Chapter 6 Reverie
REVERIE
One hundred eighty-three…
One hundred eighty-four…
One hundred eighty-five…
The burning in my lungs mixed with the panic shooting straight through my chest has me stepping out of the stream of water just as my lungs are about to burst. I instinctively go through the motions my old therapist taught me.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
It’s only oxygen going into your lungs, not water.
Except it’s not my therapist's voice ringing through my mind, but my father's.
I squeeze my eyes shut, forcing it out of my head. It used to bring me comfort. At one time, he was the only parent who made me feel safe. Protected.
My mom was twenty-eight weeks pregnant when I spilled my apple juice on the floor, causing her to slip and fall.
She landed on her stomach.
Placental abruption is what the doctor called it, but all Regina heard was that she lost my baby brother. Completely preventable, had I not spilled that juice.
It sent her into a spiral of grief, rage, and severe postpartum psychosis.
Mostly because it was my fault.
Lionel had once told me that, for several weeks leading up to the night she drowned me, she vacillated between wanting to reunite with her baby boy and wanting to get rid of the child who took him away from her.
I don’t remember those weeks, though. I don’t even remember spilling the apple juice.
Fighting for my life is my very first memory.
I remember the iron grip on the back of my head as she held me underwater. The fire in my chest and lungs as I inhaled water. The absolute terror that consumed me so greatly, it would’ve killed me if the water hadn’t first.
Then came the warm blanket of peace as my vision faded, and all my pain went away, replaced by a cocoon of warmth.
I’d never felt such serenity, and it was odd how, in that moment, I felt like I could finally breathe, only to be abruptly pulled from the water and for everything to come barreling back in.
The terror.
The pain.
And the utter confusion as to why my mommy held me underwater like that.
What came after was a whirlwind of her screaming to let her finish killing the demon who murdered her child and my father wrestling her away from me sprawled on the floor, coughing and vomiting up water.
Then, his deep voice. Soothing me. Telling me everything’s going to be okay. That I’m safe now.
But he lied to me—I just didn’t know it.
Even back then, I wasn't angry with my mom for what happened. Maybe it’s because I didn't understand how to be, or even why. I forgave her because I didn’t know what else to do as a child, but eighteen years later, I still do.
No—I never blamed my mother for trying to kill me. It was the fact she never made me feel safe in all the years following that I still struggle to forgive her for.
Nevertheless, Lionel saved my life that night and then continued to save me while I worked through the trauma.
For two years, I clung to his soothing voice with a grip far stronger than my mother’s.
He was my safe place when my mom went to a psychiatric hospital for treatment, during CPS's involvement afterward and the threat of being put into the foster system, and even still when my mom came home, profusely apologizing and hugging me until I felt a familiar burn in my lungs.
The only one I could run to for safety was Lionel D’Amour.
Only for him to shatter that, too.
I turn off the water and stand there for a moment, residual anxiety clinging to my bones.
I can’t remember exactly how old I was when I could finally take a shower—maybe twelve.
Even though it was a bath she drowned me in, they were the only way I could stand to be in water.
I couldn’t handle the feeling of it running over my face.
It felt like being submerged, and I’d panic and think I was drowning again.
To this day, I struggle with them, but they’ve gotten a lot easier. When I was sixteen, I started training myself. It became therapeutic to stand beneath the shower stream as the water beat over my face, holding my breath until I couldn't anymore. Pushing myself to hold it longer and longer.
I’ve gotten to over three minutes now, and each time, I hold it a second or two longer, granting me a little more of my power back, as if I’m one second closer to never being able to drown again.
Logically, I know that’s impossible, but in my fucked-up head, it feels that way.
It feels like taking away the power Lionel had for saving my life and giving it to myself instead.
I can save myself.
Feminine voices break through my trance, bringing me back to the shower room.
Wringing out my hair, I grab a towel, twist it around the sopping strands, and knot it on top of my head, then quickly dry off with another.
“Did you hear Dread’s going to be at Craig’s party tonight?” one of them asks.
It sounds like Victoria—she has a distinct, nasally voice.
“Who hasn’t?” her friend answers.
Lynn, maybe?
I don’t pay the girls in my dorm much attention, only enough to learn their names and faces should they ever become accomplices for Dread.
