Freeing Liberty Read online

  ALSO BY J.M. PAUL

  Last Summer

  Last Chance

  Copyright © 2016 by J.M. Paul

  All rights reserved.

  Visit my website at www.jmpaulauthor.com

  Cover Designer: Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations, www.okaycreations.com

  Editor and Interior Designer: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing, www.unforeseenediting.com

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9971512-3-7

  For the ones who fought and found a way to survive—silently or outspoken.

  And for the ones still buried deep. Keep fighting to find the light.

  May the outspoken keep speaking for the rest of us.

  We are all survivors.

  My Wage

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Resources

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  My Wage

  I BARGAINED WITH LIFE FOR A PENNY,

  AND LIFE WOULD PAY NO MORE,

  HOWEVER I BEGGED AT EVENING

  WHEN I COUNTED MY SCANTY STORE;

  FOR LIFE IS JUST AN EMPLOYER,

  HE GIVES YOU WHAT YOU ASK,

  BUT ONCE YOU HAVE SET THE WAGES,

  WHY, YOU MUST BEAR THE TASK.

  I WORKED FOR A MENIAL’S HIRE,

  ONLY TO LEARN, DISMAYED,

  THAT ANY WAGE I HAD ASKED OF LIFE,

  LIFE WOULD HAVE PAID.

  —JESSIE B. RITTENHOUSE

  THE DOOR OF DREAMS, 1918

  Over a hundred eyes scrutinized me as I stood silent and slowly sank in the rubble that was my life.

  My sweaty hands gripped the sides of the wood podium in front of me as I shifted my weight. I strained to focus on the piece of paper scribbled with my chicken scratch because there were no words I could say to make the situation better.

  The wreckage of my life grabbed ahold of my ankles to drag me below the surface. It didn’t care that I had been raised to be a survivor from the moment I took my first breath. The darkness serenaded me, and I knew I would never last against the pull. The grip was too persistent. The fingers were too strong to pry apart.

  As I struggled, I felt the roomful of prying eyes caress every inch of my discomfort, and I tried to remember how to breathe.

  “One deep breath at a time, Peanut.” My mom’s voice echoed in my head.

  Her familiar words coaxed tears to dampen my eyelashes.

  I blinked the moisture back. I won’t cry. Not here.

  Sweat moistened my upper lip, and I wiped it away with an unsteady hand. I brushed my damp palms down the front of my wrinkled black pencil skirt and then twisted the silver band on my left middle finger.

  I gently shook my head. I can’t do it.

  Despite everything my parents had taught me, I knew I wasn’t strong enough to say the words everyone needed to hear.

  A light hand rubbed my shoulder, and I jumped. I turned to see pale blue eyes I had known my entire existence—eyes that were meant to bring comfort but instead brought me pain.

  “You don’t have to do this, Libby.” It was whispered as she looked out at the crowd before us—a crowd that studied my every move and waited for me to crack and break open, to bleed the life I wasn’t supposed to have onto the muted, lackluster carpet under my feet.

  It was quiet, mind-numbingly quiet, for a standing-room-only area. If a pin dropped, it would simulate a freight train roaring through the space. If luck were on my side—and it never was—the train would pummel me and bury me eight feet underground, where I belonged.

  I shook my head and cringed from her reassuring touch.

  I can do it. I will do it. I have to do it. For them.

  I focused my gaze on the four smiling faces behind me. They meant everything to me. They were my home.

  So, why did they leave me homeless?

  I turned, so the filled room only saw my profile shadowed by my long blonde hair, and I studied the images.

  Jarrod, my lifelong best friend turned boyfriend, smirked, as if he held a secret no else knew but me. A strip of his golden-blond hair hung in his brilliant blue eyes. He let a day’s worth of stubble caress his chin and cheeks because I found it attractive. My hands itched to touch his beautiful face.

  I shifted my attention to my parents—Tom and Jewel—and my younger sister, Justice. My family stood with their arms wrapped around one another, illuminated by the morning sun filtering through the trees. Happiness sparkled in their eyes as they gazed back at me.

  All four looked like angels. They were now my guardian angels.

  Both images, the one of my family and the one of Jarrod, were the first pictures I had taken with the camera they had all given me for my sixteenth birthday four days ago. If I had known my time with them would be limited, I would have taken a thousand more pictures and made a million more memories.

  “Liberty…” Julie Manor, Jarrod’s mom, whispered again to draw my attention.

  I shifted to study her. How is she keeping it together?

  She had lost almost as much as I had. I felt like I was slowly coming apart at the seams, unraveling to spill my heart, my love, my reason for living onto the floor to be washed away by tears I wouldn’t allow myself to shed, yet she somehow stayed composed. The bags under her eyes indicated she was under distress, but everything else—her perfectly fitted black suit, her impeccable makeup, and her golden hair without a lock out of place—expressed togetherness. I needed to simulate whatever it was she was doing or taking. The fake mask my features bore was quickly slipping off my sweaty face. What was beneath wasn’t safe for anyone to witness.

