Before We Were Yours(73)

CHAPTER 18


Rill

The house is black as pitch inside. There’s no lights left burning, and the curtains block the moon outside the bedroom windows. Around me, kids rustle in their beds and whimper and grind their teeth in their sleep. After all that time trapped in the basement by myself, it’s a comfort to be with anybody, but, truth is, this is no safe place. These girls tell tales. They say Riggs comes at night sometimes and gets whoever he wants—mostly the little kids he can carry easy.

I’m too big to carry. I hope. But I don’t want to find out.

Quiet as a shadow, I slide from under my blanket and tiptoe across the floor. I already walked it real careful before getting into my new bed tonight. I know where the squeaky boards are. I know how many steps it is to the door, how many to the stairs, the safest way past the parlor room off the kitchen where the workers will be dozing off in their chairs. James told me all about going downstairs to the kitchen at night to steal Mrs. Murphy’s tea cakes. I know just how he got away with it.

But all the things James had figured out didn’t save him in the end, so I need to be careful about sneaking out to tell Silas I’m waiting here for Fern to get back. Soon’s she does, I’ll grab her up, and we’ll slip off in the dark, and Silas will take us home to the river, and all the terrible times will finally be over.

What if Briny and Queenie don’t want me back after what I’ve done? Maybe they’ll hate me as much as I hate myself. Maybe they’ll look at the skinny, sad girl I am now and see someone nobody wants.

I shush my mind, because your mind can ruin you if you let it. I have to pay attention, to do everything right so I don’t get caught.

It’s not as hard as I thought it would be. I’m down the back stairs in no time. A small circle of light seeps from the room off the kitchen. Someone’s snoring loud inside. Near the door, a pair of feet in heavy white shoes is flopped outward like moth wings. I don’t even look to see whose they are. I just slip around the wall by the stove, staying in the shadow like James talked about. My toes test each new floorboard, real careful. The ragged hem of my nightgown catches on the oven’s rough iron surface. I imagine it making noise, but really it doesn’t.

The screen door in the washroom squeaks a little when I tug it open. I stop, hold my breath, stretch my ears toward the house, listen.

There’s nothing.

Soft as a whisper, I go on out. The porch boards are wet with dew, just like the deck of the Arcadia. Overhead, katydids and crickets give the sky a heartbeat, and a million stars shine like far-off campfires. The half-moon hangs heavy, rocking on its back. Its twin rides the ripples in the rain barrel as I pass.

All of a sudden, I’m home again. I’m wrapped in the blanket of night and stars. The blanket is part of me, and I am part of it. No one can touch me. No one can tell one of us from the other.

Bullfrogs croak, and dark birds call as I run across the yard, the thin white gown skimming my legs, light as milkweed silk. Near the back fence, I cling close to the holly bushes, give a whippoorwill’s call.

An echo answers. I smile and breathe in the sweet, heavy smell of jasmine and hurry toward the sound, pushing my way along the big boys’ tunnel until I’m there at the fence. Silas is on the other side. In the moon shadows, I can’t see his face, only the outline of his applejack hat and his knobby legs bent up like a frog’s. He reaches through the bars for me.

“Let’s go,” he whispers, then locks on to one of the bars like he means to pull it loose with his bare hands. “I cut this one most of the way through. It oughta…”

Grabbing his hand, I stop him. If he opens the hole, the big boys will see it in the morning when they come to their hideout. “I can’t.” Everything inside me screams, Go! Run! “I can’t leave yet. Fern’s coming back. The people who took her don’t want her anymore. I have to wait till tomorrow night, so I can bring her with me.”

“You gotta get away now. I’ll come back here for Fern.”

Doubts dart through my mind, skittering this way and that. “No. Once they know I’m gone, once they see the hole in the fence, we’ll never get her out of here. I can sneak away again tomorrow night. And there’s another little boy, Stevie. He’s from the river too. I can’t just leave him here.” How am I gonna manage it? I know where Stevie sleeps, but getting him from the toddler room and bringing Fern and not letting anyone see us…

It doesn’t seem possible.

Even so, Silas being here makes me sure of myself. It makes me brave. I feel like I can do anything. I’ll find a way. I can’t leave Fern or Stevie here. They belong to the river. They belong to us. Mrs. Murphy and Miss Tann stole enough from me already. I want it back. I want to be Rill Foss again.

Before this is over, I’ll find all my sisters and my baby brother and bring them home to the Arcadia. That’s what I’ll do.

Silas reaches out, and his long, thin arms circle me. I lean toward him, and his cap tumbles off. His forehead rests against my cheek, his raven’s-wing hair tickling my face.

“I don’t want you to go back in there.” He slides a hand over my hair, soft and careful. My heart speeds up.

It’s all I can do not to bust through the fence right now. “It’s only one more day.”

“I’ll be here tomorrow night,” Silas promises.