Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 46398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
I nearly cry. My throat closing up and tears pricking my eyes.
“I have to pee.” I tell him. “I’m going to piss myself,” I confess.
“No you don’t,” he tells me and adds another book to the stack then presses them closer to my stomach.
I don’t know why I’m being punished, and I know he won’t tell me if I ask. The reason will come down to something I did wrong. Some word I didn’t say right. Some attitude I had while I was answering. It’s not like I can forget the rules. I could repeat them in my sleep, and sometimes I dream about having to recite them in places they don’t belong, like a gas station or at the movie theater. Like one day I might get out of here. Although I’m starting to lose hope.
“The rules,” he says. “When you break the rules we have to break them into you.”
Biting my tongue, I resist the urge to ask which one I’ve broken. My mind instantly goes to the girl. The vision of her.
I haven’t even seen her. I don’t know her name. It’s like he knows my thoughts. It’s not a rule though, I’m allowed to think of her. She’s the only thing keeping me sane. The desire to know she’s okay.
He asks again and I answer the damn questions.
“—make verbal contact with another student,” I say. My stomach is so tight with all the water. If I was anywhere else, I would’ve been sick by now. That’s something I can’t do in this room with this man. If I throw up, he’ll probably start over and we’ll be here for another year, me listing out a sadistic monster’s idea of school rules and Mr. Jay looking bored.
My stomach lurches, and I swallow.
Swallow.
Swallow again.
Am I going to throw up or piss myself? I don’t know which he’s after. I don’t know which will get me the worst punishment either.
“I have to throw up,” I tell him, leaning forward and the books slip, my leg cramps.
I’m not sure when he starts to hit me. The blows seem like they’re coming from far away. We go back to the beginning of the list and through the whole thing again. At first, he hits me with an open hand, but that must be boring, too, because he switches to a fist.
Why does he do it? I don’t know. I guess it probably makes some kind of sense to the people who run this place, but it will never make sense to me. There’s just no reason for him to do this. It’s not even worth my time to figure it out.
My head is so fucked, I can barely make sense of the room. It spins and goes fuzzy. Everything does. I’m here but I’m not.
I’m also not sure when I stop…being there.
I’m still in the room. There’s no escape from this place, so my body stays on the chair. I don’t try to get away from Mr. Jay’s fist. I know where I am, just like I know the rules are taped to the wall opposite me. The print is too small for me to read them, but I don’t need the paper to tell me what they are.
My mouth moves, but it belongs to someone else. The longer I talk, the more I feel like someone else is talking for me.
The longer Mr. Jay hits me, the more it feels like he’s hitting someone else.
That’s been happening more often lately, I think. I exist in my body, but I don’t. The school exists around me, but it doesn’t. As I sit in the chair, answering Mr. Jay’s questions, I start to imagine another place.
I don’t imagine much at first. For a while, all I can picture is a sidewalk. It’s a regular sidewalk with some cracks in the concrete and grass on either side. It’s not like the patches of sidewalk in front of the school that don’t lead anywhere. This sidewalk leads to somewhere else—I know it.
Eventually, it becomes a street with houses and yards in the front. It’s not some half-abandoned place with one building in the middle of nowhere. It’s a neighborhood.
A nice neighborhood, with people who aren’t sick bastards in it. People who check up on each other to make sure they’re okay. Dads who mow the lawn on the weekends. Moms who go shopping on Wednesdays.
A fucking paradise, right?
I imagine walking down that sidewalk until the middle of the street. That’s when I stop and go into a house.
This isn’t my dad’s house. This is my house. I live here, and nobody else can get in. I can shut the door and flip the lock, and they can’t touch me. The living room has carpet, not concrete, and the furniture’s simple and clean. I’m safe here.