The Girls I've Been(66)

She leaves me alone in my room, all those clothes still spread out on the bed, and I slide against my closed door to the ground because my bed feels tainted now.

I press both hands against my mouth as the tears trickle down my cheeks. I’m not holding in sobs, I’m not holding in anything; I’m just holding myself, and my mouth has always been a lot more reliable than my heart.

I think about the bloody dish gloves and her wild eyes. Did she learn from her mistakes? Or did she just learn how to bury them better?

(She killed for me.)

(She wouldn’t have had to, if she hadn’t chosen him.)

I think about her. My sister. About how strong she is and how she keeps coming back to see us, and what both those things mean now, with this new knowledge.

I think about that phone number, memorized long ago.

I think about what I want for the first time in a very long time. Maybe forever.

I take a deep breath. And another. And then maybe about fifteen hundred more before I’m ready.

But I do. Get ready. Slowly and surely, I start to make some decisions of my own, without anyone else’s input.

I decide to lift the old butcher knife from the kitchen a few nights after Mom buys Raymond a new set for his birthday. He’ll never miss it now that he has his shiny new toys.

I decide to steal the gun that I find tucked in the corner of one of the linen cabinets, a forgotten backup that he really should have locked in the safe. Just think of what could happen.

I decide to dig up the just-in-case box I buried under the dock the first week they brought me here.

I decide to pull out the burner cell I have stored there.

I decide to call my sister.

I decide to run. Just like her. Because now I know:

I want to be strong. I want to be free.

I want to be just like her.





— 49 —


12:10 p.m. (178 minutes captive)

1 lighter, 3 bottles 1 bottle of vodka, 1 pair of scissors, 2 safe-deposit keys, 1 hunting knife, 1 chemical bomb, 1 giant fire starter, the contents of Iris’s purse

Plan #1: Scrapped

Plan #2: On hold

Plan #3: Stab

Plan #4: Get gun. Get Iris and Wes. Get out.

Plan #5: Iris’s plan: Boom!



“I’m sorry,” Iris tells me.

I shrug, because it’s hard to accept some things, especially apologies for things the people who love me had nothing to do with.

“Sometimes I’m not okay, either,” she says softly, her eyes on the hourglass instead of on me.

I’m quiet, waiting.

“I’m the reason my mom left my dad.”

“No,” I say immediately, because the idea of it is so strange. Her mom loves her. She’d never . . .

Oh. My mind catches up with my heart, because she looks so tentative when she finally glances up.

She flips the heart pin. Six minutes.

“I got strep throat last year before we moved,” she tells me.

“What?”

“They put me on antibiotics. I thought I had timed it okay with my birth control. But Rick, my ex, he always complained about wearing condoms because hello, selfish jerk, and I just . . . I thought I would be okay. It was stupid. I should not have been sleeping with a boy who complained about wearing a condom in the first place, but there I was.”

“There you were,” I repeat, and I think I know where she’s going—no, I know where she’s going, and something’s rising in me.

“I got pregnant,” she says, and her eyes are on me, and they’re burning with the kind of fear that makes my entire body throb, not with the pain, but with the desire to touch her, to reassure her: It’s okay. “And I am a what-if person, Nora. You know I am. I like plans and details and I have been making decisions about my body and especially my uterus since I was twelve and started puking from pain with every period. So I called the clinic.”

I don’t speak, I just wait, her truth wrapping around me like a silk slip.

“I needed money for the abortion,” she continues. “So I put some of my vintage stuff online to sell, but I forgot to block my mom from seeing the posts. And when she asked me why I was selling the Lilli Ann coat that my grandma gave me, I didn’t have a lie ready. She saw through me, and I broke down.” She bites her lower lip. “She did everything I needed. She drove me to the clinic and she paid for it, and she held my hair back when I puked afterward, and oh God, I’m gonna leave her alone now.” She presses her hand against her chest like she’s trying to keep her own heart from tearing out. “She’ll be alone because now I’m here and we’re gonna die.”

“We are not going to die.”

Her lip trembles. She has to take in two big, shuddery breaths to hold back the tears. I know how she feels: If she thinks about her mom, she’ll break down from the potential loss. I understand, because I can’t think about Lee. It’ll make me weak. Clumsy.

“He found out,” she whispers. “My dad. And he’s always been um, protective? Controlling? For our own good, of course.” She stares up at the ceiling, blinking furiously. I recognize it in her: the fight against what’s ingrained in you through fear and what you’re starting to learn is truth now that you’re free. It spins in my head: We’re more alike than you know, we’re more alike than you know, she’d told me. I don’t think I heard. But I know now. We’re both girls whose bones got forged from secrets instead of steel. No wonder we snapped together like magnets. We are made of the same stuff, somehow.