  “I’m fine, Julie. I need to do this.” I turned back to the podium and shifted my focus over everyone’s heads to a blank spot on the wall at the back of the room. I couldn’t bring myself to make eye contact with anyone and read the pity I knew would be written there.

  From my peripheral vision, I saw Julie turn to take her seat in the front row. Ken Manor, her husband and Jarrod’s dad, grabbed her hand. Joel Manor, their son and Jarrod’s twin brother, sat stiffly next to them. I could feel Joel’s eyes glued to me.

  I cleared my throat as I looked back at the haunting pictures at the front of the funeral home and then back at the piece of paper on the podium. I crumpled the stationery adorned in whimsical pastel flowers and took a scornful deep breath.

  “Death fucking sucks,” I blurted.

  Surprised gasps echoed through the room.

  I was the good girl, the one who never swore, never did anything
wrong, and always tried to please everyone. I’d wear dresses and skirts, straighten my shiny blonde hair every day, do my makeup, and always be flawless for my perfect family and boyfriend.

  Four days ago, the good girl inside me had died right alongside my family and boyfriend. The new girl who had emerged from the depths of my loved ones’ graves now flipped the world off.

  Julie started to stand, but Ken placed his hand on her knee and slightly shook his head. She sat and covered her mouth with her fingertips. Joel intensely scrutinized me.

  I averted my attention back to the blank spot on the wall. “I’ve loved only four people in my life, and all four were taken from me in an instant. One instant.” I ran a shaking hand through my rumpled hair. “I should’ve been killed alongside them. I should’ve died because being buried in the ground to become maggot meal has to be better than walking around this fucking earth, feeling dead inside.” I lowered my head. “I’m absolutely dead inside,” I murmured.

  I hadn’t thought it was possible, but the room grew even quieter. Even though I couldn’t see anyone, I knew several pairs of eyes were blinking at me in shock.

  Squeezing my lids closed, I tried to force myself to grasp reality, the past, or anything solid, but it all seemed out of reach. It felt as if I were in purgatory, and no one was left to pray my way out.

  As I looked behind me again at the pictures showcasing the beautiful people I loved with every fiber of my body, my heart ripped into shredded pieces of lost love, lost hope, and a lost will to live.

  “I wish I were dead, too,” I whispered to them.

  While studying their pictures for the hundredth time that day, it finally sank in that I was completely and utterly alone in the world.

  Claws scraped the inside of my chest and threatened to rip it open. My breath caught in my lungs and strangled me. It felt as if I were drowning on dry land. My body trembled uncontrollably, and my blood roared in my ears. When my knees gave out, I gripped the podium to help me remain standing.

  I’m alone. Forever.

  I would never again see my mom’s smile light up a room, I would never hear my dad’s deep laugh, and I would never watch my baby sister grow up or fall in love. I would never feel Jarrod’s tender touch that had communicated everything I needed to hear, like I love you and I promise you forever.

  The truth about forever was, it never lasted. Forever was a lie. Especially promised forevers. All that was guaranteed was what was between hello and good-bye, and good-bye would come far sooner than anyone anticipated.

  This is our good-bye.

  My eyes squeezed shut from the pain seizing my chest, and I choked back a sob. I twisted the silver band on my left middle finger again. The circle represented a broken forever, a forever that was dead.

  Someone coughed, and several people shifted uncomfortably in their seats, drawing my attention back to the room. I was surprised I could hear their subtle movements over the thundering in my ears.

  I observed the rows of faceless bodies before me. They were here for my family, for Jarrod, and for me. I hated everyone in that room in an instant. I despised them and what their presence represented.

  “It’s my fault they’re dead.” I swished my arm to indicate the cold cardboard pictures standing erect behind me. Studying my clammy pale hands, I imagined they were covered in blood. “Their blood is on my hands. I killed them,” I whimpered into the microphone.

  After another stretch of silence, I said, “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.” Then, I sprinted down the aisle and crashed out the double doors of the funeral home. I ran across the parking lot and into the security of the woods that outlined the property. My legs couldn’t carry the arduous weight of my grief, and I collapsed onto my hands and knees.

  As my hands twisted into the moist soil and decomposing leaves that blanketed the ground, I sobbed. I cried for the lives that had been taken from me. For the lives that had been washed away by my selfishness. For the life I still had but didn’t want or deserve.

  Seconds, minutes, or hours passed as I wept to the point that I couldn’t catch my breath. It felt as if the roots of the surrounding trees were slithering over my skin, wrapping their grit-covered tubers around my neck and chest, and squeezing the undeserved life out of my body. My arms gave out, and I fell to the ground. I huddled into the fetal position and begged for the darkness to take me.

  “Oh God, why? Why did this happen? What did I do? Why…why…” I cried into my hands. “How am I supposed to live with this?”

