Pride and accomplishment rushes through you, causing the smallest of smiles to appear. When you came home from Sacred Heart you immediately delved back into writing. The words became filled with the darkness of your heart and the blood running through your veins. If you’re ever going to have a magnum opus, this book is the one.
Why? Because this is more than just a story.
You wrote this book because the truth gets lost inside of rumors. Trapped inside of souls. You didn’t want that to be a possibility for you.
You have no kids but you imagine that this is just a small portion of what a parent feels toward their child. You put the heavy stack of pages in your messenger bag and leave the library. Before you go, you give the librarian a small smile. Like everyone else she only knows your story through the media’s eyes, but she’s always been so nice to you so you’re nice to her.
When the Dateline episode aired in late March you were still at Sacred Heart. The episode brought a whole new round of magazines covering the story and journalists wanting to talk to you. It’s now July and the media is still knocking on your door for a chance to get an exclusive interview with you.
Through Sam, you declined each and every interview. She stepped up and became a watchdog for you. She told the journalists you had no comment. Once you were discharged from Sacred Heart she pleaded with you to find an apartment and to continue therapy sessions with a psychotherapist.
You agreed to everything.
Sam found you a small, one bedroom apartment in Mt. Zion. It was in a fairly quiet area, where no one would hound you or stare at you with fascination. Sam found furniture for you. It was minimal. (Personally, I think she was afraid that more items and furniture would lead to you hoarding like your mom.) Overall, she created a cozy place for you.
Of course, people still recognized you. Some of them were bold enough to talk to you. ‘I’m sorry,’ they’d say quietly, but you don’t know if they meant it. The words were instinctual, like saying ‘bless you’ after someone sneezes. You always said ‘thank you’ and hurried away.
Some days were good for you. On those days you talked your psychotherapist’s ear off or happily answered the psychiatrist’s questions about the medication she prescribed for you. She recommended consistent treatments.
But on those bad days? Oh, your thoughts were dangerous. You felt uncontrollable and downright dangerous to yourself and others. It scared me. Hell, it scared you, too, because if you hadn’t sought treatment and just lived in your own world, there wasn’t much chance that you’d make it out alive.
It’s been a while now. Long enough for the drugs to kick in. You’re taking upwards of 1000 mg of Seroquel a day. And let’s not forget Remeron. At night, the sleeping pills make you drowsy before they knock you out, but you always wake up thinking of your mom, convinced it was a bad dream before reality sinks in again.
Something has to give.
I know the danger of giving you too many gifts now. So I bestowed my last gift as an idea: move out of your apartment. Move out of Decatur altogether. You love that idea and spend days on the Internet searching for places you can settle in. Wherever it is, you know it isn’t going to be in Illinois.
Ultimately, you settle on Kokomo, Indiana. It’s small enough not to be considered a big city and big enough to be considered a town.
I tell you to stop taking your medication. Because what people don’t understand is that drugs are just a band-aid placed over agony. They may hide it and a lot of times, numb it. But at the end of the day the agony’s still there. Still waiting for you.
You don’t tell Sam any of this.
You throw your medicine in the trash.
You pay next month’s rent. You place it in an envelope along with your apartment keys before licking it shut. You drop it off at the community center.
According to your navigation system, the drive to your mother’s house takes approximately fifteen minutes. Twelve, if traffic is good. You make it in nine. (You told yourself not to speed but you couldn’t help it). It has been months since you’ve seen the house.
We miss it so much. I swear we sigh in unison when you pull onto the street; it doesn’t matter what heinous moments happened here. There is something indescribable that keeps us tethered here. You park near the sidewalk instead of in the driveway.
There’s a Brinkoetter Real Estate sign planted in the front yard. The grass is a healthy green thanks to a good amount of rain. The oak trees are once again covered with leaves that gently sway in the direction of the house, almost as though they’re pointing you toward the door. When you step out of the car you hear the birds chirping. The wind carries the sound of kids’ laughter and lawnmowers.
When Sam decided to put the house on the market the real estate agent gave her a key to the lock box. She also, albeit reluctantly, gave you a key. I think she thought you were going to become a squatter and refuse to leave, but you’re proud of yourself that this is the first time you’ve used this key.
