Authors: Denise Jaden
The bearded cameraman yanks open the outside door, and even though it’s practically dark out, I have to squint, because the moonlight is brighter than their underground dungeon. I wonder how many girls they have locked down there. Was there one or more
girls behind each of the closed doors? Are they taking us all to the container ship?
Once I step onto the dock, my eyes roam frantically for Sawyer, but I still don’t see anyone. I don’t even know which direction the voice had come from
, or if it had just come from a place of hopefulness in my mind.
I try to lift my arm, but Stanko yanks it back down. “
If you don’t let us go, I’ll scream,” I tell Stanko, even though I’ve been warned of what will happen if I scream again. As he leads me toward the boat, he tightens his hand on my arm. He flips open a knife, holds it close to my throat, and says, “No, you no scream.” He runs the knife between my shoulder blades. I can’t tell if it’s sweat or blood I feel dripping down my back.
I breathe in and out and tell myself maybe I’ll get my chance in the boat. Play good for them. Bide my time.
Maybe there’ll be someone watching the boat as we float out of the canal. Maybe they’ll call nine-one-one, if they even have such a thing in Europe.
But the last of my hope diminishes when
Stanko pushes me and Tristan flat into the bottom of the boat and throws a blanket over our heads.
I want to cry. I want to somehow let out the full force of the defeat I’m feeling. If only I’d waited for Sawyer. If only I’d left with Brittany and Courtney and gone straight to the police.
I feel the warmth of Tristan’s face near my cheek. “Please,” I whisper, so quietly it’s barely a breath. “Please help me.” But there’s no longer anything left in my words. No hope. No strength. And again, there’s no response.
One Italian cameraman joins us on
our boatride of doom. From his voice, I suspect it’s the bearded one. I think he might be the nicer of the two. Maybe. For half a second I hope he’ll do something to help. But I suspect Stanko would just as easily throw him over the edge of the boat if he needed to.
Stanko
grunts orders in broken Italian. Things like, “go there,” and “unpopulated,” and “deeper water,” which sounds terrifying, but also makes me hope that Stanko is not the expert boatsman here. Then he adds something about not bothering with the container and keeping quiet about it, which means, what? He’s just going to dump us in the water somewhere?
I’ve never been much of a swimmer. When Eddy was born,
Mom didn’t have time for things like swimming lessons. The deeper we go out to sea, the less chance I’ll have of making it back. But at the same time, I think I’d rather drown trying to swim to shore, than drown in a pool of my own blood because Stanko has sliced me up one side and down the other.
And
even if I don’t make it, maybe Tristan will make it back.
But she hasn’t even responded to me. I don’t think she cares
any longer what happens to her.
There’s silence for a long time, and all I feel is the lull of the boat going over small waves. I smell sea air, even through the dirty blanket, and I suspect we’ve made it out of the small canal.
My thoughts are confirmed when the Italian says, “We could dump them here.”
There’s a jerk to the boat as
Stanko moves quickly. His loud Bulgarian words make me think he disagrees.
In the silence that follows, at first I wonder if
Stanko has hurt the Italian, but my next thought is this: Was the Italian just trying to help us? Are we close enough that Tristan and I could swim to shore?
With my hands still
low beside my hips, I find the edge of the blanket. With tiny tugs, I pull it until I uncover one eye. Thankfully, Stanko is not looking down at me, but he is hovering almost right above my head. The Italian is at Tristan’s and my feet.
I feel breath and then hear quiet words from beside my ear. I go perfectly still
when I realize it's Tristan whispering.
“I’m so sorry, Jamie
.”
I bring one of my hands down under the blanket and find hers. I squeeze it and hold it, and even though
her grip isn’t strong, she squeezes back.
That’s all I need to believe there has to be a way out of this.
There has to be.
N
o matter how quickly we push ourselves up, they’ll surely be able to grab at least one of us. Unless they were both distracted. But I can’t see the Italian, so I can only base my timing on when Stanko is distracted. Which looks like right now. His head swivels behind him one way, then quickly the other way, and I wonder what he sees. He says something under his breath in Bulgarian. I release Tristan’s hand and silently reach for the edge of the small boat while Stanko’s eyes are the other way.
