The anger I feel flushes my face with prickling heat. But I don’t even look over my shoulder at him. I don’t even put up a fight. I’ve done this routine enough that I know the easiest way out is to go along.
I know what’s waiting for me in that room. I know what’s coming. And if I’m locked in here for ten days then I’ll just have to play the game better than he does, that’s all.
But once those ten days are up I’m gone. I will find a way. I will not get lost in the past. I’m strong now. I’m different now. I’m better now.
So I walk down the hallway to the double doors, go upstairs, and flop down in the bean bag chair.
I hate this room. So much. My stepfather put all this crap furniture in here to piss me off. But… maybe… I walk over to the desk and open the top drawer. Oh, yeah. There’s one of my old journals. I flip through the pages, but it’s empty. I always had a journal when I was a kid. Mostly because my father hated that I kept all my secrets in there. He threw them out every time he found one.
But he must not’ve checked this desk. It has been over seven years since I used it.
There’s more stuff in there. Stuff I’d forgotten about. But it all feels very familiar.
And pretty soon I’m sitting on the beanbag writing.
I write about Mason. Not the kidnapping. I would never place him in the middle of this shit-show of a life I’m leading by outing him in a diary.
I write about what he looks like. And I imagine what it would be like to know him outside of this house.
I bet he’d be nice. I bet he’s not a bad guy. He was pretty fair with me all things considering.
I mean… normal me knows that’s all wrong.
But princess room me… she has a very warped view of what’s normal.
And he sure did make me feel good.
But so what? Maybe he does feel good. Maybe I do enjoy the way his fingers feel inside me.
But none of that matters anymore because he’s just another liar.
He’s not on my side.
No one is on my side.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN – MASON
She spends the next five days pouting like a child in that room. Never coming out once. I take her food three times a day and ask her if she’s ready to come downstairs.
And each time she says, “No, thank you, Mason.”
I have looked through the whole house by now. There is a room in the middle of the hallway that has clothes I presume to be hers.
Jeans and shorts. Shirts and t-shirts. Cotton dresses in pink, and pale yellow, and light blue. There’s also underwear. Just plain cotton panties and bras.
Each day I choose something for her to wear and take it up with her breakfast. She offers up no opinions on my selection but she puts them on.
These things make her look younger than she is. I know she’s twenty-five, but the day I choose a pair of cut-off shorts, a baseball tee, and a pair of white knee-high socks I have to do a double-take at lunch time because she seriously looks twelve.
She’s sitting in the bean bag chair writing in a pink journal with a unicorn on the front. Her pencil has some fuzzy pink topper thing on it. All stuff she found in the little white desk, I suppose.
Turns out, making her learn to cook wouldn’t have been a good idea. The kitchen is stocked, but it’s very basic stuff and there was a meal plan for her in the pantry. Her stepfather called me that first night to see how she was doing and I asked him about that. He said her food must be controlled to keep her moods stable and I was to follow it precisely.
Oatmeal for breakfast. Grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch. And either spaghetti with meatballs or hamburgers for dinner.
When I asked him how that crap could possibly even out her moods, he said she liked comfort food. It made her happy and he would like her to be happy.
And even though she doesn’t look anything close to happy whenever I go up to her room, she does eat the food.
So I don’t argue. Just do as I’m told. Because Baylor did keep up his end of the deal. He wire-transferred that fifty grand directly to my mother and five million dollars appeared in my Swiss bank account. Paid in full. Up front.
And my mother was chosen for that experimental program. I’ve talked to her a few times over the last several days, but she refuses to answer any questions about the treatment. Just says, “We’re going to remain hopeful and positive,” and leaves it at that.