Chapter 9

chapter 9:
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Molly looked out her bedroom window. The leaves had begun to change already, but just a second ago it had been summer. She usually loved it when the Chicagoland area weather changed, the air becoming crisper and the leaves changing from green to brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows. Autumn was normally her favorite time of year, but there was just something different about this year.
Her best friend had been severely beaten and raped by her own father and was going to be at the hospital for a while. For the first time in days, Molly had her room to herself. Although she appreciated the quiet, all she wanted was her best friend back and healthy again. She didn't care that Ashley wasn't the quietest sleeper in the world, or that she tended to throw her clothes in a pile on the floor until she got sick of the mess and picked them up (which was usually only when she ran out of clean underwear). Of course, this time had been different. Her usual sleep murmuring turned into night terrors, and she did not want to set foot into her house at all, and with good reason.
Molly promised Ashley she would get her mom's box. She wondered if there was anything else she should look out for, but she didn't want to stress too much about it. Ashley could always get new clothes, but she couldn't get a new box filled with all her favorite memories of her mom. It was the one thing she had always held onto and hid from her dad so he couldn't throw it away like he had all the rest of her mom's stuff. Ashley had been in the hospital for a week now and this was the only day Molly had a block of time that she didn't need to be anywhere so she could sneak out for a minute.
Molly opened her window and climbed out onto the roof. When she was younger, she would come up here all the time at night and lay down with her wings fully spread out and stare up at the stars. She hadn't done it in a very long time, though. The last time she was up there had been with Ashley, right before a stupid fight that Molly still felt guilty about. She had a feeling that Ashley was trying to tell her something but she wouldn't and Molly took it personally. Ashley went home in tears and that was the last Molly had heard of her except for school until that let out and during the summer it was like they had been strangers.
Now that Molly understood why Ashley had pushed her away, she wished that she could have just accepted her plea to just be quiet for once. Ashley just wasn't ready to talk.
Molly vowed to get Ashley's mom's box if it was the last thing she did. She could wait until nighttime, but her wings were buzzing. She was ready to go now.

She hadn't practiced staying airborne from a standing position in a while, and she was a little rusty. She kept flapping her wings trying to gain momentum but it took a few tries to finally get her up in the air. Ashley's house wasn't far away so she'd only be up for a few minutes at most. It was a weekend in the middle of the day so most people would be out, but they were used to her by now. As she flew she looked down at all the trees, admiring their beautiful colors. She vowed not to wait too long before doing this again, and maybe she would bring Ashley along, like the old days.
Ashley's street was right around the corner. As Molly came closer, she felt a little buzzing at the nape of her neck. Something was definitely a little off about this place. As she approached the house, she aimed for the big trampoline in the backyard that was now filled with leaves. One big bounce and she tucked her wings back, ready to approach the house by foot.
Looking in from the sliding glass door, nothing in that big house looked right. Very slowly Molly tried the glass door, only to have it move. The door was open.

Carefully stepping inside the mansion, she could tell instantly that it had been looted. There was broken glass everywhere, pictures ripped off the walls, even the 55" big screen tv was tipped over on its side, and it had appeared that someone had kicked in the screen.
All around the house there were words that said "rapist" and "abuser". People wrote angry notes and left them on walls and on the floor. Upon closer examination it seemed that nothing had actually been taken from the Blackfield household. The people in the surrounding houses were merely just pissed off at this man and took it out on the first floor of the house.

Molly didn't feel like anyone was upstairs. If she hurried, hopefully she could be in and out in only a few minutes and she wouldn't have to come here again. She moved quietly up the stairs, as if preparing for someone to jump out at her and arrest her for breaking and entering. Even though the house had been vandalized, it still felt like it was expecting someone to be home. Mr Blackfield had only been in jail for 24 hours. Molly had no idea how long he'd be in there, but she didn't want to be there if some stupid cop decided to let him go.

