The Butterfly Keeper

12

TWELVE

I STAYED locked in the bedroom for what felt like weeks. I avoided Sebastian, I just couldn't stand looking at him because I kept getting images of him hiding behind trees or following me home and peeking through my windows, stalking me as I grew.

I also kept getting images of him as child, feeding himself and lost in the streets with no one waiting for him back at home. The image of a young teenage Sebastian sleeping in the streets replayed over and over in my head. Looking at him gave me a mixture of disgust and sadness. I only wanted to feel disgust, so I locked myself in the room to clear my head.

I'm trying to understand why I feel this way. Part believes I don't feel sad for him, I just feel this emotion because in some sick way I can relate to his childhood. Similarly, both of my parents were never around growing up, they still weren't when Sebastian took me.

Ever since I was a child, all I remember is the absence of my parents because they were always gone or busy with work. I have no memory of them being at my orchestra concerts or attending conferences, it was always the babysitter they hired that would go and take me to all my school events when I was younger. Once I got older, I started seeing and speaking to them less. I didn't even see them the day I was taken. I know what it feels like to be out in the streets for hours and have none worrying or waiting for you back home.

I'm terrified that there's a slight chance my parents might not even care that I'm missing, or even worse, they don't even know that I am.

A couple weeks before, I got into this huge argument with my mom and told her that one of these days I wasn't going to return home. It was obviously I said that at the heat of the moment and to be dramatic, but what if they actually believe I ran off like I said I would.

What if they aren't even looking for me.

I strongly held on this hope and hallucination that my parents would come and find me, but after knowing that Sebastian's mom didn't even bother to look for him after he got taken, made me realize the same can happen to me. It could also all be some story he made up to make me get rid of the idea that there's a possibly I can be found or escape. I can't distinguish what to believe. Everything is confusing.

Then, there's this other part of me that genuinely believes I'm sorry for him, which makes me sick to my stomach to even be capable of feeling that way towards him. That ugly part of me is convinced Sebastian wasn't always like this, that he was turned and made into the man he is today. If he lived a better life, he would have never taken me, and we would both be living separate and better lives. He wouldn't have been sick in head and this hell wouldn't even have existed. His childhood was a tragedy that he became one.

I don't want to be empathetic towards him. He doesn't deserve it.

Three knocks echo from the door and I jump at the sudden sound. Ever since I locked myself in here, Sebastian has been knocking on the door and leaving trays of food right outside in the hallway. I'm relieved he's been respecting my decision of not wanting to him and hasn't pushed me to leave the room, but today is different because he knocks two more times. Abruptly, the doorknob rattles and Sebastian pushes the door open and walking into the room with no tray of food.

He stands at the entrance as his eyes quickly scan the room until he spots me sitting down on the floor beside the bed. His jeans are dirty with crusts of dry paint and his hair looks unclean and greasy that it glistens brightly under the light of the room. There's a pale bruise on the side of his face, probably from when I punched him that day in his room, and his jaded eyes sit above dark bags. Despite his posture being relaxed, he looks wild and exhausted.