I’ve Lived My Whole Life Without Ever Hearing Music
I hide the papers inside my pillowcase where they can’t be seen unless someone tears the pillow apart. Every day I add more notes about the locks, the isolation, the monitoring, and the lectures about my poisoned brain.
If I ever get out of here, I want to have specific details and dates so people will believe me. On the sixth day, someone knocks on the front door and I hear Mom answer.
I crack my bedroom door open just enough to listen. A woman’s voice asks to borrow a large pot for cooking and Mom sounds annoyed but agrees.
I peek through the gap in my doorway and see it’s Andre’s mom, Sylvia, standing in the entryway. Her eyes scan the living room and I watch them widen as she takes in the foam padding on the walls, the tape over the doorbell button, and the unplugged TV with its speakers ripped out.
Mom practically throws the pot at her and starts closing the door, but Sylvia thanks her slowly, still looking around. I know she saw enough to raise serious questions about what kind of house this is.
The next morning Dad unlocks my door to bring breakfast, and I make sure my sleeves are pushed up so he can see the bruises on my arms. They’re from two days ago when Mom grabbed me hard during a lecture about how music was rotting my ability to think clearly.
The marks are dark purple and finger-shaped. Dad sees them but doesn’t react, just sets the tray down and leaves.
I position myself by the window gap in the curtains where I can see Sylvia’s yard. She’s outside watering plants and I wait until she glances toward our house.
When she does, I mouth the words “Help me!” as clearly as I can. Her face changes immediately, going from curious to seriously concerned.
She sets down the watering can and stares at my window for a long moment before going inside. That afternoon I hear her voice in the yard talking on the phone.
I can’t make out the actual words through the glass and curtains, but her tone sounds official and worried. She keeps looking at our house while she talks, and I press my face close to the curtain gap to watch.
She’s pacing and gesturing with her free hand like she’s explaining something important to whoever is on the other end. I let myself hope that maybe she’s calling someone who can actually do something to help me.
That night Mom comes into my room without knocking and starts tearing through my things. She pulls out drawers, dumps my clothes on the floor, and strips my bed.
When she finds the scraps of paper hidden in my pillowcase, her face goes white and then red. She reads through them fast, her hands shaking, and then she rips them into tiny pieces.
Her reaction is worse than when she found the MP3 player. She screams that I’m being dramatic and ungrateful, that I’m making up stories to hurt them when all they’ve ever done is try to save me from myself.
She throws the torn paper at me and it flutters down like snow. She tells me I’m sick and twisted for documenting their love and protection as if it’s something wrong.
After she leaves I pick up as many pieces as I can, but most are too small to read anymore. I’ve lost my evidence, but the act of keeping it taught me something: I need to be ready to leave at any moment because this situation is only getting worse.
I start gathering essentials and hiding them where Mom won’t think to look. I take my winter jacket and fold it flat under my mattress.
I find some birthday money I’d saved, maybe $30, and tape it inside an old book cover. I take the one photo I have of Micah from before the nightmare started and slip it between the pages of a textbook.
I put everything into a plastic grocery bag and hide it in the back corner of my closet behind a box of old shoes. I don’t have a solid plan yet, but I know I need to be ready to grab that bag and run if an opportunity comes.
Staying here until they move me to the middle of nowhere isn’t an option anymore. The next afternoon I’m watching through the curtain gap when I see Andre in his yard tossing a tennis ball against the fence like he’s bored.
