The screwdriver was smal er than I needed, so I had to press on one side to get the screw to rotate at al . Once the first screw became loose enough to use my thumb and finger to make more progress, it didn’t take long for it to drop into my hand. I began working on the other screw, and after two laborious turns my right hand slipped. Trying to catch myself, my palm grated against the edge of the vent, and the ragged edge of metal sliced through my skin.
I pul ed my hand back with a gasp, watching the blood ooze from the cut and drip down my forearm toward my elbow in a thick, red line.
“Ow! Sssshhhhoooot!” I cried, bending at the waist.
I climbed down to grab a wad of tissue and held it tightly in my hand, unwil ing to give up.
Tissues in hand, I tried to fit the screwdriver into the tiny slot at the best angle possible for traction. When I pressed against the side of the screw, I leaned into the movement and the wheels of the chair shifted. Before I could right myself, the chair jerked from under me and I tumbled down, smacking my elbow on the floor.
It took a moment for the pain to register, and once the sharp stabbing sensation shot up my arm, I closed my eyes. “Ow,” I whimpered. Once I could think about something other than the pain, I hobbled back onto the chair.
Tugging the vent loose, I inched up on my tip toes to peer inside. My heart skipped a beat when I saw a tiny black object nestled in the decades of dust. I reached inside the vent and pinched the smal piece of plastic, tugging on it once before it gave way. I pul ed it toward me and brought it into view; Jared’s miniature microphone.
Overwhelmed by the undeniable truth I held in my hand, I pul ed the mic down with me as I slumped to the chair. Jared could hear me and was aware of what I had done. Coupled with the pain in my arm, the fact that he was just on the other side of this device made my eyes wel over with tears.
“Jared?” I breathed, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “I know you can hear me.” I sighed, closing my eyes. “I don’t know what she said to you. I don’t care, I just…,” I trailed off as my voice broke, “I miss you,” I whispered. “What are you doing? Al that talk about growing old together and being honest? And now you’re going to listen to her and walk away?
“Wil you please just....” I struggled to form the words. “Wil you please just talk to me? Please?”
I watched my cel phone, praying, wil ing it to light up and ring. An eternity passed, but it lay on my nightstand, stil and dark.
I wiped the moisture from my eyes, looking up at the wire spiraling down from the ceiling. Anger surged through my veins and I stood up, yanking on the wire over and over until it final y ripped from its source. I noticed the frayed edge of the end of the wire and wiped my face once more, satisfied.
It wasn’t fair that he could hear me when I was alone.
A buzzing noise came from the night table and I stiffened. It buzzed again and I threw the wire down, nearly tripping over it to reach the phone before I missed the cal .
“Jared?” I breathed.
“It’s uh…it’s Ryan. Sorry.”
“No! Don’t be sorry,” I sniffed.
“Are you okay? You sound like you’ve been crying.”
“Was there a reason you cal ed?” I wasn’t in the mood to discuss my latest moment of insanity.
“Yes,” he hesitated, “I’m being released in the morning.”
“Oh. Oh yeah, okay. I’l come in the morning, then. Did you let everyone else know or should I cal them?” I asked, hoping he would catch the meaning.
“I just started making the cal s.”
He’d cal ed me first. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
“Nina?”
“Mmmhmm?” I said, distracted by the wire curled and arched beside my bed.
“Tel me why you’re upset. Is it Jared?” My silence was al the answer he needed. “I could kil him for doing this to you,” he growled.
“It’s not his fault, Ryan. I’ve told you, it’s complicated.”
Ryan sighed, accepting my vague reply. “I’l see you in the morning.”
Friday was easier than I thought it would be, with the six of us choreographing Ryan’s on-the-fly homecoming party. We caravanned to the hospital; bal oons and shoe polish decorated our cars. The windows of Josh’s truck vibrated to the beat of “Paradise City” as Tucker wheeled Ryan out of the double doors of the hospital. We al whistled and clapped as Ryan lumbered into Josh’s passenger side.
“C’mon, Nina,” Ryan smiled, gesturing for me to accompany him. When I scooted in next to him, Ryan weakly lifted his arm to the top of the seat behind me. We giggled and joked al the way to Brown, and the seven of us made our way to Ryan’s room.
