Sadie

Breaking glass should be easy.

I comb the ground for something heavy enough to force against it. It takes a while. I have to wade into the long grass until I find a rock hefty enough. As soon as its rough weight is in my palm, I flash to the house, Montgomery, the lockbox …

I don’t know if I can go through that again.

It’s getting darker out. I go back to Keith’s window, pulling myself up. I have to make this count and I have to make it quick. I don’t know what Ellis can hear from inside the office, but the cleaner the break the better. I lever my arm back and force the rock against the glass.

Through the glass.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck—”

I hop back down. My arm looks like a fucking suicide attempt, just red, red, red, and torn raw. The pain is exquisite. I’m stupid, I’m stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid …

“Oh, fuck…”

I choke back a sob and listen through the pounding in my skull because having your fucking arm ripped open fucking hurts, but that’s going to be the least of my problems if Ellis heard me. I wait. Nothing happens. I think it’s safe. I don’t even know what the glass breaking sounded like, if it was loud, quiet enough. All I know is my hand reached back and the next thing I was in this immediate, bloody aftermath.

“Okay,” I whisper. “Okay, okay, okay…”

How cruel is it that the only person I can muster the steadiness of my own voice for is the one who will be least reassured by it.

I just need—I just need to get into that room.

I use the rock to clear the window frame of what’s left of the glass, throw my bag through and then get to the excruciating task of maneuvering myself inside, trying not to scream at the pain in my arm, the torn, open skin assaulted by air, by any movement. Trying not to feel my own sticky blood everywhere I don’t want it to be.

I end up in the shower. The room is dark and I can smell moldering towels. I step out of the shower and squint into the dim light and when I see a lump of them—towels—in the sink, I grab one and wrap it around my arm, my stomach revolting at the thought of it touching Keith before touching me. I move quietly across the floor and open the bathroom door, trying to ignore the furious throbbing in my arm and the way the towel is slowly turning red.

Keith’s room looks like mine. That same bland wallpaper on the walls. Same table and chairs. He has a fridge, but I think it must be his own. This place is … has been lived in. The bed is unmade, blankets tossed aside so many mornings ago. There are clothes everywhere, thrown over the backs of chairs, on the floor beside the bed, hanging over the mirrored bureau. I don’t know where to start. I get to work one-handed, opening and closing clothes drawers, digging my uninjured hand into the pockets of discarded pants, looking for something, anything, to tell me where he might be now.

Come on, you motherfucker.

I check the fridge—gagging when the curdled smell of rotting food assaults my nose—and then I pull the blankets off the bed and toss them on the floor, strip the pillowcases. It all takes too long being down one arm. I tear the fucking place apart as best I can and when I feel I’ve been through it all, I’m breathless and empty-handed. On the nightstand next to the bed, a matchbook catches my eyes. The logo on it. Cooper’s.

I laugh.

Then I sit on the bed and try not to scream.

Enough.

Enough, Sadie.

I get up. I turn the table over, upend the chairs, try and fail to move the dresser away from the walls. I wriggle under the bed, choking on the dust, and there’s nothing there. I scramble back until I’m eye level with the edge of the mattress. The mattress edge. I lift it up and a noise of triumph escapes me when I see the small envelope resting neatly in the middle of the bed frame. I reach my left hand out, the towel hanging limply over my bad one, blood no doubt dripping on the floor, and grab it. The mattress slams back with a thunk. I sit on the floor and stare at it, cradling my right arm to my chest. The envelope feels light as Silas’s box and a sick sense of déjà vu washes over me. I close my eyes, letting my fingers pulse against it, feeling the bubble wrap inside.

Make me strong, I think to no one.

Please make me strong enough for this.

I turn the envelope upside down.

My heart is pounding so hard I’m scared my whole body will give before I know what I have. I close my eyes and force myself to take a deep breath and when I open them, I’m staring at IDs and jagged strips of material. No photographs. No photographs, thank God. I sift through the IDs, my throat tightening as I make contact with this first real … proof of Keith since I started this, proof beyond the way he flickers in and out of other people’s lives.

They’re driver’s licenses. They look real enough, excellent fakes. His picture in every one of them, and seeing it makes my blood run hot, makes me want to swallow all the broken glass in the bathroom just to free myself from it. He’s different now, time on him that makes him look even more like the monster he was when he was in our lives, when I was a girl. The lines at the edges of his eyes are more pronounced, his skin sallow and tight to his skull. Nearly all of the IDs have a black markered Xs over them, places and personas he burned through and can’t ever return to again. He’s known so many different names. Greg, Connor, Adam … Toby, Don … Keith. I pick it up, hold it in my trembling fingers.

This is the man I knew.

The X crosses over his eyes, obscures most of his face, but I can picture him without it. I can see him across from me at the breakfast table. Sitting on the couch in the living room, his gaze fixed on the TV before moving to me. Outside, nestled in a lawn chair when I came home from school, which was better than those days he picked me up and pulled us over to the side of the road just before we got up to the lot … I set it facedown on the grainy carpet and turn to the scraps of material on the floor. I pick one up. It’s a pink piece of cloth, soft to the touch and ribbed along the edges like a … there’s a tag on the underside, the prickly feeling of it against my thumb makes me realize exactly what I’m holding. Part of a shirt collar. I turn it over. There’s a name written on it in thin black marker.

Casey.

I grasp at the next piece of material.

A delicate, flower print. Pink rosebuds.

I flip it over.

Anna.

The next one is plain blue.

Joelle.

Then a girl-plaid.

Jessica.

And, finally, soft peach.

Sadie.

I drop the tag and root through my backpack until I find what I’m looking for. The picture. The picture of him, Mattie, Mom and me and there it is, on me. That shirt on me.

That shirt on me.

I get to my feet slowly, my eyes never leaving my own small face, until I can’t look anymore and then I let it drift from my grasp. I crouch down and start making a grab for the tags, the IDs because I can’t leave those girls here, alone, and the IDs are as good a list of places he’s been and I can go to them. I can go to each one of them, ask if they’ve seen him, get them to tell me where he went and—a door opens behind me, slamming against the wall. Shit.

I whirl around, half-expecting him, Keith, finally, but it’s not.

It’s Ellis.

He stands in the doorway, his jaw to the floor.

The “What—” barely leaves his mouth before I have him shoved against the wall beside the door, have him pressed there, my body pushed against his. My bloody arm is tight across his chest, the towel slipped to the ground beneath us. His reflexes are no match for the surprise of me and it’s all the time I need to get the switchblade out and I press it against the length of his throat. The sound of us breathing fills the room. I put more pressure on the knife, so I can’t tell where he ends and it begins. It’s dizzying, how it feels to have a person like this and to know, just know that if he gives you a reason …