The door easily opens and when you step inside you’re momentarily frozen in confusion; this isn’t the house you grew up in. It’s a cleaner, sleeker version. It looks like it belongs on one of those before and after shows on HGTV.
It has Sam written all over it.
It’s been staged to the nines to attract more buyers but you’re skeptical. You imagine that once people discover what happened behind closed doors they’ll become too nervous to buy it.
The floors are real hardwood and the walls have a fresh coat of off- white paint. Windows have been replaced. So have the holes in the walls. The putrid smell is gone. The old bannister that was on its last leg has been replaced. Your hand curls around it as you slowly walk up the stairs.
The walls start to speak.
You hear the laughter and giggles of you and Sam as you both raced up the stairs. You can smell your mom’s famous meatloaf and it’s so real that your stomach rumbles. The flash of a camera goes off behind you. You turn around and see your sixteen-year-old self standing on the stairway with your date. Your mom takes pictures as he puts the corsage on your left wrist.
The memories make you smile faintly. You continue up the stairs and go directly to the your old room. The team Sam hired to stage the house put a simple twin bed up against the window and dresser on the opposite side of the room. Even though there’s fresh carpet a rug has been placed in the middle of the floor. You wonder if Sam had anything to do with that.
When you go back into the hall, you look to your right. The master bedroom door is open but you can’t walk down there. The emotions swirling through you are ones that I deal with every damn day. Surprise. Nostalgia. Sadness. Fear. Some of them I’m closer to, like sadness. The bond we’ve created can’t be helped. When a person experiences trauma like you have, it’s impossible for the human psyche to go back to normal.
You slowly make your way down the stairs and realize that even the front door has been replaced. How did you miss that? You must have been too busy trying to get inside. The door is one of those ‘fancy ones’ as your mom would’ve called it. It’s a stained mahogany, four-panel print with sidelites.
The dinning room table is staged, making it look like some fancy dinner is minutes away from starting. You marvel at how clean the table is. You sit in one of the chairs. It’s stiff, from lack of use. You stare at the grainy wood of the table surface. When it was just you the dinning room table was so packed with junk you could barely put your plate down.
You get up and tour the kitchen. Sam had someone do a full gut because it doesn’t even look the same. There’s new flooring, new cabinets and appliances. New countertops, too. But the biggest difference is the wall that’s been removed, replaced now by a kitchen island.
You have to tip your hat in Sam’s direction; she did an amazing job.
You close the front door and make sure to lock it behind you. Your head is held high as you walk down the sidewalk, past the FOR SALE sign in front of the yard. You cross the road to
ward Noah’s house. You know he’s at work so your steps are sure, confident even.
Instead of moving toward the door, you stop in front of the mailbox. You take one of the heavy manila packages and put it inside. You don’t worry about how long your manuscript will stay out here, neglected. Noah’s responsible and he’ll have the pages in his hands within a few hours.
For a brief second you shudder with relief and fear because everything you could never say aloud—all the pain and dark thoughts—is written in black ink and enclosed in this package. You give the weather-beaten mailbox a small tap before you hurry back to your childhood home and put the house keys where they’ve remained hidden for years: beneath the door mat. You don’t need them anymore.
You move toward your car. The second folder is in your arms. As you back out of the driveway you keep the folder in your lap. Once you’re on the outskirts of Wildwood you pull over to the side of the road, in front of the blue collection mailbox. The package is addressed to Sam Gulick.
Just like the first package, you hesitate for a second. You’re so nervous to send out your manuscripts you think you might vomit. It’s one thing to write your feelings down but a whole other matter to send them out into the world where anyone can see them. Feel them.
You’re so nervous because you know you’re strange, not altogether whole. Your brain is constantly on the go. You can’t help but wonder what it would be like if I could step outside your body and show you everything you’re doing wrong. It’s in interesting idea, but who’s to say that I’d want to step back in?
Dark things live inside of you, Selah. But I’m part of that darkness.
“Fuck it. Just do it,” I urge you.
“Fuck it,” you mutter to yourself as you drop the package off. You take a deep breath because you can’t take it back. It’s officially out of your hands.
