Bury Me(55)

Why is all of this information so important? Is it jealousy because I had a normal, happy childhood? I want to feel sympathy that I obviously had such a better life, but it’s so hard to do this. It’s not my fault I had it better. It’s not my fault this house is filled with photos of happy times and happy memories. My parents won’t stop hovering, and it’s driving me insane. I know they feel bad for lying, but I can’t forgive them. I’m so angry that everything in those happy photos and wonderful memories has been tainted by a secret they kept hidden.

They want me to be polite and accommodating, just as they raised me to be. Show that I’m the bigger person and make the best of this situation. It’s the only reason I’ve agreed to go exploring in the basement when my parents leave for dinner. I hate going down there, but I’ll do it if it finally stops all the questions. I’ll go down into the basement and fight through my fears. I refuse to be called a chicken or accused of being afraid to take chances. Just because I wear nice dresses, keep my hair perfectly neat, and behave like a proper young lady should, doesn’t mean I’m scared to be adventurous. I will go down into the basement, not because I was teased into it, but because I’m tired of always being labeled as the good girl. I’m going to prove I can be bad too.

Crumbling the journal page in my fist, I toss it across the room in frustration. Why was I so cryptic when I wrote in that stupid journal? I mention how my life suddenly changed and lies my parents told, but I never say what the lies were. Did I find out about Tobias before I lost my memory? Is that why I ran out into the woods and someone tried to hurt me? Has my mother been the guilty party this entire time? She admitted to pushing me into the lake and apologized for her sins and weaknesses. When I found out about Tobias, I assumed all of that talk was about her affair with him all those years ago and never telling me he could be my real father. Maybe her sins went beyond that. Maybe I found out about Tobias before that night, and she was afraid I’d tell my father. It would explain how differently I started acting a few weeks before. It would explain my sudden interest in Nolan, the change in clothes and hairstyle, and the fighting with Trudy.

Maybe my mind started fracturing before I even ran into the woods that night. According to the journal page I just read, my life had been turned upside down by something. If I was still a normal, good girl when I found out the man who raised me for eighteen years wasn’t really my father, I’m guessing that would have changed everything for me. Especially if I knew about Tobias’s past and the type of person he was.

“Are you okay, Ravenna? I can’t even remember the last time you were in one of the cell blocks.”

My father’s voice suddenly fills my head, and I think back to those first few days after the accident and the day I went to see him in the cell block while he prepared for a tour. Even then, so early on, when I was still covered in scratches and bruises and still had a bandage covering the gash on my head, nothing felt right, and the things he said to me felt like lies. I pushed those feelings aside, though, and blamed them on my jumbled brain.

I run out of my room and down the stairs, holding tightly to the banister when I get to the bottom as I swing around and head to the back of the first floor. Racing through the halls, I pass by the secretary’s office, and then the storage room filled with boxes of shirts, coffee cups, and other items to restock the gift shop, and I don’t stop until I get to the fork in the hallway. To the left is the west cell block and to the right is the east. I turn to the right, moving past the old guard station where new prisoners were checked in before being led to their cells, and through the alcove leading right into the east cell block.

“I can’t even remember the last time you were in one of the cell blocks.”

I hear my father’s words again, and I move silently across the cement floor, like I did that day I decided I was tired of being cooped up in my room and decided to go on a walk around the prison. I remember feeling like his words didn’t make sense because this area felt so familiar to me, especially one cell in particular. That day in this cavernous room, five stories tall of row after row of tiny rooms where killers and rapists and other dregs of society lived out their days, I glanced inside each dilapidated cell just like I do now, looking at mangled bed frames, cracked and stained toilets, and stone walls that are crumbling, leaving behind piles of rocks and dust on the floor.

Just like that day when my father told me I’d never been in this area, a particular cell halfway down the row calls to me. It beckons me closer and I have no choice but to go to it. My feet automatically stop in front of cell number sixty-six, the number etched into the top middle of the steel frame around the cell door.