by Tess Sharpe
I look around, desperate for some kind of long-range weapon. I’ve got very little hope against him with a knife, as I know too well. I’ll get one good stab in and then he’ll grab me. I need something bigger. A rake or shovel or something farmer-y and lethal.
The barn door creaks open, and I freeze in the loft.
It’s completely silent. He doesn’t talk. He doesn’t taunt. I think it’d be better with his bullshit chatter, because I’ve gotten used to it, and the silence is . . .
Scary. Really fucking scary.
It’s just his footsteps and my heartbeat and the knowledge that I’m probably a couple of breaths from something painful. That’s what he wants. He wants me to rot in it.
He still hasn’t figured out who I am.
I guess that makes two of us, but at least I know what I’m capable of. I warned him, but he didn’t listen, so now I’ll make him hear.
Shuffling forward to the edge of the hayloft railing, I watch as he walks farther into the barn, waiting until he passes the farthest stall. Then I drop the handful of dirt right on the tarp, ducking backward before the spray of soil hits the plastic with a rustle-ping.
I’m already moving as he whirls toward the sound, crossing the loft as I search for something . . . anything . . .
There’s a broom. The bristles are rotted and the broom part’s just a stubby suggestion, but it’s a staff. Something to hit with. If I can daze him first, break it across his face or something, then maybe I can use the knife and run. Maybe he won’t follow this time. Maybe he won’t be able to if I yank the ladder down and trap him in the loft.
It’s an awful plan and it’s the only one I’ve got. My hand tightens around the broom handle as the ladder to the loft squeaks.
I hide as far back into the shadows I can, retreating from the sun spilling from the big window, but it’s not enough. His head crests the floor of the loft and he spots me immediately.
I wait until he’s stepped onto the hayloft floor, away from the ladder, and it’s a mistake, I realize it too late, because there’s not enough time to charge. I feint to the right, but he’s moving with so much purpose and that purpose is to hurt me enough to get me to finally break. Not just my bones. All of me.
Never going to happen.
Swinging the broom handle, I aim high, but he blocks it. The old wood snaps in half against his arm, and he howls because I got his elbow at least. I have just enough time to back up a few steps, out of snatching reach, and pull the knife out. I flick it open, putting it between us, and it’s déjà vu; here I am again, a girl and a blade and a bad man. It never seems to change, but I do.
I take two steps to the right. If I can just get to the ladder . . .
But he lunges and I slash out, not instinctual; practiced. You have to put your weight into it, using a knife. You have to be strong. And quick. I’m not right now. The knife catches messily against his forearm, jagged and long, not deep. He yelps, batting my arm away so hard the knife goes clattering. He closes his hand over his bleeding arm, hissing between his teeth, and the knife’s too far away and this may be my only chance, this little window of pain I’ve caused, so I bolt.
I’m halfway down the ladder when he grabs it, jerking it forward so it flings me backward like an old-fashioned flip toy. I have one second to decide: head or back, head or back, and then I tuck my knees up and try to twist in the air as my hands come up to shield my skull. The road rash from my jump out of the car slows my reaction time, and I slam awkwardly into the barn floor with a horrible crunch, but my head doesn’t smack, thank God. Then it radiates down, the shock of the impact, catching up to my brain and heart, and then I’m sucking in air that’s not there anymore as my entire body seizes against the pain.
My lungs shudder, and for a second I’m not sure if it’s because the fall knocked the wind out of me or there’s a rib sticking through my lung or something. It certainly feels like the last thing, not the first one. I’m afraid to move, not just because it’ll hurt, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to. I stare at the barn ceiling, blinking slowly. I know I need to get up. He’s going to come down from the loft now. He’ll hurt me.
I can’t move. I can’t even focus. My fractured mind’s skimming over memories like a mosquito hawk across a puddle.
Wes and a bully’s black eye and my fist; the day we met, that was a good punch; his hand on my arm . . . the first time in forever I hadn’t flinched.
Iris and gold swirls on her skirt; her twirl on the sidewalk, they don’t make clothes like this anymore, Nora . . . her smile catching mine, lighting up my entire world.
Lee. Her hair honey blond instead of deep brown. Bending down to meet the same blue eyes. A smile too sad at the edges. I’m your sister.
Lee. A scrap of paper. A scribbled number. A hand held out. You can always use it.
Lee. A code word. A promise whispered. A truth acknowledged. Mom won’t have your back.
Lee. Late night. Scared girl. Bloody sand. I’m on my way.
Lee. Lee. Lee.
She’s like a heartbeat inside me, my sister. The person who taught me what strong was.
What free looked like.
She saved me before. I’m not sure she can pull it off this time. I don’t think I can, either.
But I gotta try.
I wiggle my toes. Then I turn my ankles. Good start.
Thunk, thunk, thunk. He’s coming down the ladder.
It’s time to get up.
Time to make her proud.
— 60 —
Raymond: How I Did It (In Four Acts)
Act 4: Run
It’s still dark inside when I get back to the house. I don’t flip on the lights. I’ve already done the hard part, so I just go upstairs to his safe and get what I need to earn my freedom.
