by Laney Wylde
I rolled my eyes and put my hand in his.
After days inside the unnecessarily frigid hospital, the grey air felt thick, muggy. I shed my long sleeves and sat on the bench with Cash, my head on his shoulder and his arm behind me. He ran his fingertips up and down my arm.
“You want to talk about it?”
I shook my head and relaxed against him. I was safe with him, safe enough to tell him more in the last four months than I had ever told Jake, safe enough to be in pain, safe enough to just be silent. I’d grown too used to that security. Maybe that was why I didn’t see the threat walking toward me.
“Hey, Sawyer?” Cash nudged me on the bench in the hospital courtyard. “Do you know those people?”
I glanced up to see a man and a woman walking straight toward us. As they closed in, it was clear they weren’t hospital staff. They were dressed more professionally than the therapists and psychiatrists. The man was wearing a tie. No one wore a tie in a psych hospital. That was just asking for trouble. I shook my head.
But my skin crawled with that feeling of being found when I wanted to be lost.
The female of that out-of-place pair walking toward Cash and me in the courtyard introduced herself. “Sawyer de la Cruz?” she asked as she pulled a bronze badge from her blazer.
“Who’s asking?”
“I’m Agent Holt,” she announced with her badge and ID bifold extended toward my face. “This is Agent Espinoza,” she gestured toward the swarthy guy next to her, “with the FBI.”
“Yeah, I’m Sawyer.” What’d I do this time?
“We need to speak with you in private.” When Cash stood with me, she repeated, “In private.” I took Cash’s hand and shook my head. “Okay, but you can change your mind at—”
“I won’t.”
Cash took my hand as we followed the agents into an empty therapy room a nurse unlocked for us. “Have a seat, Sawyer,” Holt said and pointed to the couch. I sat down, still holding Cash’s hand. “You were arrested in December for assaulting Congressman Allen Buchanan, correct?”
“Well,” my forehead crinkled, “yeah, but I’m doing my time right now.” Were they trying to get me on prostitution charges, too? Busting a first-offense hooker seemed like awfully small potatoes for the FBI.
“Did you tell your lawyer that Buchanan attempted to rape you because he recognized you from child pornography?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“What name did he call you?”
“Delilah.”
Holt nodded and opened a briefcase. She pulled out a folder and spread three glossy photographs on the coffee table between us.
“Sawyer…” Holt’s voice was gentle when she asked, “Are you the girl in these photos?”
All but the faces had been blurred, like a fog had rolled through my Third Street nightmare. The first was just me, naked, scared, but pretending not to be. The second was Jeff and me. The third was Jeff, Simone, and me. Jeff’s face was conveniently cropped out. Son of a bitch.
Jeremy had sent Simone and me a video, just the one. But never photographs. I hadn’t seen these. I had no idea how many more there were, what they were of, or who had seen them. Or who would.
I nodded and swallowed over the lump in my throat. Cash squeezed my hand.
Holt asked, “I know this must be difficult for you—”
No shit.
“—but can you tell me about how old you were at the time these were taken?”
“That one,” I pointed to the first photograph, “I was eight.” I remember because it was one of the first he took. I remember because I was a virgin in the photo. I remember because I wasn’t right after. I ignored the rising memories from the other two. “I think I was nine in these.”
She pointed to the second and third photos. “Can you tell us who this man is?”
I nodded. “Jeff Lindley.”
“Okay, thank you, Sawyer.” She scribbled on a pad of paper. “Lindley is spelled?”
“L-I-N-D-L-E-Y. You’ll find him easy. He’s on the sex offenders registry.”
She inclined her head. “And do you recognize this girl?” Holt pointed to the third picture.
Simone’s body was intentionally distorted, but those shattered-glass irises still reflected me when I picked up the photograph. Not the brunette child in the picture, but me, fully grown, staring at the fear in the fragmented blue. I nodded.
“Do you remember her name?” I closed my eyes and took a deep inhale.
“Simone,” I whispered. “Simone Carson. She was in my grade. Jeff picked her up with me after school most days because her parents worked.”
