They fight, beating the shit out of each other. Blood spurts as Trace barrels his brass knuckles into Jensen’s face. Jensen screams before attempting to point the gun at Trace. I try to shout, fear gripping me tightly. And then I feel a tug at my wrists, the tape being ripped from my skin. I turn around to see Banks behind me and once I’m free I lunge for Trace, but Banks pulls me back, yanking me to his chest.
“Get her the fuck out of here!” Trace shouts as he fights against Jensen, my heart accelerating as my sobs consume me.
“You fucking little bitch,” Jensen groans as he looks up at me. “You all deserve to die the same way youkilled Seren,” he threatens as he seems to gain the upper hand on Trace.
Banks has me locked in his arms holding me back, and that’s when I notice that Evrin is helping Alli and Sage out the front door.
Banks tries to urge me, pushing me forward but I stand my ground. “No, I’m not leaving without him!" I cry, feeling my heart shatter as I watch Jensen finally point the gun right over Trace’s forehead.
“Olivia, you need to go.” Trace groans as he reaches into his pocket. I watch as he reaches into Jensen's pocket and pulls out something that looks like a lighter, but after wiping my eyes dry from the stream of tears, I see that it's a bomb detonator.
“No!” I scream right as Banks yanks me aside and pulls me through the front door. I fight, clawing at anything I can to stay. Fear bubbles in my throat, fury thrashing in my veins. “No!” I shout again, kicking at Banks as he drags me away.
The rest happens in slow motion.
I sob, turning in his hold, desperate for one last glance behind me. Trace lays flat on the floor, pistol pressed to his head, blood pouring from his mouth as he hovers his thumb over the red button.
“I love you,” he mouths and before I can say it back, before I can do anything at all, I’m being dragged into the woods and within seconds, the house explodes behind me.
31
OLIVIA
"Oh, I've missed you." — Richard Fenton, Prom Night (2008)
TWO MONTHS LATER
It’s the first time in years my father has hung anything Christmas related in the house. But there’s a tree in front of the window—granted, undecorated—and he’s got mine, his, my brother’s, and my mom’s stockings hung by the fireplace, the fire roaring underneath.
It’s not much, but it’s enough and for the first time in years, I feel a sense of peace wash over my soul. Something that has been void in my life for so long.
“Where are you going?” My dad asks, watching the news with his coffee in his hand, looking over at me as I slip my shoes on. “I thought therapy wasn’t until tomorrow?”
I look up at him and smile, watching him as he observes me carefully. Ever since everything happened, I’ve been more intentional with spending time at my dad’s. Every Sunday, I come over for breakfast, justhim and I, and we normally just hang out on the couch and watch football all day. It’s nice, honestly. Especially now that not everything is as doom and gloom.
“Yes, Dad. That is tomorrow,” I tell him.
“Can I just say that I honestly assumed that after the fourth or fifth session, you’d have given up by now,” he quips and I roll my eyes.
Surprisingly, I’ve been enjoying my new therapist. My sessions don’t seem so pointless now that I have an answer for everything, now that I know what was wrong with me after all this time and now that I know the trauma that I have to deal with.
Of course, getting here wasn’t easy. Especially after finding out that the pills I’d been stealing from my dad’s were actually antidepressants for me. Something that he hid from me—slapping a fake label over the real one once he got them out of the bag—because he didn’t want to trigger something in my brain that could cause me to spiral, seeing as I hadn’t ever remembered being diagnosed with anything in the first place. And once he found out I wasstealingthem, he just let it be, knowing that it was the only way I’d take them.
It took me a minute to process the diagnosis I have, the one I’d been given over four years ago but can’t recall.
Dissociative amnesia. Otherwise known as trauma blocking.
It was described to me, essentially, as my brain shutting down. An attempt to suppress memories to cope with the distress and blocking them out entirely as a defense mechanism to protect myself. To shield myself from the flood of emotional damage associated with a traumatic experience. In this case, the nightmy brother was murdered. But mainly, the moment on the cliff with Seren. My brain responded to the pain I’d felt by tearing anything to do with that night, with Seren, away from my mind and treating it as if it didn’t happen. Because in my brain, I was wired to believe that Seren’s death was my fault. So every memory from that weekend with Seren was erased from my mind, locked away so that I didn’t have to suffer from that pain of feeling like it was my fault anymore. And the memory with Declan was just as traumatizing, knowing that if I had held onto that memory after finding his body, it would destroy me. And it did.
My brain just wanted to protect me.
There is no real cure for the diagnosis. Which is likely why I remember my first psychiatrist recommending I revisit the Pines, the only way to jog those memories. And the antidepressants help with the result of such trauma, a preemptive attempt to unwind the potential depression I’d spiral into if the memories ever did resurface. However, I later found out that the antidepressants I was prescribed can also impact your dreams through REM sleep, inducing different dream emotions which can lead to both pleasant dreams and terrifying nightmares. Some seem real but also disillusioned.
That’s when I learned what my nightmares were trying to tell me. They were an anchor to that night with Seren on the cliff, my dreams trying to counteract the amnesia, reminding me of that pain I’d lived through. But they were distorted due to the meds I’d been taking, which I later learned are very strong meds. Meds that I know longer take.
“Actually,” I start as I stand from the couch. “I was thinking about going to the cemetery,” I state.
And the very thick and tangible flow of sorrow fills the room, both mine and his.
