People find intimacy vulnerable, but I find my favorite books to be read by others vulnerable. They’re my most treasured prize because they contain pieces of me that I’ll never show to anyone.
“Books. You’ve loved them since you were a kid.” He closes the book with a thud using his both hands. The cigarette hangs between his mouth and his eyes now back on me again.
I gulp under his fierce stare, seeing darkness swirl in patterns.
Keeping his eyes on me, he rips apart the book making sure each page is torn out of the spine in the most brutal manner.
I stand five feet away from him like a stone statue. I can’t move.
I watch him rip it to shreds before starting on the second one, then the third, and the fourth until he’s on the last book.
While he’s doing it, I only stand and watch. Tears push past my eyes and fall down my cheeks, burning my skin like acid. A few slip under my jaw, move down my throat and slide down my chest—the place where my heart is weeping.
Dad tears all my books until the floor is a mess of pages and I have no idea which page belongs to which book.
Striding towards me, he steps onto the pages—pagesthat I turned countless times and had my thoughts written on them—and coats them in his dirty mud footprints. The footprints make my heart clench and more tears rush down my eyes.
Stopping in front of me, he says, “That’ll teach you a lesson as you’re so determined to disobey me.”
I meet his gaze and all I see is anger. For what, I don’t know. I haven’t since he first raised his hand on me. “Remember, I straightened your mother into obedience, making sure that she doesn’t forget that she belongs to me.”
My heart pounds in my ribcage as I hear those words.
“Now, will you stay away from that boy or not?”
I nod, trying my best to not stare at the pages on my floor.
“Good, otherwise you won’t like what I do,” he warns me. His face grim and his eyes filled with hatred.
With that he leaves and closes the door with a loud thud. The sound shakes me and I gasp. Suddenly I find the room too suffocating to breathe air.
Rushing towards the windows, I open them and lean over the sill as I try to breathe.
A thorn seems to prick me in the chest. With each breath I draw in, pain spreads through the nerves. It hurts.It hurts.
Leaning over the sill, I try to regulate my breathing when I see Nadina looking up at me from her window. She’s sitting in a rocking chair knitting what appears to be a sweater but it’s small and red in color.
She stares at me and I feel like she can read me better than Heath does.
I push back and close the windows. When I turn around, the utter mess of my torn books awaits me.
With each step I take, my stomach tightens.
I crouch down on the floor, and pick up a few pages. My hands shake as I hold them. Some pages are torn so badly that no amount of glue or tape will ever put them back together. They won't be the same as before.
4
HOPE
“Oh my!What the hell happened here?” Mom’s worried voice enters my ears, and her touch sweeps over the top of my head, pushing away the hair from my face. “Hope, wake up, honey.”
I flutter my eyes. Her face is the first thing I see as I look up at her. It takes me a whole minute to realize that my head is her lap and I’m lying on the floor.
Lifting my hand, I bring it to rub my eyes but pages smack me in the face. Pushing my hand away, I study the pages. Slowly it all comes to me what happened.
Bright morning light streams in and fills the room, highlighting the mess. Pages are scattered in every direction. There are small piles amidst that mess—that was me trying to align pages to make the books complete. The bottle of glue is open and the tape is undone beside the pile closest to me.
I don’t rememberwhenI fell asleep orhowI fell asleep. I was sure sleep was the last thing that would happen to me after everything that took place.
