Playdate

by Alex Dahl

  ‘Where’s your daddy?’ I ask.

  ‘He’s gone,’ says Josie.

  ‘Oh,’ I say.

  Josie’s breath and my breath are the same speed and every time she breathes out I feel it on my arm, like a little wind. Josie’s drawing a girl swimming from a beach.

  ‘When is he coming back?’ I ask.

  Josie looks at me and shrugs, but she doesn’t answer. She’s sad. I know that because her mouth is pressed shut. I’d be sad too, if my daddy was gone. I think about my daddy – he likes to tickle my belly and call me his little ragdoll. I feel sad because right now he and my mamma and Lyder are in my house, maybe watching something funny on TV and eating cheese puffs, but I’m here. I swallow hard three times and draw the dog’s ears carefully. They are long and floppy.

  When Josie speaks, I’d forgotten that I’d asked her a question.

  ‘I never see my daddy.’

  I open my mouth to say ‘Oh’ again, but just then Josie’s mamma comes into the room and says, ‘Hey, girls! Oh, are you okay? You look a bit… Did you have a tiff? Anyway, put your smiles back on and come with me. I have a surprise for you.’

  13

  Lucia

  My mamma says I’m too big to be carried, but Josie’s mamma doesn’t think that, because she picks me up in the night and carries me. I say, ‘What’s happening?’ and she says, ‘We’re going on a trip,’ and I say, ‘I want to go home,’ and she says, ‘We are going home.’

  It’s dark in the house, so I don’t see the man until we’re right next to him. He’s standing at the top of the stairs and he has a black hat on and a black scarf wrapped all the way up his face so I can only see his nose and eyes.

  Josie’s mamma hands me to the man and he says, ‘I thought you said you’d knocked them out.’

  ‘I did,’ says Josie’s mamma, and then the man makes a loud noise, like my daddy does if I get out of bed too many times at bedtime.

  He carries me fast down the stairs and I shout ‘No!’, but the man looks at me and his eyes are big and angry, so I stop. The front door is open and the man carries me fast through it, making his eyes even bigger and pressing his finger to his lips. It’s raining and everything is wet and shining and I want to scream but I can’t and my mouth is open and little drops of water fall into it.

  14

  Lucia

  I’m in a box in the ground, like dead people. Or maybe the box isn’t in the ground yet, because it’s moving in a strange way, like it’s sliding fast down a hill. My eyes are open, but I can’t see anything. I open my mouth to scream, but there’s no sound, only a squawk like from a bird that’s fallen out of its nest onto the road and is waiting to get run over. I try to touch something, but my arms feel heavy and they flop back down.

  ‘Hello?’ I whisper, even though I know I’m on my own. My eyes begin to cry. Why haven’t Mamma and Pappa come for me yet? What if they never come? How can I get out of the box? And what if I do get out and the bad man is standing on the outside? Or what if I don’t escape and the box is thrown into the sea and water comes in slowly, drowning me?

  There’s a strange sound. Like an engine. Could the box be in a plane, flying me far away? Or maybe I’m not inside a box at all but the boot of a car? I stroke the hard surface I’m lying on with my fingertips and it’s cool and smooth. Not metal, not wood, more like tough plastic. My fingers move further along and the bottom of the box goes up in a smooth curve, then across in a low ceiling. It’s like I’m a baby bird inside an egg, but I don’t think baby birds feel afraid inside their eggs.

  Mamma always tells me that I’m strong and that I can do anything. My baby girl is stronger than she looks, she’ll say, and she’ll laugh, her eyes creasing in the way I love, and she’ll pinch my arm muscles. I clamp my eyes shut and try to see Mamma in my mind. And there she is – squatting down beside me, wearing her navy uniform, looking at me with her brown eyes that are just like mine. My mamma is Big Me and I’m Little Her.

  I try to think what Mamma would say if she could speak to me inside the box. Be strong, baby girl, be strong until I can hold you in my arms again. I repeat it in my head, over and over. Be strong, be strong, be strong, be strong.

  I must have fallen asleep because I don’t know how much time has passed when the top of the box is suddenly lifted off, making my eyes hurt when the light comes in.

