Bury Me(17)

“Why does everything I remember feel like it’s the exact opposite of what you and Mom tell me?” I question.

He immediately stops playing with the spare change in his pocket and silence fills the room. I hate that I’m sitting on the floor at his feet, feeling so small and insignificant when he towers over me so commanding and in charge, ignoring everything I ask him as if the questions I have aren’t worthy of an answer. I want to stand up to him, yell in his face, and poke his chest with my finger, but I find myself glued to the floor as the mask of indifference on his face quickly changes to one of fear. His eyes widen and he bites down nervously on his bottom lip, much like my mother did when I walked in her room and caught her crying.

“Have you remembered something, Ravenna? What have you remembered?” he asks in a rush.

His concern would be touching if I felt like he was doing it for my benefit, instead of trying to figure out if I’ve remembered something I shouldn’t. Something that would prove he really has been lying to me and he knows what happened.

Because he saw it happen, or because he was the cause of it?

Once again, I’m left wondering what could possibly be so bad that my own father doesn’t want me to know the truth.

Maybe I haven’t been avoiding him lately because I’m afraid of him and uncomfortable around him ever since I heard him yelling at my mother. Maybe I’ve been avoiding him because I’m afraid of how he makes me feel in his presence. When I’m in the same room with him, I feel my mistrust of him growing so strongly that it’s almost suffocating. A daughter should trust her father and know without a shadow of a doubt that everything he does is to protect her, but when I look at him, sometimes I feel nothing but anger and disappointment. I feel as if this isn’t the first time he’s ever let me down.

Right now, if someone were to ask, I could recite a laundry list of things my father has done to prove his love for me over the years, but that’s all it would be…a list. I don’t have the memories that should go along with those things. I don’t remember sitting on his knee while he read me a story, I don’t remember him holding my hair back while I blew out birthday candles on a cake, and I don’t remember splashing around in puddles in the driveway. I’ve seen the photos in the albums and hanging on the walls, but I can’t remember them. I should be able to remember the smell of the smoke from freshly blown-out candles; I should remember the soft sound of his melodic voice as he read to me, and I should be able to feel the mud and the water splashing against my legs in the driveway. Why do I know things but I can’t feel them?

“Ravenna!”

He calls my name again, obviously impatient that I haven’t answered his question. He wants to know if I’ve remembered anything. If I really were the good girl, the perfect daughter, the wonderful daughter they keep telling me I am, maybe I’d do as I’m told and stop forcing things and asking questions. Maybe I’d push aside all of my crazy thoughts and strange glimpses into memories that confuse me and just go about my life, content to believe whatever they tell me and not worry about things I can’t remember. Maybe I’d learn to love the color pink and stop getting headaches every time my mother braids my hair too tight.

“The secrets are hidden in the walls of this prison,” I tell him in a monotone voice, repeating the words that were written in my journal.

I watch as the color drains from his face and instead of being horrified with myself for finding pleasure in his fear, I let it travel through me, igniting me and making me feel alive for the first time in days.

My father slowly backs away from me, his eyes never leaving my face.

“I’ll just let you get some rest. I need to get back to the tour,” he informs me as he bumps into the wall next to my bedroom door.

He gives me a tight smile before he turns and leaves my room, closing the door behind him.

“My name is Ravenna Duskin. I’m eighteen years old, I live in a prison, and I’m pretty sure I’m not a good girl.”





Chapter 7





After my father left my room, I tore the place apart, looking for the pages of the journal that had been ripped out. I don’t know why those pages are missing, and I don’t like it. Finding nothing hidden in any nook or cranny anywhere in my room, I searched the only other room upstairs that wasn’t locked or occupied—the kitchen—and found nothing. My father had been working in his office and my mother was holed up in her room so those two areas would have to wait until they left and the spare bedroom would have to wait for me to either pick the lock or find the key in my father’s office. Making a quick sandwich in the kitchen since I had no desire to sit through another silent, awkward dinner with my parents, I ate outside on the front porch and enjoyed the peace and quiet with nothing but the sounds of birds chirping and frogs croaking.