Chapter 57
Dakota
My bedroom was small and moonlit, my laptop laying on my bed and a flash drive gripped in my fist. I’d found it earlier today in a random box of junk in my closet when I was looking for an old giftcard I swore had five dollars left on it.
Didn’t find the giftcard, but I did find this…
memory stick. It was fuchsia and metallic and I kept flipping the cover off, then clicking it back on, contemplating.
I didn’t know what was on it. Potentially my middle school homework. Potentially other things like old pictures. Or maybe it was blank.
I jammed the flash drive into the USB port on my laptop, then waited for the icon to pop up on my desktop.
I clicked it open and watched video files appearing in the folder, the thumbnails loading in.
All the ones at the top were all from almost eleven years ago, around Christmastime—so just after my eleventh birthday.
A lump formed in my throat as I slammed my laptop shut. By seeing the dates and thumbnails, I knew what these videos were.
Huge breaths rushed in and out of my chest, tears welling in my eyes as I stared at nothing except the darkness of my bedroom. I could feel my pulse in my fingertips, pressed flat on top of my closed laptop, trembling slightly.
I stood up and stumbled into the bathroom, sticking my wrists under a cold stream of water coming out of the faucet. I gripped the edge of the sink and took deep breaths, over and over and over, sucking in oxygen.
Breathe.
Slipping back into my bedroom, I sat criss-cross on my unmade bed and stared at my closed laptop, pulse racing in my chest. With some invisible force compelling me, my hand lifted open the screen, even though I knew nothing good would come of watching this.
I couldn’t stop myself from turning up the volume and playing the first clip.
It was a grainy Photo Booth video of me and Anthony making stupid faces.
I had my tongue out and my fingers hooked in the sides of my mouth and he was crossing his eyes, little blue birds swirling over our heads.
He would’ve been fourteen in the video. Both of us were laughing.
We were sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the old couch, brown and stained, with the sort of fabric you could draw patterns on using the direction of the fibers.
The light was soft and reddish, glowing off the Christmas tree I could see reflected in the picture frame above our heads.
Tears dripped down my cheeks as I watched, and I did nothing to stop them.
I went to the next video, then the next one, watching me and my brother try out all the filters. Watching the videos like they’d all taken place in an alternate universe. Like I wasn’t actually the girl in them.
Bug eyes, hearts over our heads, stretch, chipmunk cheeks, sepia.
High-pitched voice changers altering the tone of my fifth-grade laughter.
In the background I could hear cabinets slamming in the kitchen, hear our father’s voice starting up, low at first, then loud.
Video-me didn’t even flinch at the shouts, didn’t even look up.
Every time I walk in this house, you’re on my fuckin’ back. Don’t roll your eyes at me, bitch. Always starting something. Don’t start crying again, Jesus. Don’t tell me what I said—I remember what I goddamn said. Fuckin’ useless.
You’re turning her into you, all softness and no sense.
Referring to me.
It all sounded so much worse now, and I found myself wondering how it’d ever been so normal to me. I could almost smell the cigarette smoke lingering on my hair, on my clothes when I was at school.
Anthony was looking up, past the camera, watching whatever dispute was happening in the kitchen while I made a fish face on the video, hand stuck up in a peace-sign. His brows were furrowed with anger and I could see anxiety in the press of his lips, his smile long gone.
I clicked onto a new video.
The clip started with the laptop wobbling in my hands as I set it on the arm of the couch, then backed up, watching the screen to make sure I was in frame.
The Christmas tree was glowing on the right side of the picture.
I’d pushed the coffee table out of the way so I could attempt a crooked cartwheel.
I was humming something to myself, sorta out of breath because I’d probably done a bunch of cartwheels before this one.
“Dakota!” my father barked.
I landed hard on my knees on the thin carpet, looking over at him off-screen.
“Can’t you be quiet for five fuckin’ minutes?” he yelled. “Turn that damn thing off.”
“Okay,” I said, crawling over to the laptop.
The video ended.
Another video. This one I was standing with the laptop, the video shaking as I walked into the kitchen. Yellow light shone down on the top of my head and my smiling face.
“Mommmm,” I said, plopping the laptop on the counter next to her. “Look at it.”
