Page 6 of The Oath We Give

He lets the silence stretch, not saying anything. I know it’s because he wants to give me space, room to gather the courage so I can keep talking. Finally speak aloud words I buried with the old Coraline.

Eight months of freedom, eight months of being locked in a new prison, and this time, I’m the warden. I’ve not told anyone about this, not the police, therapist, my family. It’s a vault inside of me, one that I told myself if I just keep it locked, it would eventually go away.

But he’s not a person I’m talking to.

He’s just a voice.

“I was leaving a party.” My eyes shut tightly, hoping when I open them, I’ll be back to that night so I can avoid ever going out. “It was the first college party I’d went to. My first of many.”

A humorless laugh rattles from my mouth as I remember the tequila my friends and I tossed back.

“Nothing bad happens when you’re just starting life, right? Not to the rich and just, not me. Never me.”

There are parts of that night I can recall vividly. The loud house music, all the people I knew and those I didn’t. Shots of what I think was tequila and how badly my belly hurt from laughing.

I’d wrapped my arms around my high school best friend, a girl who’s only a stranger to me now, and screamed,“This is the best night of my life!”

“A friend was supposed to drive me back, but he’d gotten wasted and crashed on a couch. I didn’t want to sleep in some random place, so I decided to just walk back to campus. It was only a few miles, that was it. I don’t even remember anything past walking out of the house. It’s this big black hole in my mind. But I—”

I bring my knees to my chest, dropping my forehead to my knees and letting my body feel the ache of the tears as I press the phone to my ear. Allowing myself to remember, to cry and hurt freely, with no one watching.

Only a voice on the other end to hear me.To judge me.

“When I woke up, I was naked and cold. They sprayed me down with a water hose and examined me. I still feel their hands at night, can see the flash of the camera on my skin as they spoke out loud about my body. How much they could sell me for. I don’t even know if I tried to scream because the drugs, they made everything fuzzy. They kept me so fucking high that by the time Step—” I bite my tongue, so hard that the metallic taste of blood fills my mouth. His name makes me sick. “I went through withdrawal the first few weeks I was in that basement. Alone. Covered in throw up, and I had these insane muscle cramps. It was mental agony, and it was only the beginning.

“I wish I died in that basement.” A sob takes my voice, and I cry heavy tears into the speaker of the phone to a voice that owes me nothing. “I want to go back and die there. It took so much of me—why not just take it all? Why leave me this fucking empty!”

I shout the words to a darkened sky, begging for an answer I’ll never get. There are a million questions I ask myself every day, and never once have I been able to find a single answer.

Why was I so weak? Why me? Why did I love him so much that I still feel the embers of it scorching my veins? How did he have that much control over me?

My cries are interrupted by an answer. Not from the stars but the voice on the other side of this phone.

“To fill.”

“What?” I lift my head, eyebrows furrowed.

His tone is a steady hand, calm water. “Life left you empty so that you’d have room to fill it. We are only hollow if we allow ourselves to remain that way.”

“How? Where do I even start? I don’t—”

“Learn, Coraline. You lived for a reason. Figure out why.”

“Aren’t you supposed to just be an ear?” I laugh a little, taking my palm and wiping the tears from my cheeks, inhaling a deep breath of fresh air. I’m dizzy from all the emotions.

“And a voice,” he notes, and although I can’t see him, I hear the smirk in his words.

Light rain wets my arms. Nature’s way of telling me my emotional dumping session is coming to a close. But I linger for a few minutes, sitting in the relief of having something, anything, to ground me to the earth for a couple of seconds longer.

I don’t have to be Coraline Whittaker, survivor of the Sinclair House of Horrors. I’m not the award-winning artist prodigy or the regal daughter of James Whittaker. I’m not the older sister to a girl I’ve trapped myself in this town for or the younger sibling of a brother whose own guilt is leaking into mine.

I’m Coraline. I’m not okay, and right now? That’s enough.

“I don’t want to die,” I whisper.

“Then don’t.”

The rain falls a little harder, bouncing off the roof. I lick a drop off my lips, letting the water wash away the tears on my face. Maybe if it rains hard enough, I won’t be able to tell the difference.