"I won't hurt you—"
Suddenly pain shoots through my back, doubles me over.
"You got that right." He jabs. The sharp pain scissors my side. "You won't hurt her. Because you won't touch her."
I am staring into her eyes. My best friend. Her eyes are full of unspeakable sadness. She is right here. And a world away.
He yanks both of my arms, spins me around. A knife. The serrated tip cutting into my sweatshirt. Serrated for cutting meat.
I look at his face. The crazy fury, I recognize it.
"Now I'm going to show you who's boss," he says.
He drags me to the stairs. Drew's whimper rises behind me.
I stare at the precise creases in the paper, each one folded by the person who wrapped this cheeseburger, dropped it in an anonymous white bag and handed it to a man who will kill me. Kill Drew.
"Eat it," he says.
A bitter taste climbs up my throat.
"G'on." He shoves my head. "Eat it. Now."
At a small kitchen table, he stands over me, holding the knife to my throat. I can smell the burger, the meat gone cold, and something else hovering over the food. A human oil, stinking of rage and hate. His sickness. I shift my eyes to the right. He's wincing from where the baseball bat hit him. His ribs, I decide. Probably broken. Good.
Only the pain seems to make him even meaner.
He grabs my hair, pulling my face into the food.
"Yum. Yum."
I open my lips. My teeth nibble at the bun. The bread tastes stale, like dead grease. And there's no saliva left in my mouth. Fear has dried up every drop. I try to chew the food. But it refuses to slide down my throat. I cough.
He shoves me down for another bite.
Do not cry.
"Are you crying?" he demands.
Do. Not. Cry.
"Stop it!"
I nod, chew. My throat closes. The food, it refuses to go down.
"Water," I cough. "Please. Water."
He yanks me out of the chair—I hear it crash to the floo
r—
and drags me to the sink. A glass of clear fluid is waiting. I stare at it, his grip on my arm so tight my knees begin to buckle. He sets down the knife, picks up the glass, and lifts it to my mouth.
"Drink up."
I move my lips over the rim. The fluid is warm, like spit. It dribbles down my chin. He pulls the glass away.
"Spoiled," he says. "All you spoiled, rich crybabies."
He offers me the glass again. I suck the warm fluid from the rim, funneling it to the back of my mouth.
"You make messes everywhere you go. Classrooms, halls, the bathroom? Don't even get me started.”
My mouth is full. I push my lips against the rim, pretending to swallow.
"And lunch?" he says. "I spend hours scraping your food off the floor."
I pull air through my nose, holding it in my lungs.
"You done?" he barks.
I nod.
He turns, setting the glass on the counter. And I stare at his face, and blow. Everything—water, food, bile rising up my throat. He throws his hand up, protecting his eyes, letting go of my arm.
I run for the door. Panic flashes across my back, burning my skin. My right hand grabs the doorknob, my left yanks the key out of the deadbolt. I hit the first stair, slam the door, and twist the deadbolt, snapping the lock on him.
"Get back here!"
I have both hands latched around the knob. He tugs at it. Kicks the door. He's yelling.
I glance behind me. The stairs are black as night.
I keep one hand on the knob. The other holds the key, frantically brushing the wall for a light switch. Didn't he turn off the light up here? I can't remember; my mind isn't working. He's twisting the knob, yanking, kicking at it. How long, I wonder. Does he have another key? My fingers are shaking when they touch something hard. Light bursts on below.
I haul down the stairs, racing straight for the closet.
Her eyes bulge with fear. I can hear him pounding on the door.
"Roll over!" I yell.
She pulls away from me but I grab her shoulders, diving my hands for her wrists. Even in the dim light, I see her fingers don't look right. They're dark, turning blue. I try sawing the key's teeth against the tape but it's too thick. I can't see well enough to pick at the ends.
The door cracks.
I turn my head. Wood splintering.
I hear someone panting.
Drew.
I pull the rag from her mouth, she cries out, but I run to the freezer. Lifting the lid, I search for a tool—screwdriver, knife, anything—to cut the tape. But it's all baseball supplies. Glancing around the room, taking in the dark at the edges, I see white buckets stashed under the stairs. I run over, they're full of baseballs.
Wood snaps above us. The door. He's getting through.
Drew's slumped forward, grimy and helpless.
I lift the freezer's lid again, pull out a baseball bat, and lower the lid.
"Close your eyes," I tell her.
She looks up, confused. "Raleig—?"
"Close your eyes!"
I jump on the freezer and aim the bat at the window, slamming it into the glass. It shatters, the shards smashing on the concrete floor. The cold night air rushes into the room, slapping the hot skin on my face. I beat the bat against the pane, clearing the edges of broken glass.
"Don't leave!" she cries. "Raleigh—"
The bang explodes at the top of the stairs. I turn, waiting.
"You can't leave me!"
I jump off the freezer. The door splinters
above me.
Pieces fall on the stairs, tumbling down. I grab the rag that was in her mouth, and try not to look into her pale, petrified face as I shove the cloth into her screaming mouth. Then I close the door on her.
Something hits the stairs. His foot.
I run for the bottom step, swerving at the last moment, dodging beneath the stairs to crouch beside the buckets of baseballs.
Bang-bang-bang!
He comes down the stairs, the steps vibrating in the dark over my head.
At the bottom, he pauses. One arm is stretched out wide, his hand holding an axe. His other hand grips his side, his shirt drenched with sweat. He surveys the room, side to side, then steps to the open window, rising on his toes to gaze outside. Even from here, I can feel that air, blowing in on us, telling him I'm gone. But suddenly his head snaps. He moves to the closet, he throws open the door.
