Ryder

Chapter 11

My plan for not liking Ryder was going to be simple.  I was going to just distance myself from her, but only enough so that I would forget about her and like some other girl.  We would still be friends, just not....more than friends.  I wasn't about to let my feelings get the best of me. 

Mum had told Ryder and I that we weren't allowed to go back to school for a week, because she was afraid of Ryder getting sick again, not to mention her multiple bruises from where Lucas had stepped on her, and because my head was still healing and my black eye was still being an asshole.  Therefore, we had to either stay in the living room, where we would be on corresponding couches, or in our rooms.  I had a feeling that she preferred the couch, though, because she could keep an eye on us at the same time.  I wondered if she thought I was going to start throwing up again.  Social situations still made me a little queasy, though it never got that bad.  The weekend after Lucas had hurt us, I was staying in the living room.  Now, I told myself, now I was going to go into my room.  Away from Ryder. 

The trudge up the stairs to my room was a long one.  What should've been less than a minute seemed like hours.  My muscles ached further yet, and I couldn't shake the feeling of guilt that accompanied leaving Ryder behind.  She had fallen asleep after many restless nights of talking to me.  About her story.

She was living with a happy family, in a nice little house.  She had her brother, her mum, and her dad.  Like she had said, they were a family of quiet, secret-keeping people.  Any anger that was felt inside the house was to be taken out of the house.  "There was no room for frustration", she had said. 

She was attending Brookdale Elementary school before things went awry.  She told me random bits of information, none of which really fit together, but that I enjoyed hearing nonetheless.  Ryder had gotten most of her traits from her mother.  The hair type, long and straight.  The colour came from her dad.  She inherited her mum's curiousness, and also her sudden bursts of outgoingness.  She was also built like her:  lean and average height.  Even though most of her tininess came from her lack of food and water.  But the eyes, she said, she had no idea where those came from.  Her dad told her that they made her special.   

Every Sunday, she would have pancakes with her family.  They didn't go to church, she had said, but Ryder always prayed and believed in God, much like my family.  Each night, before she slept, her parents would read her and her brother bedtime stories.  Their favourite was "Guess How Much I Love You".  Her brother and her shared a bed, because it was only a two-bedroom house.  Very tiny, but very comfy.  On Tuesdays, they would have pasta for dinner, because that was Ryder's favourite.  And for some reason, she loved Tuesdays. 

On nights with storms, the entire family would gather in the television room and watch movies.  They'd pile onto one small couch, underneath the same blanket.  Her mum had made the best popcorn, apparently.  All in all, there was a lot of love that went around that small house.  She liked to ramble on about her life.  I supposed it was because Ryder had never had anyone to share it with before. 

On the day of the accident, Ryder had ran home to tell her father that her mum and brother weren't moving.  She was only seven, so she really had no idea what was going on.  But she was still crying hard, and was completely soaked.  There was a thunderstorm going on at that time.  In fact, her mum, brother and her were all talking about what movie to watch that night.  A movie that they would never see.

Splashing through the streets, Ryder ran as fast as her tiny legs would carry her.  She threw her body against the door so that it would swing open.  Her father was cooking dinner.  Spaghetti.  Like he did every Tuesday night.  He jumped away from his cooking, and when he saw the look in his daughter's eyes, he knew something was wrong.  Ryder chocked out what had happened.  How their two family members weren't breathing.  How scared she was.  He tore out of the house, pulling Ryder with him. 

When he saw the crash, there was already a crowd gathered around the car. 

"That's my wife!  That's my wife!"  He had screamed in fury, in such a wildness that Ryder had never thought possible.  An ambulance pulled up.  Medics rushed out, and, in a few minutes, both Ryder's mother and brother were declared dead.

She said that she recalled being shaken until she fell to the hard ground, being screamed at by her father.

"What did you do?  WHAT DID YOU DO?!" 

After that, things had only gotten worse.  Her father's sanity had gone down the drain.  The house became an unsanitary mess.  There were random items scattered around all over the floor that Ryder's father had tried to hit her with.  He had begun silently stalking her throughout the house, requesting why she had killed them.  He was furious with Ryder, and acted as though it was all her fault.  "He just needed someone to blame," I was told.  His emotions were flying away rapidly.  They were the only family he had ever had, because Ryder's father was an orphan.  And now they were gone. 

He would hit her.  He would burn her.  He would push her down and scream at her.  She would bleed out onto the floor, and her blood would simply dry and crack there.  Nothing was ever cleared up.  It's not as if anyone would come looking for her anyways.  She was the quiet girl.  No one would have noticed if she was missing.  I think that's why she became talkative with us. 

One day, she was thrown into her basement.  I remembered when I walked down that narrow staircase more than two weeks ago, when I walked down to Ryder's prison.  Every other day, a small bread roll and a mini water bottle would be tossed down the stairs to her.  Each roll and bottle would have to last a while.  If she got sick, there would be no one to help her.   Her father just didn't care anymore.  He had completely lost himself amongst all of the house's rubble.  Ryder remembered hearing screams in the night, then rapid footsteps and a door slamming.  She thinks that her father had begun finding comfort with other women.  They had no clue that his daughter was trapped in a basement with nothing but her thoughts. 

I remembered how her father had left her.  How for a week or two she didn't have any food.  Just one water bottle that she had saved, just in case.  He had left her.  There was a "For Sale" sign up in the front lawn just to prove it.  A homemade one, no doubt.  I don't think that the town's house salesmen would approve of selling that place with a human inside of it.

The abuse that Ryder had gone through was chilling to the bone.  No one knew her pain or her loneliness that she must've felt inside.  Not even I could feel anything relatively close to that.  Ryder....she was like an unrecognized soldier. 

And here I was, leaving her alone once more, even though I would only be upstairs.

I shook off the feeling and left.