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I drag in a short, shaky breath. “It’s not you.”
“Go to sleep,” he says in a clipped tone, but the coldness cracks, a hint of warmth seeping through.
Closing my eyes, I block out the disturbing thoughts running on repeat through my mind, and it doesn’t take long to fall asleep. I really am tired. But the reprieve of rest doesn’t last long before I’m back in the car, snow and trees zipping past as the headlights illuminate the asphalt road.
We round the bend, and my stomach clenches. I’m Mina, the adult, sitting in the back. I look on like an observer when the car skids to a stop. It’s Mina, the adult, who gets out with my parents, the adult who’s supposed to protect them, but the gun in my hand is shiny and blue. Plastic.
“No!”
A shot goes off. My mother falls, her blond hair covering her face.
Pop!
My father sinks to his knees.
“No!”
I jump on the men, stabbing them in their white, flabby, syringe-bruised arms just enough to immobilize them. Just enough to tie them up and make them look at me, but they don’t know Mina the adult. They only know the little girl. And they’ve long forgotten my parents. They’ll die without confessing their sin, because they can’t confess a sin they can’t even remember.
“Mina!”
The voice of my kidnapper is the voice of my savior in the dream. He jerks me from the claws of the nightmare and pulls me back to reality.
“Wake up.”
I open my eyes, knowing I screamed. I always scream at this part. “I’m sorry.” My T-shirt is soaked in sweat.
He switches on the lamp on the nightstand and shifts up, resting his back against the headboard. “Come here.”
I scoot up to the crook of his arm, needing the warmth, the comfort.
He kisses the top of my head. “Same dream?”
I nod.
“They’re dead, those men,” he says. “They paid for what they did.”
I drag a finger over the dusting of dark hair on his forearm. “Did they pay if they couldn’t even remember?”
“They couldn’t?”
“They were high when I shot them. Maybe they were high on the night they…”
“Say it,” he urges gently when I trail off.
I know why he’s doing this. This sort of thing festers when you seal it up under skin and bone and flesh, when you bury it in your heart.
Yan is still looking at me, waiting, so I take a breath and say with a rush of air, “On the night they killed my parents.” My chest deflates from the effort.
He caresses the side of my face with his knuckles. “Tell me.”
I want to, but not because I sealed it up. I didn’t; I just went numb. Cold, like the snow and ice that night. I haven’t had the nightmare for many years, but since Yan took me, it’s returned with a vengeance. And I suspect the reason is that Yan is slowly defrosting my heart, making me feel again. Making me vulnerable.
“How did you get away?” he asks softly.
A shiver ripples through me. “I ran. I ran so fast. I hid out in the woods, and waited. I thought my parents would come get me when the bad men were gone, but it took so long and I was so, so cold.”
He rubs my arm as if trying to dispel the cold of that night.
I continue, because it does feel better telling him. “Eventually, I went looking for them. At first, I didn’t understand. Then I felt the wetness, the blood. I saw my father’s eyes, glassy like marbles, before I saw the hole in his head.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. I just… started walking.” I make myself small against his side, hiding in the safety he offers. “I didn’t feel the pain, just the cold. I still don’t feel it fully. At times, it’s almost as if it happened to someone else, as if the girl in my dream is a stranger.”
“Detachment,” he muses, dragging his chin through my hair. “It’s often a coping mechanism in severe trauma cases.”
I stare at where my hand is gripping my knee, my knuckles white. “They tried to fix me for a very long time.”
“They?”
“Psychiatrists. Therapists. Guidance counselors. They said I was dysfunctional. Not normal. Difficulty making friends and forming new attachments. Lack of empathy and unhealthy fascination with danger. I went to therapy every week for years, unsuccessfully. They finally gave up when I started high school.”
Yan’s body tenses against me. “They had no right to judge you. Nobody’s all sweetness and light, rainbows and puppies. Not deep down, where it matters. We all carry a darkness within ourselves. Some just have the luxury of never knowing it. In any case, normal is a vague and tricky concept. What is normal other than a broad generalization based on the standards and values of the majority of people in the world? Just because you’re different doesn’t mean you’re not normal.”
