Cut Me Free

by J. R. Johansson

  “You better be okay.”

  Every bit of air in my body pushes out like a gale, and I place the knife back in the drawer.

  “Hold on.” My voice is lost somewhere in my throat and what comes out is unintelligible. I hear a thump and when I look through the peephole I see Cam pressing his ear against the other side of the door.

  “Charlotte?” His voice is soft now and he waits. When I unlock the first of my seven locks—one of my favorite things about this apartment—I hear him release his breath. I look at the door to the fire escape and remind myself again to buy more locks for it. With only two, the fire escape is vulnerable. I refuse to be vulnerable, not anymore. Whoever lived here last obviously didn’t consider it a risk.

  They weren’t me.

  By the time I get the door open, his angry glare could melt glass and he doesn’t wait for me to invite him in.

  “Where were you last night?”

  The other half of the payment—I’d forgotten about it when I saw the girl.

  “I’m sorry.” My voice feels scratchy, like a cat has been set loose in my throat.

  Cam frowns and walks into my kitchen. When he returns a moment later with a glass of water I’m so stunned I don’t know what to say. He pulls out a chair and waits for me to sit before handing me the drink. I take a sip while I try to find an appropriate response to his kindness. A simple thank-you doesn’t seem like enough.

  “Are you sick? Is something wrong?” At the shake of my head he says, “You don’t look well.”

  I rub my eyes and sigh. “You keep telling me that.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was a rough night.” I stand up, wanting to avoid more questions. “Wait here. I’ll get your money.”

  “No. That’s not…” When I pause and wait for him to finish, he only shrugs. “Fine.”

  My first day in the apartment, I put a safe behind a panel in my closet. Under the mattress or in my suitcase didn’t seem like good places to store the money—my money now. It was Nana’s before she got sick, and she told me where the Parents kept it, under a loose board beneath their bed. My safe feels like a wiser choice.

  Digging through my closet, I push aside the only thing besides my bolt that I brought with me from my old home, Sam’s favorite puppet. Just seeing it sends a wave of sadness and regret crashing down on me. It’s tangled in its own strings, and it takes me a moment to gently move it completely out of the way. There’d been a few puppets stuffed up in the attic with us. Sam was afraid of all of them except this one, a tiny girl with giant blue eyes and blond hair. He called it his Piper-Puppet. When the Parents would drag me out of the attic, he’d always be hiding in a corner, clutching it in his thin arms when they brought me back.

  I smooth the puppet’s blond hair and set her gently aside before entering my combination. I used Sam’s favorite number (because it was the age he’d been when we met Nana), followed by Nana’s (because of Christmas), and then mine (because if luck exists, it’s screwed me over time and again): 5-25-13. Opening the door, I take out thirty-five hundred dollars and then close it again.

  When I come back into the room, I see Cam standing over the stack of mirrors I hid behind the chair. The only mirror that remains on the wall is the one in the bathroom, and that’s because I think I need a crowbar to get it down. His expression hovers somewhere between surprise and amusement.

  “I’ve never met a girl who didn’t like mirrors.”

  I shrug and hold out the money. “Appearances are overrated.”

  It’s fast, but I can’t miss his eyes sweeping from my bare feet up to my crazy bed-head hair. There’s an unmistakable twitch at the corner of his mouth, and I’m suddenly very aware of my blue polka-dot pajama pants and bright orange tank top.

  I sigh and mutter under my breath, “An opinion demonstrated by my choice of clothing.”

  Cam grins wide and I’m totally unprepared for the way it makes my stomach wobble inside me.

  “Uh”—I step backward and run into my table—“that’s all you needed, right?”

  His eyes take in my quick movement, but he doesn’t mention it. “Any luck finding a job?”

  “No, but my luck should improve once I start trying.” Pulling out a chair, I sit in it and wait for him to leave. The pounding in my head has eased, but not much.

  “Six blocks southeast of here in the Italian Market, there is a restaurant named Angelo’s.” Cam tucks the money inside his pocket without counting it. “Meet me there at five.”