She finally made it to Ashley's room. The whole time she has been walking up the stairs she could feel a sadness, an energy that filled her soul with despair. As she reached for the door handle, the energy shifted. What once was merely sadness was now pain. So much pain Molly felt like she had just been kicked in the stomach. She could hardly stand it. Her hands were shaking by the time she finally opened the door.
As she entered Ashley's room, she suddenly understood what her dreams meant. She could feel everything that Ashley had been going through those past few months, all the tears that had been shed, all the secrets she was forced to keep. Molly took a deep breath to calm herself. She gave herself 10 minutes to walk through Ashley's room, pack a bag, and leave. First thing's first.
She went to the closet to find Ash's duffel bag. She found it stashed behind some dirty clothes that were filled with blood it looked like. Upon further examination, Molly also saw dried up snot and what she guessed were tears. She kept digging and found a whole bunch of pairs of dirty underwear. It was so unlike Ashley to stuff dirty clothes in the closet. On the floor, yes, but closet? Molly didn't really want to, but she felt like she had to look at the underwear. She only had to look at one pair to know what it was... These were the underpants she was wearing when she got raped by her dad. And guessing from the blood, she had been a virgin.
Without thinking, Molly grabbed a separate bag to put these clothes in. She didn't care if it tempered with evidence, she didn't want them disappearing. Judging from the looks of the rest of the house, though, it didn't seem like the police cared that much about what happened to this house. It wasn't being patrolled and there wasn't even any police tape cautioning people to keep out. No matter what evidence Molly confiscated out of here, from the town's witnessing accounts and Ashley's testimony alone, Jeff Blackfield was looking at 20+ years in jail anyhow.
But something td her that she would need to save these. She had no idea why but it was a sense that was so strong she had to listen to it.
She finally got to the duffel bag and found that it was already halfway packed. Molly peeked inside and saw a note safety pinned on the side of the bag: if found take me to Molly's house.

Molly was shocked. Sure, her job was made so much easier by her friend's ability to plan ahead, but it was just the way the note was written. Ashley had always talked about emergencies. She always had an exit strategy, always had two, maybe three plans for everything. It wasn't something that everybody knew, most people only knew her as the lovable but ditzy kid with the rich father. Molly was the only one who knew that her first kiss happened during a game of truth or dare, that she was secretly afraid of thunder, and that she wanted to be a famous jewelry maker when she got older. She wanted to be a lot of things that her dad turned down, and when her mother died, her plans for escape were a lot more intricate, a lot more detailed. Her room was one huge booby trap. She had put all of her dirty clothes on top of her escape duffel bag not only so the maids couldn't see them but because she knew her dad would never look past the evidence of what he had done. He would never look past the t shirts with blood on them, the underwear with blood and (ew gross) semen on them. By doing that he'd have to admit to what he did and he'd burn in hell before that happened.

Molly looked around the room to see if there was anything she had missed. She picked up some of Ashley's favorite pieces of jewelry and put them in her favorite box. Upon opening the box, she found a note. "good, you're here. I hope you found all the pieces. If you're reading this it's because you haven't found my diary yet. And yes you have permission to read it. I'm sorry in advance. Ash."
Molly was stunned. She quickly located the diary and the key (in the second row of books on her bookshelf in a box that looked like a book) and decided it was time to get the hell out of there. After getting everything in the bag that she needed, she took one last look around Ashley's room. She had so many memories here. That was, until Ash's mom died, then there were fewer. They still had plenty of memories at her house though, and now they were going to be real sisters. She couldn't wait for this whole mess to be over with.
Saying her goodbyes to the room, she shut off the light and silently shut the door. She crept down the stairs and made it through the back door. She took a running start this time and jumped on top of the trampoline, flapping her wings with each jump. It was a little trickier with the duffel bag, but she managed to gain strength and soon she was flying through the air again.
She flew all the way to her own street, where she decided to walk the rest of the way home. She landed a little awkwardly but managed to keep most of her dignity before walking. She was going to have to relearn how to land because the crashing part was not so much fun.

She walked up to her bedroom window and in one jump managed to get up to the roof. The more she used her wings, the better she was getting at maneuvering them. Suddenly she felt a pang of guilt at neglecting them for so long.
She used her wings when she was little as much as she used her arms and legs.  Her parents felt that if she was going to have wings, she was going to learn how to use them. So she learned how to take off, land, and stay airborne. But when she was about 10, she got sick of all the attention she would get from using them.
It wasn't so much her school that was the problem. Everyone was used to her and no one had a real problem with her or her wings. But whenever her class would go on field trips, not everyone was as accepting. Lots of people would stare and she could feel herself becoming increasingly uncomfortable as time went on. She knew people knew about her, she just couldn't understand why people still refused to see her and focus only on her wings. Since then she stopped using them as much.
Now that she was using them again, she was remembering things she had forgotten about them, like how spectacular they truly were. She never felt more alive than when she was up in the air, watching the town from down below. People would notice her and wave and she would wave back.  She felt safer up in the air than she ever did on the ground. Even though her wings behaved, she knew that there always had to be special accommodations made on her behalf. It didn't matter how much she longed to fit in, she would always be different. She felt that if she finally embraced who she truly was, she would feel better about having to sit at the back of the classroom, having to make sure her wings were tucked in at all times in public places so as to not accidentally knock into anyone or anything, and that no matter where she was, certain people were just going to look at her.

