AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My spirit, my hopes, my dreams. Everything is devoured, reduced to nothing.
My father watches it happen.
He must be able to see the emptiness in my eyes, the limpness in my body. He must understand what’s happening to me because, for the first time in a long time, he gives me the rarest of all his gifts.
A smile of approval.
Ispendtherestof the summer holiday in a sort of numb state of dissociation.
It’s not depression or despair. It’s not even sadness. It’s less than all those things.
It’s less than not feeling anything.
Like barely existing at all.
I walk through my mother’s house, sit at the dinner table next to my father, attend my parents’ social gatherings and dinner parties. I wear the beautiful clothing and jewellery. I eat when my father tells me to, forcing food inside myself, swallowing through the nausea. I dance with the young men my father introduces me to. My face shapes itself into the polite smile required of it. My mouth forms courteous, empty sentences.
And my soul—my mind—my consciousness, whatever it’s made of—floats somewhere above, watching thoughtfully. My body is a chess piece gliding across a chessboard, but I’m not the player.
That summer, I don’t read at all.
I don’t touch a single school book, not a volume of poetry, I don’t even re-read old favourites. My hands don’t so much as brush longingly over a book cover. My notebooks and laptop remain untouched. I don’t write a single word.
I become the Theodora my father always wanted. The obedient doll.
I’m surprised to find there’s a sort of dull relief to be found in not quite existing.
When he finally leaves near the end of summer, the habitual rush of relief doesn’t spread through me to warm my cold limbs. I watch his car pull away down the long drive to the gate and feel nothing at all. That night, I sit at the dinner table and push my food around my plate, staring at nothing. I sleep dreamlessly and wake up already tired.
The following day, I pack my things in preparation for my return to Spearcrest. My final year of school. My final year of freedom. My final year battling it out with Zachary Blackwood.
I should be excited, nervous, elated, scared—but I’m not any of those things. The thought of Spearcrest leaves me untouched. The thought of Zachary doesn’t even feel real. A dream. Less.
A shadow of a dream.
Did I imagine him?
Maybe.
I return to Spearcrest under the shadow of a great hourglass. My father’s hand turned the hourglass, and the sand has already begun to pour and gather. It’ll be pouring down with all my hopes and dreams until there are none left and I’m suffocating in sand.
If only there was somebody to save me.
But why would there be? I can’t even save myself.
Chapter 17
Blackwood Triptych
Zachary
Thesummerbeforemyfinal year at Spearcrest is a long series of unexpected events.
The first of those occurs on my first day back at home: my father summons me into his office as soon as I arrive. The solemn look on his face is disconcerting. As far as I’m concerned, I haven’t done anything to draw his displeasure.
He asks me to sit down and then announces in the glummest of tones, “Your sister will be starting at Spearcrest Academy in the fall.”
“Pardon?”
