WEDNESDAY || AUGUST 4th || 2021
[Present time, 3 days after incident]
Violet De Angelis' POV ~
The redness is all Violet can think about.
Red, red, red.
It fills everything she can see; thick and loud and wrong, like it's shouting without making a sound.
Her cheek is squished against her arm. Her arm is squished against the table. And the table smells like paint and PVA glue and something else that won't go away no matter how hard she breathes through her mouth instead.
Her hand moves.
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
A scarlet crayon is trapped tight in her fist, a piece of paper pinned beneath it. She pushes harder, because the red isn't enough yet. It has to be more.
The waxy lines drag and stutter as her arm jerks back and forth in messy lines that don't look like anything except danger.
The color thickens, darkens, grows heavy. It spreads and spreads until it feels like it's everywhere.
The world tilts from this angle. The table stretches long and slanted, like it's trying to slide away from Violet.
It's not supposed to be like this.
The Baxter playroom is supposed to feel perfectly right.
It's her favorite place. The best place. The place she waits for every single morning, bouncing on her toes and peeking down the hallway, asking, "now?" and "now?" and "now?" until the last daycare kid arrives and the grown-ups finally say yes.
Then they all go together. Down the hall. To the left wing of the house.
It always feels big when Violet steps inside. Like it keeps going and going and never runs out.
Maybe that's because there's so much in it.
Boxes full. Shelves full. Corners full.
Toys everywhere.
And they're not for breaking. Not for hurting. Not for getting taken away.
They're for playing.
All of them.
Even the dress-up basket, spilling over with glittery dresses and plastic crowns and shiny shoes that go clack, clack, clack on the floor when you walk.
Mrs. Baxter says the room has magic in it.
She calls it 'imagination'.
Imagination means Violet can be anything.
A princess.
A fairy.
A famous singer with a microphone and purple hair clips that sparkle under the lights.
She can be loud, and quiet, and silly, and soft, all at the same time. She can be whatever she wants.
Because in here, nobody gets in trouble just for existing.
In here, nothing bad hides around corners.
In here, the monsters don't come in.
They never have.
That's why Violet never, ever wants to leave. But sometimes Elsie takes them away on loud, shaky airplanes, and then the magic room disappears completely. Not for a little bit. For days. For weeks. For forever-long stretches that feel like they might never end.
YOU ARE READING
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