Letters From Cages

“How is this even happening?” Adam asked, his steps short and quick as we walked through the police station parking lot. His hands were stuffed in his pockets as Piper and I slowly walked behind him. He turned around sharply, a look of pure anger and confusion on his face, waiting for either of us to speak.

“I don’t understand,” I finally spoke. “Those pictures were on my camera when I went to sleep.”

“Did you take out the memory card, or drop it or something?” Piper asked.

Once we got to Adam’s car, I leaned against it while leaning down to adjust the top of my sock.

“No, not at all,” I replied. “I put the camera on my nightstand and grabbed it again this morning.”

“It’s not like someone could have snuck into your house when you were asleep, taken the camera, erased the pictures and then placed it right back where it was,” Adam said. “That’d be impossible. I don’t get this.”

“Well, actually, that’s the only logical explanation I could think of right now,” I responded, looking at Adam. He looked up at me in surprise. “I mean, do you think they saw me taking the pictures yesterday and came in the middle of the night to erase the pictures? Ever since the Tier Forest incident, Annabelle does know what we’ve been up to.”

“Are you listening to yourself, Gwenith?” Adam asked. “Could you have possibly not woken up when someone was sneaking around in your room?”

“I don’t know, Adam,” I replied sharply. “I’m just trying to think, okay?”

Adam sighed and gave me an apologetic look that I nodded in return to and then we both turned to Piper, who looked genuinely baffled.

“Maybe we can try again,” She offered. “I mean, it’s obvious they don’t coop up in that house all day, maybe we’ll find them again wearing the jewelry and just... try again.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I replied. “Let’s just go home right now. I don’t know how much more of this I can handle. The police don’t even take us seriously anymore. I don't even know where to start now.”

“We’ll figure it out, Gwenith, don’t worry,” Piper encouraged. “We can’t give up yet. Besides, this is just getting interesting! Right?”

I stifled a small laugh while looking at Piper, her eyes glistened with what I took as excitement. She really wanted to help us.

Adam opened our car doors for us as we got in, and the whole ride back I lay my head against the window and thought that maybe she was right. I coudln't just give up on Carter just because things were getting difficult. I wasn’t going to give up. I wasn't.



“So this is the first time you’ve been home since graduation?” I asked Carter as he unlocked the large front door to his much larger white house. He nodded and twisted the key aggressively in the lock.

“Yep,” He replied and pushed the door open. “I thought I’d stay with Jerry for a little bit before I came back, I’m hoping my dad has cooled down.”

Carter walked into the doorway and shouted out “Mom, Dad?” but no one responded. He smiled and walked into the kitchen, which sent me flashbacks of me standing behind the wall eavesdropping onto his and his dad’s conversation just 8 months earlier. Carter opened the fridge and grabbed a bottle of water and closed it with his foot.

“What do you think he’s going to do to you if he hasn’t cooled down?” I asked. Carter sat up on the counter.

“The worst he can do is kick me out, the best he can do is let me stay here for the summer before I find a place near the state school. I really don’t know,” He replied with a shrug.

“Why are you so nonchalant about this?” I asked, a slight edge was to my voice but probably not enough to make a difference in how Carter was thinking. He always acted like he never cared about things and it was getting to the point where I was truly wondering if he honestly didn't.

“Well it’s not like I can control my father’s ridiculously seesaw emotions,” Carter replied while running one of his hands through his dark hair. “I’m just going to go with the flow and see what happens.”

“Go with the flow… nice,” I said sarcastically. Carter hopped off the counter and stepped closer to me. His hand reached out to touch my hip.

“Why are you always so angry with me?” He asked quietly. “It's not my fault that I want to be around you so I make decisions that can help me do that. You act like it's a crime."

“But you never let me know about the decisions!” I said almost too loudly. Carter raised his eyebrows. “I mean, I just… you unintentionally make me feel guilty, Carter. You're changing your whole life around for me without even letting me give you any input on if I think it's okay or not. The decisions you make make me feel like I'm holding you back from your true potential."

There was a pause and Carter looked away as if he was trying to gather his thoughts rather than impulsively letting out his anger that he was obviously holding in his jaw. “Well,” He said. “You know that’s not really quite what I was going for. I think what I was trying to do was make you feel wanted and loved, but you know, maybe I’m doing this whole relationship thing wrong, Gwen.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” Carter asked, his voice sounding like daggers against my skin. “Why can’t you just be secure and happy with me? Why can’t we just be happy with where we are and not focus so much on what’s going to happen, or what bad can happen?”

I almost scoffed but instead stifled a sarcastic laugh. “Yeah that’ll just do great things for us.”

“So what do you want then? Do you want to break this off and have me move 3,000 miles away so I can live out the future everyone else wants for me but me?” Carter asked.

“No,” I replied.

“Then what the hell do you want from me?!"

I flinched from Carter’s raised voice and leaned my head back against a cabinet. Another silence filled the air, except this one was thicker and seemed to impregnate what seemed like his whole house, making me feel smothered.

“I don’t know what I want Carter," I finally said quietly. "I just don’t want you to throw your life away for a girl you met in high school."

