Little White Lies.
Chapter One: As long as I'm in the closet, everything will be okay.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything mentioned in this story except for the character of Kristen. She is a creation of my own imagination
She was used to the dark. She had spent a good number of nights in the dark of her bedroom closet as a child, crammed between the stuffed animals and shoes that littered the bottom of the tiny room. When she was 12, she pretended that she was a princess, locked in the tallest tower of a castle, waiting for her prince charming to come and get her. The screaming going on outside the closest were the shrieks of the dragon guarding her and the loud crashes that usually echoed were the fierce sounds of war. Everything was make believe, and none of it was real. The closet was her safe haven, a place where no one could get to her, and as long as she was in the closet, she'd be okay. Until one day, that all changed.
She remembered the day as if it were yesterday, or maybe because everyday played out in pretty much the same manner. She was 15 at the time, and she'd woken up to the familiar sound of her mother and father's screaming. She was getting out of bed to retreat to the confines of her closet when her bedroom door busted opened, snapping off its hinges. Her father stumbled in, the smell of booze hanging in a haze around him as he reached out to her and grabbed a fistful of her hair. She shrieked in protest but he had none of that, bringing his other hand sharply across her face, shutting her up promptly.
He dragged her out of her room and into their family room, where her own mother was now screaming for him to let her go. He threw her on the ground against a wall and then stumbled around the room, throwing a glass bowl across the room in a fit of rage. It shattered above her head and the glass fell around her, cutting her legs and arms. She got up slowly and hobbled into the washroom, her mother screaming louder at her father now as her dad whipped another glass object against the wall. She locked the washroom door and looked at her body in the mirror. She was riddled the cuts of all sizes, but a deep one on her forearm concerned her the most. She sat down on the toilet and gently hummed to herself, trying to drown out the screams and crashes as she cleaned her wounds slowly. Around 3 am, the screaming subsided and she slipped out of washroom and into her room, making her way over to the closet. She sat down on the floor, closed the door, and began to rock herself back and forth as she repeated the same statement in her head.
Everything will be okay, as long as I'm in the closet.
She repeated the statement in her head over and over enough times that night that she actually started to believe it. Her father and mother's behaviour the next morning was typical; they acted as if nothing had happened. At school, she'd played the cuts, scraps, and bruises off to a playground incident and people believed her. She was fine, she said, whenever someone asked what had happened. And for several days after that night, things were fine. But 5 days later, the play that she had participated in only nights before replayed itself. Except this time, things turned out much, much worse.
She'd woken up to screaming again, and this time, didn't think twice. She scrambled across her bed and as her fingertips brushed the cold metal of the closet's door knob, she was grabbed roughly from behind and thrown across the room as if she were nothing. She collided with a wall and slumped on the floor, the sounds of screams filling her ears but no coherent words being said. She heard her mother scream and seconds later, the front door slam close. Her mother had decided to leave. She was all alone.
Her father was above her, shouting down at her, but all she could think about was her closet. She had to get there. She slowly inched her way towards it, but everytime she moved, his fist collided with her body. First with her chest, then her stomach, and eventually her face. Just as she was moving towards the tiny room for the forth time, she was pulled up off the ground and thrown violently onto her bed, crushed underneath her father's body as he fell ontop of her. She struggled against his form but she was nothing to his strength. He restrained her with his forearm, which he pushed roughly against her neck. She gasped for breath and clawed as his body, desperate to break free from the hold he had on her, but she couldn't. The last thing she remembered from that night was the way he tore her clothes from her body as if it were paper.
That was two years ago.
"Kristen, you okay?"
Kristen Tergessi looked up from her calculus textbook and squinted her brown eyes behind her navy blue, square framed glasses. The sun was shining down brightly on her and the pathetic excuse for an umbrella that she had propped up beside her did little to protect her from the sun's rays. She could already feel her shoulders burning and the tingling sensation on her nose told her that it was probably going down the same road.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Why?" she asked, looking around at the packed quad at her high school.
