White Liars

Chapter 23

It had been three days since I had last spoken to Nina or any of my other "friends". Well, except when Mel would bring me food and water. My wounds were slowly but surely recovering and I was able to get up and walk around.

But while I was recovering physically, my mental health was quickly deteriorating. The mind games that Nina had mastered were constantly making me go crazy. I could only think of the inevitable scenarios that all the people I loved were in. I just knew in my head that Ashton, and my, and my dad were all being tortured and murdered in cold blood. I couldn’t release the thought that my entire life was crashing down in front of me and I was paralyzed in my wheel chair, unable to pick up any of the falling pieces. The only thing keeping me sane was the idea that after Nina killed everyone I loved and had gotten everything she wanted from them and me that she would kill me too. I didn’t want justice anymore. I just wanted silence. I was desperate for peaceful silence.

After those three days of rest and recovery the door was opened for another day in hell. Nina strolled in the room and just looked at me, no doubt another mind game to make me question everything that I knew.

“I can see your mind whirling around with these crazy ideas and questions. It’s making you go crazy inside. I can’t say that I’m not enjoying it. Your little mind is searching for answers that you can’t even begin to imagine.”

I just looked at her. She knew exactly what I felt. She knew exactly how crazy I was going. She knew exactly everything. I was just some open book for her to read and get enjoyment from.

“However, I think that you deserve some answers. So today, I’m going to give them to you. Ask away.” She said and sat down in a metal chair across from me.

“Did you kidnap Ashton’s family?”

“Sure did.” She replied with a smile on her face.

“Is his little sister okay?”

“Jennifer, I’m not a monster!” She yelled mocking horror and placing a hand over her heart.

“Where is my dad?”

“In a room.”

“Is he okay?”

“Depends on who ya ask.”

“I’m asking you.”

“Then he is just dandy. He’s a little banged up but nothing I can’t fix.” She said

“Why?”

“That isn’t a real question Jen. It’s too open ended.”

“Why are you doing this to us?” I asked

“That’s a little more complicated than the other questions you’ve been asking. You have to narrow it down.” She said to me, with her awful, awful smile on her awful, awful face.

“Nina, why are you torturing my family?”

“For the insurance money of course! Well, and to get revenge.”

“I know that, but why after all this time?”

“I was in an institution. Did you know that?” She didn’t give me time to answer. “Your mother put me there. Said that I needed help.” She was shaking her head. “I was depressed. I was pregnant, the father just disappeared from the picture, and my parents had always favored her so when it all happened they disinherited me. Ashley was going to get everything, just like always. And then, she took my baby and placed me in a mental hospital. When my parents died she got the courts to give her custody of me. I was legally an adult but she talked the courts into giving her custody of me. She said that I wasn’t fit to live on my own and that I was unable to make decisions that wouldn’t harm me and they believed her. So I was stuck in this stupid hospital with all these crazy people. I didn’t belong there. I tried killing myself a few times, but the nurses always caught me before it was too late. The funny thing is that the only reason I was continuously trying to commit suicide was because I was stuck in a place trying to prevent me from committing suicide. Isn’t that something?” She was laughing and crying at the same time and she just rocked back and forth in her seat. I could see the insanity seeping out through every action and word she did or said. She was going completely insane. “So, I vowed to get revenge on her.” She said picking up where she left off, “I didn’t know then, that she had had a child of her own and when I found out I knew that I needed to get out so that I could take her child from her just as she had taken mine from me.”

“My mother thought she was doing the right thing.”

“NO! NO, your mother was tying up a loose end. She was getting rid of something she didn’t want to take care of. She was paying other people to keep me in a hospital that I didn’t belong in. I was depressed for fuck’s sake! Not criminally insane! I just needed some medication. I just needed a family and love. Not a hospital where no one cared what happened to me. All they cared about there was the money that my sister was paying them.”

“But why?! Why did you have to kill Liz? My mom didn’t kill me. She gave me a better life. She gave me something you could never have given me!” I said crying

She just laughed and laughed and laughed. She was laughing so hard and I had no idea what she was laughing at. I didn’t know what was so funny.

“You don’t get it. You’re not getting it! God! There’s so much that you don’t know!”

“Then tell me for god’s sake! Tell me the awful truth instead of dancing around it!” I screamed at her.

“Liz found out about me way before your mother knew that I was out of the hospital. I had talked my way out of there and contacted Lizzy. When we met up for the first time it was at a little diner. She had already gotten into some bad stuff with some of her older friends that you didn’t know about. That’s how she got there, was one of those friends. I didn’t tell her my story that first day. I figured it would be better for her to get to know me first. I let her know that I was in an institution, but I wasn’t crazy. To which she said “That’s something a crazy person would say.” And I said, “Touché” We just ate and talked for hours. I knew that I had made the right choice in picking her and not you for my plan. The next time I met her I told her my entire story from beginning to end and then I told her my plan. I knew that if she declined I was going to have an issue, but when I finished she stared at me with tears in her eyes and then she got up and ran over to me and hugged me for a long time. She gave me the one thing I needed most. Love. She just cried on my shoulder and said how sorry she was for all the things her mother had done.” She was crying in her chair and rocking back and forth again but she just continued on. “She agreed to my plan and said that she hadn’t realized how she had been suffocating there. She told me how her parents favored you to her and how it all made sense now. But she never once spoke out against you. She loved you.” Now I was crying.

 “My plan was that Liz was going to die.” Behind her the door opened, and walking in was none other than my little sister.

A/N: WELL? WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS? THE TRUTH IS FINALLY OUT! BUT THERE'S MORE AND LIZ IS GONNA TELL JEN THE REST OF THE STORY. XOXO -Emily