by April Henry
Bridget scrambled to pull back the covers, the chain between her cuffs jingling. Derrick and Joanne managed to get a moaning Bob up onto one foot, with his arms around their shoulders. Bob had to brace himself on them each time he swung his good foot forward. Even only taking half the weight, Derrick was glad the old man had lost a few pounds.
Bob finally fell more than sat on the bed, still holding his right leg suspended in the air. Groaning, he scooted back on his elbows until his knee was supported by the mattress, his leg jutting off it.
“All right, girl, you and I are going to have to hold on to his leg just below the knee.” None-too-gently, Joanne tugged up the bottom cuff of Bob’s sweatpants. After propping her phone on a pillow, she leaned over and put her hands on either side of his knee, just above the joint. She instructed Bridget to get on the other side and hold just below. “Okay, Derrick, now you take his foot in both hands, pull it back and try to straighten it out until the bone slips back in.”
Derrick’s vision went blurry. How had everything gone so wrong, so fast? “Can’t you do it?” he protested.
“I don’t know that this whole thing is such a good idea,” Bob said urgently.
Joanne answered as if only Derrick had spoken.
“You’re stronger than I am.”
Chewing his lip, he put his phone on the top of the treadmill desk, propping it against the typewriter. It didn’t provide that much light, for which he was actually glad. Derrick tentatively laid one hand on the top of Bob’s disgusting, bare, sweaty foot. It was hairy, which made it even grosser. He cupped his other hand around the callused heel.
“In fact, I think this is a really bad idea.” Bob’s tone was even more urgent.
“Be quiet,” Joanne said. “And don’t move.” She took a deep breath. “Okay, on the count of three. One. Two. Three.”
Derrick tightened his grip and started to pull the foot toward him, angling it a little bit.
Bob screamed, high and shrill. Suddenly, mercifully, he stopped. With a thump, he flopped back on the bed.
“Keep going!” Joanne ordered. “Finish it before he comes to.”
Derrick pulled harder this time, trying to focus in the dim room on the dark splotch that marked where the bone had broken through the skin. Through his hands, he felt the vibration of something clicking back into place.
“That’s it!” Joanne said. “Good job.” Rare praise, but it barely registered.
When Derrick picked up his phone to check Bob’s leg, the bone had disappeared.
But things did not actually look that much better. There was still a bloody gash. And the whole area was starting to look puffy.
Putting the bone back into place was just the start. They needed prescription pain medication, antibiotics, sterile conditions, and an orthopedic surgeon.
What they had was expired Tylenol and three people who had no idea what they were doing.
“Let’s get him the right way on the bed,” Derrick suggested.
Together the three of them maneuvered Bob into more or less the correct orientation. In a weird way, it felt like they were now co-conspirators. Even though Derrick and Joanne were the ones who had brought Bob here, it was Bridget who had broken his ankle. Now she lifted Bob’s head and put a pillow under it. She gently draped the covers over his torso.
“Do you have any ice we could put on his foot?” she asked.
Derrick gestured toward the window, feeling a harsh laugh bubble up. “Miles of it.”
“I think we need to splint it first,” Joanne said. “And it’s probably better if we do it while he’s still unconscious. Derrick, go get some of those old magazines from the living room. And then you can fill a garbage bag or two with snow.”
The splint they made ended up looking totally ridiculous. They padded his ankle with washcloths and then tied two old copies of National Geographic around it with kitchen twine. After propping his leg up on an extra blanket from the hall cupboard, they put two garbage bags full of snow on either side.
After that, Derrick and Joanne left Bridget to watch Bob, and they went to bed.
But Derrick couldn’t sleep, especially after Bob’s moans started floating down the hall. His head felt full of static, and his body vibrated with itchy panic.
If Bob died, then he would never finish Eyes of the Forest.
AJAY
Mix of Feelings
Ajay sat in the back seat of the car, idly playing with his phone. Beside him, Aprita was asleep, a balled-up sweater serving as a cushion between her and the window. In the front seats, his parents were listening to NPR.
