CHAPTER 1
Jordy
Water ranout of the sink faucet in an uneven trickle. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. What could I expect from plumbing that probably hadn’t been replaced, or even repaired, in thirty years. Yet, I couldn’t help cursing under my breath as I fiddled with the faucet’s handles.
Today was important. Everything had to be perfect.
Giving up on the faucet, I turned my attention to the box of hair dye on the sink next to me. The smiling model stared back at me, teeth too white, and hair a blinding bubblegum pink. That color was obviously photoshopped. Even my hair, which was already a pale blond on its own, would never look that blindingly bright without some drastic bleaching beforehand.
That was fine. I didn’t want anything too extreme anyway. It was just time for a change.
My hair had been a cause for contention most of my life. Today, I wanted to finally look in the mirror and not cringe at what I saw.
Grabbing the box of dye, I ripped open the packaging with enough force to send the contents flying in all directions. Cursing again, I chased after the various packets, bottles, and papers before carefully lining them up on the bathroom counter so they couldn’t escape me again.
Then, after reading the directions through several times to make sure I knew what I was doing, I started mixing the dye.
The whole time, I kept my gaze pointed away from the bathroom mirror.
Blond hair, blues eyes, and fair skin. This was an ideal beauty standard that all people apparently strived for. I’d been told more than once how lucky I was to have such features naturally.
“Ha!” My laugh came out in one sharp, unpleasant sound, as I carefully poured the newly mixed dye into its applicator bottle.
If people wanted my looks, they were welcome to them. So far, my features had brought me nothing but trouble.
My blond hair and blue eyes were the exact reason I’d been taken by…
My thoughts came to a screeching halt and my hand dropped from where it had been reaching for the protective gloves that came with the hair dye kit.
Something deep inside me started to shake.
Setting everything aside, I braced my hands against the counter and closed my eyes. Words from the several different therapists I’d worked with while living at the recovery center flashed through my mind. I needed to center myself. Breathing deeply through my nose, and out through my mouth, I fell into a familiar meditation routine, and after a few minutes, the shaking stopped.
A year ago, this kind of episode would have sent me into a panic attack that lasted all day. Now, I was able to overcome it in just a few minutes. It was a sign of the progress I’d made.
Yet, I still couldn’t help feeling like a failure every time it happened. It was over. I was safe now. Everything should be fine.
“Bell ringers,” I said out loud. The name still sent a shiver up my spine, but I held it together.
It was one of the first things my therapists had focused on once I’d been brought to the recovery facility. Words had power, and I needed to be able to say the name of my abusers out loud. It allowed me to take the power back from them and reclaim it for myself.
Somehow, describing what the bell ringers had done to me, kidnapping me as a child to be used by a bunch of pedophile monsters, was easier to talk about. Though not pleasant to recall, it was clinical. An action that someone else did, rather than something that happened to me.
Saying their name out loud, however, had been nearly impossible at first. Giving my abusers a name felt like I was making them real and inviting them into the room with me.
“Bell ringers,” I said out loud again, just to prove that I could name them now. “Fuck you.”
With my hands no longer shaking, I reached once again for the bottle of hair dye.
I could do nothing about the color of my skin and eyes. I’d tried wearing colored contacts and fake skin bronzer once, but both had left me so irritated that I’d had to give up on them.
My hair, however, was easier to change.
After escaping the bell ringers, I’d just buzzed it all off. For years, I’d never let it grow longer than peach fuzz. Now, I’d finally gotten comfortable enough to let it grow out a few inches. It was still very short, but long enough for the natural pale color to be evident.
As I held the bottle of dye up to my hair, I decided that I wouldn’t cover all of it. My therapists insisted that I needed tolearn to accept my looks. So, I would do them proud by letting some of the blond color remain, and I only applied the dye to the ends of my hair.
Once everything was applied, I had to wait twenty minutes for the dye to do its job. Until then, I was stuck in the bathroom.
