My father whips me around
to face him and slaps my face hard. I taste blood on my lip and I think of the
blood that is covering Jacob’s face. Fire courses through my veins, and it
gives me courage.
“You’re a murderer!” I
shout at my father. “You killed Jacob!”
“You don’t understand
anything,” he spits out.
My stomach caves in from
his punch, and I double over in pain. A tremendous blow to my head causes my
vision to go blur and then everything goes black.
“Lila,” someone whispers
into the stillness. “Lila.”
For a moment, I shudder
and believe that I am hearing the voice again. Then a warm hand settles on my
shoulder and I know it is Jacob. He gently pulls me back around a corner,
keeping silent. When we stop, I turn around and see his face in the moonlight.
He smiles and draws me close. With my face hidden against his chest, I let
relief flood my features. He is alive. He whispers my name into my ear and a
different kind of shiver runs through me. But his next words erase the brief
feeling of happiness I’d experienced just a moment ago.
When I open my eyes again, there is only a small bit
of light coming from somewhere a ways away. I immediately tense and my hands go
out in front of me to test the darkness surrounding me.
“You
are failing and he is too,” the voice whispers.
I
shut my eyes tightly and battle the instinct to curl up on the ground with my
hands over my head to shut out whatever new horror the voice has come to show
me.
“Go
see what you are causing him to endure,” the voice prods.
I
slowly walk towards the light and I realize what I am about to see. It is the
same room as before, where Jacob sits in a chair. His hands are in steel cuffs
and so are his feet. A hooded man stands before a steel tray with various
torture devices. Once again, I cannot reach him though a barrier that I assume
is reinforced glass.
Boo!” Alya shouts in my
ear.
I let out a surprised
scream and my heart jumps. “Don’t do that,” I protest. “Unless you want to give
me a heart attack.”
Alya grabs her heart and
acts like she’s being electrocuted. “Oh, oh, oh!” She falls on the floor.
I clap my hands. “You get
the award for worst heart attack ever.”
Alya acts offended. “How
rude.”
“Ah, here we are. Osweil, Sarah,” the woman says,
reaching up to take down a file. “Let’s go back to the desk and look at it.”
She
gets me a chair from somewhere –I have no idea where –and then flips open the
file. Her brow furrows and she rifles through the sheets. Then she meets my
eyes, looking concerned.
“I
don’t know what to tell you, dear. Her file is empty.”
My
heart stops. “What?”
She
holds it up for me to see. “Her file is full of blank papers.”
I twirl the necklace around my finger as a dozen
different opening sentences run through my head.
“I
should have never given you that,” my father says.
I
look down and realize what I was doing. I seize the opportunity.
“I
can’t tell if you’re right or not because you never speak about my mother.”
My
father’s jaw tightens. “You don’t want to know about her.”
“Her
name was Sarah,” I say very, very quietly.
“No!”
my father yells and lunges towards me. He grabs my shoulders and shakes me.
“No! Don’t say her name. You can’t say her name!”
“Do you have pictures?” I ask eagerly. “What did I
look like as a baby?”
My
aunt stares at me. “Lila, are you telling me that you haven’t seen any pictures
of yourself from when your mother was alive?”
I
shake my head. “No, I don’t know what she looks like,” I say as my voice
catches.
We all file back into the common room, where Kent
dismisses us. I head out towards the door as fast as I can, but Kent still
catches me.
“Did
I cut your wrist?” he asks.
“No,”
I say, turning away from him and moving to leave the room.
“Miss
Osweil,” he says quietly.
I
stop and suppress a sigh as I turn around.
His
eyebrows come together slightly. “I only wanted to see if you were what I
thought you were.”
~Clarissa