It’s now or never.
Chapter Twenty-Four
All at once, I use every bit of my strength to hoist myself up. But Stanko is quick, and I don’t make it anywhere near the edge of the boat before he grabs for my neck with one meaty hand. I let out a cry, but he tightens his grip, closing off my sound and my air.
The Italian stands to help—Stanko or me, I can’t tell—but it knocks the boat off kilter and Stanko loses his grip on me for a second. I’m ducking out of his reach, grabbing to pull the blanket off of Tristan, but suddenly it comes flying
up at my face, and I can’t see a thing. Everything moves in slow motion. It feels like it takes me a lifetime to get the blanket away from my face and out of my fumbling hands. The next thing I know Stanko is yelling something Bulgarian and I hear a loud splash.
When I
get myself upright to look, Stanko is in the water, pawing at the side of the boat, and Tristan is half standing with an oar in her hand. The Italian stands behind her looking stunned, like he still doesn’t know who to help.
I’m about to tell her we can’t trust him, that we have to knock him off too, but the next thing I know
, we’re all being pulled off balance, all of us tumbling toward one side of the boat, and as Stanko jerks his full weight onto the edge, the boat is flipping.
The water is shockingly cold, but it feels like a
live wire to my brain.
Stanko
is still near the boat, still hanging on, so I push away from it. He doesn’t come after me, at least not for the moment. He’s trying to right the boat again. I can’t concentrate on him, though. I find the shore and start kicking like mad. I’m sure it’s too far away. I’m sure Stanko is going to come after me and pull me under any second now, but I have to try.
Ahead of me, Tristan is making perfect strokes, moving much faster away from Stanko than I can, and it gives me a surge of joy. Even if I don’t make it, maybe I can slow Stanko and the Italian down. Maybe Tristan will get away.
My arms flail in a variety of different motions, and I kick my legs as steadily as I can manage, but it feels like I’m expending all my energy and getting nowhere. Tristan looks back and sees me struggling. She starts to turn, but I wave her away. “Go,” I call, using what feels like the last of my strength. “Get away. Go get help!”
She turns and starts swimming again. I follow her motions, trying to get more speed, but my body feels panicked and
awkward and out of sequence.
After what feels like forever, when my legs are about to fall off, I realize that
Stanko hasn’t grabbed me. Maybe he didn’t get back into the boat and he can’t swim either? Maybe we’re both going to die out here? Maybe he’s in the boat with the Italian and they’re waiting for me to wear myself out?
Regardless,
I need a break. I drop my legs and tread water. I try to force my breathing slower and deeper, but my lungs are on fire. I survey the shore, which is still a mile away. There are forms of people, but they’re all too far off to see or hear me.
I turn back to see the boat,
maybe fifty feet behind me, which Stanko has managed to lift himself into. The Italian cameraman is swimming toward the shore too. Away from me and away from Stanko, and Stanko is yelling something in his direction. The waves are bigger than they were when I was in the boat, and some of them lap right over my head so I can no longer see either of them or Tristan.
I try to yell to the people on shore, but even using all my strength
I’m not nearly loud enough. I try to keep paddling, taking smaller strokes as my exhaustion sets in. I try to rejuvinate myself with oxygen, but each time I breathe, a gulp of water leaks into my mouth, causing a coughing fit that takes everything out of me. I keep flailing my arms, trying to move forward, then trying to at least tread water, but my arms are getting so tired. My whole body is giving out. I’m swallowing a lot of water, so much water, and my vision grows hazy. I can no longer concentrate on what my arms are doing, if they’re even moving. I try to get my legs up. The one thing I remember from swimming lessons when my grandparents took me the year I was in Montreal, was,
“Monter sur le dos,”
or “Get on your back.”
So I
use the last of anything I have in me to pull my legs up and move flat. Water keeps seeping into my mouth, and there’s nothing to hold onto. I stop struggling and lay there for I don’t know how long, trying to regain some energy, trying to gasp some air each time I can.
