thrust the word into his head in a bit of a panic, realizing that, as I did so, I was telling Tommy that I was still there, in his head, and that I had seen and heard everything.
“Are you sure, Jane?” Tommy asked, under his breath, too low for his dad to hear even though the man was just a few feet away.
“I am,” I told him, simply.
“Do you think this Jane might be in some kind of danger?” his dad asked, sounding concerned. Tommy had been the same way the first time we had talked. I guess this was where he got it from!
Tommy was lucky to have such a dad as that.
“You can’t tell anyone!” Tommy rushed in a panicked voice. “If you do, she’ll get in trouble!”
“Tommy,” his dad admonished, “if this girl is in danger…”
“She’s not in danger!” Tommy interrupted. “It’s just that her parents are strict and don’t want her getting into any kind of trouble! Trouble like…”
“Trouble like…” his dad prompted after Tommy had paused for too long. “Boys?” he asked, filling in the blank for Tommy.
“Yeah,” Tommy affirmed, accepting the excuse his dad had handed him. “If they found out you knew, then they’d know that I had told them, and then she’d get in trouble!”
“Okay,” his dad said, giving in. “We’ll keep this our secret, but if you think they might be hurting her, you let me know, okay?”
“Okay, dad,” Tommy gave in, feeling horrible.
Once his dad had left, Tommy exploded at me!
“Jane!” he hissed under his breath.
“Look! I’m sorry!” I pleaded, tears coming to my eyes. “I couldn’t look away! I know I shouldn’t have stayed, but I had to see what happened!”
“Jane,” Tommy said, in a softer tone. “I’m not mad about that. I thought you might still be there.”
“Then why are you mad?” I asked, bracing myself, hoping that Tommy wouldn’t turn me away. I’m not sure what I would do if I lost Tommy… I’d probably do something… permanent.
“I’m mad because I want to help you, but you won’t let me!” he admonished. “My dad can help!”
“But would he?” I asked, a hard edge creeping into my tone. “What they’re doing to me isn’t illegal, is it? Spanking your kid isn’t enough to arrest anyone for, is it? Keeping your kid in the house all day isn’t a crime, is it?”
I was being hard on Tommy and I knew it, but I still had nightmares about how the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Tommy’s ‘help’ might only make my life worse. I was as convinced of that as I was that Tommy would demand that I never talk to him again…
“Jane…” he huffed with a sigh. “I want to help!”
“You are!” I told him forcefully. “You’ve shown me the world! Tommy, you’re my escape hatch! Without you, I would have… have…” Here, my voice choked with emotion and I could feel some of it bleeding into Tommy, though I didn’t mean for it to, but the connection was so strong that I couldn’t help it!
“Jane…” Tommy whispered, tears coming to his own eyes.
“Don’t leave me, Tommy!” I begged. “I don’t know if I could stand this if I didn’t have you helping me!”
“Okay…” Tommy relented, still feeling bad about not being able to do more, bless his dear sweet heart…
“Tommy, you give me the most precious thing I can ask for…” I told him, wanting to cheer him up a bit.
Tommy snorted in disbelief. “Like what?” he asked, a little bitterly.
“Hope,” I told him, simply.
“Doesn’t seem like it does much good,” he sighed.
“It does a lot of good,” I told him. “More than you can know. Tommy, one day, I’m going to get out of here, and when I do, it’ll be because of the hope you gave me. Even if we never meet in person, you’ll always be with me.”
“Because of the toy car?” he asked, smirking a little, thinking he had me figured out.
“No, silly!” I teased. “Because you’ve shown me that the world is a good place, even if mine isn’t!”
“But your world could be a good place!” he pleaded.
“Maybe someday,” I told him. “But not yet. If I run, Jack and Billi will come after me. If I run, I need to be faster than they are. I can�
�t do that, yet.”
“But Jane,” he pleaded, getting exasperated. This was the longest fight we had had, but it wasn’t the first. Every fight we had was about getting the authorities involved. Tommy was so much more optimistic that the authorities would see things his way, while I was even more cynical than I am now. I believed that the authorities would turn a blind eye to my suffering, believing that my parents knew best what was good for me, and above all, protecting their own.
“Tommy…” I admonished, interrupting him. “I don’t know enough about the world outside my room… Jack and Billi do. Will you help me even the playing field?”
“Yeah…” Tommy relented. “I can do that.”
“Thank you,” I told him, pumping as much relief and sincerity into those two words as I could. “Tommy, you’re my best friend!”
Tommy snorted. “Jane, I’m your only friend!”
“Um… not quite…” I confessed.
“Oh?” Tommy perked up. This was new information to him and he wasn’t about to miss this! “Should I be jealous?” he asked.
It was my turn to snort as I told him, “My other friend is a ghost… you have nothing to be jealous of!”
“Wait,” Tommy demanded. “Are you saying ghosts are real?”
“Is that any harder to believe than a girl talking to you inside your head thanks to a toy car?” I asked, half-mocking him.
“Fair point,” he conceded. “So! Tell me about ghosts!”
And with that, our argument was over and I told him a ghost story…
Chapter 7
Escape
Tommy became my lifeline in the evenings, teaching me about the world through something as mundane as his homework. Through Tommy, I learned about all the different subjects that Billi never saw as worth my time, such as math, science, and history. I guess Billi always figured I’d either die young or become a housewife like her.
Pfft! Like that was ever going to happen! Me? A housewife? Nope! I wanted to see the world!
There was one evening where Tommy became more than my lifeline; he became my escape.
Call Me Jane Page 4