Blurring Lines (7 page)

Cade

November 26
th
, 2005

Emily was supposed to swing by my house after cheerleading practice. Football practice finished over an hour ago, and I was growing anxious. I had this weird energy buzzing inside of my body tonight. It felt like anticipation or excitement …

Weird.

I checked the time on the clock above the fireplace for the fiftieth time and sighed in frustration.

Why was it that time passed excruciatingly slowly when you wanted it to go fast, but when you needed it to slow down it went by in the blink of an eye?

Our house phone rang, stirring me from my reverie, and I reached across the counter to retrieve it. Picking the phone off its stand, I checked the screen before accepting the call and putting it to my ear.

“Mom, what’s up?”

“Oh Cade,” my mother cried. My heart shriveled inside of my chest. “It’s Mackenzie.” Time crawled to a slow, and I felt dead inside.

“Where did they find her?” I managed to ask though my throat was dry as sandpaper. “How long has she been dead?”

“No, Cade, baby, you’re misunderstanding me,” Mom wept. “They found Mackenzie alive, honey. She’s alive and well and in Birmingham, Alabama, as we speak.”

Mackenzie is alive.

She’s alive and well and in Birmingham …

“Please tell me this isn’t a mistake,” I begged. I could hear the pain in my own voice. “Please.”

I was terrified; terrified of getting my hopes up and having them crushed again.

I couldn’t go through this again – losing Mackenzie.

I wouldn’t be able to survive it twice …

“There’s no mistake,” Mom assured me. “The police got a tip-off several weeks ago and they’ve cracked the case. Mackenzie was found in a hotel in the city earlier tonight. She’s safe, baby. The police phoned Mitch this evening. We’re driving to the city now. We booked into a hotel near the hospital for the night and are visiting Mackenzie in the morning.”

“I’ll meet you guys up there,” I told my mother as I looked around franticly for the key of my motorcycle. “What hotel are you staying in?”

“Cade,” my mother said, and I knew from the tone of her voice that she was about to say something I wouldn’t like hearing. “Kenzie is delicate right now ...”

“You’ve just told me that my best friend has been found after
three years
. Do you really expect me to sit at home and wait?”

“She was used in a brothel ring for three years, Cade,” I heard my mother wail. “You rushing into her hospital room all guns blazing won’t do anyone any favors. Besides, the doctors are only allowing Mitch in to see her.”

“What do you want me to do?” I whispered.

“Be patient,” Mom replied gently. “And give her father some time to get to know his daughter again.”

“Did she say anything?” I choked out. “Has she …”

“She said your name, Cade,” my mother replied in a worried tone. “The police told Mitch that Mackenzie has been chanting your name since they found her.”

****

Part Three

The reunion …

Spring 2006

Age 18

Mackenzie

February 5
th
, 2006

My life changed when I was fifteen years old.

One moment in time, one insignificant day in the grand scheme of things, altered the course of my future, poisoned my perspective of the human race, and put to rest every hope, dream, and desire I ever had.

Everything that happened to me before that moment was irrelevant. Everything that happened to me since was meaningless. I was destroyed in the space of time it takes to put out the trash – in the space it takes to light a match, to ignite a flame. Ruined. Violated beyond repair.

I had no goals, because I had no hope. Hope was lethal to people like me. Hope could drive a person to insanity. To incessantly believe things would get better and improve was absolutely pointless. Being rational and accepting the hand you’ve been given was a wiser option …

Last week my therapist asked me about my goals for the future. That’s the answer I wished I’d given her. Instead I’d spun some yarn about college courses and extracurricular activities because I wasn’t stupid and knew exactly what happened to girls like me.

Girls who had been through what I had been through were either medicated or sectioned. I didn’t relish the thought of either being done to me, therefore I put up with my conscience when it called me a liar. Being a liar kept me alive all those years. Being a liar kept me alive in the nest. Being able to lie to yourself was a valuable tool – or in my case a life-saving attribute.

The past three months I had spent inside St Mark’s facility had been some of the loneliest times in my life. I was lonely – desperately lonely –and spending six hours every day having three years worth of schoolwork shoveled down my throat was not helping matters. I wanted company, but apparently that was an
abnormal
request. I found myself constantly trying to discover ways to fill the void inside of me, the darkness, because schoolwork sure as hell wasn’t doing it for me.

According to the statistics, a girl like me was supposed to be terrified of all things physical – because of what I had been through. I was supposed to fear men and shy away from physical touch. I knew I had to be broken inside, because I was the opposite of those statistics.

I had to be broken, because I still desperately
craved
physical.

I had tried explaining this – the way I feel and the urges I have – to Anna, my therapist, but she told me I was in shock. The nurses thought I was suffering from PTS. I wasn’t. I knew I wasn’t. I knew what was wrong with me, and it was worse than all those things. I was having withdrawals ...

Everything from the night I was rescued was still a blur and I felt numb.

Numb on the outside and dead on the inside.

The doctors explained that I was
free
now. The police officers told me that
Master
was dead. They said Master’s real name
was
Emanuel Topanga, and that he was the one in charge of grooming the girls before they were sent to work in the nest. I was his reward …

Master wasn’t the boss – no, he wasn’t even close. He was just one small fish in a vast sea of corruption and illegal activity.

Detective Burke told me the nest was destroyed and the men involved were arrested. They found thirteen girls in the nest.

All locked in cages.

All close to death.

Hannah was one of those girls. She had been treated in hospital for dehydration, chlamydia and a pelvic infection, but she was okay now. She reunited with her family three weeks ago.

But I was still here.

Detective Burke said I shouldn’t be afraid anymore, because I was safe. But I didn’t feel safe and I didn’t feel relieved. I felt nothing, because their words changed
nothing
.  Death, pain, sex and violence – that’s what my life had been about for the past three years.

