Write a poem or short story from the viewpoint of someone living in a doll house
“Don’t you remember how young we all used to be?”
I glanced sideways at Bethany, checking if she was serious. It was the third time she’d asked the question since she arrived. She looked back earnestly.
“I mean, we’ve been friends for ten years.” She continued. I gave my canned chuckle and nod, not quite sure how to respond. Yes, I suppose it’d technically been ten years since we all met. But it felt so much more complicated than that.
“It’s been a while,” I agreed as she took a drag off her cigarette. I waved her off when she offered it to me. There was a time when I would have had my own pack–in fact, Bethany’s brand were light blue American Spirits, the kind of cigarettes I used to buy when I turned 18, a couple months before everyone else. She only smoked them because I smoked them first, but now even a drag from the vile things made me want to vomit. I told her this when she first arrived, but she didn’t seem to be able to comprehend it. She kept asking me out to the porch to smoke and getting surprised when I didn’t partake.
“I needed this,” She declared, turning around and leaning against the wooden railing to gaze up at the sky. “I miss the stars. I never get to see them in New York.” I copied her movements, gazing up with her at the unimpressive night sky. We were in rural Wisconsin, sure, but the stars didn’t come close to the skies I’d just come from in Montana. But then, Bethany wouldn’t know about how much I loved the stars in Montana. She didn’t know much about my life anymore, and all I really knew about hers is that she lived in New York and seemed to have an extraordinarily selective memory where our friendship was concerned.
“It must be nice to get out of the city.” I offered lamely. Bethany was saved from having to think of a response by the rest of the group spilling out onto the deck, interrupting our sorry excuse for a conversation.
Jacob passed me a joint, which I sucked on gratefully. Weed was the friend I was really celebrating ten years with.
Jacob was better, far better, at hiding his feelings about Bethany. We’d discussed endlessly how she judged, bullied, and broken us in high school, but as soon as she arrived at the cabin, Jacob seemed to be able to wipe all that from his memory and happily reminisce about the ‘good old days’ with her. I was not so adept at hiding my feelings, and by necessity relegated myself to the fringes of the conversation, holding the joint like a lifeline.
I tried my best not to judge my friends as they indulged in Bethany’s obsession with the past. I tried not to comment on how they rewrote history as they spoke, always in their favor. I prayed silently that they would avoid the subject, as Jacob did when we were together.
“I think senior year was my favorite year.”
The Lord is cruel. I stared at the one who’d uttered the offending sentence–Jacob, of all people. The bitter poison of betrayal soured my mouth and stomach. My throat grew dry, as it always did when anyone broached the subject of our senior year in high school.
As I feared they would, every one of my friends enthusiastically agreed with him. And then, the torture began. A play-by-play retelling of their weekend ritual. Jacob and Annie, surreptitiously sneaking whatever alcohol they could into water bottles, generously supplied by Annie’s warring and unaware parents; the drive out to Excelsior; the magnificence of his house, his car, his clothes; the way his parents turned a blind eye to the rampant and raucous underage drinking taking place in their basement; the places they passed out, the places they woke up. The sound of Bethany’s laughter was knives in my stomach. While they shared mutual memories of hungover mornings trying to make it to McDonald’s breakfast, I relived my own personal hell in silent agony.
I couldn’t look any of them directly in the eye. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t move, I was frozen as a different set of memories washed over me. The look in his eyes as he beckoned me over, the glint of braces in his smile (braces, for Christ’s sake!), the acid-laced confusion as we sat together, I on his knee, and he lowered the headphones over my ears. My arms wrapped around Jacob after it happened, the whisper in his ear, “Please don’t leave me alone with him again,” the confusion in his face as he asked “What?” loudly, and then slipped away. Stomach dropping, bathroom locked as I realize both Jacob and Annie are gone and I am alone here (where are my car keys?) Breathing too fast, too fast and the letters on my phone are dancing in ways I’ve never seen before, and I dial the first person I ever truly loved, who doesn’t pick up. Hit the button again, again, he doesn’t pick up, he never loved you, not really, and then someone is slipping the car keys under the bathroom door and that’s your ticket out.
I sat in my car in the dead of winter and waited for my mom to pick me up. I was promptly grounded, and saved from having to go to the next party that weekend. I told my best friends what happened to me, thinking they’d believe me, but I was wrong. My friends spent their senior year partying with the boy who sexually assaulted me. I spent my senior year watching them do it on Instagram.
All at once, I knew that if I didn’t get out of there, if I didn’t leave that instant, that I would say something I regretted.
A Spoken mind
I stood suddenly, my chair skidding out from under me so fast that I was sure it would stop the conversation dead. But only Jacob noticed, giving me a questioning look. I ignored him as best as possible, staring at Bethany, who remained engaged in conversation with Annie and Alicia. One by one, they finally noticed me, trailing off into silence.