Holt gave another brusque nod. “Thank you, Sawyer. Is there anything you can tell me about her?”
I swallowed back the sour acid in my throat. “Like what?”
“Do you have any idea where she is now?”
Yeah. I did. And my stomach rejected that fact. My eyes darted around the room for a trash can. I spotted one under the desk by the door, flung the office chair out of my way, and vomited into the plastic bag inside.
Cash pulled my hair back at my neck as I heaved mostly nothing into the garbage bin. I hadn’t eaten much in days. “Are y’all about done?” he barked.
“Just about,” Agent Espinoza, that quiet guy with her, finally spoke up.
“She’s dead.” I collapsed to sit on the floor before answering with my voice husky from the bile burns.
“Do you know when—” Holt started.
“Four years ago.”
Holt left it at that and collected the pictures. “They found evidence Buchanan downloaded your images.”
“They did? When? They didn’t have that before my trial. Does that mean I get to get out of here?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. It doesn’t change anything about your plea bargain.” Of course not.
Espinoza chimed in, “You’ll be receiving an official notice of his conviction in the mail, along with notices of all other convictions where the perpetrator downloaded your images.”
“Why? Why would I want to know?”
He cracked a smile. “So you can sue their asses.”
“What would I get out of that?”
“Talk to your lawyer,” Holt said. “By law, you’re eligible for a certain amount of restitution.”
“You mean like money?”
“Yes.” Espinoza shot me a satisfied grin. “Hopefully a lot of money.”
“Yours and Simone’s are the most downloaded child pornography images out there,” Holt added as she snapped the briefcase shut. “We’ve been searching for you for years. So have authorities in England, France, and Australia.”
I buried my face in my hands. “Glad to hear I’m so popular.”
“Thank you for your help, Sawyer.” Holt reached her hand out to shake mine.
I took it. “Fuck him.” Then I reached for Espinoza’s hand. “Please, I mean.”
“That’s the goal,” Espinoza said through that same smile.
“Thank you.”
I started to follow them out when Cash caught my hand. “Hey,” he whispered. “You gonna be okay?”
I turned to him and scoffed. “Yeah, it’s nothing new.”
“Sawyer, you should talk to someone about this.”
“Yeah, I’ll get right on that.” I glared before flouncing toward the door.
“Sawyer—”
Spinning on my heel, I barked, “Talk, right? Because that’ll help. That’ll erase all those photos. That’ll stop those men from jacking off to Simone even though she’s been dead for four years.”
He ran his hands up and down my arms. “What can I do?”
I shook my head and sighed. “I think visiting hours are over.”
“We have a few minutes.”
I couldn’t look at him. And I couldn’t stand him looking at me, not after he saw those pictures. “No, we don’t. I’ll see you next week.”
He gave in, his face crestfallen. I closed my eye
s to feel his lips against my forehead, but even that didn’t slow the disgust and rage pumping through my arteries.
I was helpless to change anything. And I always would be.
20
MAY 2018
The days after the feds left, I found myself lingering on those images of self-annihilation that popped in my mind.
When my arms would itch with that creeping under my skin, I’d search for anything to scratch it. I knew I’d only find relief by slitting deep beneath to the fat and fascia to let the sensation drain out with my blood. My bare legs would swish under the cool sheets as I lay awake at three AM craving the taste of steel in my mouth, colder and harder than a cock, with rougher edges. Would I wait to warm it with my tongue before revving up the nerve to pull the trigger, or would I barely think before closing my lips around it and painting the room behind me red? Now that I had time to think, jumping didn’t sound like my style. Something about the uncertainty of the fall. What if I survived? What would my quality of life be with my body paralyzed and mental capacities diminished? How would I finish the job then? Hanging sounded awful. Not that any of the above would work here. Well, maybe I could drown: stop up the sink in our bathroom, hold my breath in the shallow water, then inhale it when I blacked out. Unless I fell backward and not into the water once I was unconscious. Shit.