Carter walked over to me and put his hand under my chin, making me look up at him. He continued to step closer to me until our bodies were completely touching, molding into each other. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes as his forehead pressed against mine, his lips hovering over my nose. We both continued to stand in silence as his lips moved to softly press against my cheek and finally land on my lips. He pushed his body even closer into me and kissed me as if he was trying so hard to convey every possible emotion he was feeling through it. When he pulled away and stepped backward, I felt empty and incomplete.

"I love you, please let that be enough," He spoke.

I looked up at him and he gave me a toothy grin which made me fall in love with him all over again. I laughed quietly and grabbed the loops of his pants to pull him towards me again.

“When will your parents be back?” I said quietly. Carter raised his eyebrows and wiggled them suggestively while I just rolled my eyes and punched him in the stomach. He reacted overdramatically which made me realize that he may be eighteen, but he was still a boy.

“Let’s go upstairs,” Carter said and grabbed onto my hand and then I realized just what I had said. My stomach felt nervous and jittery and I immediately regretted ever even attempting to imply anything. What was I thinking? Me, the 18-year-old virgin from West VIRGIN-ia, pun very much intended. I didn’t know what I was doing, and from what I heard around school, Carter definitely did. Piper had told me that he slept with his past girlfriend, the one he broke up with for reason that he couldn’t handle a girlfriend at the time. Piper never told me who that girl was, but we went to a rather large school, and Carter didn’t really like to talk about much when it came to past relationships or relationship attempts. Maybe she didn’t even go to the school…

Carter pulled my hand up and kissed my hand, probably trying to get me out of the daze of continuous flowing and distracting thoughts that I couldn’t pull myself out of.

“Carter, who was your last girlfriend?” Popped out of my mouth before I could think about it. My stomach felt like it was doing flips while Carter jiggled the doorhandle to his room. I didn’t even remember walking up the staircase.

“Why? She doesn’t matter,” Carter replied. “That relationship literally lasted for a whole whopping two seconds.”

“Well, still, I’m just interested about who it is,” I said quietly as Carter kept trying to fiddle with the doorknob.

“You don’t even know her, and trust me she doesn’t compare to you at all,” Carter replied through his teeth as he tried to push his bedroom door open.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I don’t know, I think my bedroom door is locked... I don’t ever remember having a lock,” Carter replied, confused. “Hand me that bobby pin in your hair.”

I reached up and pulled a small bobby pin out and handed it to Carter who unfolded it and tried sticking it through a small hole in the center of the knob.

“Do you think your parents locked it?” I asked. Carter ignored my statement and kept fiddling with the lock with a determined look on his face. “Maybe they’re trying to prove a point or something.” I added.

Suddenly we heard a small click noise and Carter turned the doorknob, and opened the door only to reveal a completely empty room. His bed was stripped of everything and was just a mattress on a bed frame. His desk, his carpet that he bought that laid over the wooden floor, his dressers, his clothes, his books... everything was gone.

I turned to look up at Carter, his jaw was clenched and he grabbed my hand that was in his tighter until it went numb.

“Well,” He said angrily “I guess they proved their point.”



Adam pulled into my driveway and we sat in his car in silence for a few moments. We had already dropped Piper off at the house she was living at by the lake across town, which resulted in us driving past our old high school on the way back, which then also resulted in me feeling completely distraught and nostalgic. I missed the days where life had been simple and the biggest worry was having my boyfriend move away, and not to a penitentiary.

“I’m sorry this happened,” Adam said quietly. I shrugged and turned to him, his handsome face looked back at me and he gave me an awkward smile. I then don’t know what possessed me to do so, but I leaned forward and placed my lips against his cheek, kissing it quickly before pulling away. I averted my eyes purposefully so I couldn’t see his reaction.

“Um, I just wanted to say thanks for everything,” I said while grabbing the door handle and leaving the car quickly. My heart was pounding and I instantly scolded myself for doing what I did. It was an impulse. He has been so sweet to me and I just wanted to thank him. It was friendly.

I opened the front door and stepped inside. The warmth of the house swarmed around me and I quickly took off my jacket and put it on the coat-rack by the door.

“Dad? Grandmother Lyba?” I called out while pulling my hair up into a high pony tail with the hair tie I had conveniently on my wrist. I walked further down the hallway to see me dad’s back as he was sitting at the table. I heard a woman’s laugh that wasn’t my grandmother’s and I widened my eyes at the sound. My father had a woman at our house?

“Um, dad?” I shouted, still making my way to the kitchen.

Once I got to it, my father turned around with a broad smile on his face, still blocking the view of the woman he was speaking to. I grabbed my keys from my pocket and fiddled with them awkwardly, mainly to just try to find something to do with my hands while I stood awkwardly in the kitchen still trying to wrap my head around the fact that my father had a woman over. He never had women over.

All of a sudden the woman’s face popped out from behind my dad’s blocking view and I instantly dropped my keys to the ground.

It wasn’t a woman, it was a girl. And the smile on her face gave me chills that ran through my whole entire body.

It was Annabelle.