“What’s up, hun?” Bethany asked. Her voice dripped with thinly veiled derision. We stared each other down for a moment, venom in her eyes, fire in mine. I struggled for my first words, but once I began speaking, it was as if someone else took over my mouth for me, and the words finally flowed freely:
“You all think you’re such good people, huh?” Bethany raised her brows, and I plowed on. “If you’re gonna sit around talking about shit that happened five years ago, why don’t you get it right? Why don’t you fess up to your lie, Bethany? You know, that one you told about me so that they would all feel better partying with the guy that sexually assaulted me? Yeah, that’s right, I know about that. I know that you told everyone that I was lying about it–“
Bethany stood up too, her chair violently falling to the floor with a loud bang. “I didn’t tell them you lied, I told them you over-exaggerated, and I was right. You put yourself in that situation, no one made you take that tab of acid. You always do this, you always blame other people for things that are your fucking fault, no wonder Lucy doesn’t talk to you anymore–“
“Fuck you, fuck all of you. You’re so fucking fake, Bethany. ‘We’ve been friends for ten years’, yeah right, you think you’ve been a friend to me? You don’t know the first thing about me anymore.” I was speaking too loud, almost yelling, and I could feel the room’s eyes bouncing between Bethany and I as we hurled insults at each other, the finale of our friendship.
“It’s not my fault you fell off the face of the fucking earth, no social media for years–“
“I fell off the face of the earth because you didn’t want me there anymore!”
The sentence, a scream to the heavens, echoed back to me off the lakeshore. I stood in the middle of the room, shaking, breath coming in heaves, fists balled at my side. Everyone was staring at me in shocked silence, even Bethany. When I spoke again, it somehow came out quiet, level and measured, and I spoke directly to her.
“You come back from New York and expect everyone to just be there where you left us. People aren’t like that. We have real lives. We’re not just dolls in your doll house, waiting for you to pick us up and play with us. You can’t just put us down when you’re done. It’s not high school anymore, and I’m sick and tired of pretending that our friendship was something special when you went out of your way to make life a living hell for every person here.”
The room was silent, Bethany’s expression frozen and unreadable. Avoiding Annie and Alicia’s gazes, I turned to Jacob.
“I’m sorry, but I have to go.” I addressed him alone, for he was the only person I would regret losing. He didn’t say a word, just stared blankly at me. I swallowed once, and then walked across the room and out the front door, into the summer night.
A Swallowed Truth
I stood suddenly, my chair skidding out from under me so fast that I was sure it would stop the conversation dead. But only Jacob noticed, giving me a questioning look. I couldn’t meet his eye, I was afraid that if I did, he would be able to read it like a book and know every one of my thoughts. It was for Jacob that I walked as quickly as I could out the front door, the conversation between Annie and Bethany and Alicia unbroken in my wake. He was the one I didn’t want to hurt.
The summer night was dark and quiet, yellow light from the cabin striping the grass and driveway. I shivered slightly. It was colder up here than it was back in the city. The breeze blew in off the lake, and I started walking in a trance down the steps towards the lakeshore.
I hardly stepped off the porch when the front door slammed behind me. I didn’t turn around, determined to fully make my exit, but Jacob got there first.
“Hey, are you okay?” He grabbed my arm, stopping me in my tracks. I glanced up at him, unable to force my face into the easy smile I wanted to give him.
I forced the word across my lips, nearly choking on it. “Yes.”
“Are you being honest with me?”
I spoke without thinking. “I’m never honest with you.”
He sighed glumly. “I wish you were. I can never tell.”
It was the willful ignorance that spiked my blood with anger. Because the truth was, honesty came second-nature to me, almost like a curse. I could never hide how I felt about anything. I expected the dishonesty, the constant gaslighting from Bethany. But to hear it from Jacob cut me deeper. The words spilled from my lips before I could stop myself.
“I think you’re a worse person when you’re with Bethany.”
It wasn’t what I expected to say. It wasn’t what I wanted to say. What I wanted to tell him was that yes, he hurt me. He hurt me, and so I swallowed my truth every day, hiding myself from him for the sake of our friendship. I fought hard now to keep it from all coming to the surface. I didn’t want to risk the damage the truth might do to us.
His eyes narrowed, his voice tightened. “Is that just one of your random insults, or do you actually believe that?”
“I actually believe that.” As I said the words, they felt right leaving my lips. It was a truth, definitely, but not the truth I did and at the same time did not want to share with him.
“Well.” He said shortly. He crossed his arms, and then uncrossed them. He sighed, and then turned away, walking back up the steps towards the cabin and the rest of them. I watched him go with a mixture of guilt and pride. It felt good to have at least said something, but I knew it was the wrong thing to say. His hand on the doorknob, he turned around to look down on me. His face was darkened by shadows, but I could still hear the pain in his voice.
“You’re always so mean to me.”
So many replies ran through my head, but in the end, I swallowed my words as he disappeared back into the cabin, back to laugh and reminisce with Bethany.
I wanted to laugh out loud, I wanted to cry. It was the nail in the coffin, the undeniable confirmation that whatever I did, it just wasn’t good enough. I packed my belongings quickly, beyond grateful that I drove my own car here. The crickets and loons called out to me as I marched across the driveway with my suitcase. I could see the rest of them through the windows, laughing and drinking in the yellow light. Jacob sat across from Bethany, staring back at me without seeing me, looking hollow and lost. Bethany held court from the head of the kitchen table, dictating the night like a puppet master playing the strings, a girl playing with her dolls.
Whether I spoke my mind or swallowed my truth, it didn’t matter. That night, I knew: it was time for me to leave the dollhouse.
House of my Soul 