The Dollhouse (Paperdolls #1)

by Nicole Thorn

I was met by three pairs of panicked eyes as we realized how much time had passed. The goodbyes were painful when they came. I had to watch them stay while I left with Mom. It made my chest ache when I walked through the door.

  I knew I shouldn’t eat the whole package of cookies all at once, but they were just so good, and I highly doubted it wouldn’t happen. I’d put them in the freezer, and it made them magical. I think I had at least seven of them.

  My brother was downstairs and Mom was doing a load of laundry, so I was all alone. It was comfortable in its own way. There was no pretending when I was alone.

  With the good always came the bad. It was easy to slip back into memories of my life up until a few days ago. The dark I was in. No matter what I did, I couldn’t make the pictures stop playing in my head. The last night. I had thousands of other nights to think of, and that was what I was stuck on. Like a movie playing over and over. Blood and screaming and pain.

  The doorbell ringing was what pulled me out of the darkness. That, and my brother screaming as he ran downstairs, excited about whoever it was.

  He slammed into it, turning to me. “Can I open it?”

  I was only ten feet away, so I decided it was safe. I nodded at him.

  The door opened, and it only took a moment for me to be sure it was his friend. It helped they were jumping up and down while screaming. They saw each other an hour ago… But I guess I’d be screaming too if one of my sisters showed up.

  While the boys rambled, I shoved an entire cookie into my mouth. It seemed like a good idea before I did it. Turns out that I was wrong.

  Welly dragged Jude in front of me and gestured out. “This is her.”

  The little boy had big stormy gray eyes and shaggy brown hair that was just shy of dipping into his eyes. He blinked at me like I was an alien. “Hello, I’m Jude.”

  “Riley,” I said.

  He smiled. “You’re very pretty. You look like a Barbie doll.”

  It was a sharp hit to the heart when he said it. Doll. I looked like a doll because I was designed to look like a doll. He wanted it that way, worked at it for years until we were perfect. He always wanted us perfect. When we were flawed, we went to the Bad Girl Room. Or the Clean Room. Depending on what was wrong with us.

  “You okay, cookie girl?” another voice said.

  My eyes flickered over to see a boy in the doorway. Boy or man? I didn’t know. He looked older than me by maybe a few years. His hair was dark too. Everything was dark. Black hair that was almost as shaggy as the little boy’s. A black shirt fitted him immaculately. Wiry muscles were only barely hidden under the fabric, and I could perfectly make out his shape. He had rough worker’s hands, I could tell from where I was. A pointy nose, but again, barely. You’d only be able to tell if you saw his profile. He didn’t look… sad. That wasn’t quite the right word. It was something else. Melancholy, maybe. He wore it in his eyes. The only color on him, and they burned with green. Bright green.

  He arched a black eyebrow at me. “Well?”

  “You’re talking to me?”

  The raven-haired boy gave me a funny look. “You’re the only one here with a box of cookies in their hands, so yeah.”

  “Oh. I’m fine.”

  His tone was dubious. “Really? Because you look like someone just tasered you.”

  I took another bite of my thawing cookie. “I’m fine,” I lied again.

  Welly lit up and ran to the boy. “You have to come meet my sister. She lets me play Legos in her room, and she’s as nice as Mom and Dad said she used to be.”

  I think my cheeks turned bright red when the guy looked at me again. There was only a hint of change in his expression, so I wondered how much he knew.

  My brother pulled him over to me, so I felt obligated to stand up. The cookies were set on the coffee table and I attempted to look human. Welly dropped him like a hot potato when he got within a foot of me. He looked taller close up. A couple inches over six feet.

  “Wilson,” he nodded, and the headphones over his shoulders bounced.

  They too, were black, and I almost didn’t see them.

  “Riley,” I said in a much smaller voice. “You’re Jude’s brother?”

  “I am. Five years running,” he smiled.