  The bad man reaches for me.

  ‘Shhh,’ he says, pressing his pointing finger to his lips. ‘I’m not going to hurt you, okay? Just please shut up.’ His eyes aren’t angry but soft, like Daddy’s eyes when we play games and he realizes I’m screaming for real and it isn’t funny anymore.

  The man scoops me up like a sack of potatoes, puts me over his shoulder and starts walking. I look past him and realize I must have been shut inside the ski box on the roof of the car that’s parked behind us. We’re indoors in a large garage like the ones at Mamma’s airport where they keep the small planes when they’re not flying.

  He carries me to a van with no windows and puts me down on the metal floor inside the back. I look up. There’s a half-open sliding panel right above me. ‘Are you okay to climb up?’ the man says, nodding for me to open it all the way.

  There’s a kind of bedroom in the roof of the van. I put a foot into a little cubby hole on the wall and pull myself up. Now I can see into the sleeping space and up there are Josie’s mamma and Josie, asleep, holding Kimmi the cat.

  Josie’s mamma opens her eyes and smiles at me. ‘Hi, sweetie,’ she whispers and reaches out to try to stroke my hair.

  I start to cry again, but I’m not sure if I’m happy or even more sad to see them. I lie down beside Josie and her mamma, burying my hands in Kimmi’s fluffy coat.

  The man pokes his head and shoulders up into the sleeping space. ‘Ready to go?’ he says, and Josie’s mamma nods.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I whisper.

  ‘Home, sweet girl,’ says Josie’s mamma. ‘Sleep now.’

  Home… ‘I need Minky,’ I say, but no one gives her to me, even though I’ve had her since the day I was born and can’t manage without her.

  ‘This will make her sleep,’ says the man, and the mamma presses a tissue to my nose and I want to scream, but I can’t.

  *

  I wake up again and I’m still in the van bedroom next to Josie and I try to make her wake up but she doesn’t.

  ‘Hello?’ I say. ‘Hello, hello, hello…?’

  It’s dark and the van is moving, but it feels more like a boat rocking than a van driving. I crawl forward and slide the panel to the side to look down into the back of the van and it’s dark but not totally dark and there’s no one down there.

  I try to wake Josie again, but she won’t wake up and I can’t tell if she’s dead. One time I saw a dead dog. We went on a trip to a country where it’s so hot that sometimes dogs die and in that country people’s dogs don’t always live inside the houses.

  I try to wake Josie for a long time and when I shake her shoulders she makes a strange sound, so she can’t be dead.

  I don’t know how it happened because I didn’t want to sleep more, but I must have fallen asleep because when I wake up again Josie is gone.

  I look down into the van and it’s moving, but like driving now. It’s still dark outside. Josie’s mamma looks up and sees me. She says, ‘Oh hi, sweet girl.’ She looks like Snow White, only old. Or maybe like her stepmother. I hide in the corner. I cry a lot. After a long while, the mamma comes and says we’re going to the bathroom. I don’t want to come down, but I have to. I have to pee very badly.

  The van has stopped in an empty parking lot in the woods. There’s a hut with writing on the door and a picture of a lady under it, but I don’t know what the letters mean.

  When I’ve been to the toilet, the mamma grabs hold of my elbow and says, ‘Come with me.’

  ‘No,’ I say, and I try to wrench my elbow loose, but she’s very strong and I can feel her nails digging into my skin. ‘I
want my mamma and I want Minky.’

  I look over at the van and I can see Josie in the front seat. The man has a baseball hat on and he’s standing outside smoking. My daddy doesn’t smoke because it rots your heart.

  ‘Come on,’ says the mamma, and I don’t come, but she makes me by pulling my arm.

  I can hear cars driving fast nearby, but I can’t see them through the trees, so they can’t see me. The mamma walks me away from the toilet hut, gripping my elbow still, and away from the van, and we stand underneath an orange tree that drips onto us from its wet leaves.

  ‘Look,’ she says, ‘you need to listen to me. There’s something you need to know. We’ve rescued you. Those people, they weren’t your family. Not really. They were pretending. You were taken by them when you were little.’