Her intuition was starting to come back again, too. It was always there, but as she wasted time and energy fighting to be more human, her intuition suffered. It would come out in garbled dreams and half truths, she was mostly just left scrambling to make sense of things. But since she started using her wings again, she could feel things in the pit of her stomach she knew to be true. Like the fact that she had no choice but to take those clothes, the ones with the evidence all over them. She knew that house wasn't safe, she knew that the police were on her side but they also weren't doing their jobs very well because they had allowed that house to be vandalized. She knew with every fiber of her being that if she had waited another day, something might have happened to the evidence, even though she wasn't exactly sure what that something was yet.
She also knew that everything she needed was in this duffel bag and there was no need to ever go in that house again. Before she left, she took some pictures off of the walls and tried to fill the bag up with as much of Ashley and the remains of her mother that was still there. It wasn't much but Molly managed to find a few more pictures, and a necklace that Molly remembered as being a family heirloom that had been passed down from generations. That was the last piece that Molly took before leaving that place and never looking back. No matter what happened now, she was more concerned about her friend than tempering with evidence. Ashley had enough broken bones to send that evil man to jail for a while without any of this laying around.

Molly reached for her phone that was in her back pocket. She unlocked it and started a text message to Ashley. She thought about telling her about everything she got, but decided against it.

"got your mom's box," was all she managed to type.

It took a few minutes, but a response finally came through. "thank you so much! I love you!!"

"I'll see you later, mom's making breakfast now."
"okay. You don't have to bring the box with you. I know it's safe with you."
"love you!!" Molly wrote. She was relieved that Ashley didn't want her to bring the box to the hospital. She would have enough explaining to do later about everything else she took, she didn't have the energy to explain this. She just wanted it to be okay that she had it.

She was curious about what was inside, though. Throughout all the years that she and Ashley had been best friend's and sisters, Molly never got to see what was inside. The box itself was lovely. It was just a simple old cigar box that had been painted with different things like caterpillars, butterflies, and other insects. It didn't look like it came with that cover, it looked like someone had found a box and painted over it.
Molly examined the front and saw that she was right, a small signature in the bottom right corner with Ashley's mom's initials gave it away. So she had been an artist. Cool.
Molly felt kind of bad for opening the box. After all the breaking and entering she did that day, it was mainly out of curiosity than anything else that made her open the box. It wasn't even locked or anything, it was just the simple fact that it wasn't hers to open. Looking inside she found all kinds of cool stuff. She found folded up pictures that looked similar to the one on the box, with the same initials, there were notes from her school mates, her old lock and key diary from high school, concert tickets, even a pregnancy test. There was more jewelry in there, lots of cool antique looking rings, necklaces with different pendants on them, and even a charm bracelet.
A single tear rolled down Molly's cheek. She knew that Ashley's mom had had her when she was young, but she was never sure how young she was until just now. This wasn't just someone's box, this was an entire life. Molly didn't have to read the diary to know that Ashley was on her way before her mother had even finished high school. This was the kind of box a teenager would keep, a life that was spent not being able to wait to break free and start her life already. But she never got that chance because she would get pregnant before she finished high school. She was in love with a guy named Jeff whose family was very rich. They didn't want to have anything to do with the baby and tried to pay for her to have an abortion. When that didn't work, she and her baby's father were forced to marry the day after they graduated, right before she was about to give birth.
After that, she needed to get her head out of the clouds and she got a real job working for her husband's family. She was paid well but never got any joy out of her life besides her daughter.
Molly could see this all playing like a movie inside her head. How could Ashley be her best friend and not tell her any of this? She might not have been able to understand it herself. But Molly understood. She understood that the Blackfield family was worse than she had ever realized, and they might be rich but couldn't afford to buy themselves sensitivity or a soul. Before Molly could find out anything else, she closed the box up and put it back in the duffel bag. She took the bag out with the dirty clothes in it and tucked that away inside a sleeping bag she hadn't used since she was 7. No one would be using that any time soon.

Her stomach growled with hunger as she put the bag in the closet and ran downstairs to the smell of pancakes, bacon, hashbrowns, eggs, and coffee. Mom sure did know how to cook. She had never been more thankful for her parents at that moment.