Bury Me(36)

“What’s the problem?” I ask, trying not to let my irritation show.

“I’ve never been upstairs in the living quarters before,” he tells me.

“Okaaaaaaay,” I reply, drawing the word out in confusion.

He huffs out an irritated breath, pulling his hands out of his pockets to cross his arms in front of him. “Look, this is a little weird, even knowing your father is probably comatose in his office. He doesn’t like me, I don’t like him, and he would kill me if he found me upstairs. If he found me upstairs in your bedroom, he would revive me just so he could kill me again.”

I laugh, rolling my eyes at him.

“Stop being such a chicken. You have no reason to be afraid of him,” I tell him, turning back around to continue upstairs.

“Don’t be a chicken, you knew this day would come. You should have spent more time being afraid of me, instead of hurting me.”

I stop suddenly on the stairs, not realizing Nolan finally followed until he bumps into my back. He asks me something but I block him out, trying to concentrate. I close my eyes, repeating the words that just popped into my head, over and over, hoping to retrieve something else along with them. Did I say them? Did someone say them to me? Where was I? How old was I?

Just like always, my mind shuts down like someone slammed a door in my face. I let out a frustrated sigh and open my eyes, continuing the rest of the way up the stairs.

“Did you remember something else?” Nolan asks softly as he moves next to me when we get to the top.

I wave him off with my hand and head to my bedroom.

“Nothing important,” I lie, entering my room and taking a look around, trying to figure out what to move first.

“Good God,” Nolan mutters, stopping in the doorway.

His eyes are wide and his hand comes up to cover his mouth. I open my own to ask him what his problem is, quickly snapping it shut when I realize that little trip down memory lane distracted me so much that I almost forgot Nolan has never been up here before. I’m so used to staring at the huge dark stain on my window and walls that I forgot it would probably be disturbing to someone else. I wait for him to ask me why I haven’t at least tried to wash some of it off, especially the window where most of the blood and pieces of brain matter landed.

He walks up next to me and puts his arm around my shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. “This is awful, Ravenna, I’m so sorry. If you want to go in the other room, I’ll clean it up and get everything out of here, so you don’t have to be in this room any longer.”

I try not to fidget uncomfortably with the heavy weight of his arm over my shoulder, and I press my lips together tightly before I’m tempted to admit everything to him. I let him continue to assume I’ve been so distraught that I couldn’t bring myself to wash away the evidence of what my mother did. It’s probably best I don’t tell him that I never washed the window and wall because lying here in bed at night with my bright overhead light on, it calms me to stare at the mess my mother left behind. It helps me fall asleep staring at the dark red splatter, trying to find hidden shapes in the dried splotches.

The only reason I’m moving out of this bedroom is because it represents everything I’m not. It’s a daily reminder of the girl my parents tried to fool me into being. And I’m getting tired of Nolan begging me to move out several times a day.

I shrug out from under his arm and move over to my dresser. “I’m fine, Nolan, really. Let’s just get this done so we can move on to more important things.”

I open a drawer and start pulling everything out of it while Nolan goes to the bed, sliding the top mattress off and tipping it to the side before pushing it across the floor to the door.

“So what’s the plan? I’ve been thinking about everything you told me and I can’t make sense of any of it,” he tells me as he pushes the mattress out of the doorway and into the living room.

I dump the pile of clothes in my arms onto the floor and follow him out so I can point out which room I’m moving to. I walk along the tipped mattress he holds up and stop short in front of the spare room.

“Shit. I forgot the door is locked,” I complain.

Nolan leans the mattress against the back of the couch and comes up next to me. He squats down and studies the doorknob for a few seconds. The doors and matching hardware up in our living quarters are still the originals from when the prison was first built. The knob is made of thick glass, framed with an oblong brass filigree backplate that requires a skeleton key to open—a skeleton key that is on a key ring in my father’s locked office.