Safe Haven

It was a sudden obsession – an itch that I needed to scratch.

The fact that I couldn’t find my bracelet was driving me mad and I came to the conclusion that I needed to search one last time. It had to be there – it simply had to be.

Walking down the stairs, I paused in the open dining room door to find everyone already gathering around the table for dinner. Ryder grinned up at me from his seat beside mine, and Sebastian didn’t even bother acknowledging me as usual. My father walked in with Anita, each carrying forks and a stack of plates. “Marlow?” my father questioned, taking in my whole appearance before continuing. “Are you going somewhere?”

“Uh… Yeah. Ray just called. She wanted to know if I could hang out with her again. She’s ordering Chinese for us and a few of her other friends…” I lied, hoping to God that he would buy the words I was trying to sell.

I could practically hear his thought process: It’s family dinner night. She should stay… Sophia won’t be comfortable with this… But Marlow’s talking to people again! That’s good right? She should probably go; we wouldn’t want to stall any progress she’s made, right?

“You know what? Go. I’ll deal with your mother. Have fun – be back before midnight okay?”

I nodded, resisting the urge to roll my eyes at the fact that I had a curfew, and wasted no time on getting out to my car, even though I really could have saved the gas money by walking.

Within minutes, I was parked near Fort Ravenrot, and found myself walking back to the woods that were privately owned by the O’Callaghan family, to the trees that surrounded the cabin that John and I had cleaned up after a few good parties to hide the evidence – the place that I’d walked home from just nights before after our conversation.

Kneeling in the dirt once again, I ran my fingers through the loose top soil, feeling between my fingers for anything that had the potential to be my bracelet.

It felt like I’d been out there for days, searching hopelessly through dead leaves and grass, dirt and twigs before I came to the conclusion that it was no longer there. Someone had picked it up – more than likely a drunken person at a party John had thrown sometime after I’d left for Seattle.

In reality, it had probably only been an hour or two, but the disappointment was there as I wandered carefully back toward Ravenrot as night settled over Tempe, watching my footing as I avoided roots and broken-off branches.

As Ravenrot came into sight, I stopped, pausing to stare at the building that I hadn’t truly looked at in a while. Even in the darkness, I could see that the rotted shingles had been peeled off and replaced with new, Atlantic Blue ones.

A sudden wave of sadness washed over me, not because I disliked the change – it was good to see that someone had taken the time and money to fix that roof – but because it had once been a place that meant so much to me. And the fact that I wasn’t there to help or to chip in, made me regret leaving – only for a second.

Crossing my arms, I glanced up to the sky before giving in to the sudden urge to stop and explore.

Pushing the door open – the new hinges not going unnoticed – I was surprised to see what was inside. The sofa that John, Halvo and I had dragged out after it got so moldy it was unusable had finally been replaced by a worn, floral patterned piece. The sharpie-d walls had been painted over, providing a fresh new canvas for people to start writing on again. The magazines had been removed and flashlights had been stashed in a wooden box under the small sofa.

Taking one out and flicking it on, I studied the more recent scribbles on the walls. Just above the back of the couch in what I recognized as Halvo’s boyish handwriting was, “I still love boobies.” In Garrett’s handwriting behind the door was a list of rules to abide by if a zombie apocalypse ever occurred. Even Noel had written, “It's not forgetting that heals. It's remembering” at one point in her small, hard to read handwriting.

Itching at the collar bone just above the beat of my heart, I turned away from her words and resisted with all of my might the urge to cry all over again.

Sitting on the sofa, I stared into the darkness of the shack for a minute or two, taking in deep, shaky breaths.

Nothing felt right. I was supposed to be the one to help with all of this. I was the one who should have made John fix the roof with Kennedy – because, honestly, I couldn’t trust him to do it with anyone else’s help. I should have the right to sharpie the walls with nonsensical words of wisdom and insight.

But I didn’t have that right anymore. Ravenrot had become free game to those I’d left behind, and by default, I’d lost my rights to it the second I let everyone worry and wonder about me.

With a sinking feeling, I turned to the neat stacks of composition notebooks piled in the corner. The covers were all labeled in the same black sharpie adorning the walls as “Creations” in the handwriting I could never forget.

Flipping through the top composition notebook, I noticed the way the words were lined, the titles on top, and the scratches throughout each poem and song.

Just skimming the first one I noticed it wasn’t full, but the four others were. The very bottom was missing a handful of pages, the scratches were deeper, and the pages messy and crumpled, filled with song lyrics that went from heartbreaking to pure anger.

And I knew after just reading a few of the angry ones that John had written them about me, probably not long after I’d disappeared from Tempe and his life altogether.

By the time I got to the third notebook, I was exhausted emotionally and physically. Reading poetry that displayed just how much John despised me was not particularly my cup of tea, especially knowing that some of the adjectives he’d used were true. I couldn’t read anymore, not with the way my chest was hurting, not with the way my hands were shaking and not with the occasional blurry eyes.

Time had escaped me, but I didn’t really care. Sitting on the floor after stacking the books back to the way I’d found them, I felt myself going numb with emotion and with the coolness of the night forcing its way through the cracks in the walls.

Curling up in the corner, between the walls and the arm of the sofa, I felt myself giving into to the thoughts I wanted to avoid. From Fletcher knowing, to seeing Noel and Halvo again, to knowing that my bracelet was really gone and the fact that I would never really fit back into Tempe like I used to again was upsetting.

And I didn’t realize that I even wanted to fit back in until that very moment, huddled beside furniture that reminded me of my deceased grandmother’s nursing home.

Loud, summer class, exam the next afternoon, needing to go study, smiling, kissing John goodnight, windows rolled down, the sound of fireworks, getting out of the car, the chain snagging on the edge of the car door, the already feeble clasp snapping with the jerk of my arm. Noticing blood. Headlights, my name being called. Noel. The part where it becomes blurry, the fear settling in all over again.

Covering my ears and closing my eyes, I tried to force away the memories.

I was trapped in a never ending cycle, stuck between the underlying want to go back to normal in Tempe and wanting to start anew elsewhere – where I wouldn’t have to confront all that I’d witnessed and the people that served as reminders.