Collared(10)

And when the dreams remind me of the life I had, I convince myself that it’s nothing more than a dream. I’m more convincing now than I used to be.

I flip on the overhead kitchen light, and sterile florescent light floods the room. It’s too bright, but at least I’m allowed to turn on lights whenever I want to. I feel like I lived in the dark for years. The kind of dark that was so disorienting I lost my sense of what was up and what was down. My eyesight had paid a price. Being stuck in that kind of dark for however long I was messed with my long-distance vision. I probably have the eyesight of an eighty-year-old now.

That’s okay though because now I can turn on the light whenever I want. I sleep with the light on too.

I try to ignore the framed photos hanging on the wall behind the small dining table, but I’m never successful. As I reach for the white loaf of bread in the cupboard, I find myself staring at those two photos. I move to the old tan fridge to grab the pack of bologna and bottle of yellow mustard, still staring at those photos. I’ve made this bologna sandwich so many times I can do it and still keep staring at that wall.

Behind the glass of those brass frames are the faces of two girls. Well, one girl if you ask him. I guess most people would look at the two girls and believe they were the same, one photo taken a few years before the other. Hell, there have been days I’ve convinced myself of that to see if it makes things easier. Sometimes it does, at least for a while—until another one of those dreams shatters that feigned reality.

The younger girl has the same light brown hair that lightens in the sun that I have. The same green-blue, wide-set eyes. She even has the same bone structure. That girl is smiling, the kind that’s real because it hits her eyes. It’s clearly a school picture with one of those swirly bluish backgrounds. She’s wearing a lavender shirt and a matching headband.

The older girl in the photo a few inches to the right is wearing the same kind of shirt and matching headband. Her hair’s draped in front of her shoulders, the same as in the other photo. The same background, the same hair, eyes, and face . . . the only thing that’s different is the smile.

The older girl is smiling, but it doesn’t hit her eyes. In fact, that girl’s eyes look dead, like whatever lights used to burn behind them had been blown out like a birthday candle.

I force myself to look away because I have the urge to throw the chipped white plate I’m making the bologna sandwich on at the photo of the older girl in the hopes that the frame will shatter. The girl in that picture’s broken—it seems unfair that the photo of her would tell a different story.

I hear the floor creak upstairs as he moves across the room. This is an old house. I don’t know for sure, but I guess it’s at least a hundred years old. It creaks a lot. In a storm, it makes so much noise it feels like it has a life of its own.

A minute later, as I’m portioning out a handful of plain potato chips on the plate, I hear the rush of water through the pipes snaking through the walls. The news on at twelve, bathroom break at 12:25, lunch at twelve thirty.

I remind myself that predictability is a good thing. Knowing what to expect is better than knowing nothing.

I pad back across the weathered wood floors to the fridge and trade the bologna and mustard for the gallon of milk. Always milk. With every meal. With every snack. Milk. So much milk I’ve had nightmares of drowning in it.

I pour him a tall cup of it and slide the almost empty jug back in the fridge. He can’t go without his milk, which means he’ll have to make a run to the store soon. He leaves the house sometimes. Usually once a week. It’s only for a couple of hours at the most, but those are my hours. The ones I can do what I want without the fear of him peeking over my shoulder and not liking whatever I’m in the middle of.

The last time he caught me doing something he didn’t approve of, he had me make a fire in the wood stove and forced me to rip apart the picture I’d spent the last week of nights sketching. He made me watch each piece go up in flames while I repeated over and over that that was my old life—ripped to pieces, burned apart, nothing but a pile of charred ashes.

Now when I draw, I make sure to keep one ear tuned to the stairs that lead upstairs to his bedroom. At the slightest creak, I gather everything up and stuff it into the very back of the game cupboard because I know he’ll never look there. He doesn’t like playing games. At least the kind on boards.

There’s an old box television in the living room, but it doesn’t work anymore. It used to, and sometimes when he left, I’d flip it on and tweak the antennas enough to get reception on a channel or two. It was usually always a news channel though, and the news was just too depressing. Especially when, for those first years, the faces of my past were there, talking about not giving up hope or holding my photo at some candlelight vigil with tears in their eyes.

It might have comforted some in my situation to know that they weren’t forgotten—that people still cared—but it did the opposite for me. I didn’t want them to keep looking, because I knew what they didn’t—I’d never be found. He’d never let it happen. He’d told me so. He hadn’t just told me that—he’d shown me. He’d been showing me for years.

People could look for me, but they’d never find me.

His lunch was ready. I set it on the table, at the same chair as always, tucking a paper napkin under the right side of the plate.