The rush of fresh air hits me next. This I’m used to, and it hits me as powerfully as ever. I don’t realize how putrid my world is until I realize what the outside world smells like. I don’t realize how dead I smell until I catch a whiff of life.
I sigh as the fresh air clears out the stale, then I notice the light slicing inside dim some.
“Is that better?”
It’s the first time he’s spoken to me without the door between us. His voice is familiar in that “distant dream” kind of way, but I can’t say from where or if it’s just familiar because every wire in my brain has become crossed and frayed.
“Yeah.” I shield my eyes and attempt to blink them open. It’s still blinding, but I can’t close my eyes to the light again. After being robbed of it for so long, I can’t look away just because it’s too painful.
I hear him step closer, but my eyes are having a hard time adjusting. I can see bright white light and a dark shadow, but that’s all. There’s no detail. No color.
“Everything’s going to be different now, Sara. You’ll see.”
Hearing his voice like this reminds me of the night he took me. I want to slink away from him, but I make myself stay where I am.
When I hear a sharp, rattling sound, I shiver. It sounds cold. Unfriendly.
“This is for your own good, Sara. I know you didn’t want to leave, but teenagers can be impulsive.” The rattling moves closer. “This will keep you from giving in to those impulses.”
When I feel my hair lift, I flinch back. I haven’t been touched in weeks, and his touch is strange and almost awkward feeling. Giving my hair a sharp tug, he pulls me back.
When I cry out, he sighs but doesn’t say anything else. Now that he isn’t blocking most of the light streaming into the little room, it’s blinding me again. Even when I close my eyes, I still see strobes flashing.
“What are you doing?” My voice quivers, and my body is close to following.
He’s still quiet, but when I feel something cold and hard ring around my neck, I panic. I fight against him and it, but I’m as weak as I knew I would be . . . and weaker.
The fight bubbles out of me after a few seconds, then my body goes limp, seeming to sink into that heavy ring being locked around my neck. I don’t even have the strength to lift my hands to inspect what’s there, but I already know. It’s not a necklace. It’s not a noose.
It’s a collar. A metal one that feels at least an inch wide and so heavy I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to rise with it on. A chain dangles from it, and to what it’s attached, I don’t know. All I know is that I’m stuck. The door to this dark room has been removed, but it’s only been opened into a darker world.
I hear him move away once everything’s been fitted into place. I think I’m going to throw up. I think I wish that door had never been opened. I think feeling free to move about a small space on my own is better than being collared like a wild animal.
“I promised I wouldn’t run away.” I slump against the wall behind me and realize I can’t bend anymore.
“And I promised that I’d never let you leave again.” He moves out of the room. “This way, we’ll both be able to keep our promises.”
When I curl back onto the mattress, the chain rattles. The collar cuts into the side of my neck, and I know I’ll never be able to sleep with it on. At least when I slept before, I could escape this world and trespass in the other.
I can’t bend anymore. I’m already broken.
I HAVEN’T LEFT my room in two days. I haven’t left the house in seven.
My parents don’t know what to do. I don’t know either.
Ever since the meeting with the detectives and finding out about the end of my chain being locked to absolutely nothing, my sense of reality, my perception of freedom . . . it’s all changing.
The closer I get to accepting I was tied to nothing—free to go whenever I figured that out—the more confined I feel. The smaller my sense of safety shrinks. The longer I think about it, the more scared I become. How am I supposed to know what’s real and what isn’t when nothing is as it seems?
How am I supposed to be free of the past when I hadn’t known what freedom felt like the moment Earl Rae slid that padlock free?
I don’t want to leave the house. I don’t want to leave my room.
Here there are no cameras or uncomfortable questions or people to stare at me. I’m safe.
At least I think I am. I’m not sure if I remember the way safe feels anymore.
“Jade?” My mom’s muffled voice comes from outside of my door. “You need to come out, sweetheart.”
“I’m not ready.” I curl lower into the rocking chair and draw the stuffed elephant tighter to my chest.
“You can’t stay in there by yourself. It’s not healthy.”
I double-check the lock on the door. It’s still turned over. “I spent months in a dark closet, crying on an old mattress and shitting in a metal bucket. Don’t tell me what is and isn’t healthy.”
“Jade!” Dad’s voice booms followed by a hard pounding. “Come out. Enough of this. Now.”
I don’t say anything. I just keep rocking, staring at the same patch of carpet I’ve spent all morning watching. I’m pretty sure it’s where Torrin kissed me for the first time. I keep trying to conjure up the image, but I can’t get a firm enough grip on it. The moment it starts to surface, something pulls it back down.