The Rapunzel Effect

Dry Lips

I gave up after the first month. I knew Kyle wasn't going to come and save me.

I wasn't allowed TV or movies or the internet anymore. I was cut off completely from the world and there wasn't a night that went by that I didn't cry. My hair had began to grow to my shoulders and that was the only indication that time was passing.

My mother didn't hire anymore hair dressers.

I had lost interest in food and I knew my weight was dwindling but I couldn't care less. I felt as if there was just no point in looking after myself. 6 months had passed, where I was a prisoner in my own house. I barely left my room as where could I go? Even the tutoring had finished and I was made to learn alone with thick textbooks. Studying and crying were the only things that I seemed to be doing productively.

I couldn't even picture Kyle's face anymore. I knew the words to describe it but I couldn't form an image to match them, which made want to cry even more. My mother and I barely talk... even though we hardly used to talk before. Now there is just a defining silence between us and we're almost strangers to each other. She had finally owned me.

The only consolation for my depression was that I could look out the window and watch the world go on around me. It comforted me to know that I had walked those streets, that I knew what was beyond my vision from my room. The taste of coffee. The feel of grass. The care of a friend.

My willow dreams stopped completely and strangely I missed them. Lily, Mr Egan and the willow plant he had seemed to be too much of a coincidence. Yet I couldn't recall anything. Maybe it just was a coincidence. Maybe my mind was tricking me, to mock me at my own stupidity.

I wish I had listened to Kyle first. Things would've been different then. I would have been happier and... free. My anger against his had dissolved in the first month and I missed him more than ever. I missed having a friend, someone to talk to, someone to care about and in turn, be cared for.

Since mother was hardly in the house at all, to keep me in she changed the password for the door and had it altered so that a password was needed to leave the penthouse. There was nothing I could do. The phone in the kitchen had been removed so the only way I could call anyone was through a mobile... which she kept at all times. She even removed my fingerprint from the elevator. She told me that the first night I was back, reminding me that I couldn't leave again.

In the mornings I would sit in the lounge and reminisce in the memories in which I had first met Kyle. I smiled slightly, thinking of how confused I was and my stubbornness to make sure I stayed in the apartment.

That's when I saw him.

I almost thought it was a hallucination but it was really him; my mind couldn't concur up something so clear. Dirty blonde hair, amber eyes and a face of surprise.

I ran up to the glass I shouted at him.

"Kyle!" He didn't seem to hear me. He began to make a pen motion in his hand and I rushed to my mothers office, grabbing a pen and a notepad. I had never had so much energy as I had now, in the past 6 months. I ran fast, incase he decided to disappear. To my relief he had stayed put.

He seemed to be smiling and I couldn't help but too. This was the first time I had human contact in a very very long time. I stared at the notepad, thinking on what to write. There was so much I wanted to tell him but the thick pane of glass stopped us. I wanted to tell him all the pain I had went through and how much I regretted what I had done before. I wanted him to know that his friendship was one of the best things that had happened to me. However, most of all... I wanted to be free. So I wrote just that.