“It looks like a parade threw up in here,” Ryan said, beaming. He hobbled over to his desk chair and fel into it, visibly spent.
We sat and talked, and then Beth, Chad and Tucker left for class. Thirty minutes later, Kim and Josh had classes of their own to go to.
“What did you do to your hand?” Ryan asked, staring at my messily bandaged palm.
“I sliced it on the air vent in my room,” I shrugged.
“Ouch. Are you al caught up on your tetanus shots?”
I nodded. “I’l come by later, okay? We have a lot of work to do.”
“You have class?” he asked, disappointed.
“I’ve had class for the last two hours, Ryan,” I grinned.
“Thanks for today. Maybe we could do this every month.”
“Okay, but I’m not volunteering to get stabbed next time. Or ever.” I hugged him and an awkward pause fol owed when I pul ed away. “You take it easy. I’l come over later and we can study.”
Ryan watched me with a soft expression as I walked to the door. “See you later, Nigh.”
I pul ed his door closed and let out a gust of air. I couldn’t be sure if it was guilt or the look in Ryan’s eyes after I’d hugged him, but everything felt different when we were alone. I forgot about angels and demons and feeling unwanted. In Ryan’s presence, life was normal.
Soon after class began, my thoughts zeroed in on Jared. I clenched my eyes shut when I thought about the night before. I had probably relieved him of any regret he might have felt after my antics. The professor’s voice blurred into the background, and I took shal ow breaths to keep the tears from forming; it was embarrassing enough that everyone peered over their shoulders at me every day as if I’d gone crazy, the last thing I needed was to break down in class.
In the solitude of my room, I let the tears flow. I was glad that Jared couldn’t hear me. I had become a blubbering, pathetic mess. My eyes drifted to the vent to see that the cover was securely fastened to the ceiling. My eyebrows pressed inward. I was too exhausted the night before to replace it.
Scrambling to the floor, I lifted my comforter to peer under the bed where I had hidden the frayed carcass of the wire. I gritted my teeth seeing that the only thing under my bed was a lone sock surrounded by a herd of dust bunnies.
Jared or Claire had come into my room while I was gone and replaced the mic. I looked to the ceiling, bal ing my hands into fists at my sides. “Stay out of my room!”
The screwdriver was missing from the top drawer of my dresser as wel . I had left it there for safe keeping until I could replace the vent cover. I burst into the hal way, letting the door crack against the wal . Anger fueled my march to the RA’s room and I pounded on her door.
She opened it with the same impassive look on her face as before. “Yeah?”
I sighed. “Dara! Oh good, you’re here. Um, I seemed to have lost your screwdriver. Do you think I could borrow another one? And, I need a bigger one this time.”
“You lost one of my screwdrivers and you want to borrow another one?”
“Yes,” I said, more of a question than an answer.
“Hold on,” she sighed, leaving for a moment. She returned with a larger screwdriver in hand.
Running back to my room, I pushed Beth’s chair under the vent. The new screwdriver was a better fit, and I had the screws out in record time. I reached up again and stood on my tip toes, finding the familiar smal plastic object without effort. An exact replica of the first mic came down in the first tug.
I climbed down and pul ed on the wire until it quivered with tension. With one swift yank, the wire dislodged from the vent and dropped to the floor. A strange sense of accomplishment came over me; I had perfected the art of ripping out surveil ance wires.
With a smug smile, I looped the thin, mangled wire into a tight circle. “I’m not a zoo animal,” I whispered.
The door pulsed as someone banged on it from the other side. I twisted the knob, hoping for a scolding from Jared, but instead I found Claire standing in front of me with a murderous expression.
A lump lodged in my throat as she shouldered past me. In one lithe movement, she climbed onto Beth’s chair and reached up into the duct. It took her longer to get the new wire instal ed than it had taken me to rip the old one out, but she replaced the vent quicker than I had removed it.
She walked to the door and stopped to look at the wire in my hands. Her hand blurred as she snatched it from me.
“If you do it again,” she eyed the vent and then whispered in my ear, “I’l rip out your tongue.”
