Brian turns up the volume.
“Please, no!” a frightened girl’s voice begs. “I did everything you asked.”
“You need to find freedom. Find release,” Brian’s tinny voice says. “You’ve got too much pain, and you haven’t learned to let it go. So I’m going to give you freedom. The ultimate freedom.”
There’s a rustling sound. Metal rasps, like a knife drawn from a sheath. The girl screams.
I shudder, sweat trickling down my back. I want the voices to stop. Want to slap my hands over my ears, but I know if I do, he’ll use it against me. Probably play it for me again. So I stand still, shaking deep inside, and listen. I try not to wonder how many times he’s played this on his laptop.
“Please, I’ll do anything!” the girl cries.
“Anything but take responsibility. Oh, you parroted the words back, Judy, but that’s not enough,” Brian’s voice says.
The girl cries out—a high-pitched cry of fear and pain that turns into a gurgle. There’s a heavy, wet thump, and then silence, except for the sound of Brian’s panting.
There’s another click as he turns off the recording.
I retch, trying not to vomit. “What happened to her?”
“You know what happened,” Brian says gently. “She found everlasting freedom.”
NICK
Day 98, 6:40 P.M.
I’M HERE SO OFTEN that the Meadowses’ house is almost more familiar than my own. I sit with Sarah’s mom, and we talk about Sarah. We go on the website together and try to think up new ways to find her. And we avoid talking about the possibility that she might be dead, or if she’s not, that she’s probably having unspeakable things done to her.
“The psychic said Sarah is still alive,” Sarah’s mom says, quiet so Mr. Meadows won’t hear. “He said she’s trapped somewhere and can’t get to us.”
I duck my head. I don’t know if I believe in psychics. I want to. I need to so badly, the way I can see Mrs. Meadows needs to. But if the psychic is just playing on her hopes, taking her money when things are so tight—that would make it even more unbearable. Mr. Meadows gets enraged when he hears about the psychic, I think because he’s afraid to believe Sarah’s still alive when he so desperately needs her to be. I can see his pain in the new lines in his face, in the deep set of his eyes. But we each deal with Sarah’s disappearance in our own way. And Mrs. Meadows’s is a psychic. It’s easier for me to go there, since I love the paranormal. Love the idea of a superpower.
I squeeze her hand. “That’s good news,” I say quietly.
“You want another grilled cheese?” Sarah’s mom asks, pushing her chair back.
“Sure,” I say. “Thank you, Mrs. Meadows.”
“Ellen,” Sarah’s mom says.
But I still can’t call her that.
“Grilled cheese—it’s one of Sarah’s favorites,” she says, slapping bread and cheese down onto the frying pan. Her voice chokes off.
“I know,” I say. “And she also loves peanut butter and chocolate milk.”
“Yes. She does,” Mrs. Meadows says quickly.
I shift uncomfortably in my seat. I feel guilty about not having told them the truth, but I needed to be here too much. Needed that connection to Sarah.
But now I have a relationship with them both. A kind of friendship, almost family. I don’t know if it’s strong enough on their end to survive me telling the truth, but I have to try.
I clear my throat. “I need to tell you something.”
Mrs. Meadows freezes, spatula in the air. Mr. Meadows sets down his mug of coffee. Both look at me expectantly.
“I—I love Sarah,” I say.
They wait. Nod.
“But I’m not—” My cheeks grow hot. Sweat pops out on my upper lip. “I’m not really her boyfriend. I’m just her wannabe boyfriend.”
I stare at their faces. I don’t see any anger or coldness or rejection. “We talked, we hung out sometimes, but I was never brave enough to ask her out.”
Mrs. Meadows turns back and flips over the grilled cheese. Mr. Meadows takes a sip of his coffee.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” I ask, my voice getting higher. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before—”
“It’s okay, Nick.” Mr. Meadows’s mouth twitches. “We knew.”
“How?” I ask, bewildered.
“Sarah never talked about you,” Mr. Meadows says.