  When it got quiet, I heard the faintest thing. Music. I leaned toward the sound, ending up closer to the boy. It was coming from the headphones. A beat that stayed light and fun. I didn’t recognize it. That wasn’t the important thing. The important thing was that I didn’t notice until that moment this was the first piece of music I’d heard since I got home, since before I was taken. No music in The Dollhouse.

  “Dexy’s Midnight Runners,” Wilson said, drawing my eyes up while I leaned.

  “What?”

  “The band,” he said, and I noticed how gravelly his voice was. The kind that would make his chest feel rumbly if I touched it.

  I blinked. “C—can I listen? Just for a few seconds?” It seemed like a lot to ask, but I wasn’t sure what the proper etiquette was. One of the many downfalls of being blocked from all social aspects of life.

  He didn’t hesitate to pull the headphones around from his shoulders and hand them to me. I put one in each ear and listened. He reached into his pocket, and he gave off the faintest trace of cigarette smoke each time he moved. With a swipe of his finger on the little silver device, the music got louder, making it the only thing I could experience.

  It was loud and wonderful in my ears. It sounded like energy and life was being pumped into me with each word from the singer. I went away to another place while I was listening. How could I forget what music was like? How could that much of me slip away into the abyss?

  The music dulled when Wilson pulled an earbud out of my ear. He was smiling. “Where the hell did you just go off to?”

  I cleared my throat. “I like that song. I haven’t heard music in a very long time.”

  He didn’t comment, and that was telling. Then he had the music player in his palm. He looked to me, then to the iPod, and back to me. “Do you wanna listen for a while?”

  I accidentally flashed doe eyes at him, and it made me feel like a little girl. “Really?”

  “Sure.” He shrugged. “I’m coming back for Jude in a few hours. I can always get it then.”

  He handed me the thing that looked a lot like the new phone I hadn’t touched yet, and I held it to my chest. “Thank you.”

  He smiled crookedly. “No problem, cookie girl.” I watched him kneel down and remind his brother to behave. With a hug, the nice boy was off.

  It gave me the smallest twinge of hope, speaking with him. A stranger, and I was fine—or as fine as I could be. He didn’t even look at me like I was a freak. Or with pity. He just looked at me like the doe-eyed girl I was being.

  When I was alone with the boys, I was the center of their attention.

  Jude lifted to his tiptoes. “Will you play with us, Riley? We can run around in the backyard and be dinosaurs.”

  Music was still playing in my ear, and it reminded me that I was holding the iPod. I put it in my pocket and smiled at the boys. “I can play. I’ll be a pterodactyl.”

  Wilson

  wasn’t a pacer on a normal day, but he was late. Very late. I had about twenty minutes before the boss came back, and if he caught on to what was happening, he’d kick my ass for taking a bigger cut than I promised. I was doing all the work anyway. Not to mention, I was the one to bring this guy in.

  The rain was light, and I was tempting fate by walking so close to the open garage door. Normally it was where the cars pulled in for us to work on them, but we didn’t have any new customers today. It was a miracle Mr. Evans kept this place open.

  I put one foot directly in front of the other as I walked the line between wet and dry. I took a drag on my cigarette and blew the smoke in the direction of the rain. Music would probably have made the time go faster, but unfortunately I left my iPod with Cookie girl.

  It was a really good thi
ng Mrs. Cain warned me about that. However, I thought the girl would be hiding out in her room when I came over with my brother. It was odd, the bliss and the sorrow in her mother’s voice when she told me the girl was home. A dead girl come back to life. What a bittersweet miracle.

  She didn’t look like a girl who’d spent the last seven years locked up—or wherever she was. The news speculated on where the four girls where, but they didn’t wanna speak up. I couldn’t blame them. More horrors were to come. The only thing the news knew for sure was that one of the girls killed their captor, and that they all looked the same. Some cop must have leaked the info to the news. Four blonde girls with blue eyes. Taken when they were twelve and kept in hell for the entirety of their teen years. I was glad the bastard was dead.

  A rusty pickup drove along the empty street, and I saw who I was waiting for. He was a lanky man, Sherman. Well, Sherman was what I called him. He wouldn’t tell me his real name, and I didn’t care to ask. I watched his gangly body as he came up to me, ducking unto the building to avoid the rain. He shook his shoulder length blond hair out, and water splashed on the ground.

