23. Ivy
CHAPTER 23
Ivy
I vy, 13; Emmett, 16
ache
/e?k/
noun
a continuous or prolonged dull pain in a part of one's body.
verb
suffer from a continuous dull pain.
You know that awful, visceral feeling you get when you desperately feel like you’re about to burst in tears, but you hold it in because you know crying is more humiliating than anything?
That feeling when your throat starts burning.
Your nose starts tingling.
Your vision blurs, and everything in front of you, around you, even within you, tilts out of focus.
Suddenly, nothing makes sense anymore.
You start feeling something acute and intense building in your chest.
Your fists clench tightly at your sides but still deep inside you, there’s a voice screaming at you to hold it in?
Don’t let the tears drop!
Don’t even let loose a sniffle or else you’ll unravel.
That’s how I feel in this moment and more.
There’s a constricting pain-like pressure in my chest, like an elephant has planted its big ass on there, weighing me down into the dirt..
And it’s all because of the words on the pages of a book I want to chuck away.
“Did you look it up?”
I stare at the words in the dictionary for a long time, unable to breathe right, let alone say a word.
I can feel the familiar firm gaze set right on me, as it always is when I do something to disappoint her.
I don’t usually do that—that’s reserved for my brother—but it seems when it comes to one specific person that she’s warned me repeatedly against, I disappoint her over and over again.
“Well? Did you?” Grammy presses.
I refuse to look at her.
If I do, not only will I confirm the disappointment that I know I’ll find in her eyes, but I’ll also see something else that’s been present in her gaze almost all my life.
Pity.
Not just any kind of… ‘Oh, sorry you’re going through that, it’ll get better next time’ kind of pity. No. That kind is reserved for when our chatty and nosey neighbor comes over uninvited.
The kind of pity my grandmother has for me is the desolate kind.
The type that feels grim, dark, cold, and so damn miserable, it makes you tremble.
“Is this…” I stutter, then clear my throat. “Is this the new word you want me to learn?”
Silence falls over the room, but I’m pretty sure Grammy can hear the loud pounding of my heart as much as I can feel it almost knocking me down to the floor.
“Yes, Pumpkin,” she says in a soft but firm voice. “You’ve always loved reading all sorts of books since you were young. Your favorite thing was learning new words. Do you remember?”
I clutch the pages of the dictionary so tightly, I’m at risk of tearing the thing into a million pieces.
“I’m pretty sure the new words I learnt were something like segue, truculent , costochondritis … words that make me stop and think, not this…” I trail off, feeling like I might burst into tears.
“Ivy…”
“I know what ache means, Grammy. I’m not in grade school anymore.”
“No, you’re not,” she says gently. “You’re growing up, which means you need some reminders of what some things are and what they mean.”
I bite back the onslaught of emotion that swells up in my chest.
“I know what ache means,” I repeat, hoping she drops the topic like she always does, but this time, she doesn’t.
“I’m sure you do, as I think you feel it much sharper than the rest of the world would ever know.”
As if to prove a point, I inhale sharply then look at her with tears welling up in my eyes.
“Pumpkin, maybe?—”
“I’m all right, Grammy. I’m not aching anywhere,” I quickly defend myself, straightening my posture as if that might somehow hide the mess that’s so obvious, even my busy grandmother picked up on it.
I hear her sigh deeply, then she looks at me as if she’s at a loss and doesn’t really know what to say.
“Can you read it again, but out loud this time?” she asks gently. There’s no doubt she’s trying to drive a point home.
I stare down at the jumbled words on the cream-colored page of the dictionary I ‘won’ when I came last in a class spelling bee contest in fifth grade.
For eighteen seconds, I stay silent, my lips pressed firmly together.
But in the next five seconds, I quickly repeat the words without even reading them because once was enough to insert a kind of lasting torture on my soul.
Once was enough to get me here, to a place where my grandmother and brother look at me with pity mixed with that ‘snap out of it’ glow in their eyes.
“Ache, as a verb, is to suffer from a continuous dull pain,” I mumble, my throat burning with a sob. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“I just want you to tell me one thing,” she says softly.
“What?”
“Do you want to suffer from a continuous dull pain, Pumpkin?”
My heart jumps in my chest.
“Grammy…”
“Do you, Ivy?”
I fall silent, tears now streaming down my face like a river.
“Baby girl, I’ve been watching you and I found something else…” She waves a small familiar-looking purple diary in the air.
My stomach drops.
“Where did you get that?”
I quickly try to make a dive for the sacred little thing that contains all the words I never say out loud.
“Does it matter where I found it?”
“No, but you read it! You invaded my personal space and read my private diary!”
“Ivy…”
I’m completely panicking now.
My heart is racing so hard and so fast, at this rate I might give my own heart a cardiac arrest.
I wrote things in there… things both my grandmother and my brother avoid like the plague whenever I bring it up.
