Alexander came out of the bathroom. He shuffled back across the room, barely lifting his feet from the floor. I got out of bed as he passed me as if there were something I might do. Our eyes met. I tried to stare some courage into him. He turned away. As he went past his bed, he reached out for the torn stuffed puppy he had been clutching in his sleep. But before he got a full grip on it, the Fat Woman pulled it gently but insistently out of his hands and set it back on the blanket.
“Let’s leave that for the next children, why don’t we? There’ll be plenty of toys for you at your new home.”
That broke through Alexander’s fog of grief and fear. His lips trembled. He began to cry.
“I don’t want to go!”
He appealed to her—he appealed to all of us—with everything in him. But Samantha and I could do nothing. And the Fat Woman
. . .
“Oh, now, don’t be silly,” she said. “You’re going to have a wonderful new life. Say good-bye to your friends now. Don’t keep your new father waiting.”
She took him by the hand as if kindly. She led him to the door. I stood and watched. Samantha sat and watched, clutching her fists under her chin.
Just as they reached the door, Alexander turned and looked back at me over his shoulder. He didn’t say anything. He only bit his lip, the tears running down his cheeks.
I wanted to run to his aid, to rescue him. I wanted that more than anything. But I couldn’t. I didn’t. I just stood there.
And then he was gone.
That look in his eyes—that final moment before the door swung shut—
Don’t let them take me, will you:
That’s what I had spent my whole life forgetting. I had stood there and watched him go and didn’t do a thing to help him.
I bent forward on the toilet seat. My gun in one hand, I covered my face with the other. I cried, the tears running through my fingers.
I’m sorry,
I thought,
I’m sorry!
I was so ashamed.
The moment the door closed on Alexander, I raced to the wall beneath the window. Desperate to do something, anything, I leapt up twice, trying to snag the grate with my fingers. It was impossible, out of reach.
“Samantha, come here, help me.”
She jumped out of bed, hurried to my side.
“What can I do?”
“Make a stirrup. Boost me.”
Small and fragile as she was, she bent down and linked the fingers of her little hands. I stepped into the stirrup.
“C’mon—up!”
I jumped at the same moment she tried to lift me and her rising hands gave me the extra boost I needed. I got the first joints of two fingers through the lowest wire and held on. Ignoring the cutting, excruciating pain, I hauled myself up the wall. Caught the grate in my other hand, and dragged myself up the grid of wires hand over hand. Already the strength in my arms was failing, but for a second or two, I managed to pull myself up to the window, managed to hold the position and peek through.
I looked down through the grate. I saw the man waiting for Alexander in the driveway below. Then my strength gave out. I gasped and lost my grip. I dropped to the floor, stumbling away from the wall.
Samantha followed after me.
“Did you see them?” she asked eagerly. “Did you see the people who came to take him? Did they look like parents?”
I stood openmouthed but silent. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the truth, but I couldn’t hide it from her either.
Alexander had been right. The man I had seen standing in the driveway below was no father, no one’s father. Standing in bright-eyed anticipation by his large, dark car. Flabby-faced, self-satisfied, rotten. Even my little boy’s eyes could see his foulness and degeneracy.
My stare met Samantha’s, and she understood.
“Danny!” Her voice cracked. She pressed her fists against her mouth. She looked so pitiful and frightened, I had to look away. “Poor Alexander!” she said. “He was so scared.” She cried with pity for him—and with fear. Her words came out brokenly through her sobs. “Maybe it’ll be all right. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe we’re going to nice new homes like the woman says.”
I nodded miserably. “Maybe.”
“But why wouldn’t she let him take the puppy? All he wanted was to take the puppy. We didn’t mind. Why couldn’t she just let him take it?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say.
“He just looked so scared, Danny.”
“I know,” I said. “And he’s so afraid of the dark, you know, and he forgot to take
. . .
”
I didn’t finish. I turned to look at the hiding place, the wainscoting. Samantha, still crying, turned to follow my gaze.
“The candle!” she said. “That’s right. He forgot to take the candle. Poor Alexander. He hates the dark. He’ll be so afraid, he’ll
. . .
What? What is it, Danny? Why do you look like that? What’s the matter? What
. . .
?”
She fell silent as I pressed a finger to my lips.
We could already hear the Fat Woman’s footsteps laboring slowly back up the stairs.
Slowly, I stood up. My hand hung at my side, holding my Glock. I stared at the door of the bathroom stall, but I didn’t really see it. I saw the mist. I saw the past through the mist.
I murmured to myself, “We’ll wait until after dinner.”
The Fat Woman brought us breakfast: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and milk. Paper plates, paper cups on a tray. She put the tray on a chair.
“Here’s some delicious breakfast for you.”
Her voice was deep, coarse, toneless. Another perfunctory smile, and she was gone.
Samantha and I sat on the floor with the plates of food between us.
“She doesn’t even pretend to be nice,” Samantha said bitterly. “Not really.”
I chewed my sandwich. It tasted like ashes in my mouth, ashes with the consistency of leather. I stared into space. “She doesn’t have to,” I said. I heard my voice coming out of me as if it were someone else speaking. It didn’t even sound like me. It sounded dead—dead and somehow fervent at the same time. “She doesn’t have to pretend. She knows we can’t do anything. We’re just kids. She knows we can’t fight her. She can say she’s taking us to our new parents and she doesn’t even try to make it sound real because she knows we’ll believe her. Because we have to. We’ll believe her and just sit here and just go with her like he did, like Alexander.”