  “Why?” His constant amused expression is starting to bother me. “I have the rest of Charlotte’s papers. Now I’ve paid you the rest of the money. I thought we were done.”

  “We aren’t.” He shrugs and walks to the door. “Not quite yet. Five—don’t be late.” Cam closes the door behind him without waiting for me to agree. The echo of it shutting mingles with my groan. Each of the seven pins and bolts slides into place under my fingertips, reassuring me as I close off the outside world and lock myself away. Something about that separation makes me feel like everything will be better when I wake up.

  It doesn’t matter that I know it’s a lie.

  5

  By afternoon my headache has dulled, but Sam won’t shut up.

  Go back. We need to know she is still okay.

  She’s living in a cupboard, of course she isn’t okay.

  Help her, Piper.

  I know his voice isn’t real. That he’s dead and I’m essentially arguing with myself. But it helps me feel like he’s still with me. And if that means I’m walking a bit on the crazy side of the sanity line, I’m okay with that. I’ve lived through reality—didn’t care much for it.

  Slow, deep breaths keep me calm while I shower and get ready, but I can’t say the same for Sam. He’s like a spring in my brain. Every motion I make that doesn’t take us closer to saving the girl winds him tighter. The pressure begins to feel like an unstable land mine waiting for the slightest trigger to set it off.

  Locking up my apartment, I turn and nearly step on a blond girl sitting at the top of the stairs. At my gasp, she glances around and beams up at me.

  “Hi.” She lifts up a stuffed bear from her lap and waves at me with one of its arms.

  “Hi.” I say a quick prayer in my head that she’s real because a hallucination like this would put me about a mile over the sanity line, and that’s too far—even for me. “Are you lost?”

  Her blond hair bounces when she shakes her head, and then she hops toward me. “No. I’m playing hide-and-seek,” she whispers.

  I glance down the stairs but see no one. Cam told me the guy who lives below me is a businessman who’s gone traveling most of the time, and Janice seems a little old to have a daughter this young. “With the bear?” I whisper back.

  She giggles and I can’t help but smile. “No, but you’re funny.”

  This girl with the long blond hair and happy grin is me from another life—the sister that Sam should’ve had. It takes all my strength to stay upright as a pounding wave of loss and sorrow threatens to drown me. Sam would’ve loved this version of me. He would’ve been happier with her.

  He would’ve lived.

  A door opens below us and I hear Janice’s voice muttering, “Rachel, so help me.” When she looks up at both of us, she freezes.

  “You found me! You’re good at this game, Grams.” Rachel tucks her bear under her arm and hops down the stairs. When she reaches the bottom, she takes Janice’s hand and points up at me. “But she’s better. She found me first.”

  Janice crouches down by Rachel. “You have to stay in Grams’s apartment or we can’t play this game anymore. It’s not safe out here.”

  “It’s okay though. I was with…” Rachel turns to me and tilts her head to the side. “What’s your name?”

  I take a breath and a couple of steps before answering. “Charlotte.” The name is foreign on my tongue, but I need to get used to it. “But your grandma is right. You have to stay insi
de with her.”

  Rachel shrugs. “Okay. Bye, Charlotte.” She skips past Janice and into her apartment. Her grandma follows her in and casts me a half smile before closing the door behind her, and I hear the lock slide into place.

  “Bye, Rachel.” I sigh to myself, trying to ignore the giant hole in my heart the girl has stretched wide just by existing. Then I head out the door into the afternoon sunlight.

  * * *

  At Rittenhouse Square, I wait on the bench with a magazine I picked up on the way. Which celebrity might be pregnant and whether she cheated on her husband doesn’t hold my interest, and I glance up at every girl that walks by. The city feels different today, more hostile somehow. Even in full daylight, the shadows seem deeper; the contrast between the light and dark more ominous. The people seem less busy and more calculating, almost sinister. Instead of hiding me, Philly feels like it’s trapping me. The towering buildings bordering the square no longer make me safe. I am closed in, claustrophobic, and I don’t like it.

