I kick my legs frantically, landing a foot in my attacker’s crotch. He lets out a surprised yelp, but it’s not enough, not nearly enough, to loosen his grasp.
Silver glints, cutting through the darkness. He’s planning on rewarding me for my resistance, then.
I turn to look at him, but it’s the wrong move, because I don’t want to see his face, I don’t want to see his eyes, filled with maniacal glee, and I really don’t want to see the blade tear through the skin and tendon and muscle of my belly.
He raises the point of the knife, driving it in with agonizing slowness. I think I scream, but I can’t be entirely sure if I make any noise. Even if I do, there’s no one to hear me.
The man with the gun, the one whose face I can’t see, yanks the knife out of my skin and clamps a hand firmly over my mouth. “Shut up, you stupid bitch. I could kill you right here. We’ll get the money either way. We still have your brother.”
Jack. I have to get to Jack. He’ll know a way out of this.
I bite down on his hand until I taste the metallic salt on my tongue. I try the kick again. This time, I hit my target.
His fist under my chin causes the salt to dip further backwards in my mouth. I spit it back at him, into a face covered by a black mask that obscures all trace of humanity, except for a pair of soulless, glittering black eyes.
“Little bitch,” he hisses.
This is his sick idea of entertainment. He twists my arm, the one that’s already snapped, until the pain becomes a blinding veil of red and black and purple.
I’m going to pass out. It’s only a matter of time. I pull back my foot and aim carefully again, landing another one deep in his groin. He doubles over in pain, and while my belly is wet and oozing blood, I’m no longer trapped in his grasp.
Biology has never been my strong suit, but even I know there’s a finite amount of blood in the human body. I’m already running on less than a full tank. He’s going to kill me. And he’s going to enjoy it. Pain is going to be the last thing I know on this earth.
There’s a trail of red pooling beneath me as I try to crawl towards the stairs. My mother’s carpet is going to be ruined. She won’t be happy about that.
The agony fades into a dull ache. Shock. I must be in shock.
If I can just make it to the stairs before I lose too much blood or he manages to recover or I pass out from the pain that’s not even an ache or a throb but something deeper and far more sinister. If I can get to the stairs. If I can find Jack.
My head is fractured, only conjuring half-thoughts. Fragments of thought. Thoughts of fragments.
His rage is stronger than pain and stronger than fear. My eyes haze. A piece of glass just above my head is crashing down. Just another second of breathing. I raise my hands to cover my face, my head, to prolong the utter certainty that my world is going to go black.
I’ve never considered my own death.
I’ve never made a bucket list.
I’m eighteen years old.
The glass shatters all around me, bringing nothing but incomprehensible darkness.
* * *
“W
ake up, sleeping beauty.”
The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. I blink once, twice, three times, but my vision is blurred and doubling again and again, replicating itself until there isn’t any one thing to focus on, but a million images that are all tinged in red.
He twists the point of the knife into my throat. I don’t make a sound, and his eyes fill with the one thing I do remember—rage. From somewhere outside of my own experience, I hear my mother’s voice calling:
“He wants to hear you beg for mercy, Stella. The only hope you have is to disappoint him. Stay silent.”
I won’t scream. Even if he kills me.
And that seems entirely possible. Probable. Definite.
Jack’s face, black from bruises and blood, enters the periphery of my vision. He writhes against his restraints, and the appearance of frayed ropes releases a burst of hope deep inside me. All-state in football. Basketball. Baseball. He has more than a burst of speed.
I crane my neck to look, to see if he’s working the rope, but a familiar glint of solid steel catches my eye. The ropes have been fortified with handcuffs. There’s no hope, then.
We’re in the library. This is my favorite room. Not such a bad place to die.
A shock of pain hits me so hard that again, I succumb to blackness.
* * *
“S
tella. Stella.”
Jack’s voice.
I open my eyes. Breathing is difficult. Everything is difficult.
“Jack?”
His normally placid expression has been replaced by an intensity I didn’t think he possessed. He pleads.
“I need you to be strong right now. I need you to see if you get yourself out of the rope.”
My eyelids are heavy and the fibers are strong and unyielding. I want to sleep.