I’d keep these images of my death alive in my head when I needed comfort. I fantasized about them when I tried to sleep at night, the way I thought of Jake between my legs instead of my hands when I needed a breathless orgasm. Then I started to rely on this reel of violence to get through each day, not just as a warm blanket to cuddle up to in bed. Thinking that a day was my last made me almost giddy, fearless. The world was painless and pretty because all the hurt and ugly would end soon. Then I’d remember I was here, kept so cruelly safe. No guns, no blades, no tubs. Just endless fucking life.
It made me hate Simone, that delicate little bitch. Suicide in a mental hospital would have been a breeze for her. She could take a bite of yogurt at breakfast, and her dairy allergy would do the rest. That was how she did it, by the way. Her brother found her slumped on her bed with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s melting into the carpet below, her silver medical ID bracelet sticky from the poison. She always wished she could have eaten ice cream. I guessed she took her only chance. Good for her.
After one particularly sleepless night in May when all I could think about were those men all over the world still commenting and downloading and watching, watching, watching Jeff rape and choke me with his dick while they had their hands wrapped around their own, I decided to try Simone’s way. She had it right all those years back. They were still using her, but she didn’t have to feel it anymore. I wanted that. And I was smart. I was inventive. I’d figure it out, even in this place. At breakfast, I skipped my strawberry yogurt and slipped the plastic spoon on my tray up the sleeve of Cash’s sweatshirt.
That afternoon in the hospital courtyard, I laid on my stomach on the lawn with As I Lay Dying propped on the edge of the sidewalk. Underneath the back cover, I sharpened the curve of the plastic spoon against the cement before working on the handle.
It was cloudy and misty and cold. I stood resolute in the middle of Third Street, unafraid of the dream this time. I had a plan. Turning to my right, to Simone, I ran my hands over her arms, her goose bumps rising under my fingers. “I’m sorry, Simone,” I whispered. I pulled her into my chest, her face against my shoulder. She was always more petite than I was. “I’m so sorry. I’m going to make this right,” I breathed into her hair.
I woke up. It was three AM. My hands searched in the dark in the underside of my pillowcase for the altered spoon and the folded lined paper. I left the yellow notes on my pillow and pulled the covers up neatly.
The bathroom was cold, and the water would be at first, too. I turned the shower on as hot as it could go and listened at the door for Tori. Nothing. I rolled my leggings down to my feet, stripped off my panties, then, once the bathroom was steaming, I took off Cash’s sweatshirt and dropped it on the floor before slipping behind the shower curtain. I turned the water temperature down as it scalded my feet, letting it flush my skin without burning me.
I took the sharpened spoon to the swollen blue veins of my left wrist, but I could barely scratch the first layer of skin. It wasn’t the insufficiency of my tool. It was my damn drive to self-preserve. I’d have to be stronger, push harder, slice quicker. I pressed the back of my forearm against the chilled shower wall, using it as a chopping block. I closed my eyes.
This is the worst. This is the worst. Just do it, and the rest will be easy.
I raised my right arm and slammed the spoon against my flesh, scraping and carving down my wrist, nearly biting a hole in my lip to silence the pain. Sawing, that was the best way to describe what I had to do. It was a weak object, that plastic spoon. I had to keep at it to dig deeper and deeper. Then that white plastic broke in my clenched fist, and my fingers surrendered the two pieces to the shower floor. I finally exhaled and opened my eyes to see if I had done enough. The jagged cut wasn’t as deep as it felt, but blood gushed from it as the hot water ran over it. The white floor below turned pink, then translucent scarlet, as the drops of red bounced with the water from the faucet. I used my finger and thumb to pull the wound apart, to keep the blood flowing.
The pain was good. More like a bruise than a sting; I hadn’t expected that. And the itching was gone. I smiled. I’d done it. I got rid of that damn crawling, skittering feeling under my skin. I’d never have to pretend I didn’t feel it again.
I laid on my back in the stall shower, my head on the lip by the curtain, my legs perpendicular to the floor, ankles crossed up the corner of the wall. The bloody water pooled around me as I blocked the drain with my back. Then it overflowed onto the bathroom floor. My fingers kept prying my skin apart in the puddle, letting the water run it clean.