  When the man finally comes through, I nearly miss him because he’s alone. My stomach clenches. Sam won’t even speak to me anymore because we both know it’s probably too late.

  Following this stranger will do me no good; there is only one place he might trust to leave her alone. I try not to break into a panicked run as I make my way back to the disgusting hole of an apartment I’d seen them in the night before. In the daylight, I can see all the garbage, cigarette butts, and discarded needles lining the alley that I hadn’t noticed in the dark. Under the warm sun, the stench of rotten food is so strong I hold my breath for the length of the side street. I’m still not used to the smell of decay. The Parents were always so neat. So clean about everything—everything except what they did to us.

  Once I get behind the building, panic takes over and I throw myself into the filthy kitchen window well. Nature has taken over and the wood around the well is mostly gone, barely leaving room for me to fit. Most of the window is above ground level and my crouching back is warmed by sunlight, but I shiver from a sudden cold sweat when I peek inside and find the room dark and empty. I can hear and see no one, and the door to her dungeon under the stairs hangs open.

  No longer caring about caution, I knock hard on the window, clinging to the remnant of hope I have left in spite of Sam’s whimpering in my head.

  “Please be in there,” I whisper as I knock louder. “Please don’t be dead alrea—”

  I freeze as I see the tiniest bit of movement in a corner of the room. The dingy curtain below the sink rippled—at least, I think it did. My pulse thumps loud in my ears as I push my face hard against the glass trying to make out any motion. Then I see them.

  Ten small toes poking out from under the curtain.

  My heart explodes in my chest with the need to see her move again. Please let her be alive.

  I knock louder and speak into the glass. “Girl? Can you hear me? Move if you’re okay.”

  After what feels like an eternity, the curtain ripples as it slides a few inches to the side and I can see her eyes shining in the darkness. Her ankles are bound together with a chain that is secured to the wall, but her hands are free. I see a battered half-empty water bottle beside her and the box of crackers from yesterday. We gape at each other, and even with the sounds of the city around me, all I hear is my own breathing.

  She inches forward just slightly, and even though I can’t hear her, I see the words her mouth forms.

  “Please. Help me.”

  Sam is humming in my head, the same song he used to hum when he was in pain but wasn’t allowed to cry. My heart shatters into a million pieces of shrapnel, and each one rips through me, drawing blood. I nod and search for a rock—anything that can break through the cardboard and any remaining glass left behind it and let me save her. My hand lands on a small stone. It isn’t much, but it should do the job.

  When I look up though, she frantically shakes her head, waves at me to go away, and tugs the curtain closed in front of her. A new light shines from the front of the apartment and I scramble away from the window well and back into the shade of the tree. Even here the sun is too bright today. He will see me. I know his type. If he knows there is anyone who might help her, she’ll be dead before I get the chance.

  There is no choice. If I want her to live, I have to leave and come back later.

  Dragging myself to the opposite side of the tree trunk and out of sight, I concentrate on slowing my shallow breathing. In and out, in and out—the rhythm matches Sam’s song in my head and he hums even louder. Only every few seconds, I hear his voice catch as he chokes back a sob.

  I get to my feet. Trying to shake off the icy coldness that has settled within me, I walk home in the sunlight.

  * * *

  The apartment with the girl is only eight blocks from Angelo’s. It was hard to convince Sam that I needed to come to this restaurant instead of going back for her. It’s startling that only a few city blocks separate places so drastically different—like the dark and light within each person. They’re so close together, occupying the same space, but still worlds apart.

  Angelo’s is warm and inviting, even from across the street. Vivid red-and-white-checked curtains frame the windows and every table has a glowing candle. It’s the kind of place I want to feel at home in, even if I don’t.

  My hair is still slightly damp from my second shower of the day. I’d been covered in filth when I’d gotten home, both mind and body. The water only seemed to help with the body. The image of the girl’s dirty face, her mouth pleading for me to help her, won’t leave me alone.

  And Sam is only making it worse.

