Chapter 3
The next day, the station brought in a psychological evaluator.
Dr. Morgan was a woman in her early forties wearing gold-rimmed glasses.
She seemed kind.
She pulled a voice recorder from her bag and placed it on the table.
There was an indicator light on top of the recorder.
When she pressed the switch, it lit up.
Red.
My stomach clenched violently.
I vomited the oatmeal I'd eaten for breakfast all over the floor.
Dr. Morgan jumped, quickly offering tissues.
I pushed her hand away and dry-heaved several times.
Tears streamed down my face.
Luke heard the commotion and pushed through the door.
He glanced at the recorder on the table with its red light and reached over to turn it off.
"Put away anything with indicator lights."
Dr. Morgan opened her mouth but said nothing.
She packed the recorder back in her bag.
Luke pulled a pen and a palm-sized notebook from his pocket and set them on the table.
"Nothing is watching you now."
He sat across from me.
"You can talk."
I wiped my mouth with a tissue and stared at the table for a long time.
"What do you want me to say?"
"Start from the beginning."
I closed my eyes and began to remember.
On my twelfth birthday, my grandmother gave me a teddy bear.
Brown, palm-sized, fluffy, very cute.
I slept with it for three days.
On the fourth night, when I rolled over, my arm bumped the bear's head.
In the darkness, I saw the bear's right eye flashing.
Blinking red light.
I took the bear to my desk lamp and dug the eye out with my fingernail.
A pinhole camera, lens pointed right at my bed.
Holding the now one-eyed teddy bear, I ran downstairs barefoot.
My grandmother was sitting in the living room watching TV.
"Grandma, what is this?"
She glanced at the camera in my hand.
Her expression didn't change at all.
"Your father's dead, your mother's not home. I'm an old woman who can't keep an eye on you. What's wrong with installing something to watch you?"
I said I didn't want it.
She ignored me and changed the channel.
I called my mother.
On the other end, my mother's voice was exhausted and tearful.
"Evelyn, do you know how hard I work to support this family?"
"You're your grandmother's only granddaughter. What's wrong with her watching you? Can't you understand what I'm going through?"
I told her my grandmother had installed a camera in my room.
My mother was silent for two seconds.
"She's old and worried about you. Don't fight with her. I'm begging you, okay?"
The call ended.
The next day, the teddy bear's eye was replaced with a new one.
Still red.
Luke's pen stopped on the notebook.
"And then?"
Then there were more and more.
One in the pencil holder on my desk.
One on top of the wardrobe.
One behind the alarm clock on my nightstand.
One above the door frame.
Every time I found one, I destroyed it.
My grandmother just replaced it with a new one, hidden in a more concealed spot.
The winter I turned fourteen, while showering, I happened to look up at the exhaust fan.
Through the gaps in the metal blades, something was reflecting light.
I stood on the wet bathroom tiles, completely naked, staring at that reflection for a full minute.
Then I grabbed the showerhead and smashed it.
The next day when I came home from school, my bedroom door was gone.
The bathroom door was gone too.
Even the door frames had been removed.
The doorways gaped open.
My grandmother stood in the hallway leaning on her cane.
"You love smashing things? Fine. I removed the doors so you can't close yourself in and do god knows what."
From that day on, I changed clothes, showered, and used the toilet without any doors.
I tried using a shower curtain.
My grandmother had someone remove the curtain rod.
I tried blocking with a chair.
My grandmother had all the chairs removed from my room.
When I was fifteen, my uncle's son Dylan came to stay during summer vacation.
He was a year younger than me.
He brought four or five male classmates.
That afternoon I was changing out of my school uniform in my room.
The doorway was wide open.
I faced away from the hallway, moving quickly.
Laughter echoed from the corridor.
I turned around.
Dylan was holding my grandmother's phone, the screen showing a live surveillance feed.
Four boys crowded behind him, watching together.
"Hahaha, look at her."
I rushed over to grab the phone.
Dylan shoved me away hard.
He was half a head taller than me.
The push sent me crashing into the door frame.
The back of my head hit hard, raising a bump.
I got up and went to find my grandmother.
"Grandma, Dylan used the surveillance to watch me change."
My grandmother was in the kitchen making chicken soup for Dylan.
She didn't even turn around.
"What's there to see on a worthless girl like you?"
"If you had half your cousin's promise, would I need to watch you like this?"
I said I'd call the police.
When the cane came down, I didn't dodge in time.
Three strikes across my back.
My clothes tore.
Blood seeped through.
My mother called that evening.
I thought she'd stand up for me, but instead she said:
"Evelyn, Dylan's still young and doesn't know better. Don't hold it against him."