31. CATASTROPHE
PANDORA
Everything happens so fast. My grades come in, my parents barge into our apartment, and without as much as a “hi,” Dad starts throwing my belongings into big, plastic containers while I scream louder than I’ve ever screamed at him before. My father keeps working, impassable, like I am air to him.
He slams the door to my bedroom, leans against the panels from the outside, trapping me while he calls the movers. The bright ceiling light doesn’t detain my panic, a roaring, howling thing that whirls and sucks me in. My fear is irrational. I know this, I know, because—
The lights are on. The lights are on.
Dad can’t dictate my life anymore, and yet my nervous system doesn’t believe. My mother cowers in here with me, eyes wide and fixed on me as I go crazy. When my fear drowns me and I don’t see her anymore, I still sense her reaching for me, and I slap her away with hands I barely control.
From within my private hell, my brain ticks off signals, telling me to get my shit together. They grow with insistence, yelling—
You need to harness this!
Slowly, I resurface. My surroundings sharpen. I see the wall with the James Dean posters. My mother’s stricken expression.
I suck air in through my nose. It saturates my lungs while my mind races and grinds on—
My father’s punishments.
They were unorthodox. His way of protecting me. They made me stay out of trouble most of the time. Who knows who I would have been, which path I’d be down in high school if he hadn’t stopped me?
But that part of my life is over. With every fiber, I know I can’t take more of his discipline. Yes, I messed up—I recognize that I did; I earned Ds and Fs across the board, but even so, I’m an adult. Not even Dad has the right to restrain me now.
“Please, Mom.” My voice is sandpaper gritty. “I need to stay in Deepsilver. I’ll pull myself together—figure things out. I can’t go back to living with you.” My pitch quivers on the last sentence, and I’m about to lose it again when my mother begins to soothe me.
“Pandora-honey, everything will be fine,” she says. Her longing look makes me think she wants to tuck away the blanket of hair soaking up my tears. I breathe in deeply, gathering control.
“Winter break is starting, Dora. I’m sure no one stays on campus, and a lot can happen over the next month while you’re at home. I’ll talk with your father.”
Mom’s the queen of wringing her hands in the background. She never seriously tries to convince Dad.
“No, you won’t.”
She straightens, the concern for me still in her eyes, but her lips thin into a line. “Pandora, trust me. I agree with you: you do need to learn on your own, and I think your father is acting hastily.”
“Fucking stop him from moving all my shit, then!”
The stunned silence from my mother merges with Dad’s in the hallway. If I were younger, if I’d lived at home, I’d be very, very scared of the repercussions. But I am not who I was. Perhaps freedom changes people.
I stride to the door and pound. The sound isn’t the panicked scratching from my first times in the walk-in at home. He’s quiet, probably biding his time. I won’t back off, though, because where would I end up if I didn’t stand up for myself? Would I even become me—the real me—the one I have the potential of becoming?
I flick a glance to my shelf, where one of my fragile little friends is on display. It gleams in the overhead light. It’s not lit, but it could so easily be lit—my sweet, silly safety blanket. I could screw it in anywhere and control its flicker. Winking with hope, the 60-watt light bulb I wish I’d had at home lends me strength.
“Dad, open up. We need to talk.”
The panic still trembling in me abates at my own demand, my emotions and common sense about to cooperate for once. It’s as if all of me grasps the milestone this moment can become.
Dad eases the door open, steely gray gaze meeting mine from an inch above. I didn’t realize how short he is, I think, randomly.
He claps his old flip-phone closed and enters my room, joining us. He sniffs and pierces me with his no-bullshit stare. “The movers will be here in thirty minutes.”
“Please call them off,” I ask while he crosses his arms.
“No, Pandora. You have clearly shown—”
I cut my dad off, and my heart skips a beat as I go against the direct orders he’s in the middle of giving. “Dad, I am not moving back into your house.”
“‘Our house!’” my mother gasps, immediately obsessing over the wrong part of the conversation. “How can you say that? It’s your home, Pandora!”
Mom diverting my attention isn’t something I’ll permit, though, because this right here, defines my future. “You guys took a big chance when you let me move to Deepsilver, outside of your… jurisdiction, and I am grateful,” I begin.
“The apartment, the tuition you pay, how I haven’t had to take out any student loans. Yes, Dad—I’m a freshman who hasn’t figured things out yet, but I’m learning. After Christmas, I—”
“No, Pandora. Next semester you’ll be continuing your studies back in Rockcastle,” Dad explains, modulating his professor persona perfectly. “Now, let’s get this place packed away.” He jerks his head in the direction of the other rooms down the hall. “I’ll give your friends a month’s notice.”
Strange how my father laying down Dad-law solidifies my resolve and calms me further. He’s not listening, like he’s never listened, only I’m done submitting to his will.
Thinking back, what caused me to obey was my dark, dark, walk-in closet. I let myself consider this for a nanosecond before I shield myself from the thought.
“I’m sorry, Dad. You can throw me out of this apartment, but we’ll find another place to live. I’ll take out loans—”
“Of course.” Dad puffs out a cold laugh that takes me by surprise. “You’ll need a cosigner for loans. You have no credit, Pandora.”
My mother’s words, repeated too often over the years, float back to me: “He’s so strict with you because he loves you.”
Problem is, I can’t stomach his way of loving me.
“I’ll find a cosigner, Dad. Don’t you worry.”
I straighten my back and stare right into the flint of his gaze. My fists must have clenched, because my nails bite into the skin of both palms.
This is all so much. My lower lip begins to quiver, but my determination isn’t affected. Mom might be silent out of shock—the only believable reason, really—while Dad assesses the raw emotions I am in front of him.
He shakes his head slowly. His stare gains a flicker of something new, and yet I’ve seen it before, just… where? It was a long time ago, that much I know. I sniffle. I whip the back of my hand up to dry my nose. Then, I remember.
At archery camp the summer I was twelve, he picked me up and caught the final showdown in my age group. Fifteen kids, one after the other, missed the target altogether, while I—his daughter—won the trophy by hurling my five arrows straight into the center.
Back then, he grabbed my neck in an approving squeeze. Pride soared through me as his mouth curled up the tiniest bit when the few words he let out said everything: “Look at you.”
His gaze now holds surprise and respect. “Pandora,” he starts. “Darling, we only want the best for you.”
“In that case, give me my freedom so I don’t have to take it. I need to do this on my own, Dad, and I will, with or without your blessing.”
“Dora, you’re only nineteen,” Mom blurts out, and I send her an incredulous glare. Minutes ago, she was speaking warmly of me making my own mistakes.
But then, the strangest thing happens. My father raises his hand, drapes his arm around my mother’s shoulder in a silent command to be quiet. As always, she follows his orders.
I continue. “This isn’t only about me either. I’ve moved my three best friends all the way across the country when they could have stayed at home. They deserve to finish the programs they started here, Dad.
“Mica’s major isn’t even offered at home, and I know for a fact that she and Shannon can’t pay for dorm rooms if they have to leave our apartment. While I’ve been screwing up this semester, the others have done really well. I don’t want to be the one to blame for their interrupted education.”
I am to blame. I did this.
I snuff out the voice in my head because I can’t afford to psyche myself out. My father’s forehead furrows. Suddenly, he looks tired, older than his years, and Mom registers the change too.
“John?” Her hand flutters up to her twentieth-anniversary necklace. The thing could pay for Mica’s college education outright. Now she fingers the biggest diamond nervously because my mother didn’t marry my father for his indecision.
“Just… I can’t, Dad,” I finally whisper. “That’s all.”