  “Ya know.” I smirked. “You could have driven your truck in here and saved us both some time.”

  Black eyes narrowed at me. “Fuck off, Sonny.”

  “Where’s your friend? Isn’t he the money guy?”

  Sherman sighed. “Sun allergy. He doesn’t like coming out during the day.”

  All I did was cock a brow and take another drag while I glanced up at the gray sky.

  Sherman rolled his eyes. “I don’t ask questions, man. I do what I’m told.”

  “Great policy. How about you go get the truck?”

  He shuffled off, and I went back to pacing. The old truck started up, and I had to step out into the rain. The second the cigarette was back in my mouth, I heard the telltale sound of water putting out the bud on the cigarette. Of course as the rain thinned, one fucking drop would find just where it needed to. I ground out the rest of the fire on my heel and tossed it in the trash.

  Sherman drove up, and we started unloading the parts he brought me. They were put where they needed to go so that they could be sorted through later. Probably by me, since my boss was a lazy bastard.

  Once everything was in the backroom, money changed hands. I got a bonus if I had the parts out of here in a week. That was a decent enough amount of time for me. I’d get paid, and maybe I could take Jude out for a nice dinner this weekend. Dad too, if he was up for it.

  “See ya in a week, Abbey.” Sherman pointed at me before taking off.

  His truck wheezed to life as he turned the key and peeled out of the shop.

  It was almost time to head home, and I didn’t want to smell like smoke when Jude saw me. Almost futile, but I took a few minutes to walk outside. The rain had stopped, but the clouds were still out. Lighter, but there.

  When I got in the car, I had to plug my phone in for music since Chocolate Chip had the iPod. It really didn’t matter in the end. I wasn’t paying attention to the music. The noise of The Offspring blended into the background.

  I parked in my own driveway and locked the car doors lest someone see my old Corolla and want to steal it. Karma, I guess.

  Mrs. Cain was the one to answer the door when I knocked. She was smiling, which was odd for her. “Hey, honey. Jude’s getting a drink, but he’ll be over in a minute.”

  I looked over her shoulder and found Cookie fast asleep on the couch, my earbuds in. She looked troubled, even all laid out and sleeping. Was there ever a time where she wasn’t troubled?

  “She doesn’t sleep very well,” her mother said as if she needed to explain.

  I nodded. “Seems to be expected for what she dealt with.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” she added, sadly.

  Awkwardness hung in the air, and I did my best to ease it. “But it must be good having her home.”

  My family moved in about two years after Riley vanished. I think I was eighteen. Maybe seventeen. My brother had just been born, and in turn, my mother had just died. Yeah, I was eighteen.

  Mrs. Cain was pretty good about helping Dad and me out with Jude when he was a baby. Two men mourning didn’t really know what to do with an infant. She was mourning too, but she’d grown used to it enough to function. That one took me a while.

  “It’s strange, to tell you the truth.” She laughed nervously. “I keep thinking she’s not real. That I’m gonna wake up one day and she’ll be gone. I’ll finally get the call saying they found her body…” Her face went blank. “And I thought that was the call I was getting a few nights ago. I guess I still don’t really believe someone isn’t going to pull the rug out from under me. I won the lottery, and nothing about it feels real. Not only did I finally get an answer to if she was alive, but I got her back.” She blinked half a dozen times and sniffled. “Sorry, that was a lot to dump on you.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. I’m good as someone to talk to. Just ask Dad.”

  She smiled and cleared her eyes. “It’s been a long few days.”

  Jude came running up to me, heedless of the conversation that had been going on. He told me about his afternoon with his best friend.

  We walked together back home, and he had the tired enthusiasm of a person who could pass out standing up. “And Riley was really good at being a pterodactyl. She could make the sounds and she’s really good at jumping and flipping.”

  I smiled. “She sounds nice.”

