Page 103

My body moves on its own, slowly making its way to the elevators and up to my floor. Walking down the hall, I run my fingers along the smooth wall. The coolness on my skin sends goosebumps along my arm. Each step is a step closer to leaving.
Reaching my door, I mindlessly punch my code in and head straight to my room. I switch on the light of my closet and pull up the board where my box is. It’s not there. They did get it. They found it and got their hands on it.
They wanted me gone. They found everything they needed to in order to get me out of here.
I walk over to my desk, my breathing coming fast and heavy. My heart is racing as I pick up a pen on my desk and rip out a piece of paper from my journal that’s lying next to it. I scribble out “you win” on the paper and lay it on top of the journal. I slowly step away from the desk and look around my room.
My body becomes numb. If I had only opened that box sooner, read through it sooner. That had to be in the box. The answers were in the box. I reach up, wrapping my hand around my locket, and I let out a blood curdling scream.
I run into my closet and start throwing things around, tearing clothes off the hangers and throwing it on the floor. I run to my desk and pick up my laptop, sending it flying across the room into the wall. I kick the full-length mirror, letting the shards fall to the floor.
My hands run across my dresser, knocking the few items off. A bottle of perfume of my mom’s falls to the floor and shatters. The scent surrounds me, and I let out another scream. I grab a shard of the mirror glass and go to my bed.
I slept with them here. I let them hold me when I needed to be held. It was a lie. They weren’t my heroes, they weren’t my saviors. They were my tormentors, my bullies.
I growl as I plunge the glass shard through the bed, tearing through the blanket and the sheet, down to the mattress. Tears pour into the gaping holes on my bed, soaking into it. I grab the pillow and rip it to shreds with the shard. My breathing is heavy, my chest moving up and down, heaving.
I look down at my dress covered in mattress and pillow remnants. I’m tired. I’m done.
She lied. They lied. My parents lied.
Everything I knew, lies.
Our happy family, lies.
My father, lies.
My mother’s love, lies.
My life, lies.
My chest heaves as I try to take deep breaths. I close my eyes and tip my head back. I’m exhausted. So over everything.
I look down at my hands. They are covered in blood from the glass I’m still holding.
A laugh bubbles up through the tears, and I look around the room. It’s destroyed.
Just like my life.
Weightlessly, I wander into the bathroom and start the shower. I humAshes of Edenby Breaking Benjamin. I run my cut hands under the water, washing the blood from the sliver of glass I’m still holding. The sting from the water should hurt, should have me pulling them back. But I’m welcoming it. Let it hurt. I watch the blood mix with the water as it falls to the shower floor and down the drain.
I step in under the warm water, in my dress, and let it soak me. Let it wash the shame away, the fear away. Let it take my loneliness away.
“Just take me all away from this please,” I say through my tears.
They burned my heart until it was nothing but ash.
Their touch, their kisses, the whispered words, they were all lies. The kings let me think that they cared. That it was real.
Lies.
It’s over. They win.
They had me so convinced I was fine. That for once I had people that wanted me. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t fight to live when there is nothing to live for.
Not anymore.
I opened up to them. I let them in. And I fell for their sick and twisted game.