Your hands curl tightly around the steering wheel as you drive out of Wildwood. You go ten over the speed limit. You’re driving like someone on a mission. A person who’s late to something important.
You drive into South Shores when the light goes red.
You turn your head to the left and see a woman behind the wheel of a silver mini van. One hand is curled tightly around the steering wheel and the other is wildly waving around. Her eyes are glued to the rear view mirror. She’s probably yelling at her kids. Maybe she has one. Or maybe four.
Either way, she looks close to tearing her hair out.
Seconds later she looks forward and closes her eyes. Then she turns and her eyes connect with yours. She looks at you with envy because you’re alone in your car and she’d do anything to get a break from the kids screaming in the back of her car. And you’d do anything to have a solid family. Maybe a kid or two, but you don’t think those cards are in your future; you’re not stable enough for a man, let alone kids.
You want to tell her to hold on a bit longer. You want to tell her that she’s lucky because much worse things are happening in the world to people. Yet that’s the thing about pain; it’s equal opportunity and yet never strikes every person the same.
I whisper into your ear that what needs to change is everyone. Everyone needs to acknowledge that everyone is fucked up. Everyone is broken. Everyone is going through their own shit. And that’s okay.
So you give her the faintest of smiles, to let her know that it’s all right. For a brief second her face slightly relaxes and she smiles back. I feel momentarily proud. Two strangers connecting.
The light turns green.
Purposely, you keep your foot on the brake and wait for her to pass. People behind you start to honk their horns. You put the turn signal on and merge in behind the van. You don’t focus on her van, though. In fact, you barely notice it. You have tunnel vision, convinced that what’s been done is done. And what will be will be.
You near the next intersection. The light is red but then suddenly turns green. Your heart speeds up because you think it’s a sign.
Go, go, go as fast as you can.
You press down on the gas, inching closer and closer to the South Shores Bridge. Seconds before you rear end the Sienna you make a sharp left. Your body moves left and right and if it weren’t for your seatbelt you would pitch forward. The front bumper makes a hideous screeching sound as it hits the sidewalk.
Your foot never leaves the gas pedal. It’s pressed all the way down. You have no intention of letting up.
You keep the steering wheel turned right and burst through the guardrail. Your car flies into the air. It feels like minutes but it’s only seconds that your car hovers in the air.
Before you crash into the water, you close your eyes. There’s a moment of fear. A moment where you want to back out. Maybe life will be easier. You can turn it all around!
But then I ask you the most important question that you’ll ever be asked: do we really want to go through this darkness and pain for the rest of our lives?
And for one second we think in unison.
“No,” you whisper.
“No,” I whisper back.
Some people are just not meant for this world.
A HUGE thank you goes out to my beta readers: Darla Williams, Tosha Khoury, Vanessa Proehl, Holli Buck, and Alyssa Cole. Thank you so much for reading through the rough draft of Selah’s story, giving me your honest feedback and being so supportive. It means the world to me.
Thank you to Anna from Cover Couture for creating an AMAZING cover for Figure Eight. I absolutely love it. You did an amazing job!
Thank you to Mare Piquette Editing for doing such a fantastic job!
Thank you to Angela from Fictional Formats for making Figure Eight so pretty.
A big thank you to Autumn H. from Wordsmith Publicity for all her hard work. I appreciate it SO much!
Last, but not least: thank you to my husband, Joshua for watching the kids and playing both Dad and Mom while I was in my own world. Most of all, thank you for believing in this book.
College seemed like too much stress for me. Traveling across the world, getting married, and having four kids seemed much more relaxing.
Yeah, I’m still waiting for the relaxing part to kick in…
I change addresses every other year. It’s not by choice but it is my reality.
While the crazies of life kept me busy, the stories in my head decided to bubble to the surface. They were dying to be told and I was dying to tell them.
I hope you’ll enjoy escaping to the crazy world of these characters with me!
For more information on Calia Read visit her blog.
caliareadsandwrites.blogspot.de/
Or visit her Author Page on Facebook
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Follow Calia on Twitter
@ailacread
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Unravel
Unhinge
Calia Read, Figure Eight
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