As I felt the dark headache sink in, I thought of Jake. Had I written enough to him in my note? I wrote enough to my mom and Jeff. I tried to explain what I could to Simone’s family. I tried to apologize. Of course, I could never write enough to Cash, but this, right here, was the best I could offer him. He would be relieved, I knew, that I wasn’t his burden anymore. And he knew how I felt, how I’d always feel about him. But Jake’s…the words weren’t even my own. I stole them. And what if Jake wasn’t at his same address anymore? How would my note even get to him? What if he never knew he was all I could think about as my life drained from me?
What if he didn’t care?
I closed my eyes when I couldn’t endure the dizziness anymore, when I couldn’t see the ceiling because it was covered in purple and grey splotches. I wish I was relieved, but I was terrified when I realized I was slipping away and couldn’t turn back. In a vain grasp at life, I tried to open my panicking eyes one last time just to see if my numb legs had folded on top of me. Even that simple motion was impossible.
It must have been then that my consciousness surrendered.
“I need another unit of A-negative,” a foreign voice commanded in the darkness. Beside his words, I heard fast beeps pacing with quick breaths. No, not just with quick breaths, with pain—a stabbing ache shooting down my sternum and out over my chest, like my ribs were a spider someone had stomped on.
Shit. Those breaths were mine. I was breathing.
I’d survived.
I lifted my heavy eyelids to the spinning sight of scrubs and fluorescent lights and medical equipment. My eyes shut in protest. It was too dizzy in here—too bright and noisy and alive. I forced them open again to see the thick needle in the crook of my right arm. I reached to pull it out, but my arm didn’t move. Again, I reached. Nothing. My gaze rolled to my left forearm. It was strapped down above the bandaged wound, cuffed to the hospital bed with a padded restraint. My legs couldn’t move either. I couldn’t see why, but I assumed it was for the same reason.
I sank my spine against the mattress, resigned. That hurt, t
oo. And I was sure a vice was squeezing my skull. There was no saliva in my mouth or throat. My left wrist ached with a pain deep between the bones. And I was cold—cold past goose bumps and shivering, that motionless cold of the dead. But I wasn’t that lucky.
“How are you feeling?” that same voice from before asked.
Eyes still closed, I barely shook my head.
“Are you in pain?”
I nodded down once.
“On a scale of one to ten, how bad is it?”
I spread out seven fingers, hoping he’d see. “Water,” was the only hoarse word I could manage.
“Sure, we’ll get you some water. Did you take any drugs? Even over the counter? Aspirin? Ibuprofen? Anything?”
I denied with a weak head shake. Maybe I should have. Maybe that would have gotten the job done. I couldn’t even begin to figure out how to sneak those, though.
I looked at the bag above me as a nurse replaced it—full, bulging with someone else’s blood, blood that another person had sacrificed to save someone’s life, someone who was actually sick or hurt, someone who deserved to live. That made me want to puke.
The doctor was about to leave when I breathed out a husky, “How close was I?”
He stared at me for a second with his hand on the door handle, rolling his lips inside over his tongue. “Are you feeling well enough to speak to a psychiatrist or do you want to wait another hour or so?”
My eyelids slammed shut at the idea. No. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to be here. In the hospital, fine, but not in this room. In a colder, more final one. And if they wanted words, they could just read my letters.
I must have drifted off. When I opened my eyes again, that annoyingly hopeful light of dawn—dawn I didn’t want to make it to—was forcing itself through the window, and the donor blood had been replaced with saline. I felt warm again, except for where the fluids were flowing into my arm. My headache was nearly gone, too, and I couldn’t feel much more than soreness in my chest. I lifted my left arm so I could see the bandage. Hey, the restraint was gone. I carefully swished my freed feet under the blankets before turning to see if the cuff around my right wrist was gone. It was, but a large hand replaced it. It was attached to a rigid, seething Cash sitting beside my bed.