  I hadn’t thought it was possible for anything to crush me more than standing at that podium in front of a roomful of strangers as I’d tried to say good-bye to the people I’d called home.

  I was dead wrong.

  Five Years Later

  I hurt everywhere it counted—my heart, my pride, my soul. Pain ran so deeply in me, my blood felt like lava coursing through my veins, singeing what was left of my essence. The agony was the only reminder I was still alive. I knew nothing would make it better as my mind spun the dark memories that would forever live in the crevices of my reality. They would chain me to the hopelessness forever, haunting me from the inside and the outside. I deserved the torture, despite how badly I wanted to escape it, escape everything.

  If anyone knew the thoughts whirling through my mind, they would question how I wasn’t insane. Maybe I was. I wasn’t sure. But my pile of evils was owed to me for what I had done, what I had become.

  Almost no one from my past recognized me, and that was the way I tried to keep it.

  I released my hopelessness on a sigh.

  As I spun my jet-black hair around my finger, I studied the Black Shatter polish on my nails. It had started to chip and peel away, kind of like my facade. It was time I repaired both. I couldn’t allow anyone to see what was beneath the veneer. If one slipped, everything would slip, and my control would crash around my black-booted feet.

  I took an annoyed breath and rolled my blue eyes toward the clock at the front of the classroom. Another fifteen minutes. I wasn’t sure I could make it.

  Photography was my passion, my life, but I preferred to be out in the field, as opposed to sitting in a classroom, listening to a professor drone on and on about technique.

  Even if he is my favorite professor.

  In my opinion, a photographer either had talent, or they didn’t; it couldn’t be taught. One could learn about ISO, aperture, and the different types of focus modes and settings on a camera, but if they didn’t have an eye for beauty while behind the lens, all the ambition in the world would be useless.

  My world was in shambles, masked by rough black attire, an aloof attitude, and reclusive behavior. I wasn’t certain about anything, except for my gift to awaken beauty when I was behind a lens. When I held a camera in my hands, the world came alive. For the brief stints of when my shutter snapped, it would feel as if it were my heartbeat, and I was living again. As soon as I set the camera down, I would go back to being a zombie. And not the cool, trendy kind that everyone obsessed over nowadays. Without a camera, I was just an entity aimlessly trudging through the monotonies of existing.

  “Earth to Liberty Daniels.” Professor Ericson’s loud voice carried through the room.

  I snapped my awareness to the front of the class and released the lock of hair wrapped around my finger. The skin had turned purple from the lack of blood flow. I blinked and noticed that not only was Professor Ericson staring at me, but several pairs of students’ prying eyes were also trained in my direction. It felt eerily familiar.

  I had zoned out again. I had become increasingly good at that.

  “Yes, Professor Ericson?” I asked with feigned indifference as my heart pounded in my chest.

  My peers’ fixated attention made me feel vulnerable, ripped open, and raw. I despised unwanted interest. It brought nothing but trouble.

  “Welcome back.” He smirked.

  Low chuckles sounded around the room, and I tried to mask the heat creeping into my
cheeks. If anyone saw my weaknesses—that I was broken and barely holding myself together—they would take advantage, leaving me helpless.

  “I think you’re going to want to hear this.” Professor Ericson swished his arm toward our male graduate teaching assistant standing at the front of the classroom.

  My eyes darted to the floor to analyze my scuffed boots. I pretended to be disinterested in what was happening while trying to ignore that the students’ curiosity, still cast my way, caused me discomfort.

  When will their probing eyes stop scrutinizing me, digging for my weaknesses?

  Their gaze made me feel as if red ants were crawling over my skin, their stingers piercing me over and over again. I bounced my leg and picked an imaginary piece of lint off my black jeans.

  Someone at the front of the room loudly cleared their throat.

  Then, a booming, “Hey, guys,” addressed the class.

  Shuffling noises indicated my curious peers were turning back toward the classroom.

  I released the breath I had been holding. I raised my eyes and looked through the black veil of my long bangs.

  The GTA, whose name I could never remember, stood at the front. I had dubbed him Sexy GTA. He had an aura of confidence that surrounded him. And he was hot as heck with his dark hair and a day’s worth of scruff covering his face. His muscular body was adorned in a fitted gray T-shirt and light-washed ripped jeans. Black and gray tattoos extended from both wrists to his biceps before being swallowed by the sleeves of his shirt.

  “I apologize that this is last minute, but I didn’t want to mention anything until I was certain the funding would come through.” Sexy GTA tucked his hands into his jeans pockets. “I’ll be leading a small tour group over summer break. The goal is to help undergrads build their portfolios for employment or to apply for a master’s program.”

  “You can lead me anywhere, Bax!” a girl from the middle of the classroom shouted.

  Low chuckles and murmurs sounded around the room.

  Bax—aka Sexy GTA—flashed a small sly smile and shook his head.