“He almost never goes to them, so I’m going to finally give him my number,” Victoria says, practically squealing the last few words. “I heard he hasn’t been with any girls in a long time.”
Excitement saturates her tone, as if him attending a party means he’s going to break his alleged dry spell.
Shit, maybe it does. I wouldn't fucking know, and I really don't care.
I move back the curtain and step out with my shower caddy, holding my towel firmly against my chest. Both of them turn toward me, surprise and then aversion flashing across their faces.
Typical bitches. They don’t like me simply because Dread doesn’t like me.
No thoughts for themselves.
They stay silent, though their stares burn. Sometimes, I think they only watch me because they’re hoping to give Dread some type of ammo.
One day, she farted so loud, I thought we were getting bombed. I literally thought we were going to die.
She doesn’t even shave her legs. It literally looks like she’s wearing thigh-high socks.
She came out of the shower with a huge bush. Literally an actual jungle with animals and everything. Pretty sure I saw a bug, too.
None of those things have happened, but I imagine that’s the type of shit they’d say, and I’d never live it down if they did.
Except maybe for the last one, considering Dread knows exactly what I look like naked now and can confirm that I do not, in fact, have a bush with animals and insects living in it.
God, the reminder that he saw me naked makes me sick, and it takes monumental effort to push that out of my brain.
“Don’t wear green and then ride him. The last girl who did, he nicknamed Grasshopper,” I say as I pass by them, ignoring their probing stares.
They don’t respond, but I hear Lynn whisper beneath her breath, “That’s why we call her Grasshopper?”
Shaking my head, I scoff as I push through the exit door and head back to my room, my flip-flops squeaking from the excess water.
I shouldn’t be surprised they blindly followed along with the nickname.
I only heard the story because of Rogue’s loud-ass mouth talking about it in the cafeteria one day, though I’m pretty sure the girl wears it like a badge of honor, anyway.
Even if it’s degrading, it still means she got to fuck Dread, and that’s enough for most of the women here.
By the time I make it back to my dorm, I’m contemplating if I should heat a mac ’n’ cheese bowl or just go straight to bed.
It’s after nine p.m., and between work and glancing over my shoulder every two seconds, waiting for Dread to pounce since I drugged him two days ago, I’m exhausted and want my bed.
But the moment I get my door unlocked and pushed open, any semblance of hunger dissipates, replaced by a stomach-churning nausea.
The shower caddy slips from my fingers, crashing to the floor, my jaw following suit. My soap bottles roll out, and a lid pops open on one of them, baby pink body wash squirting across my floor.
However, hardly anything registers beyond my tunnel vision. The only thing I see is the noose strung up on the ceiling fan. It wasn’t there when I left to shower only twenty minutes ago.
Disbelief renders me incapable of doing anything but shuffling the rest of the way into the room and slamming the door behind me.
Obviously, this was Dread’s doing.
And unsurprisingly, it’s fucking cruel.
For several seconds, all I can do is stand there and stare at it, stunned and lost in the memories it invokes.
Until I blink, and fury comes rushing in, alongside a little devastation.
I stomp toward the rope and angrily rip it off the fan blade.
Fucking asshole.
The tremors racking my body are turbulent, and the panic attack creeping into my system feels just as imminent as if I were on a plane nosediving straight toward the ocean.
My sinuses burn. Then, a few tears slip over my bottom lashes, but I quickly wipe them away. Even though he can’t see me, crying still feels like letting him win.
He knows exactly how to hurt me, especially when so many of my tragedies were broadcast all over the news.
Breaking News: Regina D’Amour Found Dead at 39 After Apparent Suicide.
There was nothing ‘apparent’ about it, though. She tied a rope around her neck and hung herself from a rafter in the garage on my eighteenth birthday.
I left for school that morning, a foreboding feeling in the pit of my stomach. For the first time since Lionel went to prison, she was chipper.
His sentencing sent her into a deep depression, and for the following years, she was nothing more than a shell.
The episodes would come in waves, but even when she was on the upswing, she didn’t care for me very well.
I learned to cook, clean, and function by myself, as most days, she opted for rocking in her husband’s recliner and staring out the window instead.