Page 75 of Obsessions of the Heart

The basement door immediately popped into my head. Rion didn't want me near that door, and I needed to find out why. What were they hiding behind it? Why did it seem so different from all the other doors?

I bolted to my backpack because I knew I had what I needed. Shoving things around, I searched my bag. When the boys left the orphanage, I went through my rebellious stage, and I liked to steal things. Enrolling in the school of hard knocks, I joined this little band of street kids and learned very quickly how to pick locks. Doors, dead bolts, and desks, simple stuff with spring or pin locks were my specialty.

At the bottom of the front pocket, I found a bobby pin and slid it into my hair, then I ran to the stack of homework on the living room table and found a set of papers with a paperclip. Sliding that off, I headed back for my intended target.

Snaking down the hallway as fast as I could, I came up to the door and stood there. If I crossed this barrier, there would be no going back. No playing the naive innocence card. I would know the truth, and whatever that was could be a curse or a burden. Was it worth knowing?

My hand shook, my body hesitating, but my mind was a truth monster that demanded I see this through to the end.

Crawling on the ground, I looked under the handle, thinking I would find some kind of pin or hole to unlock the door, but all I found were eight small black buttons with numbers on it. My suspicions skyrocketed. Why would they need such high tech? What could they possibly be hiding behind this door?

I tried a few numbers that I knew, like their birthday, the day they were adopted, and even the day they came to the orphanage, but none of them worked. The door would beep three times and stay locked. This was getting me nowhere.

Knowing that I wasn't going to get any answers from staring at it, I got up off the floor. Maybe there was something in their rooms that had a sequence of numbers I could try.

Taking the stairs two at a time, I started off in Rion’s room. I made a beeline for his desk, shoved his chair out of the way, and yanked at his drawers. Most of them opened, revealing all the normal things I saw before, no papers with numbers or anything like that. It wasn't until I remembered that the last drawer on the right was locked. Maybe I would find what I needed in there.

Settling in, I unfurled the paper clip, bending the tip to a forty-five degree angle, then took the bobby pin out of my hair. You always needed two items, one to be used as a tensioning tool, the other like a rake pick.

It was a little dark under the desk, so I pulled out my phone and turned on the light. I secured it under my chin, balancing it against my collarbone, pointed the light in the direction of the lock, and began my work.

I was a little rusty, not having done this since I was a teenager, but when I finally felt the spring release and heard the familiar pop of the lock opening, my heart seized up.

Slowly, I made my way to the front of the drawer, hesitating because once I did this, there was no going back. I would know what they were trying to hide, and I needed to be prepared for the fallout. You need to know. The thought kept circling as I pulled the drawer open.

I didn’t know what I thought I was going to find, but a jewelry box and a file was not it. Taking out the file first, I realized the first page was my birth certificate.

My heart began to beat faster.

Leafing through the papers, I realized it was a mixture of handwritten and formal documents. Some of them were written observations from when we were kids—things like my schedules, things I liked, things I disliked, hopes and dreams. Anything and everything that I said to them was recorded in chronological order. Then there was a gap in the information, picking back up when I was nineteen with all my medical records and government documents. Things that I'd never even had copies of. Everything, my whole life, was reduced to these pages.

My hands shook as I closed the folder. What could he possibly be doing with these?

Looking down again, I saw the jewelry box and snatched it. As I opened it, I found a mixture of Layrin Smith labeled bags filled with thumb drives with dates and locations on them. I picked up one of the bags labeled “December fifteenth, nine years old, fell out of a tree.” Inside was an old bandage soaked in blood, my blood. I dropped that bag, not understanding why he would keep something like that.

Unable to help myself, I picked up another. This time, I was staring at the first molar I’d lost. A memory flashed before my eyes, Rion telling me that I had to leave it under my pillow for the tooth fairy. I told him I didn't believe in that stuff since she’d never come before, but he was so insistent that I did it. That morning, I found a whole dollar under my pillow, and I became convinced she was real.

Staring at the tooth, my heart stopped. His deceptions had started way back when I first met them, when I trusted them implicitly.

Digging around, I found a lock of hair and an old napkin that said “used” on it. I put those down, feeling sick as I picked up the thumb drives. The labels were all more recent, including dates and locations. The one that stood out to me was the one labeled “ATM at Washington Rd and Breaker St.” Those were the cross streets of the apartment I’d left to come here. So, he knew where I was all this time?

Shutting the box, I stuffed it all back inside his drawer and slammed it shut, scooting away from it as fast as I could. It was like I was inside that drawer. Everything that was me, other than my soul, was in there. The feeling that I didn't quite understand surged forward as I clutched at my necklace. The three points dug into my palm, keeping me present.

Fear, betrayal, understanding, pain, delight. Logic and my heart were warring with each other inside of me. My insecurities had latched on to the proof of his obsession like a declaration, while my mind was telling me this was wrong, so wrong. He’d betrayed me, left me to the wolves and watched as I suffered.

Shaking my head of these confusing thoughts, only one thing rang clear. I needed to see what the others were hiding.

Scrambling up, I ran to Ravi’s room and went straight to his closet. While this door had two locks, they were easy to open now that I had practice and proper modification.

As soon as the spring let go, I shoved both doors open, and my eyes went so big I thought they would fall out. In the middle of his closet was a collage of pictures, looking like they were taken from far away or from a security camera, but they were zoomed in and cut up, like they were waiting to be put together.

I noticed some of them. Me walking down the street to work, going to the library, heading to the grocery store. Some of them were even from when I was inside the store. All of the pieces lay together on top of this small desk with a candle in front. In the center were the panties he’d ripped off in the changing room, making this whole thing seem like a shrine.

In the corner of the closet, there was something large, but I couldn't make out what it was. Picking up my phone, I turned on the light again and pointed it at the corner of the closet. I gasped, covering my mouth before I went in and yanked it out. It was a full-sized body pillow of me in the outfit I had worn the night Vivian and I went out.

All I could do was stare at it. My breath came out hard and fast, and the pounding in my head grew from a dull ache to actual pain.

Do they know what happened that night? Did they see it happen?

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