My tongue curled up inside my mouth as I tried to swal ow. Claire leaned back to offer a disturbing sweet smile, and then left. I shut my door behind her and locked it, wrapping my arms around my middle. She terrified me.
The thought of Jared hearing my every movement made tears trickle from my eyes and down my cheeks. “I can’t do this,” I whispered. The sudden need to distance myself from that microphone became urgent, and I grabbed my coat and keys. If I was going to have any type of normalcy again, I would have to convince Cynthia.
“Mom?” I cal ed, walking into the dining room.
“In the kitchen, Dear,” Cynthia cal ed.
I watched her expression change to concern when she saw my puffy, wet eyes.
“What happened to your hand, Nina?” she said, noticing the make-shift wrap around my palm.
“I want you to talk to Jared, Mother.”
Her concern vanished and she returned to preparing her lunch. “I’m sorry, Nina. I can’t do that.”
“Then let me have my privacy.”
Cynthia seemed a bit uncomfortable with the topic, but she was never one to be intimidated. “That is between Jared and your father.”
“Daddy’s not here.”
She ignored me. “Jared and I talked for a very long time. If it helps, he argued with me at first. He was quite determined. But when I reminded him how hard it is for his mother, and how hard it wil be for you, he couldn’t deny doing what is best for you. This is the easy part. You can’t begin to imagine how hard your life wil be if you continue this ridiculous—”
“You have to try. You owe it to me to try,” I begged.
She clicked her tongue. “He won’t listen to me now, Nina. There are some things that you just can’t take back. Once you’ve made your case, you can’t argue the other side.”
“Mother….” I pursed my lips, but it was no use. The tears fel from my eyes.
“I warned him that if he continued a relationship with you, I would be forced to fire him.”
“You what?”
“Carrying on a relationship with him could get in the way of—”
“You know he’s the only one that can keep me safe! You’re wil ing to risk my life to prove a point?”
“Of course not! Your father insisted that Jared stay away from you, Nina. You’re just going to have to forget him!”
“Mother, I love him!”
Cynthia’s eyes widened at my words. After a short pause, she shook her head dismissively. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
I could barely form a whisper. “Look at me.” I let my shoulders hang in defeat. “Does this look like just a crush to you? I’m in love with him.”
“Then stop. This is not what your father wanted for you. Did Jared tel you that? That he was forbidden to get involved with you? I won’t help you go against your father’s wishes.”
“That had nothing to do with me or with Jared, Mother! Daddy didn’t want me to know the truth about him!”
“Nina,” she breathed, “you don’t believe that.”
I could see my efforts were in vain; Cynthia wouldn’t help me. I escaped her apathetic eyes and fled to my Beemer. The rain poured relentlessly, and I was soaked by the time I entered the car. I sped down the street, the tires creating a wake behind them.
The farther I drove, the less I wanted to return to my dorm. Walking into Andrews would be admitting defeat. Worse, something deep inside of me knew that the second I stepped inside my room, I would begin a life without Jared.
When the street lights began to flicker, the rain tapped against my windshield in tiny crystals. Some of the roads had been blocked off by the flooding, and I was soon corral ed onto a dead end road. Through the gush of windblown rain, a bridge came into view just ahead of my car, arching high into the night sky.
I turned off my car and sat, mul ing over the last week. My feeble attempt to gain any control over the situation had ended dismal y. I hadn’t truly considered giving up until that very moment.
I pul ed my hat and gloves off and threw them on the seat beside me, deciding that the only option I truly had was to leave. But Jared would fol ow, he would have to, and I would take him away from his sister, his brother, and Lil ian. I gripped the steering wheel as the realization sunk in; I was trapped.
One of my gloves fel to the floorboard, drawing my attention to my purse. Barely peeking out, the sharp end of Jack’s letter opener glinted under the light of a lone street lamp. Without another thought, I grabbed it from my purse and shoved my way out of the car. The rain immediately blasted against me, but I planted my feet on the ground, determined to get Jared’s attention this time. I grabbed the handle of the letter opener as tightly as my freezing hands could manage and held it above me.