Stanko must be getting close, now that he’s in the boat. He won’t let me get away. I could go to the police, and he must know that.
Since I'm no longer getting air, I will myself to sink under the water so he can’t see me, because I’d rather go under all on my own than whatever he has planned for me. But I feel a strange pressure under me, like I’m being lifted from below. I’m losing consciousness and as much as I want to sink lower so Stanko can’t find me, even while I’m passing out, it feels as though my body is still trying to reach up for air.
I think about how I haven’t been sliced open.
I think about Tristan, who’s on her way to shore. She’s an excellent swimmer. She’s sure to make it.
And th
e last thing I think about before blackness takes over is Sawyer’s hand on my face, telling me it’s all going to be okay, even when I don’t believe a word of it.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Farla in barca!”
The words muddle in my brain. I try to reach for my translation abilities, for my knowledge of Italian, but
they’re gone from my mind. Then I’m being lifted, and suddenly the translation comes to me. “Get her in the boat!”
It’s not Stanko’s voice. That’s all I care about.
I concentrate hard on the Italian words buzzing around me as I'm lowered onto rough plastic. I catch the Italian phrase, “She’s not breathing,” but I want to tell them I am.
I am, aren’t I?
I force out a big breath, and even though there’s still water in my lungs and it makes me cough, I'm sucking in air and letting it out. I pry my eyes open, and there’s a man in a police uniform leaning over me. He calls something to a group of people in uniform, something about me being awake, being okay.
And that’s when I notice the group
—officers, paramedics, a whole bunch of them, hovering around something.
Or someone.
“Tristan!” I gasp out, but the word barely sounds above a whisper and feels like razors in my throat. I sit up and when she comes into view, there's a paramedic pushing on her stomach.
T
hey mean
she’s
not breathing. But that thought barely has a chance to take root before a burst of water erupts out of Tristan’s mouth. Murmurs of relief sound from the others, and seconds later, Tristan starts coughing.
“Tristan,” I say again, but I know she can’t hear me, and the officer beside me is trying to encourage me in Italian to lie back down. I catch him tell
ing me that she’ll be okay, that I’ll be okay, and something about the fact that they’ve caught the other boat, so no one will ever touch either of us again.
I know I should feel relief, but it doesn’t seem real. None of it. It doesn’t seem real that I could have survived, that I could really have found Tristan, but found her in something too horrible to imagine, and then almost lost her again.
It’s too much to process.
Before I can straighten any of my thoughts, the boat is pulling up to a wharf and I’m being transferred onto a stretcher and lifted. The paramedics have been busy with Tristan, but now they’re rushing me to shore and I’m having trouble keeping my eyes on Tristan with all the people between us.
I keep saying her name and pointing, but the paramedics ignore my words, busily taking my pulse and checking my eyes. There's water in my ears, and between that and my muddled brain, it’s difficult to understand anything they’re saying, beyond the fact that I think I’m going to be okay.
Soon
I can’t see Tristan at all. “My friend,” I tell them in English. “My friend, Tristan. I need to be with her. I need to know that she’s okay.”
The paramedics and officers seem to toss my phrases between themselves like a game of dodgeball. Finally, one officer leaves, hopefully to check on Tristan
and bring her to me.
When they place me down again, it’s in a small
police building near shore. They wrap a warm blanket around my shoulders, which makes me realize I’m shivering. I’m sure I’ve asked for Tristan at least fifty times, but I don’t care. I ask for her one more time. I can’t lose her again, not like this.
Finally, the officer who went to check on her returns.
“Where is she?” I ask, practically launching myself up and off the stretcher. A paramedic firmly pushes me back.
“She will be okay,” the officer says in slow English. I wish I could speak Italian to make things easier, to find out more, but
my brain is still too jumbled. “They took her on medic boat.”
“I need to be with her
! She can’t be alone right now,” I tell him, desperation leaking out from my voice.
The officer nods, and I think he’s going to take me to Tristan, but then he says, “She is okay. She is with her brother.”
