Page 9 of The Pact

“After what happened with your sister, I should’ve understood that too much freedom is a detriment to women especially when they’re teenagers. I’ve tightened up the rules but not enough, softened by the fact that you’re my flesh and blood and fooled by your obedient act. I wanted to believe that you were on the right path and I was blind to the truth. After McKayla, I should’ve taken you out of school and let your mother homeschool you. We’re planning to open schools for our acolytes but obviously that would have been too late for you. I should have taken away your phone. If you weren’t going to school, you wouldn’t have needed one. But I gave you too much freedom and this is my punishment for putting trust where it wasn’t deserved.”

I swallow the bile that threatens to rise at his words. He first took the locks away from every door, before he eventually removed the doors completely. He took the TV out from every room but this study. He put parental controls on my phone and laptop so that I could use the internet only for school research. He imposed that I dress the way he wants, that I only socialize with the people he chooses. He made me more of an outcast than I already was. Being a little shy didn’t help me make friends, I was never outgoing and confident like McKayla. But since his new rules, people have been actively avoiding me at school, unless they’re heavily involved with our church.

His next words shouldn’t surprise me but they do, I can’t believe the lengths he’s prepared to go to assert his control. “You’ll finish your last semester in high school here at home. Your mother and I will see to it. Obviously, I can’t trust you enough to attend any of the fine colleges that accepted you. To be honest, I can’t even trust you enough to go to community college right now.”

I turn to look at my mom for support but her blank stare tells me all I need to know. So I turn back to my dad. “Are you not allowing me to go to college?” I ask, shocked that he’d hurt my education to punish me.

“Not right away. I think a gap year is what you need. Something to put you on the right path and then we’ll revisit college. You’ll be working by my side for a year after you graduate high school. So I’ll be able to keep an eye on you and decide if a college degree is what’s best for you. Maybe your path is that of a wife and mother after all. Working together will give us time to see your true calling, Ausra.”

I feel my throat closing down, tears pushing vehemently at the corner of my eyes but I know that crying now would be a huge mistake. “You can’t do that, Dad. I’ll be eighteen in two weeks, you can’t tell me what to do then,” I protest.

He laughs derisively, looking at Mom as if I told the best joke he’d heard in ages. “Do you think that turning eighteen is some magic milestone? I have news for you, child. While you’re under my roof, you will live by my rules. And when you move out, it’ll be to marry someone worthy and enlightened, someone who will keep you on the right path. Then you’ll no longer be answering to me, you’ll be your husband’s problem.”

I feel the walls of this room, of this entire house close in on me, suffocating me at the implication that he plans on keeping me under his thumb forever. “You can’t do that. You can’t keep me here.”

Dad nods in agreement. “I can’t physically force you, Ausra. But this family is a boat and I’m its captain. I decide our route and we all row toward that route. If you’re found to row in another direction, make no mistake, I’ll throw you in the water.”

His words hurt but at the same time, they’re the best thing I’ve ever heard. “You might not need to, Dad. I might want to jump.”

4.

Stowaway

––––––––

Ausra

––––––––

PRESENT DAY

––––––––

I’M BACK IN MY DAD’S house. In the dream my clothes and my hair are the same they used to be six months ago and I know none of the freedom I’ve had since I packed my things and moved in with McKayla and Skye. Dad ushers me into a room where there’s a mannequin in a wedding dress. But it’s nothing like the dresses I imagined I would wear when I played wedding with my dolls as a child. It’s one of those old fashioned, plain white dresses that you see in old sepia photos, where the bride and the groom aren’t smiling. Dad tells me that he found me a husband and before I have time to voice my protests, I’m wearing the dress and Mom is there helping me fasten it at the back. What I don’t realize until it’s too late is that the sleeves of the dress are too long but it isn’t a mistake. Mom grabs the ends and fastens them behind me, blocking my arms. The dress is a straightjacket.

That’s normally when I wake up drenched in sweat but this time, I never got to wear the dress because my niece is wailing desperately. I look at my phone and realize that it’s noon, so McKayla should be awake to feed her. But little Skye keeps crying angrily and I decide to get up and check on her.

---