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So there’s still a chance that he’s going to walk out of the courtroom after the jury is done deliberating. And the way he’s looking at me now suggests that if he does, I’ll be dead before my seventeenth birthday. He’s going to fucking kill me if he walks away from this free.
If he does go to prison, who’s to say that he won’t hunt me down and kill me? The officer I spoke to at the police station when I made my report was right. I’m ruining this man’s life. He deserves it, but that won’t change his view. My testimony is going to be the reason he’s going to- hopefully- go to prison. He’s going to have every reason to kill me, but worse than that, he’s not going tojustkill me.
Josiah’s attention shifts to the other knee as he rubs ointment over the injury and smooths a bandaid over it. “You doing okay?”
I take a deep breath and blow it out slowly, keeping myself calm. “Yes.”
“You’re disappearing on me.” He looks up into my eyes and I can’t look away. “You don’t have to, but I want you to know that you can talk to me about it. Whenever you’re ready.” He wants me to trust him. In a lot of ways, I do. I put myself in this cage with him and didn’t ask to leave once I recognized the cage as a trap. I trust him and his security measures enough to keep me safe.
But it’s not a lack of trust that’s keeping me from telling him all about my past. It’s the darkness that lives there. There are so many things in my rearview that I don’t want to even think about. Talking about them feels dangerous, like it could summon the demons I’ve buried.
Just remembering them sends my brain into a panic so guttural it turns everything off. What the hell would happen to me if I talked about it? Would I drown in the turbulent seas of things I wish I could forget? I don’t know if I’d have enough desire to live to fight my way back to the surface. Sometimes I think a catatonic existence would be preferable to whatever I’ve got going now.
I could live in a nice chair in a psych ward. Maybe they’d put me facing the window so I could watch the seasons pass me by. I wouldn’t mind watching the leaves change color a few dozen times. Not that I’d be aware of any of it if I truly lost it. I’m always right on the verge.
I think I’m probably one traumatic experience away from my psyche shattering. Sometimes I wonder if it’s already happened. Would I even know if I’m insane? Don’t they say that crazy people don’t know they’re crazy? Maybe I’ve been shattered for years and nobody knows because I move too often for anyone to be in my life long enough to notice.
Maybe I’m already worthy of a straitjacket and I just don’t know it. I’m getting worse lately. What if it’s one of those things that worsens over time and my clock is running out?
“All done,” Josiah says, breaking through the haze of my thoughts and patting my leg. “Are you with me?”
Am I?
Chapter Eleven
Skids
Ipull my glasses from my face and scrub my eyes. The screens are making everything burn after my lack of sleep last night. I can’t focus. Phoebe is still asleep next to me on the couch, curled up in her blanket with one of her bandaged knees poking out and she’s not helping me concentrate on my work at all.
Phoebe is a distraction that I can’t afford, but it’s an exquisite torture having her nearby at all times. The sound of her breathing is constantly drawing my attention back to her, especially when it hitches and the rhythm is thrown off. She is pretty, but I could never tell her that. The word ‘pretty’ seems to be included in her memories of whatever darkness she suffered before ending up here.
Doc will be here soon to talk to her, and I’m not sure how it’s going to go. I have an irrational desire to hold her on my lap for their conversation, to ensure she feels safe and stays grounded in the present while Doc asks her questions that are certain to trigger memories of the past. But I’m probably no more comforting to her than the pillow she’s clutching to her chest.
Last night I scared her enough to make her run. We didn’t talk about it. She gave me the silent treatment while I cleaned and bandaged her knees, not even offering up so much as a hiss of pain. She’s very soft-spoken when I ask questions. I would generally consider myself a quiet person. I like to keep to myself. Phoebe does not have that same personality. She speaks. She’s used to spending time in public, surrounded by people- strangers and all. But she likes to speak on her terms. I hate that.
Every time I think about her refusal to answer my questions, frustration coils tight in my chest. It shouldn’t be so hard to get a small woman with colorful hair to answer questions that might give me the information I need to keep her safe. That’s all I’m trying to do- protect her.
Thinking about her being in danger puts a different kind of feeling in my chest- something rumbly and primal. I keep catching myself thinking of ways tokeep herhere. I can’t do that. Once the situation outside these gates is solved, she’ll go. And I have to let her. I understand the concept, but I’m not happy about it.
I don’t typically have to release things from my home back to the outside. I’m the only one here and now I have another person, someone I could talk to. Whether she would choose to talk back or not is one thing, but I bet she would listen if I took the opportunity to discuss something with her. And I will. I’ll find something. There’s got to be something we’re both interested in that would be a safe topic that won’t send her crying off into a panic attack.
I’m not a total hermit. I still speak with members of the club. Occasionally. I know how to talk to people. I just don’t seek out conversations, but I want to talk to Phoebe. Even if she won’t tell me what’s got her freaked out, she can tell me something else. Anything else. I find I want to hear her voice. She has experiences from the outside that I might like to hear about from her perspective.
I sealed myself away in this maximum security prison on purpose and I don’t have any interest in leaving, but maybe Phoebe has interesting experiences that she could regale me with tales of.
She moans softly as she begins to wake and I shift my gaze back to my computer screens again so she won’t see me gawking at her in her sleep. She stretches her arms up above her head and the blanket drops to the floor, exposing her belly where the shirt has risen during the stretch, and I turn towards the kitchen to avoid looking at her.
Phoebe is almost ten years younger than me and she’s here to avoid being hurt by someone. She’s not here for me to look at her that way.Fuck.I drop my glasses onto the desk and get up for another cup of coffee. “Doc will be here in an hour or so,” I announce as I fill my mug. “Do you want coffee?”
She groans and I lean back to watch her sitting up on the couch. “I feel like I was hit by a truck.”
I can’t help but chuckle to myself. That truck was me when I tackled her to the ground last night. “I was trying to keep you from hurting yourself, but I hurt you instead.”
She tucks her arms around herself and leans back against the couch with the blanket sill at her feet. “No, I probably would’ve gotten hurt worse if I’d been allowed to run. Sorry about that, by the way, and for scratching you. When I woke up…” She looks down and snatches up the blanket, folding it so she doesn’t have to look at me. “You were holding me down and it freaked me out,” she says in a rush. “Sometimes it takes a while to realize where I am when I’m in a new place.”
I hide myself behind the wall in the kitchen so she won’t see my hands curling into fists and my teeth grinding.You were holding me down. It’s possible that it freaked her out in a totally normal, not-trauma-induced way, but the likelihood of that is slim with everything else I already know about her.
I can’t ask her about it, but I desperately want to, because tracking down the motherfucker that’s threatening her and killing them is definitely something I’d leave the house for.