About what must’ve happened to my birth parents.
To Gramps..
To the lady I see in my dreams.
To the boy with green eyes.
And now that little cursed book is in the hands of my dear grandmother, with the little lock hanging precariously on the side. I pause.
“I’m pretty sure that was locked! How did you…”
Like a freight train just ran me down, I freeze in my tracks.
Slowly, like a bucket of ice-cold water has just been poured over my head, I turn around and spot my brother who’s standing motionlessly in the corner of the room.
I expect him to have a teasing look on his face, the one he wears when he knows I’m in trouble and he’s not, but instead, he stands there silently, stoic, with his arms folded with a serious look on his face.
“It was you!”
The accusation flies from my lips without a trigger.
No one else knows that I keep a diary with all my dark secrets but him and, in turn, no one would be able to break into my diary without so much as a key, but him.
“You broke into my diary and gave it to Grammy?” I cry.
“She had to know,” he says seriously.
“Why?”
I think I’m going to pass out from the shock alone.
This kind of thing has never happened to me, ever.
This kind of betrayal is beyond anything I’ve ever experienced. My own brother rattled me out.
“You’ve been acting strange lately,” Samuel says plainly.
“Strange? I’m thirteen years old! I’m just growing up!” I cry. “Is that so wrong?”
“It is when you’re headed in the direction that leads straight to hell and brimstone, Ivy,” Samuel retorts in a low but serious tone that makes me almost reel back.
“And who are you to know the direction of hell?” I snap. “If I’m headed there, isn’t it my choice to see for myself and decide whether or not I want to continue?”
“Yeah, well, let me save you the trouble! Our mother abandoned us, Ivy! That’s been blatantly clear for all our lives!”
“Samuel…”’
“Our father? Well, do you know who he might be?” He glares at me, anger flashing in his eyes. “For all we know, it might be some random-ass man out there. And what if he’s dead? What if he’s a monster? We’ll never know, so let it go!”
I suck in a harsh breath, but it feels like my own lungs are twisting up.
“We don’t know that,” I croak.
“You’re thirteen this year, Ivy, if they wanted to find us, they would’ve done so years ago, so yes, we do know that for sure!”
“Samuel!” I cry, denial lacing my veins.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, grow up, Ivy! We were raised by Gramps and Grammy, and guess what, Gramps is dead. He’s gone, Ivy, and we know it didn’t just happen. Focus on the goal.”
“I know all that!” I cry now, with tears running profusely down my cheeks, to my jaw and down my neck. God, I know that our grandfather is gone. He died saving me. “I know everything, and I know the goal, but that still doesn’t give you the right?—”
“I’ve seen you with him.”
Five simple words…
In the grand scheme of things, and the tension and hurt that’s already in the room, those five words shouldn’t make the room fall into a dead silence, but they do.
“I saw the way you looked at him,” Samuel continues, with clear bitterness in his voice. “But you seem to be ignorant of the way he barely acknowledges you.”
That sharp pain I mentioned before? It comes back with a vengeance.
“He does,” I defend. “He’s my friend!”
“You’re friends with the girl he’s in love with too, how do you explain that?”
It’s like a cannon just went off in the room.
The explosion is so loud between my ears that for several seconds, I just stare at my brother in shock, not knowing what to do or say.
And my dear brother, the one person I’ve believed would always have my back, he just stares at me, not even attempting to comfort me or take back his horrible words.
“I hate you!” I seethe.
“Ivy…” Grammy starts, but I ignore her and stare at my brother.
“I hate you and you’re wrong! It’s not unrequited love…”
“He loves another girl, and that girl isn’t you,” Samuel says decisively, this time with a cold tone that makes me gasp silently as more tears stream down my face. “And, Ivy, you know that too.”
No.
No, I don’t know that…
I don’t want to know that.
“Is that why you wanted to talk to me?” I croak, turning back to look at my grandmother. “Is that why you wanted me to read out loud the definition of this word?”
To her credit, Grammy stands as still as a majestic tower, watching me with gentle eyes.
“Ivy, my sweetheart,” she starts. “Everything your brother and I are doing is to help you avoid the pain that comes with the path you’re headed.”
The path I’m headed?
“You might not know what to call it, but as you grow, you’ll find that unrequited love feels just like this.” She points at the dictionary still clutched in my hands. “When you have intense feelings for someone, but they don’t feel that way about you, a kind of ache develops at the bottom of your heart. It’s like a dull, throbbing agony and the longer you hold on to it, instead of fixing the hurt and moving on, it’ll become a kind of prolonged suffering.”
I suck in a harsh breath, unable to look at her, but her words are so freaking loud, they actually echo in between my ears.
“What does that have to do with anything?” I whisper. “Am I not allowed to feel what I feel and then let it go on my own?”