  Go back, Piper. Please go back.

  “I will, but I can’t until he leaves her alone again,” I mutter, knowing that talking to myself in public is never a good plan.

  Drawing my shoulders back, I cross the street and walk through the front door. The aroma of fresh-baked bread and spaghetti sauce nearly knocks me off my feet and my stomach rumbles for the first time today. A low murmur of people talking and laughing fills the room with cozy warmth. It’s so new to me that I want to sit down and soak it in until my skin gets pruney. The girl at the host station is helping a couple to their table, but I don’t see Cam, so I wait.

  The wall by the door is dominated by pictures. Old and new, big groups and small, most are families with adults and children, but a few have people in chef uniforms—and I recognize the black jacket the hostess has on. I walk closer to a photo with a younger version of Cam, Lily, and a smaller girl with Lily’s hair. Lily has one arm around each and they’re grinning so wide I can count their teeth. A few adults stand behind them, and for the first time I wonder if they’re related.

  “Sorry.” Cam’s voice comes from directly behind me, and I spin to face him. He has me pinned between him and the wall of photos. Before I can decide the best way to escape, he sees my panic and steps back. “Thanks for coming.”

  The way he seems to read me makes me uncomfortable. I shift on my feet before turning back to the pictures. I reach my finger up and touch an engraving on the wooden frame. “Is she your sister?”

  “Lily?” He turns to look at the frame, but I’m surprised to see him wince and close his eyes for a moment.

  “Yes.” I study my fingers, rubbing my knuckles together, wondering why I’m anxious about his answer.

  “No.”

  “Oh.” I want to kick myself when it comes out sounding disappointed.

  Cam laughs under his breath, but not low enough that I can’t hear. “Do you want her to be?”

  “No.” I keep my voice even and don’t answer too fast. “I was just wondering.”

  “That’s too bad.” He gives the hostess a friendly wave as she hurries past, seeming frazzled.

  I watch him in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  Gesturing for me to follow, he leads the way toward a waiting area off to one side that has a few empty benches. He acts like he didn’t hear me. “Have you
ever worked at a restaurant?”

  “W-what?” I blink hard and try to figure out how the conversation ended up here.

  “A restaurant?” He raises one eyebrow, and that damn smile is back. When I stare at him like an idiot instead of answering, he continues. “People come here to eat? They pay you?”

  “Oh, no. I haven’t.” When realization finally dawns, I frown. “I told you I didn’t need help finding a job.”

  “I know.” He steps closer and inclines his head toward the girl busily leading customers to tables. “But Mary is leaving and Angelo’s really needs a hostess we can count on. Lily can show you how to do it. It’s pretty simple.”

  I run a hand along the back of a bench and raise one eyebrow at him. “Are you the manager here? Lawbreaker by day, Italian chef by night?”

  “No, but Lily is one of the assistant managers. She can’t cook to save her life.” He takes another step and I resist the urge to move away. “Our grandparents own it.”

  I can see so many emotions in his eyes—laughter, hope, concern. I’ve never met someone who can let their guard down this way. It scares me.

  With my small motion, he freezes, but his eyes don’t change. “Lily is my cousin.”

  “Oh, right.” My heart warms and it spreads up my neck to my cheeks. It’s uncomfortable so I turn and take a seat on the bench. When he pivots to face me, his eyes are impossible to read. The sudden barrier I see there hurts more than I expect, and I don’t know what changed.

  “So, will you do it?”

  I should say no. I know it, but I can’t make the word come out. “You don’t work here?”

  “No, I help my aunt Jessie at her studio.”

  “Studio?” I pride myself on how quickly I learn. I’d taught myself to read when I was little by watching the Parents’ TV through a crack in the boards of the attic floor. The commercials were my favorite part. They always said words while printing them on the screen. There were words printed on the bars over the attic window. I’d hoped if I could know what they said it would tell me how to get them open and escape. But it was only the name of the company that made them. Even now, I devour books to keep learning, but “studio” is one of those hard words that have multiple meanings.