Whatever the answer is, it can wait for tomorrow’s session with Dr. Saldon. I’ve had enough therapy to last a lifetime, but I am especially looking forward to this rehash.
Eight
Ruin
There is more that she isn’t saying. I know it, but I don’t want to press her on the matter. Seeing her cry, that only infuriated me further. Just knowing that someone touched her inappropriately sends my blood pressure soaring.
I try to think of the words to say, but nothing seems good enough. What do you say in this situation, I wonder. After I dropped her off at her apartment, I did a quick survey of the area. It seems safe enough, but now I’m not so sure. I just know I want to do everything in my power to protect her, and I want to kill whoever did this to her—or, at the very least, make them suffer.
Then again, the assholes might already be serving time behind bars. I didn’t even think to ask, and it wasn’t really an opportune time. I climb into my driver’s seat and turn the key in the ignition, then lean my head back and cover my eyes. Her scent is everywhere, intoxicating. It smells like home. After collecting myself, I pull away from the curb outside her apartment and fight the urge to speed down Main Street. At this hour, the police will be out looking for the early drunks—the before after-last-call drunks who have had just enough to be too drunk to drive but not enough to think they need an Uber to carry their asses home. The last thing I need right now is another mark on my already muddied record in this city.
My thoughts keep circling back to Avalee and how she looked when she said “Yes” they’d hurt her. That beautiful heart-shaped face, with those deep-brown eyes of a woman whose smile ignites a heat in my core, looked so scared and helpless. It’s not a look I’m used to seeing on her and one I want to ensure never has to happen again.Whatever the monsters did to her, I’ll find out and return the favor a thousand times over.
Nine
Avalee
Journal Entry #1—First Day Feels!!
Being back in Tennessee after so many years brought a strange mix of feelings for me. It felt like home but also fresh and exciting, like a new adventure in a place I had already visited but was still excited about.
As I steered my black sedan toward Cumberland Heights and pulled up to the big red brick “Welcome to Tenn-U” sign, I grinned like I’d won the lottery. This was it. My life was finally starting today!
As a freshman, I had the opportunity to stay in the dorms my first night with my parents, but I begged them to let me come solo. I wanted to see it all for the first time myself, without their constant input and anecdotes. My favorite tune played on the radio, and I turned the knob a few decibels, bobbing my head and shoulders to the beat. Honestly, I was on cloud 4000, and I wasn’t coming back down.
Someone honked behind me and briefly wrecked my moment, but I quickly recovered and continued through the campus entrance. There was a foldout map on my passenger’s seat and a tiny envelope holding the key to my fresh start! Okay, so it was just the key to my first college dormitory with my first college roomie, but damn, I was excited!
I found my dorm, and the moment I stepped into the tiny—barely fit the two twin beds—cinder block-walled room, I knew I had found my industrial, yet academic, paradise. The private Christian university, St. Agnes U, couldn’t compare to the pure raunch appeal Tenn-U offered. My father wanted to pay my way to St. Agnes’s, but I knew that if I truly wanted to experience college life, as all freshmen should, I had to get away against their wishes.
Scraping up the cash was the hard part. I had to take out loans, apply for grants and scholarships, and save whatever money I had collected over the years just to pay for my first year’s tuition—but it was so going to be worth it!
I stop reading and brush the dimpled pages of my old journal, feeling the impressions left by my anxious pen from many years ago, then close the book and place it back in the little shoe box I keep under my bed. There are still some good memories from that time worth cherishing. I take another sip of the woodsy Shiraz I’ve been nursing ever since Ruin dropped me off from our date. Its flavor profile reminds me of smoky campfires and summer.
But when I close my eyes, I’m transported right back to where I keep fighting to escape. For so long, I couldn’t actually remember anything from the abduction—as if there was this giant gaping hole in my memory where everything that happened, all the little details, were just vacuumed up into. And then sometimes, it’s as if the lights have been turned on in that compartment of my brain, and it feels as if I’m reading and reliving each second at warp speed.