Outside, the traffic stopped and started for no reason that he could see. On paper, Portland and Seattle were three hours apart, but that was only true if there were no other cars on the road. Today, that certainly wasn’t the case. And even though Portlanders complained about their traffic, Seattle’s was even worse.
Over the past few days, Ajay had cooked a few dishes in his aunt’s kitchen, patiently played board games with his cousins (all younger), and avoided Aprita’s attempts to ask him about Bridget. How could he explain what was happening? He didn’t know how to describe it to himself.
All the passion that had drawn him to Bridget had been revealed as something scarier, something that erased the boundary between imagination and reality. She had fallen so far into Swords and Shadows that she had decided to create a world where she herself was part of the books.
But thinking about Bridget made him feel anxious and sad. So now Ajay distracted himself by playing Candy Crush and Word Finder. He checked out the Onion and Bored Panda. Every now and then he would look up to see how much closer they were to Portland, and every time he was disappointed to realize how much longer it would be.
Finally, when he had exhausted every possible form of time waster, Ajay checked his Gmail account. Amid the junk mail were two personal emails. The sight of them made him feel the weirdest mix of feelings because of who they were from: Bridget Shepherd.
Already wincing, Ajay opened the first. It explained that she had discovered a code in “Bob’s” message. Reading the first paragraph was enough to make him want to kick and shout, to try to do something to release his anger and frustration at how her mental illness still had her in its grasp. A code. Good grief. Pretty soon she would be telling him that strangers were following her and her phone was being tapped. He powered off the phone and tried to mimic Aprita and sleep.
But sleep wouldn’t come. Ajay opened up her email again, read a little further. The police hadn’t believed her, which was a relief.
But at the bottom of the email, when she told him how she had solved it, it almost made a kind of sense.
Right, Ajay reminded himself. Sense. There was no way Bob was being held captive. He was on the verge of becoming just as bad as Bridget. Bridget, who had probably made the entire message up anyway and sent it to herself.
And then Ajay read her second email. About the tracker she was applying to Joanne’s car. Now Bridget’s internal demons were being let out into the real world.
BRIDGET
Shadows of the Real
Despite Joanne coming in to give Bob four more Tylenol around midnight, he had whimpered and writhed all night. Bridget had finally fallen into something like sleep, curled up on the floor wrapped in a blanket. They had let her keep her coat. Every time she turned onto her bruised shoulder, the pain roused her.
In the morning, she woke to a hushed silence. Oh, please God, no. Her eyes flew open. The room was filled with a pearlescent light.
Bridget jolted up, pinning her eyes to Bob’s gray face. Then he drew in a ragged breath and she could release her own. He was still alive, sleeping an uneasy sleep. Even though the room was so cold she could see her breath, Bob’s face was shiny with sweat.
As quietly as possible, she got to her feet. Outside, the snow was falling steadily. But the power hadn’t come back on. Looking out at the world blanketed in white, she hugged the blanket tighter aro
und herself, and not just because she was freezing. When she was a kid, it had been a thrill to walk on fresh snow, to know she was the first to touch it. Now the endless expanse of unblemished snow was simply frightening, like being on a deserted island surrounded by miles of uncrossable ocean.
When Bridget turned away from the window, Bob’s eyes were open. He looked exhausted, with hollows in his cheeks and purple shadows under his red, rheumy eyes.
“How’re you doing?” she asked softly.
“Not so great.” He looked down, and she followed his gaze. The snow in the garbage bags had melted, so now the knotted bags slumped. The skin visible above the makeshift splint was red and swollen.
“I’m so sorry, Bob.” She blinked back tears. “I should have thought it through more.” Now he might die, and for what? Clearly, no one was coming to save them.
“It’s okay.” He squeezed his eyes closed and exhaled through clenched teeth.
“Should I take off your scarf? Is it making it hard for you to breathe?”
