Tomorrow's Lies (Promises #1) (27 page)

“We could’ve done it,” I say.

“You can barely stand,” Allison snorts.

“Because you’re starving us,” I yell.

Allison ignores me. “Doesn’t matter. It’s too late now. I called my mom and told her she had a choice to make. Either the twins had to go…or I was going.” Her hateful eyes move from me, to Flynn. “I’m sure you can guess her answer. Mom needs someone to run this freak show, now doesn’t she?”

“You fucking cunt,” Flynn snarls, shaking with rage.

He knows as well as I do that this is
our
punishment. Allison has taken away food, she’s increased work quotas to unattainable goals, but none of those things diminish our love, or the bonds we’ve forged with each other. Her last weapon is to separate us, and then watch us break, one by one.

I place my hand on Flynn’s forearm to keep him calm. “Flynn,” I whisper. “Don’t let her get to you. That’s what she wants.”

Essentially the same wisdom Mandy was always imparting. And I need for Flynn to listen and back down. Allison wants him to flip so she can revel in his pain, or send him away, too.

I watch as he slowly pulls himself together. I breathe a sigh of relief. I can’t take losing him on top of the twins. I already feel numb and dead inside.

“Good,” Flynn snaps. “Cody and Callie deserve a better home. Maybe now they can get some proper nutrition.”

“I fed them,” Allison whines, defensive.

“Barely,” I interject.

“Go to the barn and get to work,” she snaps. “I don’t want to see either of you for the rest of the day.”

And with that she shoves the box of nutrition bars at us—the whole box—and stomps away.

Flynn and I eat a bunch, famished as we are. But then we decide it’d be wise to squirrel some away. “Who knows when that bitch will feed us again,” Flynn says.

“True.”

We find hidey-holes in each of our rooms, and also out in the craft barn. While there, we stumble across the going-away card the twins made for Mandy, the one they never had a chance to give her.

“Look at this.” Flynn says as he hands me an ivory sheet of folded cardstock.

With a heavy heart, I read the crooked messages scribed in pastel markers:
We love you. See you soon. We promise to be on our best behavior so we can come live with you. Don’t forget us, Mandy. You’re our mommy now
.

I start to fold the card so I can hide it in the pocket of my jeans. “What are you doing?” Flynn asks.

“Saving the card for when we see Mandy and the twins again.” I stop what I’m doing when he turns away. “Flynn, look at me.” He does. “We have to believe. It’s all we have left. To make sense of these horrors, we have to trust Mandy will end up with the twins. And we have to believe we’ll get out of here and our lives will go on, better than ever.”

He looks unconvinced. “Okay, Jaynie, whatever you say.”

“Flynn, you can’t lose hope.”

“Let’s just start on today’s projects, all right?”

I give up. There’s no convincing him of anything right now.

Materials for the day’s crafts are spread out on four work stations, saddening us further.

“She wasn’t planning on sending the twins away,” I say. “It was our punishment for sneaking out last night.”

“No, Jaynie,” Flynn corrects. “It was our punishment for falling in love.”

Flynn

W
ith the twins gone and Mrs. Lowry still constantly away, Jaynie and I become Allison’s prisoners completely. She watches us like a hawk, monitoring our work in the craft barn like never before.

Quotas remain high. The numbers are set for the work of three adults and two kids, but there are only two of us. Believe it or not, there are days we still meet the numbers.

“Fine,” Allison says on those days. “I’ll give you dinner.”

Dinner, when doled out, consists of a single microwave meal each, the very small diet ones. Doesn’t matter. Jaynie and I devour those things like they are gourmet feasts.

Our lives continue, and on the rare evening Allison leaves the house, Jaynie and I head up to our secret place by the cliff’s edge, our only respite from hunger, sadness, and a gnawing sense of hopelessness.

The days grow shorter and cooler, but we welcome the night and the crispness in the air. Summer reminds us too much of the good times. Under the pines, we hold onto each other, our bodies pressed together, desperate in the darkness. When the losses we’ve endured get to be too much, we strip off our clothes, and all is forgotten. Losing ourselves with each other is all we have left. But our joining as one is not about sex. It’s about love, a love that keeps us warm on cool fall nights.

One of those chilly nights, after sex that turned from hurried to sweet, Jaynie falls back on pine needles that have dried up and grass that has turned brown. I curl up next to her, the only good thing left in my life.

“Do you still want us to be together, Flynn?” Jaynie asks, her face buried in my chest. “Like, for sure, forever?”

I lean back so I can see her more clearly. She looks up, her face illuminated by the full moon in the sky.

“For sure, forever,” I say, echoing her words back to her and smiling. When Jaynie still seems troubled, I add, “I love you, Jaynie. You believe me, right?”

“I do,” she says. “And I love you, too. But things change. What if you get out in the world and meet other people—”

“Hey, stop right there. There’s only you, Jaynie.
You
are who I want.”

She bites her lower lip. “Okay, Flynn.”

“That doesn’t sound convincing,” I say lightly. And then, more seriously, “What’s bringing all this on, anyway?”

“I was just thinking.” She sighs. “You turn eighteen next month. You can go if you want, be free of this place.”

I’m aghast. “Are you serious? Even if Allison lets me go, which I kind of doubt at this point, I’d never leave you alone with her.”

“I turn eighteen in November. I’d only be a month behind you.”

“I’d never take a chance like that, Jaynie. Not with the way things have been lately.”