It’s like he’s plunged a sword into my heart.
“Thomas,” Mrs. Meadows chides, “look at what you’re doing to the poor boy.” She turns off the stove, sits down beside me, and pats my hand. “Sarah never talked about you that way.”
“But she—she talked about me?” I say, my voice a squeak.
“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Meadows says. “She talked about your comic art and how talented you are. She said you’re going to be famous someday.”
I sit up straighter, remembering the time Sarah told me that. Remembering her belief in me. They weren’t just empty words. “When she gets back, I’m going to ask her out.”
“Good.” Mr. Meadows nods.
Mrs. Meadows gets a sad, faraway look on her face, and her body grows still, like she’s not in the room anymore. I want to fix that. I want to bring her back.
“Did I tell you about the time Sarah stood up against a group of bullies, just to protect another girl?”
Mrs. Meadows blinks, then focuses on me. “No, you didn’t.”
I lean back and tell them—and soon Mrs. Meadows is smiling again.
SARAH
ESCAPE DOESN’T SEEM POSSIBLE, not without sight. I’ve explored this room so many times, but my hands tell me only so much. They tell me that I’m never going to get out of here.
I’m afraid I’ll never have a boyfriend. Never go to college. Never become whatever I was going to become. Nick and I could have been something. A couple. An amazing comic-book team. I wish I’d been less afraid of what everyone thought of me and done more of what I wanted to do.
It’s not fair. I’m not ready to die. I know life isn’t fair; I’ve known that for a long time. But, still, I want to scream against everything that’s happened, everything that got me here.
I don’t hope anymore that my parents will find me. It hurts too much. I know they’d find me if they could. And I know, too, that they can’t—or they would have already.
The days just keep passing, and the weather, too, is still changing. The foil balls keep multiplying. The ball I made today means that I’ve been locked up in here for three months. Three months of hell. Ninety-two days of peanut butter, crackers, and bananas. Just the thought of peanut butter makes me gag. But I force myself to swallow another sticky mouthful. I’m not going to die of starvation. I’m not going to die at all if I can help it.
I wipe my fingers along my pants, then take a long mouthful of water, holding it in my mouth to make it last. The jug feels too light. I long to drink more, to ease my thirst, but it’s too easy to finish it all, and then have days of thirst far worse than this.
I rub my wrist over my forehead. I am so used to my own body odor and urine stink, I hardly notice it anymore. But I can’t get away from the smell of him—his sweat, his sex, his craving me—no matter how hard I try. “My poor baby,” I imagine Mom saying, her voice all choked up. I invent things for her and Dad to say all the time.
The lack of human voices really gets to me. I never realized that we need to talk with other people just to know that we exist. That we matter. Loneliness is a howling, empty cavern inside me that just keeps growing.
I shake my head. I almost want Brian to come back just to have someone to talk to. I hate the relief that fills me, the unknotting of my muscles when I hear his voice and know that I won’t be alone for a while, that I’ll have food and water. Sometimes he acts so nice to me, almost tender, and I crave that. Then I remember what he’s really like, and I hate him—and myself, too. My weakness fills me with disgust.
I want to see my parents
so much, it hurts. I want to feel Dad’s hand on my shoulder, feel Mom’s hair tickle my face as she reaches in for a hug. I want to be reading a comic with Nick, walking down the sidewalk with Charlene, arm in arm, laughing. I wonder if any of them are thinking of me right now. I wonder if they know I’m still alive.
Despair pushes at me, making me heavy. I shove the hopelessness down. I can’t allow myself to wallow in it. I’ve lost whole days doing that.
But it’s not like your trying to escape has done anything, a voice whispers inside me. You’re still here, still his prisoner—
And I’m still alive. That’s what I have to focus on. Because I want to live. Even now I can’t let myself give up. And that’s something I didn’t know about myself before—that I have such dogged determination and strength. That I can be completely focused on a goal and work long past what I thought my endurance was, when I have to.
