Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty
A waking dream, a missing piece of her recurring nightmare of the house fire, only instead of ending too early, she now realized the nightmare had always started too late.
She’s in her childhood bed, and her body feels incredibly heavy, three times her weight. She wants to get up, she needs to escape, but she doesn’t move a muscle.
She can’t, because Jacob is on top of her. He’s hurting her. She’s confused and in pain and ashamed. But most of all, she’s afraid it could get worse.
She wants to yell but she can’t, because his hand covers her mouth. The other is where it should never be. She tries to breathe through her nose, but his fingers smell of those disgusting cigarettes. She wants to vomit, but it would choke her. He could choke her. He’s so much bigger than she is.
Her gaze is fixed on the spot where the wall meets the ceiling, or the window with the neighbor’s lights, anywhere but in front of her. Anywhere but on his face. Anywhere that her mind can escape when her body cannot.
The stenciled border with the barn and animals, the one she painted with her mother. She is desperate to slip out of the present and climb into that memory. To daytime, and to her mom, where none of this would be allowed to happen.
You didn’t have to be careful with sponge painting. But her body is changing and the teacher said you have to be careful with boys. She didn’t know you had to be careful with sleeping. Or that she had to be careful with Jacob.
Mommy loves you but she doesn’t see. It only happens when she and Daddy are asleep. Jacob told you that you can’t tell them. You don’t even know how to say it, but you know that it’s wrong. And you know you can’t stop it from happening.
And you are so ashamed.
She’d tried staying awake. She’d tried pretending to sleep. She’d tried asking to sleep with her parents. She’d tried leaving the lighton.
But she hadn’t tried telling. And no one guessed right.
Poor, stupid kid.
When the smoke came, she thought she had summoned it. She thought it was the blackness in his eyes and in her stomach and in her mind infecting the whole world.
She wanted something to blind her eyes and make her sleep. She wanted it to stuff her nose to keep from smelling his filthy hand and make him and everything go away. She’d wanted to black out.
Because Jacob was the smoke creeping under her bedroom door. Silent, unseen, deadly.
It couldn’t get worse.
But then it does.
Poor, stupid kid.
She never saw the fire until he carried her into it. Only the orange rim around her bedroom door.
Jacob didn’t come in to save her. He was already there. In her bed.
He didn’t see the fire that started right beside the couch downstairs, where he should’ve been sleeping, because he was upstairs with her.
Her door got closed when he closed it behind him.
When she saw the police lights and sirens outside, she thought they’d come for her. For the world’s most wretched, nasty girl, bare feet and bare bottom exposed on a frigid night. Her pajama pants were left upstairs.
Then she thought they’d come for Jacob, and she felt glad.
Then she realized they’d come for nothing. It was too late. Her parents were never coming out.
You thought you’d rather die than tell your father, but then he died instead.
You thought it would kill your mother to know, but the fire killed her instead.
It’s your fault. You didn’t tell. You didn’t ask for help. You didn’t stop anything. And now they’re gone.
Say thank you to the man who saved you. Say thank you to the man who hurt you. The bad thing is over. You survived. Be grateful.
No one would believe he did it, he’s a hero.
He’s your hero.
Isn’t that nice?
Isn’t that a miracle?
Isn’t that a better story?
You’re not a bad girl.
You’re not a sicko.
You’re not a victim.
He saved you.
And you can’t be angry at him, you can’t be angry at anyone.
You’re lucky to be alive.
Be grateful.
You can be sad about your parents. You can be scared of the fire. But you cannot be scared of your cousin. And you cannot be mad at your parents.
You are sad about your parents. You were a bad girl and you kept a terrible secret from them and they were taken from you as punishment.
All your feelings, all your emotions, all your grief, all your anger—blame it on the fire. It was the fire’s fault.
Yours is already the worst story people ever heard. You don’t want to make it worse. What good would that do?
What’s done is done. And you’ll never be the same again.
It’s better that nobody knows. As long as it’s over. As long as you never have to see Jacob’s face again.
Keep it a secret.
Bury it.
Burn it.
Burn with it if you have to. Light your shame on fire.
It’s better than living with the pain of surviving.
But it’s like you never got out.
—
“Miss?” Esdras’s voice broke through the nightmare she was reliving, but this time it didn’t make the memory disappear.
Iris blinked through tears, bringing herself back to her present surroundings by focusing on Esdras’s deformed cauliflower ear, the cartilage rough and puffy, a physical manifestation of trauma, but no more real. And it was ugly.
“You’re home.”