“No, it’s fine. It helps me.” He opened his eyes. “A girl gave it to me. Lilly.”
“You mentioned her once.” Exhaustion made her blunter than she might otherwise have been. “She left you.”
His fingers rose to gently touch it. “She didn’t leave me. Or at least not the way you think. She died. She had Hodgkin’s. Everyone said if you had to have cancer, that was one of the good ones. It still killed her. After she died, I put all my emotions on paper. They couldn’t hurt me there.” His swallow was loud in the quiet room. “I guess I’ll be seeing her soon.”
Panic fluttered in Bridget’s throat. She was not going to just sit and watch Bob die. “I’m going to beg them to take you to a doctor. Or at least dump you in front of an emergency room and take off.”
“Do you honestly think they would do that?”
“What are they going to do?”
“I don’t know.” He sighed. “The thing is, I don’t think Derrick and Joanne know either. I just know it can’t be anything good.” He pasted on a smile. “I would love some morphine, but if I can’t have that, I need something to take my mind off the pain. Could you do something for me?”
“Of course. Anything.” She nodded vigorously. “What?”
“Read Eyes of the Forest to me.”
“Didn’t Derrick take it?” Last night, he’d picked up the pages next to the typewriter.
He gave her the ghost of a smile. “Do you know the story of Scheherazade?”
“Like in A Thousand and One Nights?”
Bob nodded. “The chapters I’ve been giving Derrick are just shadows of the real book. Good enough to keep him interested, but I saved a better version for myself. And his version isn’t finished. Like Scheherazade, my plan was to never finish it, because of what they’d do once it was.” He pressed his lips together. Was he thinking of how Bridget had forced their hand? “But at night when Derrick was sleeping, I wrote the real Eyes of the Forest and hid the chapters under the treadmill. I finished it the day before you came.”
Even here, even now, the idea of reading it thrilled her. “It would be an honor to read it to you.”
“Just keep your voice low and be ready to hide it if one of them comes in. In fact, do it in chunks in case they do come in and catch you. That way I might not lose the whole thing. But I want you to tell me if it’s any good.”
After retrieving the first stack of about thirty pages, Bridget sat on the floor next to the head of the bed, ready to shove the pages under the nightstand if the door opened. Reading in a low murmur, she found voices for the different characters. Soon she was completely immersed in the story. She no longer thought about what was going to happen to them or Bob’s ankle, how hard the floor was, or even possible entries for the database.
Joanne came in only once, carrying four granola bars, two bottles of water, six Tylenol and, oddly, a flower vase. She set everything down on the nightstand. Her expression was grim as she regarded Bob’s injury.
Finally she pointed at the vase and addressed Bob. “You can pee in there while I take her to the bathroom.” She took the stun gun out of her pocket. “Let’s go.”
Bridget walked ahead of her, the chain between the shackles rattling with each step. As soon as the door was closed, she inventoried the bathroom. Towels, toothpaste, three toothbrushes, shampoo, a bar of soap. Nothing that could be used as a weapon.
After Joanne brought her back, Bridget read to Bob for another hour. When he fell into an uneasy sleep, Bridget noted the page she was on and kept reading silently to herself. She’d always been a fast reader, and with nothing to distract her, the pages flew by. They were filled with twists and revelations and sudden yet fitting deaths. And woven together with the previous six books, this new one completed a stunning tapestry.
Bridget was only vaguely aware of the real world. The snow finally stopped. At one point she heard Joanne and Derrick talking at the other end of the house. Their voices rose and fell, full of urgency, sometimes overlapping, sometimes rising to a shout. Later she heard shoveling and scraping outside. Then a door slammed, and a motor started up. A car. She barely spared a thought as to whether it was Derrick or Joanne. Did it really matter?
Meanwhile, all too soon, Bridget was on the final page. Her eyes filled with tears as she read the last line.
And he climbed on Grayhorn’s back, put his arms around Jancy’s waist, and together they flew toward the stars.
