Stained by Cheryl Rainfield

Author:Cheryl Rainfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

SARAH

I AM TIRED OF my if-I-ever-get-out-of-here daydreams. I’m even tired of creating comics—never being able to write them down, just composing snatches in my head, forgetting bits, and starting all over again. The stories I tell myself aren’t enough anymore. I’m just so tired. I want an end to this. I want to be home. And when my despair is strong, like it is now, I think maybe I’d rather not be here at all if I can’t go back. If I have to keep living this hell that’s not quite a life. I’m tired of hoping, of trying so hard and never succeeding.

I tell myself I need to get up and work on the board again, but I just sit here, hopelessness like lead in my bones, weighing me down. What’s the point of trying when I know I’ll never escape? It’s been more than a month, and I haven’t managed to get even one board off. But Diamond would never give up. Neither would my mom and dad. I have to keep hoping.

Outside this room, time is passing without me. It’s getting warmer, turning into spring. I can tell by the air blowing through the hole; it doesn’t have the same cold bite. I’m missing it all. I long to feel the sun on my skin, to press my fingers into the dirt and smell its richness, to look up at the bright blue of the sky and see the birds flying across. I long to be outside, free, the way I always was, without even being aware of it. If I ever get out of here, I swear I will notice things like that. I will appreciate them.

Dad and Mom must still be looking for me. They won’t have given up—even if they believe I’ve run away, like Brian said they do. Despair washes through me so strongly that I don’t want to live. But I can’t let myself go there. So I picture their faces in my mind and try to hear their voices.

Charlene and Nick must be gearing up for spring break. I wonder if they’ve forgotten me already. Or if they think of me fondly sometimes, before they go back to their own lives.

The days are so long, the nights even longer. Without my sight, I have only temperature changes and my body’s rhythms to give me a sense of passing time, and the foil balls I use to mark it with. The monotony, the days and days of no contact with anyone, makes me want to scream just to hear another human voice. I talk aloud to myself. If I didn’t, I think I’d go crazy. I’m not sure I haven’t gone a little crazy already. I never understood that expression that none of us is an island, but I get it now. I need to hear someone’s voice, need to feel someone touch my skin so badly that I start imagining it, hallucinating it, until it’s almost real.

I can almost hear Mom

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