The Girls I've Been(41)

So I open my mouth to tell her we have a deal, because she deserves that from me, but before my lips can even form the word, a scream that starts and then cuts off in a horrible, gutted sort of way echoes across the hall. The sound sends Iris cringing back against the cupboards and Wes banging up against them just as fast, trying to shield her and grab me close at the same time. My heart doesn’t thump fast this time. This time, it slows down, dread filling the agonizing space between.

I had laid a trap.

Did the wrong person get caught in it?





— 35 —


    Katie (Age 10): Sweet, Spirited, Smart (In Three Acts, Reversed)



Act 3: Sweet

Four Hours After

It’s still raining when I get back from the laundromat. The windows are dark, all the lights are shut off, and his car’s not in the driveway.

I push inside the house through the back door, moving through it in the dark, my shirt dripping pink raindrops as I go. If I can just get to the money that I’ve got hidden in the downstairs bathroom, maybe I can run . . .

I have to pass the living room to get there. I tell myself to be ready, that I can bear it.

Blanket’s big enough for two.

The blanket’s gone now. So are the couch cushions. There’d been blood all over them, and now they’re gone.

Just like him.

It’s like nothing happened, like that moment got plucked out of time, and I stare, trying to make sense.

Come a little closer, sweetie.

Did he clean it up? He must’ve. But I thought . . .

There had been a lot of blood. And yelling as I ran.

I don’t bite.

But he must be okay. If he could drive away.

Right?

“There you are.”

I jump, so close to screaming I have to clap my hands over my mouth.

My mother looks at me from the hallway, a bottle of bleach spray in her dish-gloved hands.

I shiver, suddenly aware of the cold under her gaze.

My first instinct is to apologize. There are bruises on the insides of my knees and I’ve become someone different in the space of those minutes that were maybe hours, but the words on my lips are still I’m sorry.

It’s hard and strange and churning sickly inside me to want to be wrapped in the protection of a person who I think I might need protection from.

“I’m almost done here,” she says. “Then we’re leaving.”

I just stare, barely making sense of the words.

Where is he?

“You’re going to be okay,” and it’s not a question or some sort of vow. It’s not a blessing or a wish.

It’s an order. She says it just like she says Katie. Your name is Katie, and it is so familiar that it almost snaps me out of the grasp of doubt.

What did she do to him? Was it worse than what I did?

“Come on,” she says, holding out her hand. The red almost blots out the yellow rubber.

Where is he?

I can see it in her eyes. There’s too much red on her gloves.

Gone. For good.

I’m rooted by it; the crash of it. The realization that she got back and saw what I did, all the blood and him and just . . .

God, we’re exactly alike, aren’t we?

She says my name. Not Katie. My real name. It jerks me out of the spiral that’s tightening around me.

“Come on. You need to help me get rid of him.”

She’s still holding out her bloody hand.

I take it.

I have no other choice.





— 36 —


11:32 a.m. (140 minutes captive)

1 lighter, 3 bottles of vodka, 1 pair of scissors, 2 safe-deposit keys

Plan #1: Scrapped

Plan #2: Fucked



In the wake of the scream, we’re dead silent. This time, Iris is the one in the middle, Wes on one side, me on the other. No one is shaking, and all of us are tensed up. What to do, what to do, there’s nowhere to go.

“Who . . .” she starts to say, a breathless word that’s cut off by the scraping sound we all know now.

He’s coming in.

It’s not like before. He’s not like before. His face is all storm, no substance. No more curiosity. And there’s a lot more blood on a lot more than his hands now.

Shit. Shit. He’s got a knife somewhere. I thought I’d covered all the weapons, but clearly I hadn’t. That’s too much blood.

I jump up, because he’s reaching for me before he can even cross the room, and if I can get away from Iris and Wes, maybe I can . . .

He backhands me so fast, I don’t have time to plant my feet; I just go down. My teeth clatter together as my cheek smacks the floor. Wes bellows like I haven’t heard in years, and the only thing in my head is his scream and white-hot pain and ringing ears, and the only thing in my mouth is blood. I spit it out on the floor, along with a chunk of my back molar. Fuck.

“Don’t move,” Gray Cap says, and it takes me a confused, blinking moment to realize he’s not talking to me. He’s not pointing the gun at me.

He’s pointing the gun at Wes. Because Wes is standing there, big and threatening and three seconds from going for him, gun or not.

Everything around me wobbles as I cough out more blood and groan, “Don’t.” I dig my elbows into the uncomfortable, ugly, bloodstained carpet. I have to get up. “Wes, don’t. Isso okay.” I slur the last words, still too much blood in my mouth.