by Tess Sharpe
This is violation. A prying sort of touch that sends every single sense inside me clamoring; running for cover, charging to fight, freezing in place.
“Hitting you is not the only thing I can do to make you behave,” he says, and there it is, in between the lines and in the lick of his lips: the real threat.
Run. Hide. Do it. Now.
No. Calm. Breathe. He wants the fear. The gun didn’t stop me. The hitting got him nowhere. So now it’s this.
Breathe.
Run. Hide. Fight.
No. Swallow that fucking spit in your mouth, Nora. Speak. He can’t know.
“I see we’ve reached the rape-threat portion of the day. Very original. Do you have some evil-dude bingo card stashed somewhere?”
I’m talking too fast. My voice rising. Shit. Shit.
Run.
He shrugs, and it’s terrifying, how casual it is. And then, he gets a whole lot more terrifying, because he says, “I don’t need to do anything to you. All I need to do is go get the girl in the poofy dress. Both you and the boy keep putting yourselves in front of her.”
There is no controlling my reaction. The blood drains out of my face so fast it has him sucking a breath in with a kind of sick joy, and I am so fucking stupid. I didn’t think. I didn’t even think he’d . . .
He steps forward.
Hide.
He’s too close. Too, too close.
My hand curls around the handle of the scissors tucked in the waistband of my jeans.
Fight. Kill.
— 37 —
Katie (Age 10): Sweet, Spirited, Smart (In Three Acts, Reversed)
Act 2: Spirited
Forty Minutes After
My button-down is stained. I pull my jacket closer around me, trying to hide it as I pick up speed. My sneakers slap through puddles, the chill of the streets almost as bad as the late-night buzz in this part of the city. Seattle sucks in the winter and my jacket’s thin, but I didn’t have time to grab my winter coat.
I didn’t have time to grab anything. My phone’s back there, along with my warm coat and clothes that aren’t rusty with blood.
I need to find a pay phone, something that’s almost impossible. But I keep walking, because if I stop, I’m going to remember what happened.
No stopping. Keep moving.
I’ve been Katie for six months. Katie is Lucy’s daughter. Katie just turned ten. She’s athletic; she wears a rose-gold charm bracelet around her right wrist, little tennis rackets and hearts and the Eiffel Tower dangling from it. Katie is a country club dream; her clothes look like they’re out of a Ralph Lauren for Kids catalogue, and her thick blond hair is always swinging in a ponytail. Katie is not quiet. She is not silent. She is not invisible. She is the first spitfire Mom lets me be, the closest thing to me I’ve been in years.
Maybe if we hadn’t been so similar, this wouldn’t have happened?
Don’t think about it. Keep moving.
I walk for what seems like forever. I’m soaked by the time I get to the twenty-four-hour laundromat. There’s only one person inside, a college-aged girl with headphones who doesn’t look up when I come dripping inside.
There’s a pay phone in the back, but I don’t go straight to it.
I go into the dingy bathroom instead. It’s trashed, like most public bathrooms. I lean against the sink anyway. My jacket gapes open. I look down at my once-pristine white button-down. The buttons are askew, off by one. I didn’t notice until now.
I had to fasten on the run, my fingers slipping on the buttons as I bolted. My hands shake as I stare at my reflection in the mirror, and then I’m clawing at the shirt, frantically trying to get the buttons right. It becomes the most important thing. They have to be right, and then that frisson of fear and hysteria flashes wide and true. It crashes in me, and I can’t stop it.
I finally get the buttons right, but it doesn’t make me feel any better.
I could go back. Already, the idea is tugging at me. I want to curl up in her arms and cry. Mom will be home soon, and what she’s going to find . . . She’ll be worried. There might be police. She’ll hate that.
I could tell her. I could trust her to be on my side.
But I don’t think there is a my side. I think there’s only a her side. That’s what being Haley taught me . . . and I have the scars to prove it.
It isn’t just that I don’t know if she’ll believe me.
It’s that I don’t know if she’ll believe me, and tell me to deal with it. That’s the way the world is, baby.
How many times has she told me that? That’s the way the world is. That’s the way men are. That’s the way it works, so make it work for you.
Would she tell me to make it work?
Can you handle this? she’d asked when I was Haley, and I’d said yes, and bled for it.
Had I been saying yes to everything?
To giving up everything?
To having it taken like this?
Is my mother a monster?
I don’t know. I don’t know.
This is what my sister’s distress signal is for. This moment. I’ve understood for years now that she wants to protect me. I thought I knew from what.
I didn’t know all of it until today.
Zipping up my jacket to my neck, I wash my hands in the sink and dry them before making my way out of the bathroom and through the laundromat.
I have emergency cash in my jacket, so I push five dollars into the coin machine for the phone. I’ve had her number memorized for years, the card she’d scribbled it on long ago disposed of so our mother would never find it.
Feeding the coins into the phone, I try not to feel like I’m betraying everything I’ve been taught, because maybe what I’ve been taught is wrong.
The phone rings for a long time. Too long. My heart rachets up with each bring-bring in my ear and then, finally: “Hello?”
