A List of Cages(68)

“You took it?”

“It was in your shirt.” He looks puzzled, but not exactly concerned. “Do you care if I see what’s on it?”

“It’s not mine.” Taking this as permission, I plug it into the desktop computer in the living room. A window full of files opens on the big screen—all of them videos. I click the cursor down and open the oldest one.

The screen fills with a small shaking boy standing with his back to the camera in Russell’s living room. Russell enters the shot. Next to the boy, he’s a giant. He’s holding a long thin stick in his hand.

My stomach fills with acid.

Take off your shirt, Russell says.

The boy takes off his shirt, then grips his bare upper arm with one hand.

Turn around.




It’s me. I’m smaller and younger, probably only nine or ten years old, but it’s me. I see my face, twitching in fear before the switch falls. I see my eyes, filling with pain before they squeeze shut. I see what I look like when I cry. And for the first time I see what Russell looks like too, an expression I never saw when my back was turned.

“He taped them?” I whisper. “Why did he tape them?”

“Julian.” Adam says my name, then says nothing more.

The boy starts to scream.

“So he could see it again?”

I feel Adam watching me as I watch myself.

“Is that why?”

The boy’s screams get louder.

“Jesus.” Adam’s hands fumble to close out the screen. We’re left with silence, and a white square containing a list of so many more files.

“Delete them.”

“I can’t,” Adam says. “This is evidence. I can’t just—”

“Please.”

“We have to show this to the police.” He ejects the hard drive.

“Give it to me.”

“No.” The firmness in his tone and the fact that he’s holding something that holds all my secrets have my eyes watering.

“You can’t show that to anyone.” I imagine police, detectives, judges, everyone, seeing me cry, seeing me…I don’t want them or anyone to look at me. “Some of the other videos will be worse.”

“Worse how?”

“In some…I’m…I’m not wearing clothes.”

“What do you mean you’re not wearing clothes? What the fuck did he do to you?”

The humiliation is unbearable, as if he can see me from the inside out.

“Julian. What did he do?”

I shake my head. Push my fingers against my eyes. “The same,” I finally answer. “The same as that…without my clothes. Please just delete them.”

“I can’t.” Adam’s voice breaks. “I won’t show them to anyone, but I can’t delete them. Not yet.”

The screen is blank now, but I still see Russell’s face and the way he looked when my back was turned. You don’t really know people when your back is turned. “You want to look at them.”

“Jesus, no.” Adam grimaces like he’s going to be sick. “I just want to do one thing that isn’t stupid. Throwing it away would be stupid. I’m holding on to it, just in case.”

“In case what?”

“In case he comes back.”





“WHAT COLOR WOULD you like to paint your room?” Mom asks Julian. She’s got that weird, overbright face on—the one that means she’s pretending to be happy but she’s really worried.

The guest room—now Julian’s room—is insanely girly. White wicker furniture, pink and yellow daisies stenciled all over the place, and white straw hats nailed to the wall, as if that’s any kind of decoration. To top it off, there are framed photos of Mittens, the Persian cat she used to have, everywhere.

Julian looks around the room. “I don’t need to change the walls.”

“Are you sure?” Mom asks.

“It’s fine. I mean, nice. Thank you, Catherine.”

“This is definitely not fine,” I argue. “How are you gonna sneak a girl into your room if it looks like this?”

“Oh, Adam,” Mom says, amused and scolding.

Julian just looks puzzled. “I won’t sneak a girl into this room.”

“Hopeless,” I say. “We’re painting.”


Around ten o’clock, Mom sits on the edge of the white wicker bed, actually tucking Julian in like he’s five, but either it doesn’t embarrass him, or he’s too polite to protest. Even though it’s not that late, I’m tired enough to go to bed myself. I shut my eyes, but I can’t shut out the sounds in my head, the screams I heard earlier today, and I can’t stop thinking about all the obvious and weird things I should’ve noticed before.

Like Julian being out sick all the time. And the fact that his uncle made him shave his legs. I figured the guy was some kind of germophobe, but now…was he trying to make Julian look more like a girl? Or a child? Both answers do weird things to my stomach.

God, I can’t freakin sleep. What did I used to do when I couldn’t sleep?

Think good thoughts.

I try, I really try.