She stepped into frame and bent forward to show her face in the warped video, making a silly expression for a second before rapidly standing again, going back to whatever she was doing. Cooking dinner, probably.
“Alright,” my father snapped, coming up behind me. He grabbed my shoulder and I winced. “Enough of that.”
“She’s just having fun—”
“Always defending her, huh?” he interrupted my mother’s soft voice, raising a hand like he was going to hit her. He didn’t. He hit me instead, on the back of my head. I cowered away, going out of frame. “Maybe if you stopped fuckin’ babying her she’d listen. She’s got no manners because of you.”
The video ended.
I shut my laptop, all the videos smothered by the darkness of my bedroom.
The memories didn’t dissolve so easily, though. I laid flat on my back, staring at the ceiling, warm tears dripping down my temples.
Every version of me now had stemmed from her.
The girl who’d loved finally having an older brother; the girl who had no idea what he was going to do to her.
Was his mother out of prison now? I didn’t know.
I envisioned my life if she’d never been arrested, if he’d never had to come live with his father—our father. Would things have been better?
Hard to say.
They would’ve been different, but I wasn’t sure better was the right term. Anthony protected me from a lot of things. Other men, mostly. Slimy managers I had. Our father. Maybe he would’ve tried something with me had Anthony not done it.
But I couldn’t think about my brother. I hated everything he’d turned into. I hated seeing those videos of him being normal, knowing what would happen three years in the future.
I could show you… I’ll be gentler than other boys… You don’t want to regret giving it to someone who’ll leave you like trash right afterward…
I rolled over, grabbing my phone off the nightstand and holding it in front of my tearstained face.
Mila had texted me numerous times this week.
I did my best to reply, but… Even Quinn had texted me, checking in about our upcoming lab.
Gas-Solid-Liquid Fluidization Column. It seemed so fucking strange to be worrying about things as trivial as that now.
My chest was hollow, my heart aching like it was covered in bruises.
I didn’t know if I wanted Mason or Micah. I wanted both of them.
But neither of them were good for me.
I yanked the comforter up over my head, curling up in a ball on my sheets, trying to imagine what it would be like to lay with both of them. Two heavy male bodies, surrounding me with something that felt good. Micah, protecting me. Mason, making sure I didn’t get dragged too far into that forest.
They were opposite ends of the spectrum, and neither end was survivable long term. I couldn’t live much longer going back and forth between them. It was ripping me to shreds.
I looked at the cups littering my nightstand, the laundry all over my floor, the notifications on my phone from missed texts and missing assignments.
Dirty dishes in the sink, no groceries in the fridge, my hair in a tangled braid, all the lights off.
The TV was on in the living room, playing some random sitcom on low volume because sometimes I got scared here all alone at night.
I watched the dim flickering glow from down the hall, changing colors on the carpet.
A few patters over my head told me that it was just starting to rain, and I flopped on my back, listening to the drops on metal as they got heavier.
Mason. Micah. Mason. Micah.
Anthony.
The rain on the roof sounded like static instead of comfort, cramming into my brain and snuffing out my thoughts. How was it possible that the girl in those videos was me? How had I ended up here? What would she think of me now?
━━━━━
Micah didn’t talk much on our drive back from campus to his house after working in his lab, and I found myself wondering what the fuck we were even doing. Was he happy doing these things with me?
I slid out of the truck when he parked, stomping through the garage to the door leading inside. He had enough room in his garage for both cars, and the contrast between the old truck and his Audi was a bit comical, but I never questioned him on it.
Kicking off my boots on the mat, I shrugged out of my coat and hung it on a hook. I was so far inside my head that I jumped when Micah’s palm brushed over my shoulder, spinning around.
“You alright?” he asked.
There was a beat of silence where I just stared at him, but I didn’t respond, choosing to walk into the kitchen instead.
My pulse was swishing in my ears and my limbs felt strange, almost jittery but heavy at the same time, like there was something wrong with the way my blood was flowing.
Micah’s footsteps sounded behind mine, muffled in my skull.
He didn’t know how high the tide was, didn’t know how strongly it pulled me, didn’t know how close I was to being washed away entirely.
But I felt it with every sinking step. I felt that horrible gravity. The deadly undertow.
Grainy home videos playing on a loop in my brain.
“Dakota.”