It’s been building in my mind, a picture forming, and for the first time, it really looks like rescue, because for the first time, I’m admitting I need to be.
It all comes crashing down when a woman who is not my sister answers the phone. Reality hits me so fast I’m shocked by the vertigo.
“Hello?” says the woman who is not my sister again. Her voice is low, husky, like she’d been woken up. “Who is this?”
“Who are you talking to?” She must have the phone on speaker, because I can hear my sister clear as day. “Wait—where did you get that?”
“Why do you have a second phone?” asks the woman.
“Give it to me,” my sister demands.
“Answer me!”
“Give me the fucking phone!” She shouts it, and then there’s a thump and a scuffling sound that has me gripping the pay phone like it’s the only thing keeping me up.
Then, breathless and panting: “It’s me. It’s me. Is it you? Are you okay?”
My sister has a life. She won’t talk about it with me, but I know she has one. I don’t know why it never occurred to me that she might have someone.
I haven’t seen her in a year. Mom doesn’t see her when we’re on the take, and Haley was the longest con we’ve pulled.
She could have changed her mind. She could have decided I wasn’t worth it. I would mess up whatever life she’s managed to build.
I mess everything up.
She says my name into the phone urgently, emotion bleeding off the syllables.
“Just say it,” she whispers.
It would be so easy. Olive. She’ll come. She’ll hold my hand. She’ll let me cry.
Her life would change. I’d change it.
She’d resent me. I’d owe her.
We’d be trapped. And I can’t trap the freest person I’ve ever known.
I cup my hand around the mouth of the phone. “Sorry,�
� I say in a low voice. “Wrong number.”
I hang up before she can protest. And when the pay phone starts ringing a minute later, I force myself to walk away.
— 38 —
11:40 a.m. (148 minutes captive)
1 lighter, 3 bottles of vodka, 1 pair of scissors (currently stuck inside bank robber), 2 safe-deposit keys
Plan #1: Scrapped
Plan #2: Fucked
Plan #3: Stab
If you think I didn’t stab that asshole, you have not been paying attention. Because that’s exactly what I did.
Scissors are not great for stabbing. But you’ve gotta use what you have.
“You . . . you little . . .” Gray Cap sags into himself, his hand closing around mine, then stumbles, trying to break my grip. I push back, with my body and the scissors. I dig deep. I twist my wrist, and warmth gushes down my skin.
He takes a step away, trying to fight the pain, and shit, it’s anger that he uses to power through it. It flares in his eyes a second before he lurches toward me instead of away, and then his hand closes around my throat.
After the initial freeze moment, it’s almost impossible to resist grabbing at someone’s arms and wrists when they’re choking you out. It’s instinctive: You scrabble, you claw, because if you can just get one breath in, you can fight harder.
I can’t let go of the scissors. So I yank them out instead. He screams, his fingers tightening around my throat instead of releasing like I’d hoped. Fuzzy dots pop along my peripheral vision, but I can’t let go. My entire face pulses, the pain and the blood rush mixed together like a runaway roller coaster. The scissors are dripping, my hand shining wet in the fluorescent lights. Now he has a choice.
He pushes me back by the throat, flings me rag-doll style down on the floor, and I hit the tiles with a teeth-clattering thud just as Red Cap comes running into the lobby, bug-eyed and bellowing. The shotgun in his hands whips up, right on me.
“Drop the scissors,” Gray Cap orders, and I know when I’m done, so I do.
“You okay?” Red Cap asks.
“She fucking stabbed me.” His hand clutches his side, and when he pulls it away, it comes back all red.
“Shit, Duane!” Red Cap says, and yes, I’ve finally got a name. His gun swings back to me, but Gray Cap—Duane—grabs the stock.
“No,” he says.
“She stabbed you!” Red Cap protests.
“No,” Duane says.
He’s protecting me—protecting his asset. The glee sparkles inside my chest even as I fight to take a full breath that doesn’t feel like knives against my throat. I’ve got him on the hook.
“You’re fucking crazy,” Red Cap mutters, turning to me. “Hands where I can see them,” he orders.
Duane sags against the deposit slip counter. He stares hard at me, his gasping shallower with each breath. It must hurt like hell. I hope I nicked something important when I went snip snip in there.
“Give me the shotgun,” he tells Red Cap.
He hands it over, so trusting. So dimwitted.
“How’s it going down there?” Duane asks him.
“Almost through. Another twenty minutes, I’d say.”
“Good.” Duane grimaces, pressing his hand harder against his side. He slides down to the ground, leaning against the counter. He’s sweating. My heart leaps. Maybe I did nick something good.
Red Cap swears. “We need to get you a towel.” He looks around. “You, get me something to stop the bleeding.”
“Use your jacket,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Your shirt.” He points to my flannel. “Give it to me.”
Leave it to these jerks to ruin my favorite flannel. I hand it over.
“Should I put her back with the others?” Red Cap asks Duane in a low voice.
Duane shakes his head. “I want her in sight at all times.”
