Breathless by Emily Snow, Heidi McLaughlin, Aleatha Romig, Tijan, Jessica Wood, Ilsa Madden-Mills, Skyla Madi, J.S. Cooper, Crystal Spears, K.A. Robinson, Kahlen Aymes, Sarah Dosher Read Free Book Online Page B

room, my room for now you called it. But this wasn’t my room and I refused to consider that it ever would be. Anywhere that you were would never be my home. It had almost been tempting, to lose myself with someone that was already lost, but in the end that wasn’t my reality.
    My face still stung from the impact of your hand and my legs ached where your body had held me down. Every inch of me was raw with hurt and mental exhaustion. After I screamed at you over and over how much I hated you, you simply drug me down the hall and threw me back into this room. The sound of the lock clanging behind me had been a clear indication of your displeasure, but all it did was fuel my hate more.
    Your actions were off; you’d wanted to make me care for you with the ultimate goal of making me love you. But everything you did only made me hate you more, only made me work harder to get away from you.
    Time passed slowly while I did nothing but stare at the blank walls thinking, my mind rambled from one idea to the next never locating one worthy of landing on. Not thinking about my pitiful situation, but instead devising a plan to remove myself from you. My stomach churned with hunger but I had no reason to believe I’d see food soon; instead, I filled my emptiness with my hate. Hatred can fuel you, in the absence of real nourishment the right amount of hate can sustain you.
    I considered what my escape would be – an escape from this house, from you, or an escape from life itself. I longed to live, but I refused to allow you to be the source of my navigation through it. If I was going to remain, I would be in charge of my own path, not you.
    Visions of how I might escape ran through my head. I lacked the strength to bulldoze my way past you, I wasn’t skilled enough to fight with my bare hands, but I might have been smart enough to trick my way out of this house. But in order to do that, I would have had to make you trust me. I had to find a way to earn your trust or I’d never see freedom again.
    I knew you were always watching me. Even when I couldn’t see or feel you there, I knew you always were. I had to pretend to be content – happy with this place you had brought me. I knew I could do that, I could place a façade of happiness around myself just long enough to fool you.
    I remembered the black soot that I’d marred the walls with. It was still there, calling out to me as a break from my scrutiny of everything. I had analyzed everything to the point that it barely existed anymore.
    I grasped one large piece of burnt wood and rolled it around in my hand, coating my light skin with its blackness. When I pressed my palm against the cold, white wall it left a perfect imprint. The lines and curves of my fingerprints were more prominent than if I’d used ink.
    I held the skinny piece of wood in my fingers like a large pencil and made one straight line down the wall. The black, a sharp contrast to the stark white, caused me to smile. Art had never been an interest for me, but that was before I had nothing but four blank walls to stare at.
    I whirled and arched the wood across the wall until the entire section next to the stove was covered. No longer white, now it had become my canvas for sanity. I had thought about trying to draw my parents with smiles on their faces to keep me company, but I refused to let you see what gave me the last glimmer of hope.
    Instead, I drew what restrained me, this room. But instead of what my eyes saw, I drew it how it should be. I started with a huge picture window across from the bed. The moon cast beams inside that reflected across the floor and circled around the room. I’d lost track of all the stars shining brightly in the sky. The slopes of the shadows that danced across the moon were all visible in my mind. The wood panels made the perfect shape of a cross as they held the window panes in place. A deep brown curtain hung across the top and was just dark enough to block out a small amount of