Page 22 of Speak

I sigh.

I’m a little ashamed I was on my way here to not only get a book for his class but to grab a self-help book on – I groan inwardly –how to seduce someone.

I could go back to Doctor Archer during winter break a grown, confident woman completely knowledgeable in the art of seduction and sex. No longer his patient. He could…wecould… No. We couldn’t. I’m fucking broken. What did he call me once during a phone call to my parents?A broken little doll.

I hadn’t meant to hear that. I was going to my room when I passed her office. Sofia had him on speaker while she was rummaging around in her desk. I knew she was probably looking for something she needed to take with her on their trip to Versailles and I recognized his voice immediately.

“She won’t survive if you keep treating her like a broken little doll, Sofia. Take her with you.”

They didn’t. Even Axel went. It was a trip where they were meeting some important fucks and they couldn’t bring their mute daughter prone to fits of violence and panic attacks in crowds.What if something happened and I couldn’t alert anyone?In other words, what if I attacked someone for accidentally touching me?They weren’t protectingme,per se. They were protecting everyone elsefrom me.

I delight a little in that.

Scary little Raven.

I sat around in the mansion’s solarium that entire weekend, trying to force my voice to come out of me. I drank the hottest tea, as if that would make my vocal chords function. But I knew it was all in my head. My vocal chords didn’t function because I didn’t need them to. Who was I going to talk to? Aphrodite's statue? It was the memories that saved me that weekend. Memories of me and Axel growing up in that cold place we called a home.

“What are you doing, Raven?” Axel said with a chuckle when he once found me posing like her during our senior year at Hawthorne.

I gestured to the statue of Aphrodite. “Practicing.”

“Don’t fucking move!” He said and scurried away only to come back with a canvas, an easel and his paints and brushes. He grabbed a stool and sat.

I stood for an hour while he scrunched up his face, furrowed his eyebrows in concentration and “mmhmmed" while he painted. And then, “There. Perfect. My finest work yet.”

“Let me see!” I dropped down from the base of the fountain as he turned the easel and I fell to my knees, clutching my stomach, laughing so hard I almost peed myself.

The portrait looked like a ten-year-old had painted it. It was all there, the rose bushels, the dahlias, the vines, the glass, the fountain behind a stick figure of me standing in that ridiculous pose with water sprouting from my sides.

“Are you laughing at my work?” He asked in his most posh English accent.

I finally got up and wiped at my eyes. “Absolutely not,” I responded in my own English accent. “I believe you’re right, Mister Monroe, this must be hung. It truly is a masterpiece, little brother.”

And I did.

I hung it in my bedroom after he signed it and I paid him a hundred dollars for his masterpiece. Because to me, it was.

To me, the smile it brought to my face after my incident at the memory when I was finally allowed home, made it fucking priceless. I would have paid him all the money in my trust funds for it now. Yes, two trust funds. One from my tycoon grandfather, the other from the Monroe’s. Lucky girl, I guess.

Except lucky girls don’t have to wish to not be a broken little doll anymore.

I reach the final step and tug at the handle very softly, peeking my head out just a little, and when I don’t see anyone around, I sneak out of the book-door and close it behind me.

It’s so spectacular I can barely contain my excitement. No wonder it took so long to get down here, it’s two whole floors of floor to ceiling dark-oak shelves, and the other bookshelves aren’t like the ones open to the university. No, these are patterned in a way that’s like a maze. Those same sconces on in the stairwell are on the ends of the bookshelves, illuminating the call numbers and the section I’m in. Anywhere from fiction to science to biographies and histories.

Each section is beautifully dimly lit. I let my fingers trail against the spines, closing my eyes, I keep going forward, feeling the residual energy of every author that poured their heart, mind and soul into each page; only to hope someone would open their book and treasure it with all of their heart, mind and soul as well.

I’ve always believed that no matter what you read, whether you remember it later on or not, like music, it alters your brain chemistry. It sticks with you. Each word is a musical note, each sentence a melody, each paragraph a harmony, coming togetherin a great crescendo to change our lives. The same way a pianist’s long fingers may hover over ivory and ebony keys, an author’s fingers may hover over a keyboard to type and they both open our hearts; to wound, to heal, to open our minds and help us forget... in some cases (mine)remember.

My fingers land on a book that doesn’t exactly feel like leather, not matte nor glossy. It’s rough and smooth and it feels… wrong. I pull on it, rubbing my thumb over the glittering almost translucent title that seems to have been stitched with invisible silk into the weird material of the binding. The little hairs all over my body prickle and it feels as though the temperature has significantly dropped even more. I exhale and a small, almost non-existent misty cloud lingers, indicating the temperature is definitely too low down here.

The Syndicate

My eyes widen at what I’m holding, fear incapacitating me at that all too familiar feeling of my shadow looming ever so close to me. I can almost hear it breathing behind me. I shiver, closing my eyes.

Inhale for five. Exhale for five.

I open my eyes, about to steal the book and turn right as I step smack dab into a hard wall. No, not a hard wall. A hard chest and that wall… is a wall of pure muscle. I swallow thickly, pushing the weird book only a little bit back in so I can find it later. I’m turned and I let my eyes slowly drift upwards, my head tilting back, only to land on green eyes with gold flecks. Strong hands grab my shoulders.

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