Sadie(66)

“You can’t go inside,” she says desperately.

And alive.

“C-come with me,” I tell her. She stares at me, dumbstruck. But what if she did? What if I just take her, what if I could take her away from what’s beyond this door?

“N-Nell, c-come with me.” She lets go of my hand and moves away from me. I reach for her, and she steps back again and I reach for her again, because I can’t stop myself, because we know what’s inside. I can feel my stutter’s hold strengthen as the desperation inside me grows. “I-I think you should come w-with me. It’s n-n—it’s not—”

Safe.

So come with me.

Please.

“My mom will be home soon,” she says, shaking her head, forgetting that she just told me her mom is at work, that she doesn’t come home until late. “My mom—” I move in a way she must not like because she opens her mouth wide and screams, “Mom!”

It rips me out of the fantasy, forces me back into my body. My sore, bruised and tired body. My tired heart. I take a fumbling step away and she’s scared out of her mind.

“I’m s—I’m sorry.” I dig into my pocket, my wallet, and hold out a twenty to her. “W-wait. Here. T-take th-this.”

She closes her mouth and eyes me suspiciously, while I glance up and down the street. If anyone heard the little girl screaming, they’re not coming. I swallow and wave the bill in her face. Take the money, Nell. She has to understand money. I did, at her age.

“You c-could get a lot of BSC b-books w-with this.”

She steps forward, hesitantly, doesn’t want to get too close to this monster girl with the mottled face. She rips the twenty out of my hands and then she runs down the street. She doesn’t look back. I blink away the threat of tears and make a promise at her retreating figure.

I’ll finish this.

I face the house.

I let myself inside.

It’s quiet but for the low hum of electricity and the clock ticking on the wall. I stand in a small hallway, which leads to a door at the back of the house. To the left, a kitchen and to the right, the stairs leading to the second floor. I close the door behind me quietly and then I lean against it, forcing myself to take deep, even breaths in and out. There’s a glass of milk and a half-eaten sandwich on the kitchen table. Dishes drying on a rack. There’s a room beyond the kitchen and that’s where I move to next, surprised at the silence of my own body, how made it was for this moment. It’s a living room, and this is where the clock is, the television, the couch I imagined Keith on, one leg hanging off it, mouth wide open as he sleeps.

But he’s not there.

So upstairs.

Everything was easy until the moment my right foot meets the first step. The stairs are old, and they let me know it, groaning loudly under the weight of my body. Each time it sounds, I feel like I did when I was driving and the car would take the curve of a hill, that strange anxious rising and falling sensation in the pit of my stomach.

When I reach the landing, I exhale. I don’t realize how hard I’m shaking until the moment before I grip the banister, and I catch sight of my trembling fingers.

There are three doors, the closest one open, revealing a bathroom, leaving two left. I push the first door open and find myself in Nell’s room.

I thought I might.

I hoped I wouldn’t.

Her room is neat, in the way I kept my room neat, like everything was put into place by small, uncertain hands. There’s faded pink wallpaper on the wall with yellowing seams that I think has been here longer than she has. A small bed with a mint green comforter, a little too deflated, secondhand. I cross the threshold and move to the tiny desk across from her bed. This is where she makes her masterpieces. A sketchbook and colored pencils with dollar-store stickers on them. I move to her closet, next to the bed, and open the door where I’m met with the scent of baby-soft detergent and all of Nell’s impossibly small clothes.

I was this small once.

A lifetime ago.

I sift through them almost unconsciously. This wasn’t something I set out to do, but now that I’m doing it, I can’t stop because I know. I know I’ll find exactly what I don’t want to find, and it’s there, in the back. A shirt with the tag cut out of it. I take it off the hanger and press it against my face and a fierce, near unbearable wave of grief follows. I’m going to save you, Nell. I’m going to save you, but everything after that, I think, is beyond saving. I can stop Keith but I can’t undo everything that’s already been done. How do you forgive the people who are supposed to protect you? Sometimes I don’t know what I miss more; everything I’ve lost or everything I never had.

“Always wondered if you’d show up on my doorstep one day.”

I take a faltering step forward and then steady myself, his quiet, edgeless voice turning me small, like that, turning me into a small girl, sick with the knowledge that she’s done this wrong. I’ve done this wrong because when I turn Keith is standing right in front of me.

I wish his darkness lived outside of him, because you have to know it’s there to see it. Like all real monsters, he hides in plain sight. He is tall, has always been tall. He’s wearing jeans, scruffed and ratty at the bottoms, threads hanging against his bare feet. His legs stretch up to his torso, his arms taut and muscular in a way I don’t remember them being when I was young. His face is as sharp as it ever was, shadowed and in need of a shave. The lines beside his eyes are so much deeper now than they were when I was eleven, and they were harsh even then. Eight years. It’s been eight years since I saw him in the flesh, but I feel that time between us disappear. I cannot keep looking at him if I want to keep myself in this moment, but I can’t look away and he’s making me small. I’m not. I’m not small, I’m not small, I’m not small … The floor creaks under him. He positions himself against the door frame, leaning against it and blocking my way out. I keep Nell’s shirt pressed to my face. The skin of my hands is stretched so tight over my knuckles from my grip. I close my eyes. I listen to the sound of him breathing, remember the sound of him breathing late at night, I remember … I’m not small …