  ‘No!’ I say, and the mamma keeps talking, but I start screaming it – ‘No! No! No!’ – and then the man comes running towards us and the next thing I know is I’m in the van bedroom again and screaming ‘No!’ again and again, but no one comes.

  *

  Josie sings in the dark. I close my eyes, but I know not to cry because the man will hurt me. He promised. ‘If you scream or cry or try anything at all, I’ll fuck you up and that’s a promise,’ he said when he put me into the box.

  I’m glad I’m not in the box anymore but in the van with Josie. It’s moving fast and it’s almost nice to be up here in the little space. At least I can’t see the man.

  I roll over so I face Josie. ‘Can you help me?’ I whisper.

  Josie shakes her head slowly and keeps singing.

  I grab the bag of peanuts and shake a few into my hand.

  ‘Please eat something,’ said Josie’s mamma earlier, ‘or I’ll worry about you.’

  ‘I will never eat anything you give me,’ I said, but I can’t help it now. They’re salty and crunchy and delicious. I don’t know why my mamma never let me have any, even though I asked her many times.

  I wonder if my mamma is on a plane now. If she looks out the window, maybe she’ll see a road and maybe it’s the road I’m on and maybe she’ll even see this van.

  ‘My mamma and pappa are going to find you and you’ll go to prison,’ I said to Josie’s mamma, and I know that’s true because taking other people’s children isn’t allowed. And it is true that my mamma and pappa are going to find me, because me and Lyder are the two best things that ever happened to them.

  But Josie’s mamma said, ‘Oh, sweet girl, don’t waste your precious thoughts on them. They’re not even going to look for you.’

  15

  Lucia

  When I wake up, the van has stopped. It’s still dark, but the sky is starting to get light at the edges. Josie and her mamma are sleeping. I crawl to the front of the van’s bedroom so I can look down into the driver’s seat but no one is there. Maybe we’ve stopped so the man can pee and if I hurry down now I could run away before he gets back and maybe I could find some kind people who could help me and then it would all be okay again.

  I slide down into the front seat and stop to listen. We are stopped at a gas station and I can see a brightly lit kiosk with a lady behind the counter from here. I can get there, it’s just a quick dash across to the kiosk. I try the door, trying to be quiet so Josie’s mamma doesn’t wake up. It’s locked. I try the other door, and this one’s open. I creep outside and move quietly around the side of the car. All I have to do now is run as fast as I can into the kiosk. The lady will help me then, she has to. I come round the side of the car to the other side but there’s the man, holding the fuel pump. I turn and begin to run, I can still make it, but he’s faster than me and stronger, too.

  ‘Hey,’ he hisses and drops the fuel pump. ‘Come here, you little shit.’ He picks me up and I try to kick him, but he pins me to him and holds both my arms and my legs at the same time. He pushes me back into the van and jumps in, driving off fast.

  ‘Get back up there or I’ll break every fucking bone in your body,’ he screams and I scramble back into the bedroom in the roof. Josie’s mamma is awake now and she grabs me at the back of my neck.

  ‘And then he’ll kill you,’ she whispers. Then she places her handkerchief over my nose and mouth and when I breathe in there’s that weird smell again.

  *

  I wake from the van stopping.

  ‘Come,’ says Josie’s mamma, and her face looks tired and pale. We climb back down and I realize that we’re inside a garage. It’s so narrow that the van door pushes against the wall when Josie’s mamma opens it.

  Josie comes down from the space in the roof behind me and we all go inside the house.

  ‘Where are we?’ I ask, but no one answers.

  We’re put in front of a television and Josie’s mamma finds a cartoon for us to watch, but it’s in a strange language. She gives us a bag of Haribo sweets and then she and the man go into the kitchen and shut the door, but we can still hear them. The mamma laughs, but the man sounds angry. After a while she comes out with a plate of pizza, and I eat it, even though I said I’d never eat anything they gave me. The sky is totally light now and that’s strange because to me it feels like the evening and I’m not used to eating pizza for breakfast.

  We watch cartoons for a long time. Josie turns to me and her face is pale like a ghost in the light from the TV. ‘Do you want to play the clapping game with me?’ she asks.