Breathing what sounds like a sigh of relief, she says, “Good. I don’t think I could stand it here without you, especially…well, now.”

Something is up.

Placing my hands on either side of Jaynie’s face, I ask, “What’s really going on here, babe?”

Swallowing hard, she tells me, “I’m late, Flynn.”

The earth stops spinning. Or maybe I
start
spinning. In any case, it sure feels like the world has tilted sideways. “Shit,” I mutter.

Jaynie immediately begins to apologize, but I put a stop to that nonsense. “Hey, hey, don’t say you’re sorry. This is more my fault than yours. I haven’t been pulling out—”

“I haven’t wanted you to, Flynn.”

There’s a long pause. This is both our doing.

I flop down on my back, scrub my hand over my face. “Jesus, Jaynie, what are we going to do with a baby?”

She wraps her arms around me. “We’ll figure it out. If Allison tries to keep us here, even after we turn eighteen”—she glances over at the cliff’s edge, the sound of the water racing below us like a foreboding soundtrack in some movie—“we can always jump.”

“Yeah, there is that.”

Our long-ago devised plan is still an option, but then again, maybe not. Everything has changed. A dozen things could go wrong. Starting with Jaynie shouldn’t make a jump like that in her condition. Though it will only become more dangerous if we wait. Would it be better to leave now? Having a baby wasn’t part of the original plan, and I don’t know what to do anymore.

Shit. Maybe we should wait till we’re both eighteen. Two more months till November, I don’t know if that’s too far away. I do know Jaynie needs better nutrition. She’s eating for two now. Unfortunately, she barely gets enough food for one in this hell hole.

Damn, I feel lost and uncertain, my thinking clouded by hunger. But in my foggy thoughts I know there is one thing I need to ensure—I want Jaynie to promise me just one thing.

“If it comes down to a choice, Jaynie,” I say, rousing her from the sleep she was falling into. “If it comes down to choosing between me and you, I want
you
to be the one to get away from this place.”

“Okay,” she mumbles, eyes barely opening.

“Promise,” I press.

“I promise,” she whispers. And then she is out.

God, please don’t let her promise end up becoming another one of tomorrow’s lies.

Jaynie

O
ctober arrives, and still no period. I don’t need a pregnancy test to confirm what Flynn and I both know. I am definitely with child.

There are days it seems surreal, actually
feeling
pregnant. Knowing there’s a life growing inside of me fills me with renewed hope. My pregnancy wasn’t planned, but it feels right. Maybe this is how all this was meant to play out. I think Flynn feels the same way. One indication is how he becomes fiercely protective of me. We have something to protect other than ourselves now, and we don’t plan on failing like we did with the twins.

A couple of weeks into October, the most awful morning sickness kicks in. Most days, though, I have nothing to throw up. Allison begins to eye me suspiciously, especially when I continue to drop things I’m working on to race to the outhouse in the back of the barn.

And with increasing suspicion comes more contempt. I am berated again and again over the state of my crafts, all of which are constructed to specifications.

“No, not like that, you dumb bumpkin,” Allison snaps one afternoon. “That branch is crooked.”

It’s a gorgeous October day, the antithesis of Allison’s rotten mood. It also happens to be Flynn’s eighteenth birthday. Allison hasn’t mentioned it, so I don’t think she knows. Just as well. Flynn and I are hoping to sneak off sometime this evening, even if it’s just to one of our rooms. I have a nutrition bar I saved that I plan to share with him. It isn’t cake and ice cream, but it will have to do.

“Are you listening to me?” Allison snaps, rousing me back to the here and now.

“Uh-huh.”
Please, just go away
.

She twists a limb from the glittery black Halloween tree I’m working on, essentially ruining it. “See, this is no good,” she says.

When I start to protest, she throws the curled twig in my face.

I look around for Flynn, but he’s on the other side of the barn, preoccupied with cutting up wood for the next craft project.

“Maybe the tree wasn’t
really
broken before,” Allison sneers. “But it sure is ruined now.”

“Because you ruined it,” I retort.

I am too tired and hungry to put up with her shit. Besides, how much more can she do to us?

Flynn stops what he’s doing and looks over. When he sees Allison hassling me, he rushes to my aid.

“What’s going on here?” he says, placing a protective hand on my back when he arrives.

“Nothing that concerns you,” Allison says.

“
Anything
concerning Jaynie concerns me,” Flynn shoots back.

The look in his eyes dares her to defy him, and Allison is cowed…for now.

Before she turns to leave, she says to me, and only me, “We’ll discuss this more later.”

Later turns out to be that night.

Passing the kitchen on my way upstairs, I throw a longing glance at the padlocked door. There is no dinner tonight. Allison claimed we didn’t make quota, even though Flynn and I counted and re-counted and were sure we had it.

But no, we were told we misunderstood the numbers.
Bullshit
. To make matters worse, Allison made Flynn stay in the barn to clean up.

Just for the hell of it, I step over to the kitchen door and try the padlock. Just a quick yank, but damn if that’s not enough. The lock falls open.

“No way,” I whisper. “The psycho bitch must not have checked to make sure it was fully clasped.”

Her oversight is about to become my and Flynn’s jackpot. I plan to grab bunches of nutrition bars—and whatever else is available—and sneak that shit upstairs before Allison shows up. Flynn can have a
real
birthday feast, instead of half a nutrition bar. But when I push open the kitchen door, I realize the unlocked door was nothing more than a trap. I groan, realizing I’ve been had.