I take out a new journal from my desk. I’ve been keeping it, waiting until I was ready to finally write everything down. When Ruin held me, as I cried and carried on, something broke loose inside me, and the itch to journal flooded back in. I pick up a pen and open to the first, blank page, pressing it flat when it tries to bunch back up on me and start where the night of my abduction began.
Journal Entry #2—Turning on the Lights
I was happy, I think. I always knew I wanted to work with kids. I just loved them. They always see the world through this absolutely perfect and innocent lens. It’s like they haven’t seen the dark and twisted underbelly of the universe yet. So, they only know kindness and love. At least, most kids. I suppose Ruin is an exception to that rule. But this isn’t about Ruin. No, I will catalogue the Ruin story in another journal, another time.
I was taking courses to complete a degree in early childhood education. I had this big dream of how I would decorate my very own classroom one day. Sheesh, I even used to go to Target just to find the back-to-school supplies section and imagine the exact layout of what my second-grade class would be. I had this huge to-be-read list of my favorite stories and classic books and even a gaudy dark-red, apple-shaped coffee mug that said something silly on it like “Apples are great, but caffeine is life” in gold lettering.
My first semester was brutal, but I survived. At least, I did until…him. My schedule was packed for my second semester, and my crazy butt thought, “Why not volunteer at the day care?” in my free time. I hadn’t met up with Ruin since I’d gotten back into town, and it was proving quite difficult to even find him. Not to mention, I never had the damn courage to visit his old house and barely had the courage to drive out by my own family’s old home.
No, I assumed Ruin was off living his best life and figured I would have to start doing the same. My father had hated Ruin when he was just a kid, so I couldn’t imagine how he would have reacted if he’d known part of why I chose Tenn-U to begin with was in hopes of finding Ruin again. I can only assume he thought that X (I can’t say his name. I’m not ready, may never be ready, to say his name) was a perfect match by all accounts and couldn’t see why his very sensible daughter wasn’t interested.
Now, things get a little graphic. Sorry, journal. It’s that time.
I pause, taking a sip of my wine and tapping the pen on my bottom lip. I know nobody will read my journals, or at least, I don’t think anyone will ever read the contents of these pages. But I always wonder if one day, when I have passed away, will someone find these and ask themselves who the heck is Virtue Avalee Sumter? Or will I just fade away like the majority of humans, forgotten by those who soon will be forgotten too? Never mind that. I stop tapping the pen and take a deep breath before continuing to the next part of this entry. This is the part that has my stomach tied up in knots, and for a moment, I think I may vomit all of my dark-red Shiraz all over my couch and journal.
The week before I was…taken, my dorm mates had been teasing me about my single status. When they dared me to download a dating app and find someone to go out with, I’d balked. I didn’t have time for dating with my new shift at the day care Monday through Friday, but they’d been relentless. So, I’d relented. The first and only message I received was from X. He didn’t tell me his real name at first, but he was charming and attentive at the two coffee dates I’d let him take me on.
I thought he was trustworthy enough, but it wasn’t long before I learned how wrong I was.
I’d just finished a volunteer shift at the on-campus day care and was walking back to my dorm. Some of the details here are a little fuzzy, but I will try my best to recap what I can. A black van was parked by the sidewalk, but I was still thinking about something one of my little students in the day care had said to me that day and didn’t even notice the suspicious vehicle. Right when I passed the passenger’s side door, it slid open, a pair of arms wrapped around my waist, and a gloved hand clamped down on my mouth, stifling any attempts at a scream.
The world went dark as something itchy came down over my head, and then my eyes filled with a burst of light as the back of my head erupted in pain. When I awoke, I was handcuffed to a military-grade cot in what looked like an old, dingy motel room. The faded green carpet was ripped and frayed around the base of the doors, with questionable dark spots dotting its surface. A heart-shaped bed with satin fringe sat against a mirrored wall that stretched from floor to ceiling. It smelled like an ashtray and dumpster had merged somewhere in the ’70s and never split again.
