Obsession

Chapter 39

My whole body shook as I felt his gun trail down my neck before the rest of his body collapsed.

I stood still as Calvin made a quick call and put Caroline in the car. He came up to me and said something, I couldn't hear him. All I could feel was the blood. Wet sticky and red running down my neck, in my hair.

He'd been shot in the head. Calvin reached for me and I gasped flinching and pulling away. I got into the car silently and we drove. He parked the car in a house I recognised.
My mother's house. The memories were vague but as I looked around everything was slowly coming back.

Caroline was stirring. I got out of the car and helped him carry a hazy Caroline out of the car. The front door opened and I saw her.
Maya, better known as my mother. I just stood still causing Calvin to stop and turn as Caroline's body was no longer moving with him.

I was a Daddy's girl. I had been my whole life, but I did love her. From what I gathered we'd always been at odds but not to a point where I'd expected her to give me up.

                       *****

"It's okay sweetie. You're safe now." I wasn't listening. My blanket was wrapped around my shoulders. "Where is my dad." I say, my voice croaky and shaking. He looks away and hangs his head. He quickly adjusts his expression thinking I can't see it in his eyes. I'm not the same playful 12 year old who had no worries. I'm broken now, battered. Maybe he won't be able to look at me. He knows what happened to me. He must know. The station is full. The administration is in chaos. They are trying to get all the girls who've been rescued into rooms. Ages, names. They aren't like me. Born and raised San Diego. Some of them were kidnapped in other countries and trafficked over here. Others are older been lost for longer than four years, definitely been sex slaves for longer than the two years I was forced to do it after they trained us for two years. I get up. We've been here a while Caroline and I. I spotted her across the room. She was shaking. We had given our statements. We were supposed to be waiting for our families, Caroline didn't have any. Maybe that's why it had been so easy for them to take her. She'd been living on the streets trying to survive. She looked up as I approached. I sat down and hugged her, probably for the last time until we bumped into each other in some expensive store in the most renowned parts of italy and just pretended to be old friends from highschool. I didn't want to let her go. Every hug if given her in the four most terrifying years of my life had been for me. To give me peace. To calm my heart. To give me a good feeling. Anything to prove to myself that those monsters no matter how hard they tried couldn't and wouldn't break me. I was surprised when her body started violently shaking. I felt her tears on my shirt. I tossed of my blanket and pulled her closer. "J-j-jenny." She hiccuped through her tears. My heart clenched and I held her as I let my tears silently fall. I have to be strong, for four years I've let her be my pillar. I couldn't leave without them when he told me he didn't want me to suffer without a second thought I wanted them with me.
Jenny was younger than us. Only by a year we were overprotective of her. We all ran together. When we heard the gunshots being fired I'd never been so scared. We were in the worse parts of the neighborhood but I knew the way back. I'd lived in the city my whole life. She had been running a little ahead of us.  We scared, beyond measure but we were also desperate, Caroline had followed me down an alleyway and we managed to jump the fence and run through a park nearby the station. Now we were here. Did they pick up her body. Do they know who she is. What she went through. When we barged into the station we were talking and screaming and mumbling we were dirty and scratchy and the trauma. A whole other thing to be honest. I let go of her and we sat next to each other her head on my shoulder. A frantic officer ran over to me. I'd disappeared as he'd been talking to me. "Come with me." I stood up and Caroline sat upright. I was led into an interrogation room with another police officer waiting for me. My dad's best friend. I remembered him. He looked the same. I ran and hugged him the first familiar face from a lifetime ago. He stroked my hair and turned my head to look at him. "You're going to come and stay with me, OK." I nodded. "Just until my mom and dad come and get me right?" I questioned. He shook his head. I opened the door and saw a woman hurriedly leaving the precinct. Mom. "Mom! Mom! Where are you going?!" I turned and stared at him frantic. "Where is she going?!" I turned back to follow her but he held me back as I screamed and broke down into tears. "Where is she going? How can she leave me after what I've been through?" I begged him for my father until he had to tell me what happened and just like that my brain hit a switch. All too much too sudden, after all I'd endured the very least I'd hoped to come back to was my family. My very wholesome alive and loving family, but I guess I didn't suffer alone. I guess I wasn't the only one who didn't quite appreciate the vicious blow of reality. Last thing I remember is waking up surrounded by white walls. I spent some time in the mental institution, I don't know how long. They diagnosed me with Bipolar disorder due to PTSD and short term memory loss as a result of this as well. I remember it being weird at first. My brother didn't know how to pretend he wasn't an only child but as time passed they were just happy I found a way to cope. Against doctors orders they moved me away and let me heal in the way my brain at that time wanted to...by forgetting.