After a long moment, Bridget reluctantly put the page down and slid the final stack back under the treadmill. When she turned around, wiping her nose on her sleeve, Bob was awake.
“So you finished it?” he rasped.
“Oh my God, Bob. That—that is an ending.”
“Does it work, do you think?” He was watching her closely.
Bridget would have lied if she needed to, but she didn’t. “It’s”—she sighed—“it’s perfect.”
She was about to say more when the door handle turned.
Joanne came in, holding the stun gun. “Okay, Bridget, it’s time for another bathroom break. And if you promise not to run, I can take off the shackles.”
Her heart leapt. “I promise,” she lied.
When Joanne bent over to unlock them, Bridget imagined kicking her in the face. Twisting and circling her legs to wrap the chain around the older woman’s throat, and then pulling until she passed out and Bridget could retrieve the key and the stun gun from her slack fingers.
Instead, she did nothing, hating herself for her cowardice.
Joanne gestured with the stun gun for Bridget to go into the bathroom. “Stay put until I let you out.”
After Bridget flushed the toilet, she waited for Joanne to come back. And waited.
“I’m done,” she finally shouted, watching the doorknob, waiting for it to turn. Did she hear footsteps out in the hall? Then the knob rattled. Bridget sucked in a breath, ready to beg for Bob’s life as soon as it opened.
But it didn’t turn.
And then the footsteps moved away.
Why had Joanne insisted she wait? Bridget’s scalp prickled as she reached out her hand and tentatively touched the handle. It turned. But when she tried to push the door open, it only moved an inch before stopping.
She put her eye to the gap. A piece of twine crossed it. One end seemed to be tied to the bathroom doorknob and the other to a doorknob further down the hall.
But why? Why did Joanne need her trapped in the bathroom?”
“Hey,” Bridget shouted. “Hey!”
Holding her breath, she strained her ears, but no one answered. All she heard was an oddly breezy noise. It sounded like a long exhalation. Or a fan? Then outside, she heard a car door slam. A motor started up. It must be Joanne’s black Honda. And now it sounded like it was slowly moving away.
But the sound inside the house, the sound she’d heard earlier, was getting louder. Crackling. Whooshing. Bridget sniffed. Smoke.
The house was on fire.
The fire would burn this cabin to the ground. And after the authorities found the remains of Bob and his researcher, Joanne would explain, with tears in her eyes, how she’d lent them her family cabin so Bob could finish his book. How an errant candle, lit after the power went out, must have burned everything down.
And then the black market for Bob’s last book would go through the roof.
BRIDGET
Too Late
Bridget slammed the bathroom door with her unbruised shoulder until it was as bruised as the other. Kicked it. Ran at it. Each attempt made her gasp with pain, but all it did was stretch the twine a couple of inches. When she tried to squeeze herself through the gap, the space wasn’t nearly big enough.
If only she had the Leatherman tool. Which was a stupid thought. Why not wish for a real pair of scissors—or to not be here in the first place?
Then Bridget realized she did have a tool: her teeth. Squishing her face into the gap, she pressed forward until the door’s sharp edge on one side and the slightly rounded edge of the frame on the other felt like they might crack her cheekbones.
Finally the twine rested between her lips. Rapidly opening and closing her incisors, she gnashed her teeth. For every time she caught it, there was another when she missed it altogether, her teeth clacking on nothing. She ignored the terrible taste, ignored the smoke getting heavier. Slowly the fibers began to part, covering her tongue in dry, itchy bits.
Finally, the last strand popped and the door flew open. Bridget tumbled forward.
She pushed herself upright. At the end of the hall, fire was beginning to engulf the living room. As she stared, mesmerized, a corner of the upholstered couch went up in yellow flames. Then the fire leapt onto the shade of the lamp next to the couch. The braided rug was smoking. Even if she could somehow get Bob on his feet, by the time they got to the hall, the path to the door would be completely blocked.