“Stop, Danny,” Samantha said with tears in her voice. “You’re scaring me.”
I looked at her. She froze. I could see she was afraid of me, afraid of what she saw in my face.
“No,” I said. “No. That’s good. That’s gonna help us.”
“What is?”
“She doesn’t think we’ll fight back. That’s gonna help us now.” I turned away from her, back to my sandwich. I took another bite, chewing and chewing the leathery tasteless mash. “She thinks we won’t do anything. She thinks we can’t. She thinks we’ll just sit here. That’s how we’ll get her.”
“We can’t, Danny. What can we do? If we try to run away, she’ll kill us.”
“I don’t care. I don’t care if she does kill us. I’d rather be killed than just go with her.”
“What about me? Do you want me to be killed too?”
That brought me out of my own thoughts. I looked at her again. I saw that all the lofty beauty of her face was gone. Her features were scrunched and wrinkled and old with fear.
“No,” I said. “I don’t want you to be killed. But do you want to just sit here? Do you want to just go with her like he did?”
She licked her lips, uncertain, her eyes moving this way and that. “Maybe—maybe it won’t be so bad. Where do you think they’ll take us? What do you think they’ll do to us?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t really know, not in any clear way. But we both knew without knowing somehow. We knew enough.
Samantha began to cry again, trying to hide it, choking it back. The tears streamed down her cheeks as she nibbled at her sandwich.
I watched her miserably. “I won’t do it if you don’t want me to, Samantha. I don’t want to just go. I’d rather die than just go. But if you don’t want me to . . . Well, I’ll do whatever you say.”
She swallowed hard. She was trembling—so badly she could barely speak. She wiped her dripping nose with the back of her hand.
“No,” she said. “No. If you think it’s right, we’ll do it. I’m just scared, that’s all. I’m so scared I can’t make up my mind. But you’re brave. You decide.”
“I’m not brave.”
“Yes, you are!”
“I didn’t do anything for Alexander. She took him away and I just stood there.”
“Because it wasn’t fair! It wasn’t fair, Danny! She’s so big and we’re just kids. She’s a
grown-up. But you
are
brave, Danny. I know you are. Do it. Really. I mean it. I want you to. I do.”
“Really?” I said.
“Yes. You’ll save us, Danny. I know you will. If anyone can do it, you can.”
I had to swallow hard to get the words out. “All right,” I said. “Then I will.”
I pushed out of the stall. It took an effort. My legs, my arms, my whole body felt heavy, weary. For the last few days, the drug had covered up the damage I’d taken, but I felt it all now, every bruise, cut, and sore.
I stopped in the middle of the bathroom floor. I saw myself in the mirror over the sink. What a sight I was. My face was stone-white, my flesh was fever-damp. My eyes were sunken deep but burning with my memories, my fury, my shame. The slash on my cheek seemed to sculpt my expression into a permanent grim sneer. My gun hand hung by my side.
You don’t know who you are,
Bethany said.
And I thought:
I know. Now I know
.
We waited in silence as twilight came. We were too frightened to speak. Samantha sat cross-legged on her bed. I sat on the floor, my back against the wall. The suspense was awful. The fear seemed to sap the strength out of my limbs, out of my core. I wasn’t sure I would be able to do what I had to do when the time came. I wasn’t sure I would be able to move at all.
More than anything, I wanted to call it off. I wanted to tell Samantha, “This is stupid. We’re just going to get ourselves killed. What’s the point of that? We should wait. We should see what happens. Maybe the Fat Woman is telling the truth. Maybe it’ll all be fine.” The words were on the brink of spilling out of me. I had to will myself to hold them back. Once they were spoken, I knew it would be over. Samantha would eagerly agree with me. Relief would wash over both of us. We might even laugh at ourselves for considering such a crazy plan. We might even joke about it.
What were we thinking?
we would say. We would still know in our hearts what we knew, but we would pretend not to know and we would laugh at ourselves and go back to waiting, telling ourselves it would be all right.
And then she would come for us.
Somehow I managed to keep silent. The air turned gray, then dark blue. Samantha’s figure dimmed into the dusk.
Now I heard a noise downstairs. For a moment, I went on sitting there, weak with fear. Then I forced myself to move. I pushed away from the wall. I stretched out on my side on the floor. I pressed my ear to the cool, splintery wood. I listened.
The tower room was three stories up. When the Fat Woman was on the ground floor, we couldn’t hear her. We could only hear her when she was on the second floor or when she was coming up the stairs.
I heard her now, shifting around in one of the rooms just below us. I could hear the creak and groan of pipes and water running.
A bath,
I thought,
she must be running a bath.
That was good. That was the sort of thing I wanted. I had thought it through. I wanted her still awake but distracted, busy, making noises of her own so she wouldn’t hear the noises we made.
This was what I had been waiting for. This was the time.
I sat up. I looked at Samantha. The shape of her had almost blended with the gathering indigo darkness. I swallowed hard. I took a deep breath. If I did not move now, I would never move. No one would blame me, I thought. I was just a kid. It was probably all crazy anyway. Crazy made-up kid fears, that’s all.