Iris

...that thing.

It confused me.

I couldn't for the life of me figure out what you meant. I was hurt and confused and I was crying and you were leaving. They showed up with their big fancy cars and two people got out and there were handcuffs on you suddenly and the reality hit me and tears were slipping down my face. You were standing there and you reached your cuffed hands out and gently pressed your fingers against where my tears were and confirmed they were there. And you leaned in and kissed me one more time.

The thing you said, with your mouth to my ear, the thing that confused me, was when you whispered, "I swear I will come back for you."

I'd love to know how you thought you were going to accomplish that. Of course I hoped with everything in me that you were right, that somehow you could break out of your new home and come find me and we could escape, but I knew better than to wish for that. It was a foolish hope, set in dust, that would blow away in no time. I still hoped for it, though, because I am foolish and it's something I've had to live with for my entire life.

I remember staring at you as they led you away. Your blind eyes were searching mine despite the fact you couldn't really see me. You looked like you were trying to convey some sort of message to me, but I am awful at receiving them so I couldn't tell what you wanted me to realise. And after you got into the car I realised that I never told you goodbye, which hurt more than anything could.

That night, driven by some unexplained desire probably fueled by my despair at losing you, I did what can only be explained as an act of insanity. A temporary breach in my learned behavior, because this could not have come from any part of how I was raised.

I bypassed security and I set fire to the home I had grown up in all my life.

I'm still not sure what led me to do it. Certainly it could not have been anything I decided in my rational mind, but I feel as if it was the right thing to do, at least at that time. The appropriate response to an emotion I was feeling, the release to the desperation of losing someone who had become so important to me. I don't think I should feel very guilty about doing it in the long run. I really shouldn't.

My father was not home. I'm glad for that, at least, because it's not his fault that you had to leave. He came home and he found me standing in the front yard, watching the house burn to the ground. By the time he had called the fire department there wasn't too much that could be saved. Pictures saved in black boxes the type of material that airplane black boxes were made out of, ones that couldn't be destroyed. But clothes, furniture, things we had taken so much time to build up the credits for...that stuff was all destroyed. And I did not 'come to my senses'. I still refuse to 'come to my senses' despite the fact that I am writing this to you from my temporary prison cell, where I will remain until they figure out what to do with a wicked girl like me.

I am not sorry for what I did to my very own home.

I feel like I needed to make an impact.

To show someone that this was not going to be something where I would sit down and take what had happened to you as fact and accept it.

It did nothing to save you, but it looked so beautiful when the flames were burning bright red against the sky, and the heat in such close proximity to me made me feel alive for once in my goddamned, privileged life.

My father has not moved from the seats in the waiting area where he is allowed to see me every few hours. When he comes in, he sits across from me at the small table they allow us and searches my eyes. He doesn't ask 'why'. I think he knows why. I think he feels the same way. I think that, somewhere, my father and I have the same mindset, that we are the same person, almost. I feel that in my situation he might have done the same thing. I have not apologised and he has not asked me to.

The only time he said anything besides hello and that he loves me was when he told me, "They should never have taken Kellin."

He didn't say it because it meant I wouldn't have burned down our home. He didn't say it because we were sitting in a five-by-five room with bad lighting and concrete walls. He said it because he knew I needed you, and he knew there was something wrong with sending someone who had been found in your condition back to Red Light to be a slave again. He knew there was something wrong with that aspect of society and in part I think he admired me for setting what was burning inside my mind to action.

He didn't offer to get you back for me. He couldn't, not without paying some outrageous sum of money that he didn't have, mostly because I burned his freaking house down.

He just watched me. That's it. That's what he did. Watched me. Placed his hand over mine and squeezed it, and that's where the conversation ended.

I really miss you, Kellin, dear. My trial is tomorrow.