“Sawyer?” I feel my eyes widen. “Sawyer’s here?” Of
course
… That must have been him I heard from the dock.
The officer nods, but doesn’t elaborate. At least Tristan’s not alone and Sawyer will take care of her. He’ll talk her through this and make sure she’s okay.
The next thing I know, the paramedic in the room is replaced with more police officers, and it takes all of my concentration on their slow broken English to realize that it’s time for police questioning. They want to lock up Stanko and get all of his cronies before they can lockdown their operation. They need my help.
And as much as I want to see my best friend, as much as I want to see Sawyer and collaps
e into his arms, I know I have to concentrate on this right now.
I’ll see them soon
enough.
The thing is, I don’t see Tristan or Sawyer soon. I beg and plead, but there are always more questions, more photographs for me to look at, more quizzing about exactly what I saw and experienced in Stanko’s so-called modeling studio and the squalid hideaway across the canal.
The police finally deliver me to the local hospital to get re-checked, and once again, I ask for Tristan. “Is Tristan Bishop here? She’s my best friend and she was hurt. I need to see her!”
Throughout the questioning, one thing I have learned is that Tristan saved my life. She’d been swimming under me, lifting me up so I wouldn’t drown once I passed out in the water. The thought makes me desperate to see her face and know she’s okay.
The officer who
brought me to the hospital must sense my desperation, because he says, “I check,” and leaves me alone.
When he returns, there’s something on his face, and even though I can’t read exactly what it is,
it doesn’t look like good news. I jolt to a sitting position in bed.
“What? What’s wrong?”
The officer presses his hands toward the floor, trying to calm me down. “Your friend is fine,” he says, and I actually hear the breath of relief leave my mouth. “Body is fine, but…” He taps the side of his chest, having trouble coming up with the English words.
“Her heart?
Her…emotions?” I ask, trying to read him.
He nods. “No visitors yet. But she is here
and getting healthy.”
That makes me feel somewhat better. And Sawyer is with her.
I can’t believe how exhausted I am. I guess a near-drowning takes a lot out of a person. Not to mention, I haven’t slept well since I left for Europe. I must sleep nearly two days solid, because the next time I open my eyes, my mother is beside me.
“Oh, honey. You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.” I remember her talking to me like this when I got punched by a bully in kindergarten, when I was trying to ride a two-wheeler and kept falling right onto my scraped-up knees, when she hugged me and told me we were leaving Italy.
And it
was
okay. All of it. So somehow, this would be okay, too. Somehow.
My body is achy and sore in muscle
s I didn’t even know I had. In between my ribs. The outsides of my thighs. The arches of my feet. My neck. I twist it to the side and for the first time notice that Mom and I are not alone.
Sawyer’s standing on the other side of my bed, perfectly still, staring down at me.
“Tristan?” I ask in a panic, because he should be with her.
“My parents are here.” His voice is quiet. Somber. “They’re looking after her. I just came to see if you were awake yet.” He places a warm hand over mine on the bed.
The oddity of having Mom and Sawyer in the same room and Mom being nice is too weird.
“You’re going to be just fine,” Mom is saying over and over again. She looks older and younger than I remember her all at once.
My brain needs a few minutes to make sense of this. I’m in a hospital. I’m not dead. Sawyer and my mother and Tristan are all here in this hospital. All at once I sit up, nearly screaming from the pain in my ribs.
“Where’s Eddy?”
Mom touches my shoulder either to comfort me or to ease me back in my bed. “He’s fine, honey. He’s at home.”
“With who?” This makes no sense. If even Mr. and Mrs. Bishop are here...
“Mrs. Molina came in to help.” Mom’s still rubbing my shoulder, trying to calm me.
Mrs.
Molina was my childhood nanny, or at least that’s how I always thought of her. She’s Mexican and helped me practice my Spanish when I first started learning. Really she was Eddy’s part-time nurse, who moved in after we settled in Ainslea and I wasn’t old enough to help with Eddy yet.
“I miss Mrs.