“I can’t.”
“Try again.”
I don’t have enough energy to do anything but look at him helplessly. He beats his head against the wall.
“I’m scared,” I whisper.
“It’s going to be okay, Stels.”
Even in my current state, I know that’s a lie.
Another voice emerges from the darkness, the one that I longed to hear. Just once more. My favorite room. A final fantasy. Not such a bad way to die, I repeat, willing myself to believe it.
“What the fuck is going on here? Who the hell are you?”
Luke’s voice is loud and furious. I wish he wouldn’t be so angry, not in the last fantasy of him that I’ll ever have. He should be whispering sweet nothings into my ear. Or teasing me. Or telling me that I’m pretty. It’s my fantasy and he isn’t playing along. Obstinate.
Jack stiffens. “Luke!” he yells. “Luke!”
So, Jack’s fallen into my delusion, too. I’m so sleepy. If I just closed my eyes once more, maybe the stinging in my belly would stop. But then Luke’s voice would be gone, too. I hold on.
An enormous crash from the kitchen, followed by the muffled thud of footsteps, shocks me back to earth. Jack clangs the handcuffs against the steel pipe.
“Luke! We’re in the library!”
The screaming hurts my head. I don’t want to see those glittering black eyes again. Don’t scream, Jack. I forgot to tell him not to scream.
A low, primal groan cuts directly to my bones. Maybe it came from me. Maybe not.
“Oh, no. No. Please, no.”
Not black. Blue. Like the sky.
“Stella.” Gentle fingers touching my face. Eyes like the sky. Not like coal. “Please, Stella. Come back to me.”
“Take her,” Jack says, his voice frantic. “You have to get her out of here. You have to get help.”
My vision clears enough for me to see him, standing before me. The completion of a final fantasy.
“Luke,” I murmur.
“Thank God.” He brushes his lips into my hair, but it’s too brief. I moan, and I feel the ache again, but this time, it’s not from pain, but from the loss of his lips.
“Luke, you need to get her out of here before they come back.”
It’s too late, Jack.
My mouth won’t move.
“How many?”
“Two. A kidnapping, I think.”
“I got one of them in the kitchen. If he’s not dead, he’s close.”
“Then there’s another.”
The sounds mingle together.
“Jack. Luke,” I manage finally.
Jack’s desperate, urgent voice is begging Luke to hear him. “She’s hurt. Badly. Her stomach is bleeding and her arm is broken and she’s lost a lot of blood. There’s no time for this.”
In one quick movement, I feel hands pressing something into my belly, and I try to tell him that the wound’s already been staunched.
It isn’t as bad as it looks. I’m being overdramatic
. My head is fuzzy and loose and I can’t get words right. I look up at Luke to take strength from his endless reserves, but I find only terror.
It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.
“You have no time! The other one will be back any second.”
Jack’s voice is so loud, and I feel Luke moving away from me.
Don’t. Come back.
“Handcuffs. They’ll take too long to break,” Jack hisses.
“But you’re...”
“Now. Before you kill all of us.”
We can’t leave him here.
As Luke makes a quick movement, I see a flash of silver skittering across the floor. A knife. Jack has a knife now. But we can’t leave him here.
I twist my head against the rigid wall and stare at my brother with panicked eyes. I don’t have enough breath, so we talk without words, the way we used to when we were kids. I tell him I love him
. I wish I hadn’t spent all of that time fighting with you. I really will be all right. There’s time to get the handcuffs off. We can’t leave you. I love you.
“I love you, Stella bella. I’ll be fine. I promise. I’ll see you in a minute.” With an obvious grimace of pain, he addresses Luke. “Get her out of here.”
Don’t lie
.
Luke sweeps me into his powerful arms. I try to fight back, but even my uninjured arm beats helplessly against him. He bursts through the door, runs swiftly across the lawn, and stops at the edge of the trees. He lays me down softly in the grass and lifts my shirt.
His face is chalk-white as he presses one hand against the wound and reaches for his phone with the other.
“I need help. There’s been an attack. I have a girl who needs help now. There’s so much blood and...I don’t know...I don’t know how much time she has. I need to get back inside before they come back and kill her brother.”
