Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 64031 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64031 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
“Dad?” I dare to speak up, and he dares to ignore me.
“Block off the hall and kill anyone who enters.” He doesn’t speak to me. Only to Nikolai.
A crease lines the center of Nik’s forehead as he gestures to the phone in his hand, the screen of it brightening with notifications every few seconds. “There’s no sign of anyone-”
“I know! You don’t think I saw the messages?” my father screams at him with hurried words. Anger and fear lace his expression, but this time, Nik doesn’t object. All I see is his back as his determined stride leads him away from me and out of the room.
Leaving me alone with my father.
I’m still on the ground, waiting for another sign of what’s to come when my father tosses something across the room. It lands hard in front of me, maybe a foot away and again, I’m scared shitless. My stupid heart won’t quit trying to escape my chest.
This is what war is, but I don’t know how much more of it I can take.
“Your journal,” my father says. “You should take it while you still can.” I can hardly make out his words, let alone what the item is with the adrenaline and fear spiking through me. My sketch notebook I’ve long lost, the notebook that started all of this.
I’m still struck with betrayal at the knowledge that it was Nikolai. That all this shit started with him luring me out and letting me believe it was someone I loathed, someone who would have damaged it just to get a rise out of me, or worse, burned it or thrown it away, simply because he could. Knowing it wasn’t Mika, and that it was Nikolai makes me hold the sketchbook tighter. I believe in fate and that everything happens for a reason.
The front cover is nothing special. Merely an array of wildflowers painted in watercolors. It came that way. But inside its pages are sketches of the world I used to live in. The one kept safe in the confines of my bedroom on the other side of the estate. Fantasies I dared to dream. And lives I’ve never lived.
As I stare at the journal, I realize how much has changed so quickly. But one thing never has. It will never change.
“I thought there would be clues as to where you’d gone,” my father tells me, explaining why he has it. Nikolai stole it from me. As I crawl closer to it, clutching it close, I’m still reeling from his confession.
“Is Mom’s picture still inside?” I somehow get the courage to ask him.
My father only stares at me, a hard gaze that I can’t place. It’s almost shame, almost hate that comes from him and I don’t know why. He doesn’t answer me, forcing me to swallow with a dry mouth and throat as I scoot closer to the notebook and let the pages flick by my fingers until they land on the same spot I’d last seen. The one where I drew her, but the picture isn’t there.
Just as the sharp gouge in my chest seems to deepen, the edges of the pages fall from the pad of my thumb until they stop, revealing the picture tucked tightly just behind the front cover.
The kind eyes of my mother gaze at me, in black and white, and the memories of her dance in the back of my mind. When the days were not as long and filled with the terror they bear today.
Back when I knew I was safe and loved and nothing bad would happen, and yet it was all a lie.
With a small, sad smile, I swallow the dryness in my throat and pick up the picture to show my father, while whispering a ragged, “Thank you.”
A cold prick sweeps over my shoulders, causing a shudder to run down my spine until I tuck the photo back away. It’s an odd feeling. One that reminds me of how I felt in the bathroom this morning in Carter’s room. A feeling like someone else is here.
“She was always so beautiful.” My father’s statement is hard. Not an ounce of emotion given to the words. Again my eyes find her photo on the wall, a younger version of my mother, hung beside the photo of Carter’s home.
“She was,” I speak without consent and then nod my chin toward the wall, and as I do, someone yells from down the hall. It sounds more like a command than anything else, somewhere off in the distance, but it’s all I’ve heard since the ground stopped shaking.
I wait a moment, my body still, wanting to know more of what’s going on, but my father doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t seem to react at all to what’s going on outside of this room, and I don’t understand why.