Dee_Tats Zell Tatsakron

Chapter 1

Even now as we grow closer, I can feel the ocean calling to me, the unintelligible whispers filling my head as desperately as they had before all the meds forced on me by the therapist at Harper’s Academy. I have to wonder if death is what my heart is looking for since the one time I’d followed those whispers, that is what I’d been met with, even if it was only in my dreams. It is thoughts like these that make me wonder if I am even ready to leave the Academy, though no one bothered to ask my opinion on the matter.

My chest tightens at the thought of returning, and I pull my gaze from the yellowed grassy plains around me, where my eyes had been searching for any sign of the ocean both out of trepidation and some sort of morbid curiosity for this thing that has managed to completely control my life for so long even from afar.

The typing indicator bubble in the bottom of my phone screen is still flashing as infuriatingly as it had been several minutes ago, my anxiety over Matt’s answer not seeming to have any effect on the speed of his response.

The emerald trees and moss-covered forest floor on each side of the old country road distracted me for a while, but the thick forest had since flattened out into a dreary pasture. Dennis has hardly said two words since picking me up from the airport, and the radio of the beaten-down old rental car doesn't even work. The growl of the rusty engine would’ve drowned it out anyway. The ever-thrifty Dennis wouldn’t even spring for a regular rental, instead settling for some shady company operating out of a used car lot. Besides the too-sweet scent of the air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror aggravating my already twisted guts, there is literally nothing left to distract me from those three little blinking dots and the ocean that I knew I’d be reunited with very soon.

Come on, Matt. It’s a simple yes or no. Are we or aren’t we still going out?

It’s not really that simple though. I hadn’t actually seen Matt in over two years, and there is no promise that things would change in the near future. The majority of our three-year relationship had been spent apart, through letters preread by my therapist. My new home in Northern Washington is even further from Los Angeles than Utah where I’d spent the last several years of my life as a prisoner at Harper’s Academy. Okay, not really, but actually, kind of. Harper’s may be labeled a mental health institution, but the bars on the window and ugly blue uniforms would suggest it was much more than that. Fences gilded with barbed wire and locks on every door. I take a deep breath, pushing the memories aside. I am free now, and I will do everything in my power to stay that way.

The uncertainty of my future would be a lot less intimidating if the one person I have left doesn’t abandon me. My breath catches when the typing indicator disappears, and dots speckle my vision as I wait for his reply to bleep into the conversation. Then I see it. The no service icon at the top of the phone screen. With a groan, I toss the phone into the cup holder next to me. We’d spent the two-hour drive from the airport texting about everything under the sun, but it wasn’t until five minutes ago that I’d wrangled up the courage to broach the subject of our relationship. Fuck me.

“Yeah, I forgot to tell you there’s no service out here,” Dennis says, glancing at me from the driver’s seat. His voice is dry and his hair threaded with more gray than last time I'd seen him just barely a year ago, after the breakdown. The second one.

"At all?" I ask. I haven't had a cell phone in two years and now that I do, it won't even work? It's just a cheap pay-as-you-go thing, but I'd lost my attraction to high-end items of any kind while at the Academy where we were lucky to sneak in a t-shirt without the "school's" logo. My Hollywood life full of name-brand shoes and an arsenal of beauty supplies had transformed into one where the little brick cell phone feels like a luxury.

The sky is overcast, swirled with black clouds and heavy with impending rain. Enough sunshine seeps through to make my eyes sting and poke at the ache in the back of my head. I snatch my sunglasses from the front pocket of my backpack and slap them on. They are bulky, black things from the gas station display case. Grimacing at my reflection in the side mirror, I imagine Moriah’s reaction if she caught me in them. Unlike the rest of us, even after being in three different mental institutions, her taste still leaned towards the finest things her rich parents could afford, and her room at the long-term care facility is crammed full of it, though it does her little good in her coma.

Dennis shakes his head. “Nope and the nearest town is forty-five minutes away.”