                   *****

Here I am after all this time. Live and in person with the biggest and most painful betrayal of my childhood. I didn't want to shut down. To cry. No. She doesn't deserve that much power over me. I closed my eyes, pushing back my tears and forcing forward my anger, rather than the pain. I put my shoulder under Caroline's arm again and kept walking. She opened the door and I walked past into her home without a second glance. We put her down onto the couch and Calvin quickly started shutting the blinds. I walked into her kitchen. Everything was the same. I closed my eyes and let my body guide me across the counter. I opened a cupboard and picked out a glass. I smiled. Exactly where I thought it would be. Even the jar of cookies she would bake on Sunday and keep up top so I wouldn't 'ruin' my dinner. My dad would sneak me one after soccer practice on Thursdays and my mom would pretend not to see us but she'd smile at us in a knowing way causing me to burst into a fit of giggles. I poured a glass of water and leaned over the counter handing Calvin the glass for Caroline through the part of the kitchen that looked like a window. I used to pretend to sell ice cream here, my mom would put out a little step so I could see over the counter. I think I was seven at the time. Then came the terrible preteen years. My mind drifted...

                        ***
"Those friends of yours are fake. They are just using you. They know your father would never let you be arrested." I roll my eyes, something that is second nature to me at that point. "Oh come on mom, get a grip. I get it you were some loser who could never have been in my situation. Suck it up. Those are my friends no matter what you say." We stood in a glaring match across the kitchen counter. "I warned you." She held out her arm for my cellphone and I threw it across the room onto the wall. I let out a shrill and childish scream as I stormed off to my room. That night I snuck out with my friends to some  amazing hang out spot I just had to see. I didn't come back. Someone hitched a ride with someone else and I didn't know anyone. It was so crowded and there were older kids...much older. I turned some corner and that was that...

"I tried to keep everything the same. Don't know why, it's not like I expected you to come back." She said quietly. "That was your choice, not mine." I replied coldly. She nodded, understanding my anger I assume. I wasn't a child anymore and this wasn't a hissy fit. "You're right." She said. She pulled the cookie jar from above the fridge took one and offered me one. "Oh wow. You must feel really guilty if the prospect of spoiling my dinner is off the table." I laugh and she joins in. "I've missed you. I kept in contact."
"Just not with me. I saw the pictures you sent dad, I mean-" she shakes her head. "That's okay. He's family nonetheless." I jump as a little boy walks into the room an old Teddy bear of mine in his hand. He looks about four. "Mommy, I had a bad dream." She picks him up. "Aw sweetie that's OK. Why don't I read you a story. Huh. Do you wanna hear a story?"
He nods sleepily. I stare at her. She talks to him without looking at me and she lifts him and carries him out of the kitchen carrying him past the little 'window' without even glancing at me. I can tell she is flustered. I want to throw something and hit that same wall I did years ago but I don't. I can see the living room from where I am standing. Caroline is sitting up now her glass of water finished. They're surprised. I can tell, but I can see sympathy in their eyes as well.

I exit the kitchen. "I think it's been a long night Calvin. Where should we get settled in." He leads us upstairs. I can hear her reading him the story as we pass his room door. My teeth clench and I briefly close my eyes. Caroline takes my hand. I take a deep breath. He opens the door to my old room. It looks exactly the same. All my old stuff. The bedding is different, more mature. We get into bed after quickly changing and I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.