  “She is. Maxwell said she was in a really bad place for a long time. His mommy and daddy told him that she was very special and God wanted to take her back home. If He did that, why is she back here? Is God mad at her?”

  Christ. How do I do this? “She’s back because she and those other girls fought their way back. They were very brave.”

  “Oh. Is she staying?”

  “I think she is.”

  We got to the door, and I reminded Jude that Dad was sleeping and he needed to be quiet. Dad didn’t need to be up for another few hours. He’d eat, then go.

  “I’m kinda sleepy.” Jude yawned.

  “You can head up to your room and take a nap. I’m gonna start dinner in an hour, and I’ll come get you.”

  He shuffled off and left me in the living room. I sank into the couch and pulled my phone out, killing a few minutes with games I hated. I lost them all within fifteen minutes, and I was left without anything to do. I could clean… if I hated myself. I guess I had to figure out the shopping list for tomorrow. That meant I had to get off of my ass and check the mail for the ads.

  With an old man grunt, I got up and forced myself out the door. I managed to get three feet before I was frozen in astonishment.

  “I just wanna be your friend!” I heard from the house next door.

  Riley was booking it down her driveway, chasing something I couldn’t quite make out. As I moved closer, I smiled. She was chasing a fucking toad. So much for her nap.

  She made it to her grass and reached out, only to be tripped by an imaginary rock. She landed on her knees with a huff, shaking her fist at the toad.

  I reached her as she was standing up. She didn’t notice me until I spoke, and she jumped in surprise.

  “Whatcha doin’, Cookie?”

  Riley squeaked and stared at me with those massive blue eyes. Then she glared at me, a valiant effort to look like something fierce while stuck in the body of a kitten.

  “It’s not nice to sneak up on people.”

  “It wasn’t sneaking. If you’d turned around you would have seen me.”

  “Whatever you have to tell yourself,” she said, looking up at the tree and sighing.

  “You didn’t answer the question.”

  She looked back at me. “My parents told me I could get a pet. I came out here to breathe, and I saw the frog. I would like to keep him.”

  I followed her gaze up the tree. The toad sat on a branch, almost mocking her. Well, clearly I only had one option here. Other
wise those big blue eyes might get all watery, and I just couldn’t watch that.

  “Get ready,” I warned her.

  She was in the middle of questioning me when I hauled her up. I tossed her so that I could get her higher up. She squeaked at me again, glaring down.

  Her hands were on my shoulders, and she gripped me, maybe trying to do damage. “What is wrong with you?”

  I smiled, lifting her up again and making her sit on my arm. She weighed almost nothing, and it was concerning. “I’m helping you save a life. You could be a little more grateful.”

  She knocked off her glare and looked up. “Okay, come with me, sweetie. I will get you a nice glass terrarium and you will have a place of honor on my dresser. I will love you, and hold you, and you will be a king.”

  When her arms stretched out, she leaned forward. Then there was cleavage in my face. Just… right in my face. Soft parts very close to my mouth, and I imagine she wouldn’t be okay with that if she realized. The girl was messed up in the head, and I was a bastard for even thinking for a second about her cleavage. Even with it in my face. I was forever a predator, and I wasn’t sure if she would ever be capable of being more than prey.

  “I will be your mommy,” Riley declared to her toad, reaching closer.

  She got her hands around him, and he didn’t jump again. He just sat there.

  She beamed at me as she sat back on my arm, examining her new pet, informing him about his new home. The toad seemed to have hit the jackpot.

  “Thank you,” Riley said, almost grudgingly.

  I smiled up at her. “I’m a giver.”

  “Are you hungry, Kermit?” she asked the toad as I set her back on the ground.

  I snorted. “Clever.”

  She flat out stuck her tongue out at me. “He’s a froggy, and I will name him after the king of the frogs. Now I just have to figure out what Kermit eats.”

  “Miss Piggy.” I smiled again.

  The joke soared over her head, and I was reminded that from whatever hell house she was in, she probably didn’t get a chance to develop right. And then I was the jerk who cracked a dirty joke with a girl as innocent as they come.