I don’t remember meeting Nolan’s father when I was little, but that doesn’t mean anything since I don’t remember much of my childhood.
With another promise to Nolan that I’m not angry that he kept this secret from me, I leave him to go back home to tend to his mother while I head upstairs to figure out a way to force my father out of his office.
“My name is Ravenna Duskin. I’m eighteen years old, I live in a prison, and I have no idea why the letter T fills me with dread.”
Chapter 16
“T means death, death means T,” I say to myself softly, writing the words on the back of an old grocery list my mother left pinned to the front of the fridge.
Underlining what I just wrote, I set the pencil down on the kitchen table and lean back in my chair to stare at the words. I have no idea why I’m trying to figure out if the ramblings of a sick, dying woman mean something, but I’m out of options right now. I can’t get the image of her eyes out of my head. They weren’t in a daze or clouded over like someone on the verge of death, pumped full of so much medication that they weren’t aware of anything. Beatrice’s eyes were bright and clear, and they never strayed from my face. I don’t care if Nolan thinks her palm reading was just an exaggeration of a sixth sense she has or that she sometimes confuses things she’s seen or heard with real life. The words she spoke made the hair on my arms stand up and made me want to run from the room so she’d stop talking. As much as I hated it, I couldn’t ignore it. If I hadn’t trusted my instincts recently, I’d still assume my mind was playing tricks on me and I couldn’t swim. If I’d ignored my gut feelings, I’d still be dressing the way my parents demanded and braiding my hair every morning. I never would have found that suitcase full of clothes I knew were mine, and I never would have remembered being in that spare bedroom before.
Nolan’s mother might have given me another piece of the puzzle, no matter how weird and confusing it was. Her words didn’t evoke any memories, but they still left me feeling uneasy and—I hate to say it—afraid. Fear is for the weak, and I will never be weak again.
“T means death, death means T,” I say out loud again, hoping it will trigger something. Obviously the letter T stands for something. Picking up the pencil again, I start writing names I know that begin with T.
Tanner Duskin, my father
Trudy, now my ex-best friend
There’s only one more person I know whose name begins with the letter T and my hand starts to shake when I merely think his name. I hear a loud snap and realize I just broke the pencil in half from squeezing it so hard. Closing my eyes and taking a few deep breaths, I drop the eraser end of the pencil and use the small broken tip to write the last name.
Dr. Raymond Thomas…
I put an ellipsis after his name because I have no idea who he is to me. I only know that his name fills me with dread, makes my skin crawl, and fills me with the urge to scream at the top of my lungs until my throat is raw.
I’ve avoided thinking about him since the night my mother shot herself. When I asked her about him, she said something about how he only did what they asked him to do. I’m assuming she meant her and my father, but who knows? She might not have even been talking about the doctor. For all I know, she hadn’t even heard me say his name and was rambling about something else.
I can’t avoid it any longer. I have to think about him, even if my mind is screaming at me to run away because it will do nothing but hurt me. There has to be a reason why just the mention of his name by Dr. Beall caused me to black out on the stairs. There has to be a plausible explanation for why the few times his name has quickly flown through my mind by accident since then, I feel like someone is physically causing me pain, and I have to stop, remember to breathe, and calm down.
When I heard his name, it was almost as if he became one with my most painful memories and the scariest dreams I’ve had since this all began. Even if I know it’s something I have to remember to put all of this missing information in my mind together once and for all, it’s still something I’ve been refusing to do since that night.
Those memories make me feel so much more than the comfort of hate and anger. They make me want to do more than just fantasize about harming people. It’s one thing to think about these things and realize there might be something just a little bit strange about myself. It’s a whole other nightmare to feel so overwhelmed by those feelings—by the mere thought of one man—that I know without a shadow of a doubt that I could end someone’s life and not feel bad about it at all.
I’m not a killer. I don’t know much, but at least I know that.
Right when I come to terms with it, forcing myself to think about that man just to see if I can remember something about the person who elicits so much pain inside me, I hear the door to my father’s office fly open, slamming against the opposite wall.