Threshold (Old Version)

Chapter Six

I remembered the first time I’d been called to my father’s office to be disciplined. I’d been five years old, and my mom had been away on a trip. My father had caught me trying to clean spilled grape juice out of the carpet of his favorite sports car. I just remembered feeling sick to the point of vomiting, a hysterically crying the whole time I sat in his office.

Marching through my house after midnight I expected to feel marginally the same. I didn’t. I was embarrassed, and upset, but most of all I was just angry. The all-over sort of deep, frigid anger. I was angry with myself for getting caught, and the scientists that were testing on Malachi, and my father for being so cruel.

“Why?” I asked curtly.

“Why what?”

“Why are you doing this?” I watched as my father shuffled the papers on his desk, a frustrated tremor running through his hands.

“You don’t understand.”

“Then explain it to me.”  

He froze. The meaning was blunt enough to break through.

“Then explain it to me.” The words were foreign on my tongue, but we both knew them well. They’d been buried with every little detail I’d tried to hold onto about my mom.

“You wouldn’t understand.” He continued the frantic movements with a renewed madness. I bristled. He couldn’t know that I wouldn’t understand—but more likely he didn’t have a reason himself.

“Dad, there is a boy held captive in our basement. What is there to understand?” My mom would have kept her cool, said everything calmly. I hadn’t inherited that from her.

“You don’t understand. What we are doing is revolutionary—it could change how the world looks at energy.”

“He’s not one of your fuel cells!”

“And I suppose you know all about what he is? Had a chat? What do you think you could know about this, Scarlett? You think you understand? You don’t know anything.”

“I know that it’s wrong, and he deserves to be free, and he’s just a boy.”

“My point is proven. This doesn’t concern you.”

It’s happening in my house! I have to fall asleep tonight knowing he’s locked up down there, just waiting to be experimented on. How doesn’t that concern me? You think you can do whatever you want, huh? Because mom’s gone? Because the only thing you focus on anymore is work? I’m here too!

I wanted to scream the words… to let them spill from my mouth and uncover the thorn in my heart. But I couldn’t. I just stood, barely managing to mumble a “Yes it does…”

“No. It doesn’t, Scarlett. This doesn’t concern you.”

The conversation was over, and I knew a bridge had been burned.

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I made it to the foyer before the tears started streaming down my cheeks. I’d always had the quiet household. My friends would complain about fighting with their parents and I would sit back and just listen. My father and I didn’t fight. We barely interacted on a family-like basis.

I’d never realized how scary it could be. Even at seventeen

I slipped past the stairs, stumbling to the third door on the which, which opened onto the stone path to Sylvia’s guesthouse. I pushed open the door, but froze on the threshold. A night breeze chilled my arms and face, but all I could do was stair.