Wrapping my hand around the knob, I quickly turn it and I’m immediately met with resistance. I rattle the knob harder, pulling on the door at the same time, but it doesn’t open. It’s locked. The only doors ever locked in the prison on tour days are the ones upstairs in our living quarters, in case visitors happen to wander where they aren’t supposed to go.
Checking the watch on my wrist, I see that the prison has been open for business for over an hour. Even on days when we don’t have tours booked, people are welcome to come in and check out the gift shop and museum and as long as there aren’t any internal repairs going on, my father will usually allow them to wander through certain areas on their own if they don’t want a guide to explain things to them. No part of the prison should be locked up right now. The fact that the one area I need to explore is closed up tight ticks me off and I slam my palm against the wood, muttering a few colorful curses under my breath.
“I didn’t realize good girls knew that kind of language.”
I whirl around to find Nolan leaning against the banister of the stairs with a smile on his face.
“Well, luckily I’m not a good girl,” I growl, rolling my eyes as I stomp past him.
He jogs to catch up, racing around me to block me from going out the front door.
“What’s got you in a bad mood?” he asks as I shuffle to the side to get around him, but he easily moves with me, continuing to hinder my escape from this frustrating place.
“People who lie to me tend to piss me off. Now get out of my way.”
I shove him roughly aside and even though he’s got a good sixty pounds on me and could have held his ground, he moves to let me pass. Unfortunately, he follows me right outside. My bare feet slap against the wood as I stomp down the steps and make a left, heading to the lake.
“You want to talk about it?” he asks from behind me.
Realizing he’s just going to keep following me, and I did just decide yesterday that I wanted to talk to him, I stop in the middle of the yard under the shade of a large oak tree and turn to face him.
“Fine, you want to talk? Let’s talk. Tell me how you knew I didn’t know how to swim,” I fire at him.
With my head held high, I try not to think about how dumb I sounded the other day when I had no clue I didn’t know how to swim and the way I freaked out and ran away without saying another word to him. I am not going to let him make me feel silly just because he knows things about me that I don’t remember. I’m going to use it to my advantage and hope that he’s more honest with me than my parents.
“Wow, getting right to the point, I see,” he says with a smile as he slides his hands into the back pocket of his jeans.
I tap my foot against the ground and raise my eyebrow, waiting for him to answer my question. He sighs and leans his shoulder casually against the side of the tree.
“I’ve worked here for two years,” he replies.
“I already knew that. It doesn’t answer my question. How did you know I couldn’t swim?”
He doesn’t look away from me and even though it makes me uncomfortable to be stared at so openly, it also makes me feel like he won’t lie to me. People seem to look away from me when they tell me things I find difficult to believe.
“There aren’t that many of us who work here at the prison,” he begins. “We’re a pretty tight group since we work with each other all day, every day, and a couple of the guys have been here a lot longer than me. People hear things, people talk. Most of it is stupid bullshit gossip. Someone mentioned one time how weird it was that you were so afraid of the water and how you’d never go anywhere near the lake.
He shrugs easily, like it’s no big deal the people who work here talk about me behind my back.
“So you knew from workplace gossip?” I scoff.
“Initially, yes. But I asked you a few weeks ago if it was true and you told me so yourself. Something about an accident when you were little. Five, I think. You didn’t tell me much, just that you’ve been petrified of water ever since.”
My arms drop to my sides while I mull this over. Something seems familiar about what he’s telling me. I don’t know if it’s because some part of me remembers it, or because I remember telling him. I just know, deep down inside, that there was something that happened in water when I was little. I don’t know why it feels right, it just does. It also leaves me with more questions. Why can I see myself swimming? Why, when I close my eyes, can I almost feel the water sluicing against my skin, feel my muscles burn as I do laps, know exactly what it feels like to pull my arms through the water and exactly what it looks like to open my eyes when I’m under there? How do I just instinctively know what all of this feels like and looks like if I it’s not true? It’s the same kind of thing with my stupid braided hair and all of the ugly dresses in my closet. I just know when it’s not right, when it feels alien.
“Why did you look at me like you hated me that day you dropped off flowers for my father?” I ask next. Clearly if I we had personal conversations before the accident, he must not have hated me that much.