Stifling another moan, I lay my head against the back of the seat as tears sting my eyes. No, I’m not going to cry anymore. Whatever awaits me at Lockhart Castle, I’m going to make it work. Even if I’d never met them, they are my family. The only family I have left, and they’d chosen to have me come stay with them. It is either this or head back to Harper’s Academy until I turn eighteen.

I’d already googled Lockhart Castle. Only an aerial image came up of the roof of a cold-looking stone mansion situated on the edge of a rugged cliff, a monstrous, onyx ocean churning and toiling below. I straighten, catching a glimpse of it now, just a sliver of shiny pewter below the early afternoon horizon. My heart races like it always does when I get too close to the water, and I take a deep breath, trying to slow it. If I am going to make a life for myself at Lockhart, I am going to need to make peace with the ocean.

The pasture narrows on my right, turning abruptly into a cliff only a couple of hundred feet away. There's a car parked near the edge of it, and I turn my head to follow it as we pass, mostly because there's little else to look at. It's waxed to a shine with chrome rims like were on the race cars all the boys drove back at Fairfax high school in Los Angeles, but this one has more of a classic car feel with round lights and a convertible top. The dark-haired boy that is perched on the hood is dressed in tan slacks and a dark blue shirt. He turns to meet my eyes the moment we pass him, and my face heats up, even though I know he can't see me through my own dark-tinted windows. I shoot a glance at Dennis to see if he sees him too, but he's squinting out the windshield straight ahead. "There it is."

I pull my attention to the towering, dilapidated stone wall in front of us as he slows the car down.

Gripping my hands together in my lap, I squeeze and release and squeeze and release, making myself concentrate on the sensation instead of my racing heart. The wrought iron gate in the arched entryway is propped open. The ivy that climbs the stone walls is intertwined in the bars, and the knowledge that they are never closed gives me comfort. This is not just another prison.

My eyes widen as Dennis maneuvers the car through and I take in the structure, an expansive stone building with intricately carved parapets across the roof and towers on each side. I hadn't known there are castles in the United States at all, but there is no other way to describe the enormous building before me. It's as majestic as it is run-down, the ivy that's climbing along the stone behind the evergreen bushes, doing its best to consume the many windows that grace the front and a variety of other shrubberies that reaches several feet up the walls. This isn't the kind of castle for princesses and knights. More like Frankenstein and deathly laboratories. It towers over us, engulfing us in its shadow. It's as isolated as Harper's had been with nothing within sight except the flat grassy landscape and the forest in the distance, but at least there are no bars on these windows. Still, my heart clouds over with apprehension, making my stomach turn. Dennis parks the car near the u-shaped staircase that leads to double, wooden front doors, keeping his eyes on the house as he gets out.

With a gulp, I string my backpack over my shoulder and climb out too. This is it. However cold and foreboding, this is my new home.

“I guess we should go in,” Dennis says after we stand there to gape another minute, but my feet don’t seem to want to do anything like that.

Despite the effort I’m putting into not crying, the tears stream down my face anyway. I sniffle, letting it happen. “You’ll come visit, right Dennis?”

He sighs, putting an arm around my shoulders. “Ah Danyka, of course, I will, but this is a good thing. A whole new life. A new start."

“I don’t want a new life,” I say with a sob. “I want to go home. I’m sorry, Dennis, about all of it. For putting you through that. For making you put me in that place. I’m sorry I’m crazy.” If none of that had happened, if I was normal, maybe Dennis wouldn’t be so eager to get rid of me now. Maybe he would’ve let me stay, but he’d only been married to Aunt Hilda for a year before she passed away. With no one left in my life to claim me, he’d graciously stepped up. The anxiety had already started by then, this uncontrollable agitation that left me irritably pacing the house and sneaking out to purposely pick fights with anyone who would fall for it. Then came the hallucinations, hours of being chased through dark hallways, only to be swallowed by the ocean when I finally found my way out. Pulling myself out of them was like falling from a dream and would leave me disoriented and frenzied for weeks afterward. Following the advice of many healthcare officials, Dennis had kept me locked away until a new job meant moving from Aunt Hilda’s home and while packing, he’d discovered a stack of paperwork with my true identity. One I am not sure I want.

