I slump back onto the chaise, desperately trying to catch my bearings, which is hard when I’m in a headlock. Both men wear rugged looks as they stare each other down. I study the nuances of their interaction, the posturing, and the subtle hints written on their faces. Where the shrink’s lips tip down with disapproval and the headmaster’s curl with irritation. I can smell their bad blood from here.
“We agreednotto harm a student like this,” the shrink chides.
The good doctor is fine with scientific torture, but this is where he draws the line? What the fuck even is this place where they’ve already had that type of discussion?
McGill straightens to his feet, readjusting his suit and righting his tie as he looks down his nose at his colleague. “Fine. Have it your way.” He pivots slowly on his heel as he grabs his satchel and walks toward the door. “Don’t complain to me when she doesn’t talk.”
The doctor’s lips press into a tight line as if he has more to add, and he’s been saving them in a folder beneath his desk. His attentionstays on the slammed door for a beat longer before it turns on me.
My moment of reprieve is short-lived, and my impending doom makes itself known when he says, “Take her to isolation.”
This time, when the guards each grab an arm, I don’t bother fighting, not when Boris digs his fingers into the soft skin of my arms, or when they throw me into the room with nothing but a water bottle and a granola bar, and the eight ball of coke taped to the other side of the safety window.
The silence slowly becomes deafening as seconds tick by into minutes, and minutes tick by into hours. With only a sliver of light coming from the window, it’s hard to tell what time it is until dusk falls, filtering soft, orange streams into the desolate room. Then everything turns bleak and gray.
I’ve learned about another privilege today: electricity. I’ve gotten by without it before. McGill has deprived me of light before while I’m stuck in this room. But unlike all the times I lost power at my house, the front door was still open for me to leave. I wasn’t confined to four empty walls and nothing but my mind to pass the time. This punishment is worse than holding me down and inflicting pain because they’ve left me with two worse things: my own thoughts and the packet of faux freedom taped to the door, just out of reach.
Teasing me.
Goading me.
Mocking me.
One line and this entire night could blur away in a whirlwind of random thoughts. Or maybe I’d have a panic attack. Either way, at leastsomethingwould happen.
It doesn’t matter how many times I pace, night still doesn’t turn into day, prison into freedom. I can stare at the white powder, counthow many specs there are, study the lines in my fingerprint, and tell myself it's a labyrinth to my liberation, but I’m still in here with an empty bottle of water and the ripped-up granola bar wrapper.
I don’t know why I think that at any second, I’ll find Kohen at the door, ready to be my knight in shining armor, about to whisk me away from this hellhole. I told him I’m not a damsel in distress when I’m a walking cry for help.
But I was right at the beginning; I’m in here because of him in every sense of the word. He gave me the gun, loaded it with bullets, cocked it, and told me where to aim. So I pulled the trigger. Take the gun away, and what’s left?
Night turns to a stormy day, and the same words are said. “Confess or tell me who did it.” When it comes out of the doctor’s mouth, it’s kinder. Sympathetic almost. Like maybe he doesn’t want me in here just as much as I don’t want to be in here.
Either way, I say the same thing. “Kohen did it.”
I say the three words not because of any feelings I harbor toward Kohen. I say it for myself.
I have never needed him to save me or get me out of my mess. I managed to keep myself alive—barely—for the better part of eighteen years. A man isn’t going to swoop in to change that, regardless of the trajectory I’m on.
Dr. Van der Merwe leaves me the same thing he did the day before: a small bottle of water and a granola bar.
This time, I ration it, taking a bite and a couple sips every hour. The patheticness of it makes me smile to myself. I guess I am capable of new things.
The sun sets behind clouds of gray, and the sky breaks into darkness, battering the roof with bits of ice.
The same happens on the third day. A proposition, three words, then food and water.
On the fourth, the same. But this time, the door stays open, and four different words are uttered instead.
“You didn’t do it.”
To that, I respond with another four. “I told you so.”
And it feels good to say.
A gas leak? The internet really does have everything on there.
I’d be gloating if it weren’t for the fact they’ve kept Blaze holed up for the past three nights. The motherfuckers even changed the keys to keep me out.