I was focused before—obsessed, really—with the appearance of perfection. But what did that ever bring me but pain? Pain, and not seeing people for who they really are. If I ever get out of here, I’ll look at people differently. I’ll look for their true selves beneath the mask of their bodies. I’ll look at soul.
I take another mouthful of water, then carefully screw the cap back on.
I think I was trying to punish myself by staring at all those perfect faces. Punish myself for how I look, and for the way people treat me. But that’s stupid. If I ever get out of here, I’m going to stop comparing my face to others’. Or at least I’m going to try to.
I want to get out of here so badly. I want to walk out the door with my head held high, because they’ve caught Brian, forced him to tell them where I am, and they’ve come to save me, the police and everyone I love.
Right. Dream on.
“I am going to get myself out of here,” I say. And I know I have to. Because no one is coming. I think, if I’m honest with myself, I’ve been waiting to be rescued. Oh, I’ve tried as hard as I know how to escape, tried everything I can think of. But there’s always been a part of me waiting for someone to save me—because I need them to. But I have to let that go. If I want to get out of here, I have to be the one to save myself.
I stand and walk around the edge of the room—once, twice, three times. The smallness of it presses in on me, sucking up all my air.
“I will save myself.”
I can almost hear Mom and Dad, Nick and Charlene refusing to let me give up. “You can do anything you set your mind to, Sarah,” I hear Dad saying.
Dad would believe in me. I have to believe in myself.
I squeeze my hands into fists. I need a tool to help me escape. Something thin and hard to unscrew the bolts on the door or to use as a lever against the window boards. But there’s nothing movable except the food bag, the quilt and survival blanket, the bottle of water, and the smelly buckets of urine and feces.
I touch the food bag again. It’s an ordinary sports bag made of vinyl. I feel the zipper pull. Too small, too flimsy to do anything. The peanut butter is in a plastic jar. The drinking glasses are even thinner plastic. There’s nothing that can be used as a tool.
Nothing.
I slam the bag down, my hands shaking.
“I can’t believe I’m still trapped in this stinking shack!” Even the goddamned buckets are plastic. I heave a bucket away from me, urine and feces slapping the wall and spraying against my face, making me gag. Something clanks against the floor.
I run over and feel for the bucket, snatching it back up, wetness and gook clinging to my hands. I don’t know why I didn’t notice it before. The bucket has a metal handle beneath the plastic tubing.
I wipe my hands on my jeans, then twist and pull at the metal, my hands slipping. “Come on!” I turn the bucket over on its side, steady it with my foot, grab hold of the plastic handle, and pull. It doesn’t move. I yank harder, pull and wiggle and tear at it until the handle detaches at one end with a crack, plastic shards splintering off. Pain pierces my finger, and I rip the sliver of plastic out of my skin.
“Screw you, Brian!” I shout. “I’m going to get myself out of here!” I’m laughing—deep, full-throated laughter. The bucket, the stupid bucket that I hate so much is my key to getting out of here. I can almost taste the fresh air, can almost feel the sun on my skin.
I turn the cracked bucket over and work on the other side. A few more tugs and the handle comes off completely. Warm blood drips down my finger, but I don’t care. I am grinning so widely my lips hurt.
I push the metal through the plastic tubing. It feels like it’s about half the thickness of one of my fingers, but it’s the strongest thing I’ve got. It will be enough. It has to be.
The window boards are tight against one another, but there’s just enough space to get the very tip of the metal in. I push hard, grunting, the metal cutting into my hand. The board groans, then moves slightly. My head is full of laughter. “I’m going home!”
I am so excited that I almost don’t register the crunch of wheels on gravel, or the sound of a car door slamming.
SARAH
I WHIRL AWAY FROM the window, the shaft of metal in my hand. The stairs shake. Wood thumps against wood as Brian fumbles with the door. I zip open the vinyl bag and ram the metal beneath the box of crackers.
The door creaks open, fresh air flooding in.
I spin around. I have to distract him, have to keep him from seeing that the handle is gone.