“Danyka.” His voice is firmer than I expect, his bushy eyebrows drawn together and an anger that I’ve never seen before flashing in his eyes. Dennis has always just been quiet and thoughtful. The all-around nice guy, no matter the situation. My breath catches as my brain tries to understand why my words had elicited such a reaction. Please don’t hate me. Even though he is leaving me and I don’t know when I’ll see him again if ever, I need him to not hate me. “Don’t call yourself that. None of that was your fault. You just needed help. I never blamed you. I’m sorry this is how things turned out, but you’re okay now. I don’t know much about your past, but this is where you belong.”

I sink into him, and he hugs me deeply, reassuring me. With our limited relationship, it’s probably the first time he’d done so, but since I am kind of sparse on people willing to give me comfort at this point, I cherish it anyway.

The doors up the stone stairs from us click open and I step away from him, sweeping my hands underneath my sunglasses to wipe away the tears there. At least the big glasses would hide the smeary makeup.

A woman pauses at the top of the stairs studying us, her lip pulled back in something close to a grimace. Her blonde hair is pinned back conservatively and an old-fashioned polka dot dress sways around her knees. Self-consciously I tug at my own cut-off jean shorts, wishing I'd picked a better outfit for first impressions, but truthfully, appearances had been the last thing on my mind. She continues to stare down at us for several seconds, her head tilted so high in the air I can see up her nose.

Finally, she scurries down the stairs toward us, her face transforming instantly like someone uttered a magic spell. Her delicate, red-painted mouth pulls into a warm smile as she approaches us, her tall heels clicking rhythmically. She pulls me into a hug and the smell of chamomile and lavender reels me in, casting a spell on me that makes me believe that she's truly happy I'm here.. A part of me deep inside wants desperately for her to actually feel it.

“Look at you, Danyka, I wish your mother could see you," she says in my ear. I stand stiffly in her embrace, meeting Dennis' eyes over her shoulder. He nods at me, and cautiously, I wrap my free arm around her shoulder, returning the hug so as not to chance offending her.

“You knew my mother?” I ask as she pulls away. Until recently I’d never given too much thought to my mother. Aunt Hilda had never left me wanting for anything, and the captivating stories she told of my sparkly magical mother were better than anything in real life. However, the knowledge Aunt Hilda lied to me for all those years leaves me almost desperate to gleam every secret I could from anyone willing to talk about it. Was anything she told me real or was it all a fabrication to placate the curiosity of an orphan? But why? What had happened in this place for her to think that was the best course of action?

“Of course, we were best friends back in the day,” the woman says.

Dennis holds out a hand, and the tension loosens from my shoulders when her attention turns to him instead. “Dennis Holden.”

She takes his hand, “Caroline Kennedy.”

Kennedy? My mom was Moira Kennedy, wife to Tobias Kennedy. Maybe Caroline is my aunt. Wouldn’t she have told me that? I’d only talked to my father briefly on the phone, but he hadn’t mentioned anyone except my sister, Shae, who is away at some fancy boarding school.

“You guys are early.” My heart skips a beat at the coarse male voice at the top of the stairs. The tall, broad man that stands there, his arms crossed in front of him as he studies us sternly, demands respect and esteem in just a look and I shift uncomfortably. His dark hair is strategically gelled away from his face and not a hint of scruff mars his square jaw. His eyes glow down on me like emeralds. Eyes the exact same color as my own, the only feature to link me to him. He trudges down the steps, pausing next to Caroline and putting a hand on her back in a way that is definitely not sibling-like.

This man I’d never before set eyes on, let alone didn’t know existed until a month ago. This man who looks nothing like me and who shows no signs of affection in his face as he meets my gaze.

This is my father.