Tables and tables of teenagers surrounded her as most of them chatted about their upcoming summer plans. There was a nonchalant air to the entire forum as the atmosphere almost buzzed with the excitement of finally being free from school. Everyone seemed to be positively giddy about the prospect of being done with school, some for the 2 month summer break and some, seniors in particular, ecstatic about being finished with high school forever. Everyone was excited. Everyone but her.
When Kristen was in school, she had a legitimate excuse at being away from home. She signed up for a jubilee of extracurricular activities just for an excuse to shorten the amount of time she had to spend at her house. Ever since that night two years ago, she'd minimized the amount of time she spent near her father. She always came home late and left early in the morning to avoid him. She was trying her hardest to erase from her memory that night and it was easier to do when he wasn't around. She avoided everything that had to do with fathers and acted as if nothing had happened.
She'd never been the same after that night. She couldn't figure out why he had done it. He'd taken something from her that she'd never be able to get back and she was a mere shell of the person she had been before. Where she'd once been lively, sarcastic, witty, and outgoing, after that night, she had changed.
Everyone just thought she was an over achiever, and the played the part well; smart, quiet, introverted with almost no friends. People didn't talk to her and she preferred that, because it meant that she didn't have to lie to as many people. As good as she was at it, lying was something she hated doing. She did it to protect herself, but sometimes, the lies caught up with her.
"It's just that you didn't hand back your calculus textbook today in class when I asked for them all back. I think I remember you say you'd left it at home?"
Kristen looked up and cringed inwardly as she saw her calculus teacher smiling knowingly down at her. She pushed her hair behind her ears and shut her textbook, holding it up to the teacher as she gathered her things.
"Yeah, sorry. I found it in my locker as I was cleaning it out and was just getting some stuff I'd left in it. I was coming to give it to you" she said, lying expertly. She smiled sheepishly at the professor as she stuffed her belongings in her black messenger bag, swinging it across her shoulder as soon as she had everything in it. She smiled again to her teacher and then turned to leave, hoping she'd be able to make a clean break without having to endure any awkward conversation.
"Well, thanks. Excited for your summer?" her teacher, Mr. Somerville, asked her, as he caught up with her on her way out of the quad.
She quickened her step a little bit and put on a face, nodding excitedly with a brilliant smile on her face.
"Yeah, totally! I'm doing a bunch of family stuff but it should be fun. Have a good break, sir!" she said as she left the school grounds, walking in the opposite direction of her house. She watched a look of confusion pass over her teacher's face, but he smiled to her eventually and gave her a hearty wave. She matched it and then walked off, thankful that the lie she told was a small one. Mr. Somerville had only ever been nice to her, but the lie was of the white variety. She liked little white lies. They didn't make her feel as bad.
She'd been having trouble sleeping that night, so she'd gotten the flashlight she kept under her bed and started to read one of the books she had piled on her nightstand to pass the time until she fell asleep. She was on the 30th page and her eyes lids were just beginning to droop when she heard it.
The smash of glass.
Her body froze solid as she waited for another sound. Ever since that night, the late night screaming matches had pretty much stopped and he'd never attacked her again. She thought that it had been a one time thing, but maybe she was wrong.
And that's when she heard it.
The familiar slur of her father's drunken voice and the rattling of objects he was probably stumbling around. She didn't wait for the screaming to start this time. She was not going to let him abuse her like he did last time. There was only once place to go, so she quickly got out of her bed and stumbled in the darkness over to her closet. She picked up a sweatshirt on her way over, not sure how long she'd be in there, and blindly felt along her bedroom wall until she felt the grooves of the door.
The screaming outside began to increase in volume and her heart began to beat faster. She needed to get into her closet.
Her fingers closed around the cold, metal knob and she quietly opened the door, minding the squeaks as if not to alert her father of her hiding spot. She was halfway in when the screaming got very loud and she heard a loud set of footfalls approaching her door. She threw her body into the closet and closed the door behind her, just as her father began pounding on her bedroom door. She expected her body to hit one of the closet's walls, except something happened.
She fell onto grass instead.
((Author's Note: Hey everyone! Well this is the first chapter of my new Narnia fic. I hope you guys like it, it's been several weeks in the making. It's a dark story, but I have big ideas for it. Reviews make my life, so please review it! THANKS! ))