Chapter 35 A Beautiful Prison
Chapter 35 A Beautiful Prison
We drove for hours, heading north—farther north than I had ever traveled in my entire life. The town I knew all my life disappeared behind us slowly, like it didn’t want to let me go, but it finally did. Everything I grew up knowing disappeared slowly into the vast forest.
After we passed the last small neighborhood, the world became nothing but trees. Moss coated the trunks in soft green velvet. Ferns spilled across the forest floor in waves. Sunlight flickered through the branches, sliding over us in warm, gold stripes. Between the shifting shadows, everything looked dreamlike… unreal…
I couldn’t look away. My forehead practically stayed glued to the window. It was just so beautiful.
“You see anything good?” Luka asked, amusement curling in his voice.
“No,” I breathed, “but… I’ve never been this far out of town before. The woods out here are just amazing,”
“Why not?” Luka questioned.
“I don’t know. Mom never wanted to go anywhere. Plus, we never had the money to do anything anyway.” I mentally shrugged off the wave of disappointment from my childhood. I always wanted to travel on holiday breaks like the rest of my class did. Even Jess left during breaks. Her parents even offered to take me along on their holiday, but my mom always said no. She never budged on this. Dad tried, too, with no luck.
The tires hummed beneath us as the road curled deeper into the forest. The air outside grew cooler, the scent of sap and wet earth seeping faintly through the vents. I took a deep breath, enjoying the scent. It soothed something deep in my soul.
“Has your mom always lived in town?” Luka asked casually, but the question poked at an old bruise. A memory of my mom yelling at me to stop asking. She didn’t like me asking. Sometimes she took it better then others.
I shifted in my seat. “No. But she’s never talked about her past much.” I answered.
“So you know nothing of your mom’s past before moving to town?” Luka pushed.
“No,” I admitted. I decided to tell him what I knew. “I only know that she was in an abusive relationship, and her parents did nothing to help her. She felt the only way to escape was to leave and never look back, and talk about it. I guess she did some things to keep her past from catching up with her? She would freak out and tell me to stop any time I tried asking for more information. That’s all I know, and only because she got drunk once and let it slip.”
Luka nodded, eyes still on the winding asphalt ahead. The trees grew thicker, denser, their branches arching over us like a tunnel. He turned down a dirt path that only allowed one car down. I started bouncing in my seat. Pain from the attack made me hiss.
“Sorry about that beautiful,” Luka apologized and proceeded more slowly down the road.
“It’s alright.” I told him, after another pause in the conversion Luka asked.
“What about your dad?”
I smiled faintly as I thought about my father. “He’s lived here his whole life and never wanted to leave. He said the town was where he belonged… and where he wanted to raise his family, just as he had been raised. I think that’s why my mom fell in love with him. At least one of the reasons.”
A streak of sunlight cut across Luka’s face as we rounded a bend. I swear his eyes glowed most amazing way, I was mesmerized. So his next question caught me off guard. “What about you?” Luka asked.
“What about me?” I asked unsure what he wanted to know.
“What do you want? Do you want to stay in your town forever or travel and see the world?”
I stared out the window again. A hawk circled above the treeline, its cry sharp and lonely. “I don’t know,” I replied honestly.
“Why not?” His tone was gentle but curious.
“Never thought about it, I guess.” My breath fogged the cool window glass. “I guess I would stay.”
“Why haven’t you ever thought about it?” Luka pushed.
The forest blurred into shades of deep green and shadow as I considered the question. The truth unfurled slowly in my chest.
“Honestly… I don’t know,” I said softly. “I could say it’s because I didn’t want to leave my mom. Or that I had a good job. Or that we were poor and traveling wasn’t an option. But I think… it just feels wrong to leave home. I have plenty of reasons to stay, but I have never had a reason to leave.”
The words lingered between us like mist. I wondered what he thought about my honesty. I noticed Luka glanced at me from the corner of his eye as he drove, studying me in that quiet, careful way of his. For a moment, the only sound was the steady rumble of the engine and the whispering forest outside.
Finally, he said, “You know what… that’s a pretty good reason.”
We sat in comfortable silence for the rest of the way. I really enjoyed looking out the window and watching the trees go by. I have always loved the woods—especially this time of year when the leaves start to turn. After my birthday ,the leaves all turn and the colors are just beautiful. We pull up to a gated house that seem to pop up out of nowhere. The surrounding walls remind me of a prison.
“Why are the walls so high?”
“It’s for privacy. I don’t want the wrong people to just stumble upon my cabin.”
After Luka punched in a code, the gates open slowly. Luka began driving in. I looked at what was probably Luka’s family crest. The crest was on both sides of the gate pillars as we passed through. It seemed as if the enormous wolf was going to jump out at me from the emblem.
Dread crept up on me as we passed through the gate. The loud clang of it shutting and locking sent a chill through me, all the way down to my bones. I couldn’t help but feel like this was a prison, and I was the prisoner.