The doctors still wouldn’t let me see Cade. He was the only one that I wanted to see. The one thing I had asked for and they were still denying me. To be fair to Anna, she was on my side. She believed Cade would be good for me, but her superiors were afraid Cade would be a
trigger.

According to the psychiatric team treating me ‘
it was abnormal to visualize your best friend making love to you whilst being raped
’. According to me, the abnormal part was being raped …

“How have you been doing, Mackenzie?” Anna asked me. She patted her head and smiled. “What do you think – too much?”

Anna had her hair done; her usual bleached-blonde mane was more luminous than usual.

“Ten years younger,” I told her even though I hated it. She shouldn’t want to have blonde hair. She should be on her hands and knees thanking her God that she was born a redhead.

She smiled in contentment, and I leaned back in my chair with one hand on the arm rest and the other on my lap. “How was your last group therapy session?”

Awful. Terrible. I hate it. Fucking despise myself and everything I’ve done, and I really can’t stand being analyzed day in, day out by social workers and psychiatrists who think they know me, but have no fucking clue. How can you know me? How can you understand the pain I carry? You can’t. No one can. No one ever will.

“Good.”

“And Emanuel Topanga?” she asked. “Do you understand that he groomed you – that none of this was your choice?”

I didn’t hate Master
and apparently that wasn’t acceptable. He was evil. He was a monster. I knew this. I did. But what my doctors failed to understand was Master
was the one who protected me from the others. He kept me out of the holding cells. He kept me clean and healthy, not like the other girls. Their masters didn’t care about their health …

“I understand.”

“And your father – how have you and Mitch been getting on in your family sessions?”

Dad couldn’t look me in the eye. He knew what those men did to me. He knew that I
allowed
them to do it.

“We’re getting there.”

“And your mood swings?” she continued. “How have you been feeling since our last session?”

“Great,” I said with a smile. “Couldn’t be better.”

“So you’re feeling positive?” she pushed.

I’d be a lot more fucking positive if you signed me out of this fucking entrapment. I spent the past three years of my life chained to a goddamn bedpost, only to be freed and signed into a psychiatric facility.

“Much more positive.”

“Then I have some good news for you,” she said. “I’m clearing you for discharge. Your dad can take you home tomorrow.”

“That’s wonderful.”

Three months. Anna thought that three months of therapy had fixed me – had wiped away my memories and erased the pain. It just went to show what little she knew.

****

Cade

February 6
th
, 2006

She was coming home tonight. 

The best friend I’d ever had – the one who I thought I had lost forever – was coming back to me.

“I don’t like this, Cade,” I heard Emily say, and my body stiffened. “How convenient it is that Mackenzie’s coming home the same month I’m due to visit my dad out of state.”

“Wow,” I muttered sarcastically. “I bet the doctors at the hospital planned Kenzie’s discharge around your parents’ custody schedule.” I was standing in our back garden struggling to keep a lid on my temper, but the more Emily spoke, the more my anger built. “Come on, don’t be ridiculous, Ems.”

“I wasn’t blind back then, you know,” she sniped. “I remember how you felt about her …”

“Mackenzie is coming home, Ems,” I growled into the phone, shoving a hand roughly through my hair. “Goddamn it, my best friend is finally back –
alive
– and you’re going to play the jealous girlfriend – for real?”

“Your
stepsister
,” Emily amended in a snarky tone. “Mackenzie is your stepsister now, Cade.”

“Exactly,” I hissed. “So stop being so goddamn paranoid.”

“It’s not paranoia when the girl
my
boyfriend
has spent over three years
mourning
suddenly reappears and moves in with him.”

“So, what are you saying here, Ems?” I demanded. “You don’t trust me?”

“I don’t trust
her
,” Emily whined. “You know what her mom did …”

“I’m not having this conversation again, Emily. Mackenzie is not Dee.” I pressed ‘
End Call’
before Emily had a chance to respond and slid my phone back in my pocket.

Stalking up the staircase I didn’t stop until I was in the bathroom with the door slammed shut and my forehead resting against the timber frame.

“Fuck,” I hissed, clenching my hands into fists.

Everything was so fucked-up. This should have been a happy time. I shouldn’t be feeling guilty about wanting Mackenzie home. I shouldn’t be feeling guilty that I was so fucking glad she made it out of that hellhole in one piece.

Mom told me all about it: about how Mackenzie had been kept in a whorehouse in Mexico and sold to every Tom, Dick and Harry.

They caged those girls.

Fucking caged them like dogs.

I wished I didn’t know, but Mom said I needed to understand what Mackenzie had been through in order to support her.

Mom also told me that Mackenzie’s doctor was worried she wasn’t coping as well as the other girls. Mackenzie was younger than most of the other victims and the doctor thought Kenz may have been more susceptible to the brainwashing techniques those bastards used on her because she was only fifteen ...

I overheard Mitch crying on the phone to his brother in Tampa the other day. He told his brother Sam that when the police found Mackenzie, she had a collar and leash attached to her neck and was being … assaulted by
three
men.

Jesus, even thinking about it made me fucking sick to my stomach.

Who was she going to be now?

Those men had three years to warp her – distort her mind and fuck up her sense of reality.

I’m going to help her heal,
I vowed to myself. I couldn’t protect her back then, but I could now. I would do whatever it took to put the old Kenzie back together. I was going to be there for Kenzie – as a friend. Yeah, I needed to remember that.

Pulling my shirt over my head, I inhaled a steadying breath before turning around.

My breath caught in my throat the minute my eyes landed on her, and I knew I was fucked from the get-go.

****