Page 11 of Tied

Maybe a part of me was hoping my childhood toys would be in this room. Or at least some of them. I thought for sure my favorite teddy bear that I slept with every night would be waiting here for me. Or maybe one of my favorite posters framed and hung on the wall. Something that said,This is your home. You grew up here, for a little while, and we remember.

Thankfully, my faded purple backpack and my books are hidden in my suitcase, despite my mother’s continued insistence that I get rid of them because they are filthy reminders.

Filthy reminders for her, not for me.

“If these items give her comfort, let her keep them,”Dr. Reynolds said to my mother during one of our recent therapy sessions.“She’ll let them go when she’s ready.”

Standing here in this room that isn’t mine at all, I’m not sure I’m ever going to be ready.

Later that night, after a home-cooked dinner of spaghetti and meatballs with my family and watching a cute comedy with themin the living room, Zac and Anna go home to their own apartment, almost as if they can’t leave fast enough. I get the feeling family time doesn’t happen often.

I catch Lizzie staring at me as our parents clean up the popcorn and soda from the living room. “Do you want to help me set up my new dollhouse?” she asks shyly. “I just got a couch, a fireplace that lights up, and a cat in a bed to put in it.”

Before I can answer, my mother has practically warped herself into the room with lightning speed. “Lizzie, Holly must be exhausted with it being her first day home. Maybe another time she can play with you. I’m sure she just wants to go to her room and relax.” She clears her throat. “Besides, it’s late and Grandma is coming tomorrow, so you should be getting to bed soon yourself.”

I stand. “Mom’s right,” I say, even though the last thing I want to do is go to my room and be alone. I haven’t spent the night alone in a dark room since I was in the bad place. Feather, who sleeps in the bedroom next to mine at Merryfield, is quiet like me, but she’s still good company.

Our mother visibly relaxes, like she just dodged a bullet, and I smile weakly. I wonder if she notices my smile rarely reaches my eyes. Most likely not—she never looks at me long enough to notice. I turn and give Lizzie a real smile, because she’s young and innocent in this whole mess.

“I think I’ll go to bed,” I tell Lizzie gently. “But I’d love to spend some time playing with you tomorrow if you want.” From the corner of my eye, I watch my mother’s face and, just as I suspected, she grimaces slightly at my last comment. At first, I thought I was imagining that she’s been purposely keeping Lizzie away from me, but now it’s too obvious to ignore. For some reason, she’s doing her best to keep the replacement from getting too close to the defective daughter.

The sun shining in my face awakens me, and I squint toward the window, spotting tiny flecks of dust floating in the beam of light, like microscopic faeries in flight.

Sometimes I wish I were a faery that could just fly away.

Mornings are still confusing to me, even two years after returning to society. When I was held captive, I wasn’t quite sure when I went to bed. I just slept whenever I felt tired or bored. I think I usually took a few naps during the day, but I never slept for long periods. The ritual of people going to bed at night, staying asleep, and then getting up in the morning to start a new day is still a bit hard for me to get used to.

Waking up in my dedicated weekend-visit bedroom at my parents’ house is no exception. Funny, I thought sleeping and waking here would feel different, since it’s where I slept for the first five years of my life. It’s the only place I felt safe and had a routine. I thought a certain degree of contentment would return to me, but it hasn’t. The room feels uncomfortable. The paint is too new, the bedsheets and comforter too stiff. Maybe if I had been in my old room, where Lizzie now gets to sleep and feel safe, I would feel like I was really home.

But this isn’t home, not anymore, and it scares me inside to realize that I really don’t belong anywhere. I’m still lost and alone, living an illusion, a ghost haunting my own past.

I rise from the bed, stretch, and go to the window to look at the tree-lined street of huge houses that all look mostly the same. I wonder if the prince lives in a house like that, but I quickly decide he wouldn’t. He would live in a castle on a hill that touches the clouds or in a cottage deep in the forest.

Please come get me soon,I silently beg, hoping he will somehow hear me, wherever he is.

A knock on the bedroom door distracts me from my wishful thinking. “Holly?” Mom’s voice is muffled through the door.

“Yes?”

The door opens and she walks in, smiling at first, but her expression immediately changes to disgust when she sees me at the window.

“Holly! Get away from that window. You’re barely even dressed!” she yells.

Startled, I back away from the window and look down at myself, confused. I’m wearing a long, dark blue cotton nightshirt that hangs to just above my knees. Feather sleeps in the same thing, and so do some of the girls I see on television.

I cross my arms over my chest and cower slightly. The bad posture the therapist at Merryfield tried for months to get me to change returns in an instant. “I just woke up. This is what I slept in.”

She shakes her head and raises her hand to her mouth. “You cannot walk around like that. You’re a young woman and shouldn’t be half naked. Didn’t they teach you that?”

I blink at her, completely confused.

“How many times, little girl, have I told you not to stand unless I tell you to?”

“Um… I don’t remember anyone telling me what to sleep in… It was in the pajama section of the store, though. Feather got one, too.”

“I don’t care what Feather does. I’m going to buy you some proper nightclothes.” She crosses the room to pull the curtains over the window. “Please don’t stand like that by the window. You don’t want the neighbors to see you, do you? It’s bad enough they know what… what happened to you,” she stammers. “We don’t need to feed the gossip hounds.”

“I’m sorry. I only wanted to see outside.” Windows are still something I consider a luxury, along with everything that comes with them. Like the sun, and the clouds, and birds, and the sky. And air.

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