“Not when you have bad history with that person,” Samuel snaps. “Not when his family fucked ours over! Not when?—”
“Samuel, that’s enough,” Grammy says firmly. She turns to look at me. “Ivy, you know your brother is right. You can’t get involved with the Easton boy. I told you this years ago.”
“If I can’t get involved with him, why did you always bring me with you whenever they called you to go to the estates?”
I can’t help but blow up. My chest is squeezed so tight. Everything hurts.
“Pumpkin…”
“No, riddle me that, Grammy!”
“Because you didn’t remember anything.”
I freeze in my tracks.
I stop breathing.
My world comes to a screeching halt.
“What?”
“I know you now remember what happened then, Ivy,” Grammy says softly, but I can hear the fear in her voice. “You remember things you were never meant to remember.”
I shake my head. “No, Grammy, that’s not the case. I was just writing…”
“You’re a terrible liar. You’ve been getting your memory back bit by bit for the past year, haven’t you?”
I feel sick to my stomach. I never told her because, well, I really don’t know why, but I knew telling my grandmother would change everything.
“Have you told him?”
“Who?”
“Emmett Easton. Have you told him that you remember his mother?”
The lady in my dreams… that was Emmett’s mother. The sole reason why Emmett hates me.
“Did you tell him?” Grammy presses with an urgency.
“I…”
“Tell me what you told him.”
“I didn’t tell him anything!”
“Are you sure?” she presses.
“Yes! I’m not so sure what I see. Sometimes I see myself drowning and screaming… What is that?”
Grammy sucks in a harsh breath, then she looks away from me.
“You never tell me anything! You don’t talk about my mother! You never tell me why she abandoned us! You don’t talk about anything but now, you invade my privacy and tell me not to have feelings for a boy because remembering is bad?”
“I’m doing this because you’re not ready yet.”
“Ready for what?” I cry. “I hear you and Samuel talking! I know you hate the Eastons. I know it’s because of me, but I also know that Emmett misses his mom. Now that I remember something, I’m planning on telling him.”
“What?” Samuel snaps. “You can’t tell him that!”
“Why not?” I snap back. “You and I never had a mother to love us or take care of us. He did! Why can’t I tell him what I know so maybe he can find her?”
Grammy and Samuel shoot each other a look… just like they always do when they’re silently communicating.
“Pumpkin, listen to me,” Grammy starts, voice now gentle and low. “You can never let Emmett Easton or anyone else know that you have your memories back. As far as anyone is concerned who knows your past, you have a case of retrograde amnesia.”
“Yes, but now I’m healed.”
“And if they know, you’ll go from healed to dead,” Samuel snaps.
With a gasp, I turn around to look at him, then back at Grammy. If they know I remember, then I’ll die? What?
“Ivy, you’ve been by my side at the hospital for so many years. Since you were six years old, in fact. I’m sure you know what happens to aches, wounds, and hurt that’s left untreated, don’t you?”
I want to shake my head and say I don’t know.
I want to tear this damn dictionary apart, then go on an expedition to tear this word from all the dictionaries and thesauruses in the world…but just like my feelings, that too is ridiculous.
“What happens, Ivy?” Grammy presses firmly, waiting for an answer.
At the tip of my tongue is a sassy response, something that will no doubt make her angry, but when I finally open my mouth, the most unlikely words come out of my mouth. The kind that are truthful—even if they hurt like hell.
“If left untreated, even the tiniest of wounds have the potential to become lethal.”
“Because lethality is…?” she presses on, as if hammering an errant nail on its head, so as to put it back in place.
“Death,” I croak.
In other words, my memories mean death.
My aches for him, for parents I don’t know, my ache to be loved, to be accepted, to be chosen… it’s all lethal and will cause my death.
“I’m not trying to hurt you, baby girl,” Grammy says gently, but seriously. “But keeping you safe will always be our number one priority.”
As she says that, Samuel, whom I hadn’t notice leave the room, comes back with two packed backpacks and two loaded duffel bags.
And suddenly everything becomes clear.
“No.” I stagger backward, shaking my head.
“We have to go.”
“No, I’m not leaving.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
The denial and pain mix together, blinding me, clouding my common sense.
“You remember that night, if they find out that you do….”
“He won’t hurt me!”
Grammy sighs heavily but I’m already backing away.
I bump into the flower vase in the hallway, and it goes crashing at my feet.
I see both my brother and grandmother drawing closer, so I do the most idiotic thing, I grab the largest chunk of broken ceramic and wield it like a knife. “Don’t come any closer!”
“Ivy, you’ll hurt yourself, put that down.”
“I’m not leaving!” I cry. “I hardly remember anything. Actually, I really want to remember everything so I can help Emmett.”
“Ivy—”
“I don’t care what you say! I’m not leaving.” I cry but I can see it on their faces, I’m not going to win this.
They’re going to have their way, as they always do.
So, I do the next best thing.
I turn around and run out the house, still holding the ceramic piece that’s now coated in hot, stark-red blood.