I put them on ice when I’m done with them. I don’t know why in the moment. But I’ll spend hours thinking about it later. I wish I could say it was a fuck you to him, because of his favorite drinking story. But the truth is, it’s plain shock and horror and gore running through me and all over me.
It’s because I’m scared of what he might do to me if he comes back and they’re gone for good.
Even after all of it, I operate like he’s going to step through the back door and grab my arm with his good hand.
So I put them on ice because I’m scared, still, and then I go into his office, because I can’t be scared still. I have to keep moving. She’s on the ground. Right where he left her.
“Mom, come on, get up.”
She bats my hands away. Her skinned knees have made little full moons of blood on the carpet.
She’s in my way. I only have so much time.
“Where is he?” And she’s not asking because she’s scared, but because she wants him. She wants to be comforted by him after he does this to her. I will never understand it. I will always hate it.
But I guess I’m done with it now.
“Come on.” I pull her up, gentle as I can, and I get her upstairs to bed. She asks again where he is.
I don’t answer.
Leaving her should be hard.
But it’s not.
I walk downstairs, and it’s like a dream. I have only so much time. His office is dark, and I leave it that way as I set the hard drives I took from his bedroom safe on his desk. I pull out the burner phone and dial her number as I plug in the first drive to his computer and turn it on.
It rings twice. Her voice crackles in my ear. “Hello?”
Say it. Do it. You have to.
“Olive.”
My sister’s breath hitches. “I’m on my way.”
I don’t say goodbye. I hang up like she told me to.
There’s only so much time.
I check each drive—the four big ones are password-encrypted. But when I plug in the thumb drive
I almost missed, tucked in the back of the safe, lines of code appear across the screen. When the code finally stops scrolling, a red cursor blinks. I’m supposed to enter something.
I stare at the thumb drive and then press Escape, pulling it out and tucking it into my pocket. I put the big drives in the lunch box.
The burner phone buzzes. My sister’s outside. This is it.
I don’t know how I get to the door. I don’t realize how bad I must look until I open the door and see her face.
“You’ve got blood all over,” she says, reaching toward me.
I back away. I can’t be touched. Not now. Not ever? I don’t know anymore. “It’s not mine.” Not most of it.
Her face changes again, so fast it’d have me reeling, but I’m numb, I’m so numb. I did the job. I got the drives. And now I’m fading. I’m not me. I’m not Ashley.
Who am I now?
What am I?
Ashley. I’m Ashley. I’m supposed to be Ashley.
A perfect daughter wouldn’t have shot her stepfather. A perfect daughter wouldn’t have reached for that knife, wouldn’t have known how. A perfect daughter would’ve given him what he needed; she would’ve just let him kill her.
“What happened? Where is she? Where is he?”
“She’s upstairs. He’s . . . he’s . . .” The world’s spinning. Lock your knees.
“Look at me.” My chin’s between her fingers, my gaze forced to meet hers. The spinning stops. I breathe. Little puffs right into her face. I wonder if my breath smells. “What did you do?”
I can answer that. I know what I did. “I shot him. I had to. He pulled a gun on her. So I got him away and I shot him.”
“Focus.” She snaps her fingers in front of my face. I’m swaying again. “Where is he?”
Good. Another question I know the answer to. I like those. “I dragged him under the dock.”
“Is he dead?”
I shake my head. “I got him in the leg.”
Her entire body changes, the angles of her shoulders sharpen, alert and on edge. “Where’s the gun?”
I hold up the box.
She nods. “We’re going,” she says. “Now. You’re not coming back.”
I don’t protest. I don’t try to grab my things. I don’t try to say goodbye. And I don’t ask if we can take Mom with us.
I just follow her. Like it’s easy.
And it is. Because what’s waiting behind me? It’s nothing good. And what’s waiting in front of me? Is everything I want.
She presses her hand between my shoulders, and I move, one step, then two, three, four. I lose track after that. Then we’re in her car, and then we’re driving down the street, away, and the beach is fading and her hands are tight around the steering wheel, and mine are tight around the box.
“Are you okay?” she asks, finally, after long pulls of silence.
“I got the drives,” I say, instead of answering. “All four of them.”
Something purrs approval under my skin as I lie. The secret thumb drive in my pocket burns. My leverage. My new just-in-case box.
I love my sister and I trust her. But only so far. And this life has taught me that only so far ends eventually.
My sister’s lips press together. “Good job,” she says, and the words, she has no idea what they mean to me. Someday I might try to tell her.
But I just stare out the window, my eyes blurring, the stained and sandy clothes on my back the only things I own, and the freedom on my tongue tastes like blood and salt.
— 61 —
12:36 p.m. (204 minutes captive)
2 safe-deposit keys
Plan #6: Don’t die.
“You’re definitely going in the trunk,” Duane tells me, stepping off the last ladder rung with a little groan to his breath I can’t miss.
“Scared I’ll stab you again?” As I struggle to straighten, my body would very much like me to stop, but I ignore it. Gotta keep going until I can’t anymore. Otherwise I end up in the trunk.
