I pressed the pen against the permission slip for the sex education class and wrote her name, my hand moving with the practiced confidence of someone who had memorized every curve and illegible scrawl. The “B” curved exactly as hers did, wide and looping, before dissolving into the messy chaos that passed for the rest of her signature.

My mother’s handwriting—in contrast to my father’s neat script—seemed furious, with each letter a tiny revolt against being readable.

Everything about our new school in Indiana felt foreign. Field trips weren’t the rare privileges they had been at my small private school, but regular opportunities that other students took for granted.

Another opportunity the Keeper would absolutely forbid.

In her mind, field trips were hunting grounds for predators, mazes where children disappeared, danger zones where the worst imaginable things happened to unguarded daughters. Her imagination didn’t specialize in catastrophe because she was paranoid, but because she was experienced. The world had already shown her its capacity for cruelty, and she would not let it claim me the way it had claimed pieces of her.

She had mentioned that I should sign her name when needed. “Just sign it,” she would say, as if forgery were as routine as taking out the trash. Her handwriting was so messy that my attempts looked authentic enough to pass inspection.

Not this time.

Signing her name with the flourish of someone claiming freedom one letter at a time, I folded the permission slip and tucked it into my backpack like evidence of a crime. For once, I would walk through the door to that classroom, would listen to the teacher instead of her commentary, would raise my hand if I had questions instead of whispering them to her for approval.

It felt like breathing air not filtered through someone else’s lungs.I spent that hour as a typical student, asking questions and taking notes, instead of being the Keeper’s daughter who needed constant correction and guidance. I spoke, listened, and existed in a space without someone else’s interpretation of my experience.

I would learn, though, that freedom invariably demands a price.

Three weeks later, parent-teacher conferences arrived like a reckoning I had somehow managed to forget while basking in the afterglow of successful rebellion.”I’m glad you permitted her to attend the sex education class,” my teacher said to the Keeper. “I was so pleased to have her participate. She asked such thoughtful questions and really engaged with the material.”

The words hung in the air like smoke from a spreading fire, innocent until they reached the wrong ears. The Keeper’s eyes found mine with the precision of a weapon locking onto its target. I watched her face cycle through confusion, realization, and then a fury so intense it drained all warmth from the room.She knew. She understood exactly what had happened, how her authority had been circumvented, and who was responsible.

The teacher continued talking, oblivious to the silent war that had just been declared. But I wasn’t listening anymore. I was calculating how much trouble I was in, whether the hour of freedom had been worth whatever consequences were about to reshape my world.

It would definitely be the last time I forged her signature, but it was far from the first lesson in control whose foundations were laid long before I could see the walls.

Next week: How the tower was built, brick by brick, story by story, until I couldn’t see the sky.