Kristen Simmons - Article 5

“You said… you said all those things… and… I believed you.”

“Wait. Please. That was the truth,” he was pleading now.

I shook my head. There was no truth.

“Ember, I love you.”

His words hacked a bright new pain into me. I stared at him for a full second, horrified, recognizing that this was the first time he’d said these words. Thinking maybe the opposite was true. That Chase might actually hate me. That was why he lied about everything. That was why he kept hurting me. How could someone be so cruel?

His eyes were filled with what I’d once thought was honesty.

“I shouldn’t have said that now. It’s too much. I’m putting too much on you. But… Christ. I mean it, I—”

“ No! I trusted you, and I thought it was right and it wasn’t right. It was a lie.” I felt ill then, disgusted by my own self. I wanted to crawl out of my skin, to leave it in this dirty room with its ugly truths.

“It wasn’t like that. You know. Please know.”

His reached out to touch my hand.

“No!” I bawled. “Don’t touch me. Don’t you dare touch me. Not ever again.”

I struck the wall. My world was crashing down. Everything I believed was scattered. False.

I didn’t think. I couldn’t. I rocked forward and hit him as hard as I could. My hand seized with pain from where it had connected to his jaw. I hit him again. Again. He didn’t try to stop me. He placed his hand beneath my elbow, giving me the strength to hit him harder.

When I had no punches left, I folded over my reeling stomach. I was no better than Roy, hitting my mother. I wanted violence to resolve my anguish. To show Chase how wrong he was. The parallel made my reality infinitely more devastating.

“It’s okay. Hit me. I deserve it.”

As though that would make it better. As though that would fix anything.

“No more,” I moaned.

He lifted his hands in surrender. “Ember, I’ll do whatever you want. Just please let me get you somewhere safe. That was the whole point in this. I knew that once you found out, you’d want to get as far away from me as possible, and if you believed your mom was in South Carolina, you’d let me take you there. I told you in the beginning, if you want me gone after that, I’m gone.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“Please. Just let me get you somewhere safe.”

All the slashes of pain inside. All the losses. My mother. Chase. Beth. Rebecca. Trust. Love. I had nothing left but the skeleton of integrity.

“No.”

“If you won’t listen to me, do it for her. Lori wanted you away from all this.”

“Don’t!” I cried out. I could not bear to hear her name.

He hung his head. “I’ve messed everything up. From the beginning. I’ve done nothing right by you. By your mother. She loved you so much, Ember.”

“She’s dead because of you!”

And what was worse was that she was dead because of me, too. Because if I’d never told Chase to leave, he wouldn’t have gone into the military. They never would have targeted him. They never would have used us to break him. Through some twist of fate, I had killed my own mother. The shame was so thick I could not speak it.

He rocked back onto his heels and then stood. I knew I had wounded him. I had done so deliberately. I wanted to injure him. To make him hurt as deeply as I did. But how could he?

“Yes,” he said simply. “She’s dead because of me.”

“Get out. Get away from me.”

Minutes passed. But he did leave. I heard the door close softly behind him.

I SOBBEDfor hours huddled in a clenched ball. I cried until the tears dried up. And when they did, my body cried without them.

Every image that entered my mind pained me. Every thought led me to the same conclusion.

I was alone. Absolutely alone.

When I could breathe again, I forced myself up and stumbled toward the window. I could hear other people in the hallway asking Chase what had happened. He didn’t answer. It didn’t matter.

My arms were heavy. My head felt heavy. Bloated.

Air. That feels nice, I thought absently.

I slid over the ledge and out onto the fire escape, needing the cold to stop the fever. The balcony was too small. I could climb down the ladder. I could get to the street. It looked like a black hole from up here. Maybe I could disappear inside it.

The rain was soothing. The first soothing feeling I’d felt in what seemed like an eternity. It soaked through my clothing, my hair. It washed away the salt on my face. It entered my eyes by way of my matted lashes and cleansed them.

I walked. And walked. Unable to focus on anything. Remembering nothing.

The lights didn’t surprise me. They barely roused my curiosity. But soon the car had stopped alongside the sidewalk where I stood. Men got out. They spoke to me in harsh tones I didn’t understand. They grabbed my arms. They dragged me into the backseat, where the rain no longer reached me.

A CLANGon the metal door. My eyes blinked open, unfocused. A fluorescent light directly above my head buzzed and flickered. The ceiling was pocked with dried peels of white paint. Mildew and body odor soiled the mattress I laid upon. I had no pillow. No blankets.

Where was I? How long had I been here? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

“She won’t eat.” Someone’s voice came muffled through the door.

“I don’t give a damn.” Another male.

“Me neither,” the first scoffed, “but she’ll be dead before her trial if she keeps this up.”

“Then she’ll be dead. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

I closed my ears to their callous disregard. I closed my mind to all consciousness.

A HANDwas shaking my shoulder. Then a hard pinch to the sensitive skin on the underside of my arm. The pain snapped my eyes open. Apparently I could still feel some things.

“You need to get up. Get up!” A woman’s voice now, warped with annoyance. I moaned and rolled away. My face pressed against the cool, cement wall.

“If you don’t knock this off, I’ll get in trouble for it.”

“Leave me alone,” I managed weakly.

“You’ve had three days of that already. Now you’ve got to get moving.”

She shook my shoulder again. When I rolled onto my back, she grabbed my arms and pulled me into a seated position. My head went very fuzzy and dim.

“Hey.” She slapped my cheek lightly. “Are you going to throw up?”

“No,” I said feebly.

“Hmph. You’ve got nothing to throw up anyway.”

She shoved a plastic bowl onto my lap. It was filled with something that resembled soupy oatmeal. I stared at it blankly.

“Unbelievable,” the woman said. She picked up a spoonful and shoved it into my mouth.

I sputtered and choked. But the tasteless, lukewarm mush slid down my throat and entered my starved stomach. Soon my mouth was watering for more.

I ate, focusing for the first time on the woman. She had gnarled, arthritic bumps on her hands and deeply etched creases beside her mouth. Her face held a look of concern it seemed would never fully dissipate, and her eyes were almost translucently blue. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she were blind, but her movements dictated otherwise.

Her hair was gray and wavy, and she wore a navy pleated skirt and button-up blouse. The uniform covered her sagging body the way a burlap sack covers potatoes.

Haven’t you ever seen the Sisters of Salvation? I heard Rosa say in my mind. They’re the MM’s answer to women’s liberation.

It was like I’d never left the reformatory.