Red Cap looks at me expectantly. “You heard him.” He bends down to help Duane up. The man leans heavily on him, but he’s not beat yet. Far from it. And now he’s got all the weapons. I’m not the only smooth one here.
Red Cap is such a good follower. I wonder what he’d do if someone told him why Duane wanted me around. Or what he was planning on doing to him to get out of here.
I guess I’ll find out soon. It’s time to sow distrust.
And they’ve just given me a front-row seat to do it.
— 39 —
Katie (Age 10): Sweet, Spirited, Smart (In Three Acts, Reversed)
Act 1: Smart
Before (After)
At first, I think Joseph’s smiley in the way Elijah was—that kind of fake cheeriness that’s all performance and pomp. After all, he owns a slew of car dealerships. He’s a salesman, and a slick one at that. It would make sense.
Every time he looks at me, I try to pick it out in his face, in his eyes. What makes him smile. What makes him frown. How I can mold myself to make him do the first thing, and not the second.
What do you want? I can’t pin it down.
(Later, I’ll tell myself I was stupid. Even later, after a lot of therapy, I’ll know I wasn’t.)
Mom’s too confident after how well conning Elijah went. She’s sailing on the high of two successful jobs in a row, but I don’t know then I can’t trust her when it comes to picking the marks.
(I will question it forever: Did she know? How could she? How could she not?)
Joseph’s on the hook too fast for someone who manipulates for a living; he moves us into his house after just two months of dating, and Mom’s smug about it and I’m so glad I’m not getting terrorized by Jamison anymore that I’ve left Haley and my curled-up fists behind.
I don’t realize my fists should’ve stayed curled until it’s too late.
* * *
—
(I have spent years talking through it in therapy. Those four months we lived with him and that one day that changed everything.)
* * *
—
(This is what I know:
He tried to draw me in in the way that men like him—predators, pedophiles—think is the gentle way, which is just so fucking sick, you know? Like there’s anything gentle about it. Men like that want to groom you. They want you soft and scared and never knowing which way is up.
Another kind of tilted ground.)
* * *
—
(This is what I know:
I was not groomable. Not because I’m smarter or better. The opposite: because someone had got there first.
Abby had groomed me to become her. There was no room for outside influence. She was the weight that leveled my world.)
* * *
—
(This is what I know:
If they can’t make you soft and scared, they just make you scared.)
* * *
—
(This is what I know:
I had no idea what scared meant, when it came to me. I had no idea what I’d do.
But I guess we all learned.)
— 40 —
11:44 a.m. (152 minutes captive)
1 lighter, 3 bottles of vodka, 1 pair of scissors, 2 safe-deposit keys
Plan #1: Scrapped
Plan #2: Fucked Maybe not so fucked
Plan #3: Stab
Red Cap makes me go first down the hall, him and Duane shuffling behind me. We pass the room Iris and Wes are in, and I croak, “Where are we going?” loud enough for them to hear I’m alive. My throat is killing me, throbbing in finger-shaped pulses against my skin, and my eyes feel like someone rubbed sandpaper over them while I was forced to watch bad cartoons for hours.
“Shut up,” Duane tells me. He jerks his head to the office to my left, all the way down the hall. “In here.”
Once we’re in the office, they make me sit in the cra
ppiest of the two office chairs. I slump in it, my eyes tracking across the room. It’s the same setup as the one they had us in, but the desk is bigger and whoever works in here really likes plants. Maybe I could chuck one at them and run. Death by fake ficus.
There’s that wishful thinking again. Gotta stop that.
Duane tries the good chair, but he’s wincing and sliding onto the ground within a minute. Red Cap helps him shift so he’s leaning against the wall. Maybe he’ll pass out long enough for me to get the dimwit to let us go. But life isn’t easy like that, and men like Duane are stubborn. They hang on. My flannel’s getting rusty, but not soaked. The bleeding’s slowing down, even as he’s getting paler.
I should’ve gone for his neck.
“Get back downstairs and finish the welding job,” Duane orders him.
“But—”
“I’ll be fine,” Duane says. “Tape up her hands and get back to work.”
I fight Red Cap when he tapes my hands in front of my body instead of behind, even though I’m pleased. I can do a lot with hands taped in front, especially because I can flex all my fingers. It’s still too many layers to break, but I’ll find a way out, and at least he doesn’t tape my feet.
Duane’s starting to sweat as Red Cap bends down to check his wound. He murmurs something to him, and I can’t make it out until he raises his voice—“Yes, I’m fucking sure”—in annoyance as he hands Red Cap the shotgun.
“I’ll be fast,” Red Cap says. “Don’t try anything,” he tells me.
“I was gonna pull a bank heist, but you two have that covered,” I snipe back. My voice cracks in the middle, ruining the effect.
His footsteps fade down the hall, and I turn my attention back to Duane. He doesn’t look great, but he doesn’t seem to be at death’s door, either. And the hand holding the gun on me is dead steady.
“So what’s the plan?” I ask. “Are you going to kill him in the bank, or use him as a human shield when you shoot it out with the deputies? Remember: I’m too valuable to be a human shield.”