Drops the axe behind him.
"Oh, baby." He almost coos. "You don't gotta worry, I'm still here."
Her cry is a strangled sob, coughed into the rag that he doesn't remove. He turns, moving back to the freezer, lifting his face to the opening. Once more, he rises on his toes, trying see where I am out there.
But I'm here. Right here.
The first ball sinks into his wounded side. He yelps, staggers, turns toward me with surprise. But I'm already unloading the next pitch, aiming for the strike zone of his forehead. He turns, the ball clonks his right temple. He goes down on one knee. My third pitch strikes his throat when I pick up the bat, running for him. This time when I hit him, I feel a weird vibration running through the bat, shimmering into my palms. He's down, falling sideways when I swing again. I miss his head but my second swing comes down hard on his back. He collapses, falling like his bones suddenly disintegrated.
He lies motionless on the floor.
I raise the bat, high. My arms are shaking.
Everything is exploding in me.
But her whimper makes me turn.
Drew's skin is white as marble, her brown eyes as wide open as that window, dark as the night outside.She turns her head. Once. Twice. Again.
No, she tells me.
No.
I drop the bat. It lands on the concrete floor, clattering hollowly.
Three hours after I almost killed a man, just past midnight, I am sitting in the waiting room at Stuart Circle Hospital, begging my body to stop shaking.
Officer Lande sits beside me. Every five minutes she asks if I'm okay.
I'm not.
But I don't think Officer Lande is okay either. Not since I called her on the phone upstairs in that house of horrors. Drew was seated, exhausted, at the small table, finally free of duct tape and mouth-gags. The door was locked. With him down there.
As I told Officer Lande where we were, Drew stared vacantly at the mangled
cheeseburger. Then I hung up and piggy-backed her out the front door. She weighed nothing. And it seemed only seconds later that Officer Lande's cruiser swooped into the gravel driveway, blue lights slicing through the dark. An ambulance followed.
Drew never said one word. They wouldn't let me ride in the ambulance with her. So maybe she said something in there.
But now, it's been three hours of waiting and shaking.
"You okay?" Officer Lande leans into me.
"Fine."
"They should be done soon," she says. "I told them to ask the doctor if you can see her. After her parents."
Her parents.
Sitting directly across from us, on the other side of the waiting room, Jayne looks crumpled and
old. Rusty sits beside her. And of all the strange things tonight—and there are many—among the strangest is seeing these two people not fighting. In fact, every time Jayne starts to cry, Rusty puts his arm around her small shoulders. Then she stops. Then she cries again. In her lap, she holds a book. It's Feynman.
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
.
And this is why Drew's books were out of order: Jayne. She was reading the books, finally curious about what interested her daughter. Finally. The missing clothes, Officer Lande explained, were the police. They took one of Drew's shirts, in case we weren't lying. In case they needed to use dogs.
Officer Lande has apologized to me—a lot—tonight. And now Detective Holmgren is talking with Drew, trying to get more information.
I hope he doesn't understand her.
"What?" says Officer Lande.
"I didn't say anything."
"Yes." She smiles, her hard face softening. "You said, ‘I hope he doesn't understand her.’"
"Oh." I didn't mean to say it out loud. "The detective, I hope Drew confuses him."
"Really?"
"It'll mean she's still Drew."
Her smile shifts, bittersweet now. I recognize it, because it's what I'm feeling. The first waves of delirious joy—Drew's alive! She's here!—have been smothered by the panic. It launches me into shaking again. Five days in that closet. With that maniac. A guy who stole her in broad daylight then showed up for work, cleaning and jingling his keys.
I asked God to bring her back. He did. But I want
all
of her back.
Detective Holmgren comes walking down the hall. His wooden-mask face reveals nothing. He looks at Jayne and Rusty and seems to decide it's better to leave them alone. He nods at me, then tells Officer Lande he'll see her down at the station.
"What about Titus?" I ask.
He snaps his fingers. "Right, I'll call the jail."
"No, in person," I say. "He deserves an apology."
Holmgren hesitates. Then nods. "You have my word. And owe you an apology, too. Sorry we didn't believe you."
He leaves, and a doctor appears wearing a white lab coat. Not hospital scrubs. A good sign, I decide.
"Which one of you is Raleigh?" he asks.
"I'm Raleigh."
He turns to Jayne and Rusty. "Your daughter's asking to see her. Alright with you?"
Jayne nods. Rusty says nothing.
I quickly stand and follow the doctor down the hallway. The hospital was built around the JEB Stuart rotary, a half-circle whose hallways curve toward the rooms. I'm so tired, so far beyond any functional limit, that I feel dizzy.
"You rescued her?" he asks.
"I suppose."
“Best friends, I take it?"
"Yes, sir."
He stops beside a door. It has a glass panel and through it I can see a nurse, moving around a hospital bed, feet tenting the white blanket.
"She'll seem quite different now," the doctor says. "Trauma changes people."
I nod, still staring into the room. "I'm different now too."
He's already reaching for the door when I say it, but he turns, evaluating me.
"Yes," he says, turning the knob. "Yes, I suppose that's true."
***
She has a room to herself, which seems like both a good and bad idea. Good, because I don't want some patient moaning in the next bed, but bad because I don't want her to be alone again.
"Hi." I stand beside the bed.
She stares out the window, night black as a chalkboard.