I could breathe for the first time in weeks.
The smell of the chemicals in the small space, mixed with the heat of the non air-conditioned room, must have been too much for my fragile state of being. I grabbed an empty mop bucket from the corner and threw up the contents of my stomach until nothing was left, and I was just dry heaving.
I’d come to develop the pictures knowing in advance how I would feel. I knew what my reaction would be. I didn’t want to remember what happened. I didn’t want to acknowledge it at all. But, this wasn’t for me. This was for him. I would be strong for him. I had to show him everything. He needed to know.
I barely had the strength to hold my camera when I took them. My wrists had shaken under its seemingly enormous weight. That shake could almost be seen within the photos themselves, causing fuzz around the edges instead of solid lines.
I saw so much more in them than I’d expected to.
In the first, I was staring straight ahead, as if I was looking at someone else’s reflection. I held the camera down by my side so I could capture all of my naked body. Every bruise, every bit of dried blood, every swell and scratch was picked up by the camera’s lens and magnified in the truthful light and shadow of the black and white image. The next was similar. In that one, my body was turned as if I looked over my own shoulder at the spreading bloodstains under the skin that covered my ribs. The next was similar, just slightly different.
And the next one.
And the next one.
And the next one.
Each was a haunted, battered version of me, taken from a different angle.
In the very last one, I was on the floor with my legs spread out in front of me. My knees were pushed open as wide I could make them go. I was wincing from the pain of the position, but the camera I’d raised above my head in both hands had captured my determination to take the photo.
This photo wasn’t taken to document what Owen had done. This one I had taken for me. Fresh wounds mixed with old scars. A portrait of my life in pain. Proof that I had been beaten, but I wasn’t broken.
They couldn’t fucking break me.
My photos reminded me of my favorite painting by an unknown artist. It depicted a woman lying naked with a huge red scar running down the length of her body. Her mouth was open, like she was screaming. Just like her, my photos represented my abusers ill-fated attempt to cut me open and gut out my secrets. She’d been cut but not opened.
Just like me.
I looked at the line hung with square images of my battered body, my blackened eyes and my swollen mouth spread in a wince, and realized: all of this was a consequence.
I was a consequence.
These photos were just one side of my story. There was a cause behind the consequence. I imagined the moment one day when there would be similar photographs of that cause, of the man who made this misery for me.
That became my hope.
I took a photo folder from the cubby behind the safelight and placed my dry pictures inside. I spent extra time cleaning the dark room and putting away the chemicals so there wouldn’t any trace of my presence left behind.
As I walked away from the school grounds, an idea came to me. Maybe, the woman in the scar painting wasn’t screaming in pain. Maybe, she was laughing.
Maybe, she, too, was plotting her revenge.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I STOOD ON THE VERY TOP of the Matlacha Pass on a day with no clouds. The only visible reminder of the nightmare from five weeks earlier when my life changed forever once again was a small, bright red scar on my lower lip. I found myself wanting to spend more time in the sun than I had in the past. I relished the feel of a sunburn now. It was just enough discomfort to remind me that I was still alive and to kill the numbness that threatened to take over every day that Jake was away.
I let myself sit in the blazing heat, my eyes closed and my face turned upward to the sky. I watched the colors move around and dance behind my eyelids while I imagined what it would be like when he returned.
I’d spent the last few weeks planning my tattoo sleeve and pinning cities on the map on Jake’s laptop of where I wanted him to take me. The day before, I’d even bought a sundress. It was green and strapless and stopped mid-thigh. I didn’t have the nerve to wear it in public. In addition to my scars, the bruises on my inner thighs hadn’t quite healed all the way. Wearing the dress had become my goal.