I step back, toward the barn doors, and he makes a noise, pulling the gun out of his waistband.
“Remember, I’m worth a lot more alive than dead.”
“Now that I’ve met you, I have a feeling your stepfather wouldn’t mind if I brought you back dead. He’d probably sympathize with me once I told him what trouble you were.”
“You don’t know him like I do. That’s definitely not what he wants.”
I’m so focused on him and any way to escape, I almost don’t catch it, the movement up in the hayloft. I think it’s wishful thinking, because there’s really no way out here, but then my thinking’s not wishful, because Iris Moulton is creeping across that hayloft, her giant-ass petticoat stripped from underneath her skirt and clutched in her hand like a weapon. My entire stomach flips like I’ve been double-bounced on a trampoline because holy shit, I am the damsel in distress and I might just be getting saved. She’s got her lighter in her other hand, and I understand instantly what she’s got planned. It’s perfect. She’s perfect, and I can’t even savor how much I love her in that moment because of that asshole and the danger.
“Are you going to be quiet now?” he asks me, and his voice trembles. It doesn’t shake. I’ve snotted off to him and outwitted him and stabbed him, and he is finally where I want him to be: at the end of his rope.
She’s at the railing. He doesn’t see her; all his focus and rage and frustration is on me.
“Just one last thing,” I say, drowning out the snick of the lighter as Iris lights her petticoat on fire. “You might want to look up.”
He laughs. He does not look up. “Do you think I’m gonna fall for that?”
“No.” I shake my head as Iris lets go of the tulle and the petticoat falls in a whoosh of fire and lace. “But I do think my girlfriend’s better dressed than you,” I add.
I catch just the barest twitch of his confused frown at my words before the flaming tulle envelops him. Layers upon layers of it fall over his head, the flames greedily eating up the fabric. He screams, animal instinct taking over, just like she said in the bathroom. He drops the gun as he tries to pull the petticoat off, but it’s roaring around his shoulders and he has to fall to the ground, rolling in the dirt, all cool gone as survive kicks in.
The gun clatters to the floor and get it, hurry, fuck, fuck, my knees scrabble across hard dirt, and when my hand closes around it, I want to cry. I want to drop it. I want to not be here.
I don’t want to be her again, but I make sure the safety’s off, and I point it at him and Ashley hums under my skin like a bad habit, trigger-happy and oh so broken and way too jumpy.
He rolls in the dirt and the flames die out. Pulling frantically, he manages to tear most of what’s left off him, but there’s a big shiny patch of lace melted into the skin of his cheek. He lies there, finally defeated, breathing these angry little moans and wincing every time the burn on his face twitches.
I level the gun at him with hands that do not shake. “That’s why you don’t fuck with the girl in the poofy dress, Duane,” I tell him as Iris scrambles down the ladder and veers around him. I don’t relax until she’s next to me.
“Are you—” she pants.
“Yeah. You?”
She nods.
“How did you—”
“There’s a ladder out back.” She points. “The lock on the window was broken.”
“That was . . .” I can’t even think of a word. “That was incredible. I can’t . . . You saved me.”
“I told you I’d set them on fire if they tried to take you,” she says. “I meant it.”
“Fucking bitches,” he groans, just for the hell of it, I guess.
“You shut up!” Iris snaps. Then she bursts into tears, which makes him laugh and makes me want to shoot him. I should shoot him.
A
shley would. Rebecca wouldn’t know how. Samantha would maybe consider it. Haley would for sure. Katie showed me first what I was capable of.
So where does that leave me?
“Iris,” I say, because I don’t know where to go after that. I’m pointing a gun at someone. Today is terrible. I don’t know if Wes is okay. Iris made a bomb and melted a guy’s face with a petticoat. She loves me. She’s perfect. I’ll love her forever. She looks how I feel: like she’s about to keel over. I am not capable of much else but her name at this point.
Iris sniffs, wiping at her cheeks and letting out a shudder when she gets too close to the purple bruise spreading down her forehead. Duane doesn’t move, but he watches me, just in case there’s an opening.
I won’t give him one.
“Do you hear that?” Iris’s head snaps up toward the roof. “Helicopter.”
I want to burst into tears then, too. Help. It’s coming.
My fingers tighten on the gun. Punishment. It’s already here.
“They’ll be on the road soon,” I say to Iris. “Can you get out there to flag them down?”
“I don’t want to leave you,” Iris insists.
“I’ve got him,” I tell her.
Still, she hesitates.
“Iris, I don’t want them to miss us,” I stress, even though I know they’ll spot the car.
“Okay. I’ll be right back.”
He starts laughing after she’s gone. Blood carves out the lines between his teeth, the white washed pink.
“God, you’re good,” he says as the sirens wail in the distance.
“She doesn’t need to be here for this.”
That makes him laugh more.
“I should’ve shot you when I had the chance,” he tells me.
“Hindsight and all that.” My finger rests right next to the trigger, but not on it. Not yet.
“Do you have it in you?”
And here’s the thing: I think I do. Don’t I? The smart thing to do would be to shoot him. He knows. He’ll tell.