Molina,” I say, sniffling a little. It’s been so long, it feels like a lifetime ago that she was with us.
“She misses you too,” Mom says. “She has Skype set up on her
iPad, if you want to say hello to her and Eddy.”
“I do!” I say. I have no idea how they’re going to work this, but then as if
Sawyer and my mother are on the same team, Sawyer pulls out his laptop and Mom finds an outlet to plug it in. They pull up a chair on either side of me and Sawyer gets the laptop set up. He’s been so quiet. It makes me afraid to ask what’s wrong.
Is Tristan really okay? But he said his parents were taking care of her. He wouldn’t lie to me, even if there was bad news. Thinking of his parents, I wonder if he’s in a lot of trouble. My mom is being unusally understanding, but I don’t expect this will last forever
. And what about Mr. Echols?
While I’m lost in my thoughts, Sawyer gets his laptop booted up and Skype started. He passes the laptop to Mom so she can connect to Mrs.
Molina.
Before I know it, my Mexican nanny is waving
at me through the screen. “Jamie! How are you? Oh my, you look so much more mature!”
I pat down my hair, realizing for the first time that I
must look like a drowned rat. After I assure Mrs. Molina I’m going to be okay and that I can’t wait to see her, she leaves to go get Eddy.
I give Mom a side glance. How is she affording to have Mrs.
Molina again? As it was, last time we kept her on for far longer than Mom could actually afford. And with Mom’s time off for my trip, I know she doesn’t have any extra money.
When Eddy gets in front of the screen, at first he’s completely still, like he doesn’t know what to think of the
iPad. I wave and say, “Hi, sweetie,” even though he won’t be able to hear me.
I’m trying to keep a smile pasted on my face, but he’s staring at me like he doesn’t know who I am. Mom can obviously tell this too, because she leans in and says, “Eddy, honey, it’s your sister, Jamie.” Mom signs along with her words, but I don’t have the heart to tell her that the
webcam isn’t capturing her hands. Tears wet my eyes, but I blink them away. I should have expected this. It’ll take some time when I get home to readjust...
Just then, Eddy’s hands are suddenly all over the
iPad screen, pawing at it. Mrs. Molina calls his name over and over and gently pulls his arms away. Mom and I both start laughing, because this is normal Eddy behavior. When he sees something he really likes on TV, like Jell-O or marshmallows or fruit cups, he often lunges at our TV, too. I’m sure he’s doing it more because Mom’s on screen than me, but I’m still glad to be able to laugh.
Once Eddy gets riled up, he sometimes has a hard time calming down. I feel for Mrs.
Molina, trying to get a handle on both of his flailing arms, so I say, “We should probably let you go for now. But we’ll see you soon, okay?” Out of habit, I say, “I love you, Eddy,” and hold up my two fingers and thumb in front of the camera to sign it.
Mrs.
Molina is saying, “Okay, honey, we’ll see you soon!”
But I can’t concentrate on her, because Eddy’s holding up his two fingers and thumb toward the
iPad.
Sawyer gently
removes the laptop from my bed while I reach for a tissue to dry my tears. Eddy signed that he loved me. Maybe he has no idea what it means, that’s probably what anyone else would say, but I still believe that he does.
Sawyer
returns and places a warm hand on my forearm.
“How’s Tristan really?” I ask
. All is still not good in the world.
“She’s...she’s going to be okay.”
His hesitation makes me swallow and I remember the last time I saw her, with all the bruises. What had Stanko put her through before I’d found her?
I look up at Sawyer, but he’s avoiding my eyes. Here’s the next big surprise: My mother says, “Maybe you two need a few minutes.”
Meaning alone?
“Now that you’re awake, I’d better figure out about your release and arrange flights home.”
Home?
It’s stupid, but the word brings a new sense of loss. Two days ago, I didn’t even think I would still be
alive,
but I suddenly feel so many other losses. Things that shouldn’t matter, but they do. I won’t be going back to the class trip. I won’t see Spain. I won’t talk to my dad.
Mom
meets Sawyer’s eye, and then pushes through the door out of the room.