I can hear him standing there, breathing. Please don’t let him see what I’ve done.
The floorboards squeal as he walks toward me.
“I hate that bucket!” I scream, my throat raw. “It’s disgusting! I need a real fucking toilet, not some smelly, nasty, disgusting bucket!”
He still doesn’t say anything. What is he thinking?
“I can’t take it anymore!” I put a pleading tone into my voice. “Please, can’t you bring me something else? Anything else?”
“Shut up,” Brian says. “You made a real mess, didn’t you? I’ll leave you some rags. You can clean it up later.”
Silence again. I can’t stand not seeing his face, not knowing where he’s looking, what he’s seen.
“You’re filthy, you know that? Absolutely disgusting.” He grips my chin and roughly wipes it with a wet cloth, then pulls my face up toward him, and kisses me roughly. “I brought you some food. Not that you deserve it.”
Relief gushes through me. “Oh, thank you,” I say, my voice hoarse. He hasn’t noticed yet. And he’s not going to let me die. Not yet, anyway. “And water?” I say hopefully.
I hear the crack of a seal being broken, a cap being pulled off. Water pouring into a cup. He holds it to my lips, and I gulp it down.
Before I am ready, he yanks the glass away. He doesn’t offer more, but I won’t beg.
“Go ahead. Eat,” he says gruffly, putting a long, waxy fruit in my hand.
I can’t help it. I tear open the banana and sink my teeth into the soft, sweet pulp. I can feel the prickle of his gaze on my face as I gulp it down, can feel the heat of his body, smell the foulness of his breath. He is taking pleasure in my hunger.
I stop chewing and spit out what’s left in my mouth, then drop the rest of the banana to the floor.
He laughs, a short, hard laugh. “You’re a real fighter, aren’t you? Even after all this time. I like that.”
I almost smile at the kind words, the first I’ve heard in a week. No. I can’t let him get to me.
I force my mouth into a frown. I have to remember who he is.
“But you’ve got to learn,” Brian says. “You won’t eat the food I bring? Then you won’t get any at all.”
“Oh, no! Please, no—I’ll eat the banana.”
I crouch down and pat the floor with my hands, trembling. I can’t bear to be without food. I’ve got to play his game. “I’m sorry. I was being manipulative again, trying to cause you pain.”
“Yes, you were, weren’t you?” Brian says, his voice closer
than I thought it’d be.
“I won’t do it again! I’m trying so hard to learn what you teach me. I know I was wrong. Please don’t take away the food you so generously brought me.” The words stick in my throat; I have to cough them out. But I must say them. I don’t think my weakened body can take much more starvation.
I raise my head and let him see my desperation and misery.
“You are trying to learn; I can see that,” Brian says, his hand cupping my cheek. I don’t move away. “And I am merciful. I will only take half the food I brought. The rest is a gift.”
“Oh, thank you!” I say, trembling with relief. He doesn’t say anything, and I know he’s watching me. I stand slowly, the precious banana in my hand.
I wait for his body to crush mine, for the pain to come. Don’t let it happen again, please don’t—
He pushes my hair back from the stain on my cheek, tucks it behind my ear the way Mom always did. “You’re doing very well.”
His hand leaves my face.
I hear him pick up a bucket, urine slopping from side to side, and dump it out the door, hear him come back and set the empty bucket down with a hollow thunk. My face burns.
“I’ve got something for you,” Brian says in that falsely gentle voice of his.
I flinch.
Brian clucks his tongue. “You’ll like this. I promise.” He grips my arm.
I struggle, even though I know it’s no use.
He slams me against the wall. “Hold still.”
He lifts my shirt up above my head, then my bra, and I shiver, waiting for him to push me to the floor. Instead, I feel worn cotton rub against my face as he pulls it down. It smells cloyingly sweet and musky, and faintly like copper. He puts my arms through the armholes, then yanks it down over my stomach. It’s too tight.
“There. It fits perfectly,” he says, delight in his voice. “I knew it would. The two of you were alike in size and temperament.”
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