Her round, lens-filled frames resting comfortably on her nose make her brown eyes evident, and the slight breeze from the open window causes her page-cut brown hair to look as if it’s floating. She remains silent, and my stomach twists in discomfort, unable to find ease in my seat. Her expectant gaze directs at me, almost like she wants me to say something, but I cannot comprehend what she expects me to say. The friendly façade she’d worn since I stepped into this office abruptly vanishes when impatience fills her expression, which only heightens my discomfort. For that brief second, I’m able to see the true nature in her eyes, as if they are twinkling with the need to tell me the truth about her. Then, the facade collapses again, and only kindness emanates from her eyes now. It all makes me feel entirely weirded out.
I’m aware that my paranoia is getting the better of me, and I know it was likely just my imagination that made me think I saw something in her eyes. Growing up in the shadows, with no guiding light, you learn to believe that everyone is untrustworthy and all sincerity is just an act.
“So, Lily–”
My body tenses at the name. I remember hearing Emilio Ricci say that name that first day in the basement, and it feels so familiar that I’m sure I have come across it somewhere. While my memories of my time before here are hazy, I know I hate that name deeply. It’s a name I never want to hear again, but I cannot understand why that is.
“Why does everyone keep calling me that?” I ask her instead, almost as if I expect a reply from her, but she raises her eyebrows and looks at me with curiosity.
I divert my focus back to the fingers in my grasp, attempting to block out the heat of her stare that makes my sweatpants feel on fire. A steady ticking noise echoes around the room, keeping me from focusing on anything as memories plague me. The clock sounds exactly like that old grandfather clock at Grimhill Manor that witnessed too many deaths.
It takes several minutes before she answers–I counted two hundred and thirty ticks of the clock–and she seems to choose her following words carefully.
“Hmm, that’s weird. Your file says your name is Lily, but that can’t be right, can it?”
That’s another weird thing. How can they access my file? I’ve been a ghost to the outside world for years.
“Did the court send me here?” As I speak, my voice cracks with insecurity, my head overflowing with questions.
She gives me a puzzled look. “Excuse me?”
That reply confirms it. This is an entirely different operation than the court. There is something weird about the way I remember certain things, fears that have settled down inside my soul as if my brain makes me remember those horrors, as if it does everything except forget. For some reason, a few of the less significant memories I have from a long time ago are still fuzzy.
“Nothing,” I mutter quietly.
Her gaze lingers on me like she’s trying to uncover the truth in my expression. “What’s your name then?”
“Naya,” I answer immediately, without hesitation.
But then it falls on me, and I hear the fabric rustle as I shrug my shoulders in a gesture of seeming unapproachable. To be candid, I hardly recognize myself; feeling like a stranger in my own skin, with no clue why I’m here or still alive.
I have been living in a state of unbearable agony for days–why put myself through this any longer?
There is an entire world out there.
Yes, but sometimes that’s not enough.
“Okay, Naya,” the woman begins before clasping her hands in front of her and leaning forward, coming closer to me. “I’m Doctor Lewis, and will be your tutor and psychologist from now on.”
A wave of power and might envelop me in the sound of her words.
“Baby, you need to focus on the psychiatrist,” the woman’s nasal voice fills my ears, but all I want to do is put my hands over them to block out the sound.
Although I refrain, scared of the consequences of not obeying her. I look at the psychologist sitting before me, a man in his sixties without hair. He casts a salacious gaze in my direction, and his thoughts are written all over his face. The old man’s age is quadruple mine, yet the woman beside me easily brushes off the stares. Her only goal is to make it through unharmed.
She doesn’t care about me.
She never did.
“So, you are experiencing something called post-traumatic stress syndrome,” he starts and scribbles something onto his note. “It’s understandable since you recently found out about your father’s tragic death.”
His words echo in my head, a person who thinks he knows everything about me and can diagnose me with something I don’t even know what it is.
It wasn’t a tragedy!I want to scream at him and lash out, throw the chair in his head until he passes out, and then grab his papers and tear them into a thousand pieces. Erase his words from existence.
He was fucking murdered!I feel my mouth go dry as I struggle to find the words to say, so instead, I nod my head in a feeble attempt to satisfy the woman standing next to me.
“It must be terrible to know that your father took his own life.”