There’s a brief pause before he unleashes a fierce moan. “Right fucking now. Damn it. Now.”
Jack is the one who needs help, not me.
A crack cuts through the air. It sounds like the backfiring of a car, but I know better. I’ll never make that mistake again.
The phone clatters to the ground, and I whisper, “Luke,” in a voice that’s unfamiliar to my own ears.
I want to stand up, I want to run back into the house, but my head already knows what I need to deny. Jack didn’t have a gun. He had a knife. Knives don’t make that sound.
Luke grips my chin in both of his hands before wrenching his eyes away. “I have to go back.” Then, more softly, “I have to see.”
Part of me hears his voice and feels his hands upon my skin, but the me who knows how to respond was lost with that gunshot. With one last agonized look at my exposed stomach, he leaves me alone.
I wait for Luke or Jack or death to find me.
What I think is death eventually wins.
When I emerge from the blackness, nothing hurts anymore, so far am I from myself.
“Stella.” Luke’s voice is broken, possibly beyond repair. “Stella, come back to me. I can’t...” He whispers a shaky prayer against my hair. “I can’t lose you, too. I can’t. The ambulance is coming, and you’re going to be all right. You’re going to be fine, I promise. You’re going to be fine and I promise not to call you a monster anymore, because you’re not a monster. I’m so sorry.”
I open my eyes. I’m safe here, cradled in this pair of arms. I’ll be safe forever, if he keeps holding me.
Oh god, his pain.
Can’t lose me, too?
I shake against him. I need him to tell me, even though I already know. He presses his face against my cheek, and I feel wetness. It must be my blood. His blood. Jack’s blood.
Just before the darkness comes back for me, I realize one simple truth.
Not blood. Luke is crying, and his tears are infinite.
A siren wails in the distance, but it’s already too late.
* * *
T
here’s a buckle across my lap. I yank at it, needing to be free of my restraints, but a soft, warm hand closes over my fingers, holding me in place.
The man with the glittering black eyes is out there in the darkness. He shot my brother, he watched the life slip away from him, and then he escaped.
It won’t be over until I know that he’s gone. It’s unreasonable. It’s ridiculous. But that particular fear sticks with me, another constant in a sea of changing uncertainties.
I
don’t know if it was just another flashback or if I’ve been saying words to Holden that might have somehow managed to turn themselves into a story. I do know that I’ve lost time again, because the sun has dipped all the way below the horizon. I glance around us to see if there’s anyone who could have overheard my words, but the rows in front of us and beside us are deserted. We’re an island, in and of ourselves.
I’ve never tried to say tell that story with my voice before, not even to Izzy. One of my shrinks gave me a journal and in one sleepless night, I wrote it all down. I had hoped it would let me forget, that if I managed to get it all out on paper, it would magically disappear from my head. I should have known that writing doesn’t work that way.
That’s how Izzy found out, about three months into freshman year. She had finally gotten tired of her sullen, nutjob roommate and snapped, “What the hell is wrong with you, Stella?”
I handed her the journal. She cried. I cried. She’s been my best friend ever since. She makes me normal.
Halfway normal.
I was afraid of the power of speech, I think, afraid that spoken words would uncover more perilous truth. I was afraid of remembering too much and of being overtaken by it.
I glance at Holden, and his agonized face gives me all of the confirmation that I need. It wasn’t another flashback. I must have gotten the basic facts right, through some kind of garbled speech, because his expression of intermingled horror and pity is pretty much the reaction I would expect to that particular story.
In one motion, he lifts the armrest, unbuckles my seatbelt, and pulls me into his arms. I try to fight off his comfort, to avoid the appearance of weakness, but I don’t have the energy to fight it. I let my body loosen against him and his soft flesh encloses mine, wrapping me in a protective cocoon.
In my head, I know that I’m not a unique snowflake. I’m human, like everyone else, and somewhere along the line, I lost my innocence and grew the fuck up. There are statistics. 75% of children experience a major trauma before they turn eighteen.
Shit happens. Death happens—to everyone. I should be able to get over it.