He calls my name again, obviously impatient that I haven’t answered his question. He wants to know if I’ve remembered anything. If I really were the good girl, the perfect daughter, the wonderful daughter they keep telling me I am, maybe I’d do as I’m told and stop forcing things and asking questions. Maybe I’d push aside all of my crazy thoughts and strange glimpses into memories that confuse me and just go about my life, content to believe whatever they tell me and not worry about things I can’t remember. Maybe I’d learn to love the color pink and stop getting headaches every time my mother braids my hair too tight.
“The secrets are hidden in the walls of this prison,” I tell him in a monotone voice, repeating the words that were written in my journal.
I watch as the color drains from his face and instead of being horrified with myself for finding pleasure in his fear, I let it travel through me, igniting me and making me feel alive for the first time in days.
My father slowly backs away from me, his eyes never leaving my face.
“I’ll just let you get some rest. I need to get back to the tour,” he informs me as he bumps into the wall next to my bedroom door.
He gives me a tight smile before he turns and leaves my room, closing the door behind him.
“My name is Ravenna Duskin. I’m eighteen years old, I live in a prison, and I’m pretty sure I’m not a good girl.”
Chapter 7
After my father left my room, I tore the place apart, looking for the pages of the journal that had been ripped out. I don’t know why those pages are missing, and I don’t like it. Finding nothing hidden in any nook or cranny anywhere in my room, I searched the only other room upstairs that wasn’t locked or occupied—the kitchen—and found nothing. My father had been working in his office and my mother was holed up in her room so those two areas would have to wait until they left and the spare bedroom would have to wait for me to either pick the lock or find the key in my father’s office. Making a quick sandwich in the kitchen since I had no desire to sit through another silent, awkward dinner with my parents, I ate outside on the front porch and enjoyed the peace and quiet with nothing but the sounds of birds chirping and frogs croaking.
My eyes searched the grounds in front of the prison, hoping for a glimpse of Nolan. It seems weird to be seeking out the person I’d spent the last few days being afraid of, but at this point he might be the only person here I can trust. It’s impossible to fear someone who went out of his way to save my life. If he was the one who hurt me or wanted to do me more harm, he could have easily just let me jump in the lake. Or he could have pushed me. I was so busy imagining the feel of the cool water on my skin that I never even heard him come up behind me.
Not finding him anywhere in my sight line, it occurs to me that I don’t hear the sound of the lawn mowers in the distance or men’s voices chatting as they work and I realize everyone must have gone home for the day. He always seems to be watching me and waiting for me any other time I’ve gone outside and, of course, now that I actually want to talk to him, he’s nowhere to be found.
As I continue eating, I flip open the photo album I brought outside and placed on the porch next to me. Under a few of the photos from my childhood, there is a small white strip of tape with my mother’s pretty cursive script, explaining what certain photos are.
Ravenna’s tenth birthday!
Ravenna learning to ride a bike!
Christmas morning with Ravenna!
Each photo I look at fills me with unnatural anger at the happy, smiling child I see on the pages, and I don’t know why. Shouldn’t I be happy seeing proof of how normal and wonderful my childhood was? Instead, I want to rip each photo from its clear plastic sheet, tear them all into a thousand pieces and scream that it was all a lie. I hate the child in the photos. I hate that her life looks so perfect in black and white when the reality of living color is the exact opposite.
On the last page, I see one photo by itself in the middle: a picture of both my parents fishing in the lake, and looking toward the camera with smiles on their faces. Off to the very edge of the photo, at least a hundred feet from my parents, staring at the water with wide, frightened eyes is ten-year-old me. Under the picture my mother has written: A day of fishing! Poor Ravenna won’t go near the water, as usual.