It’s hard to explain, Cass, she said one night in my room, her arms around me.
It’s a look that comes in a different way or that you send out in a different way. It’s just a tiny bit longer than a normal look. And it’s completely still, it’s not moving with a smile or talking or even eyes squinting or your eyebrows lifting up or anything at all. It’s totally frozen, like a deer in the headlights. It’s frozen by a thought that has just hijacked your brain for that second and that’s why it lasts too long, because you have to rescue your brain from the hijacker.
I asked her what that thought was that could hijack your brain and freeze your face like that.
It’s the thought that you want that person.
That night at dinner, I finally understood what she meant. My mother had noticed the dress I was wearing and the makeup and my hair, and she did not like it one bit. She did not like that I was trying to be like Emma and take attention away from her. She had made a few comments to me as we were leaving the house and I ignored them, but inside I was smiling because my plan was working. I was reappearing from my state of invisibility. I was finding some power of my own.
When we were at the table at the club, Hunter’s girlfriend said how pretty I looked. How grown-up I was becoming. My mother smiled at me and said, Isn’t that Emma’s dress? I said it was but that Emma didn’t want it anymore. I lied and said that Emma told me I could have it. My mother smiled again and said, Well, remind me on Monday and I’ll take you to the tailor. It really needs to be brought in around the bust. You definitely got your father’s side in that department. All the women are flat as boards.
I felt my face flush as the blood rushed in. I felt adrenaline seething through me. Hunter’s girlfriend looked horrified but that was because she did not know the kind of mother Mrs. Martin was and that I had incited her fury by trying to take some of her attention for myself. She wiped the horror from her face and said again that she thought I looked beautiful.
It was at that moment, in the chaos of blood and adrenaline and horror, that I saw that look come my way, the look Emma had told me about. It was coming from across the table. It was coming from Hunter.
I looked away as fast as I could, but I would soon learn that I had not been quick enough. I had not rescued my own brain from the hijacker in time, and now I had seen Hunter’s hijacked brain and he had seen mine.
I knew that our hijackers were different types of criminals. I won’t pretend that I came to see this after I was older and wiser. I knew it then, right then, at that dinner. Hunter saw that I was no longer irrelevant to the war. With one dress and some makeup, I had made myself a weapon he could use against my mother, and then against Emma when she returned from Europe. And I saw that Hunter could make me a weapon and I wanted to be a weapon because a weapon is, at the very least, seen by everyone on that battlefield. I was tired of being a bird.
Three days later, after more hijacked looks had passed between us, Hunter came to my room. I was asleep. It was past 2 A.M. He got into my bed. He got under the covers. He didn’t say anything and I didn’t say anything. He started to touch me and not only did I not say anything but I didn’t do anything either. Not one thing to help him as he struggled with my pajama bottoms and the covers and then his pajama bottoms. And not one thing to stop him as he climbed on top of me. I lay still, very still, for as long as I could. Denying that I was letting this happen. Lying to myself that I wanted it to stop. Because I didn’t. I hated Hunter Martin. But there were things about my life that I hated even more. When he was done, he fell asleep beside me. I could smell the alcohol on his breath. I did not sleep the rest of the night. I just lay there, staring at the ceiling. Thinking.
It happened only three more times while Emma was gone. That was all he needed. And that was all I needed. I did not care that he kept seeing his girlfriend. I did not care that there were no more hijacked looks. And I did not care that when Emma returned, they still treated me like the bird. I did not care, because I knew I was not the bird anymore. I knew I was the weapon and that I had power, and knowing was enough for me.
I also knew I was pregnant by the time school started. I ignored it at first, but then we saw our mother with Hunter, and Emma was wanting to confront her about it. This was my chance to see what would happen if she knew what he had done. This was my chance to see if she would help me if I told her I was the one pregnant with Hunter’s baby. If she would help Emma, then maybe (maybe) she would help me.
I got my answer.
I had the baby on the island. It was horrible and I won’t pretend it wasn’t. I thought I was going to die. I wanted to die. But then I had my baby, my little girl, and she became the first thing on my list of things I decided to make important.
They took her from me slowly after the first three months, not the way I told them it happened to Emma. But the rest was true. When I resisted and cried, they let me see her only once a day. We had been inseparable before that. She slept in my bed. She stayed in my arms all day. We took long walks in the woods. And I sang her lullabies from a book Lucy bought us. From my heart and out through my hands, love gushed out of me and into my baby. All the love I had felt for Emma. All the love I had felt for my father and Witt. And all the love that I had wanted from my mother when I was a little girl.
When they took my daughter, I hid that book under my bed and I held it in my arms every night and cried myself to sleep. I waited outside their door at night and listened for the sounds of sleep. And on the nights I could be sure of it, I would crawl across the floor and sit by my daughter’s bed. I would sometimes reach my hand onto her back and let it rise and fall with her breath.
When I finally woke up from their spell, I added to my list escaping from the island with my daughter.
I am afraid now. I am afraid of myself and what I am capable of. I am afraid of my own mind.