  ‘No,’ I say. I’m afraid. My arm hurts from where the man grabbed me. I don’t want to be here with Josie and the strange adults. All I want is to go home, but if I even begin to think about home, like the patch of peeling paint on our door, or the yellow roses on the windowsill or my room which is too messy but cozy too, then my eyes begin to cry. Why haven’t Mamma and Pappa come for me yet?

  They’ll never even look for you.

  ‘What about Funky Lady?’

  ‘No.’ I never want to play with Josie again.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ she whispers.

  ‘I want to go home.’

  Josie nods and returns to the screen. We sit watching for a while, tears falling down my face. When the mamma comes back into the room, I manage to stop crying, but only because I’m so afraid of what the man will do if I don’t. He said he will break every fucking bone in my body.

  ‘Come with me,’ she says.

  I stand up. My legs tremble.

  We go upstairs and I sit on the closed toilet seat next to the bath tub while Josie’s mamma rubs a strange shampoo into my head. ‘Don’t touch it,’ she says.

  She takes me back downstairs and I watch more TV with Josie, the shampoo stinging my head. It smells bad, like maybe gasoline. It itches and I have to scratch it even if the mamma said don’t touch, but when I bring my finger away from my head it’s dark brown. I wipe it on the sofa.

  After a long time, Josie’s mamma washes the shampoo out of my hair. ‘Look,’ she says and hands me a mirror.

  My hair is dark brown like Josie’s. I stare at myself and for a moment I almost want to laugh because it’s so strange. The mamma brushes my hair, carefully getting rid of tangles. She strokes my head as she goes along and when she’s finished she bends down and looks at me.

  ‘You really are special,’ she says.

  I look away.

  *

  The doorbell rings and the voices of the mamma and the man in the kitchen go quiet. Then the mamma comes into the room where we’re watching TV. ‘Quick,’ she whispers, grabbing me by the arm, but I pull it free. I’ll do what she says, but she can’t grab me like that.

  I hear another woman’s voice from the kitchen, shouting in a strange language, and the man shouts back. We rush up the stairs, and in a very small bedroom Josie and I have to lie next to each other on a very small bed with a thin duvet thrown over us. Josie’s mamma leaves us and after a moment we can hear her voice, too. We can’t make out the words, but the adults are shouting and one of the ladies cries really loudly at one point. We hear a loud bang and then the man shouts even louder than all th
e other crying and shouting. Then for a long time there is talking but no shouting.

  Josie and I hold hands under the duvet. Then we peel the top of it down slowly, slowly. There’s nobody in the room and the house is quiet except for a calm voice now and again.

  ‘Come on,’ whispers Josie.

  ‘We can’t,’ I say. ‘Your mamma said to not move no matter what.’

  ‘Yeah, but that was ages ago and she’s forgotten we’re still up here and I’m hungry.’

  ‘Me too,’ I whisper.

  We creep quietly down the stairs and from the landing we can see into the kitchen. It’s empty, but the door to the living room where we watched TV is shut and we can hear voices from in there.

  ‘I think it’s just Mamma and Mikko,’ says Josie, too loud, and I press my finger to my lips to make her be quiet.

  On the kitchen counter is a bag of peanuts and a packet of Oreos. We move fast, like thieves, and my hand is reaching for the cookies when the door opens and a woman I’ve never seen before stands in front of us. She has black, choppy hair and black writing on her neck. At first she looks so confused you’d think someone had hit her on the back of the head. Then she realizes that Josie and I are just little kids, so she smiles, because most people smile when they meet little girls for the first time. But then her face changes, and maybe the cookies were hers because she looks very angry or maybe sad.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she whispers, looking straight at me, but Josie and I start to run and the lady tries to grab me, shouting, ‘Hey! Hey you! Come back here, little girl! What’s your name?’

  Josie and I run as fast as we can upstairs and pull the duvet back over our heads. This time, the shouting is even louder, and there’s some screaming and loud bangs too. We hold hands under the duvet again. Josie cries because she thinks the man has killed her mamma. We must have fallen asleep because when I wake it’s dark outside and Josie’s gone. The house is silent but then I hear a sound – heavy boots stomping up the stairs.