“He was leaving,” I said. “And then I noticed something was wrong, and he stayed.”
“To be the hero, I bet,” Cole said. “And why do you think that is, Kelsey?”
I thought everything was straightforward. Ryan followed me home because he wanted to ask me out. My mother acted the way she did because she was afraid for no reason.
But nothing was that simple anymore. Not even this.
“It’s not like that, Kelsey,” Ryan said, his voice low—but I didn’t know what to believe anymore. I want to talk to you, he’d said.
The walkie-talkie crackled. “Send her out. You have our word.”
“No,” Ryan said to Cole.
“You don’t get to decide my fate,” Cole said.
“And yet you can decide ours?”
“You want us all to die alongside her?”
Annika moaned again, hands over her face, and my fingers started shaking, my spine tingling, as Cole’s words echoed through the room, through all of us.
Die. They thought we were going to die in this house.
We were trapped in a room, and there were men outside, and they were trying to get in. How many ways could this possibly end?
I should do something. I should. But all I felt was the dread in my stomach, and all I could hear were my mother’s fearful words, and all I wanted was the safety of walls and stillness.
This was the danger. Right here. In this room.
Everyone turns on you.
This was the truth that could paralyze you, devastate you.
This was why we needed the house. The four walls, the gate, the locks, keeping us safe. This was why nobody should be allowed inside. They push you out.
Out there, anything can happen.
But in here, they could rip your heart out clean.
Annika grabbed my hand, as if she wanted me to be sure. Not her.
“No,” Annika said. “If you open that door, we are all dead.”
Then she started moving boxes again, slamming them around. “Come on,” she said to the others. And then, throwing her hands up in exasperation, she asked, “How are there no weapons? Seriously. If this place was meant to keep you safe, shouldn’t there be some sort of weapon? Is there no gun?”
I winced. “No guns,” I said, repeating what I’d told Ryan.
“Why?” she asked. “If this is supposed to protect you, then why?”
“Don’t ask why,” Cole said. “Nothing makes sense. Really, Kelsey shouldn’t even be allowed to live here. Did you know that? That’s what I used to hear over dinner, night after night. But my mom can’t bring herself to take her away. To, quote, ‘be responsible for taking a child from a mother who obviously loves her so much, despite her faults.’?” He shifted positions and winced. “I read through my mom’s notes years ago, Kelsey. You know what it is? Nonsense. All those sessions, year after year, they don’t make any sense. Your mother is lying,” he said.
Cole had access to our secrets, and suddenly I was frightened of him. Of what he knew, and what he was saying…
I couldn’t stop my limbs from shaking, but I didn’t think it was from the fear. “Really, Cole? Really? She’s scared for no reason? Then please, explain to me this.” I pointed to the door, but my finger wasn’t steady. “She just doesn’t remember.”
He shook his head, contorted his face into something between a grimace and a grin. “There’s nothing wrong with her memory. Haven’t you figured that out by now? When I said it’s nonsense, I meant just that. She makes shit up. She pretends. My mom realized that, you know. It’s the one thing she’s sure of.”
I had started shaking my head as soon as he began speaking, and I didn’t stop. “You can’t fake what happened to her. You can’t fake this house.”
“I didn’t say she wasn’t afraid,” Cole said. “I just said it’s obvious she knows exactly what she’s afraid of. She just chooses not to tell. And now look what happened.”
He was lying. This was a lie, and so he was a liar. “Shut up,” I said.
Her, but not her.
Me, but not me.
This other version of us, just underneath my feet. Pull the carpet aside, lift the square, unzip the pouch, and meet someone new.
Ryan touched my shoulder, grounding me. “Nothing in this house calls out for help,” he said. “It’s only for safety on the inside.”
Even Ryan, now. Even him.
See it, Kelsey.
She didn’t want anyone else to come. She didn’t want anyone else to know she was here.
She didn’t want the police here.
The passports with the wrong names, and her fear of our names in the paper. The birth date from school not matching up with the one on the police report, the date I’d given them myself.
The nightmares with the spiders. She remembered.
We were hiding. And she knew exactly what we were hiding from.
Cole looked at me as I slid to the floor across the room. I know. I know who you are.
Who was I? The truth was, I wasn’t sure anymore. A girl who sprang from the earth with no understanding of her mother. With no father. Raised on fear and lies and stories that came tumbling down when you pushed too hard. Names and faces that didn’t match, dates that didn’t line up.
This was not the Kelsey Thomas I thought existed.
This was something dangerous—like something in the corner of my eye, taking shape. The edges of a shadow, sharpening and turning solid.
“The papers,” I said. “They found us again from the papers.”
“Who? Who found you again?” Annika asked.
“Whoever took my mother. She was kidnapped, when she was our age. And now they’re back for us.”
Annika’s mouth formed a perfect circle, and I thought, I should’ve told her. This was my best friend, and I should’ve told her years ago about who my mother was, why we lived this way. But I had been taught not to. I had been raised inside the secret. Inside the lies.
“They found you from the papers?” Ryan asked, turning pale.
“We have to do it,” I said, ignoring him. “If they’ve waited this long, they’re not going to just leave. They might have my mother. I have to go with them.” Out there was danger. But out there were answers. Out there, somewhere, was my mother. Through that door was the only way to find her.
“I’m not letting that happen, either way,” Ryan said. He looked at Cole, at Annika. “She saved my life, did you know that? Held us up with nothing but her fingers. Nobody hands her over.”
Can you do one thing that defines who you are? Ryan placed too much emphasis on that moment—the one where we were falling. The one where I held us up with the joint of my fingers, as if there had been any other option.
But there was, I realized. To let go. To find out what waited on the other side. But to do that, Ryan would have to let me go, too.
“I’m not the girl who held us up,” I said. “You can’t base everything you think you know about me on that one thing. You can’t like me because of that. It wasn’t me. The girl in the car, that was somebody else.”
“It was the Lodge,” he said, voice low, attempting to have a private conversation in a public place. “Not the car.”
“What?”
He stepped closer, talked closer. “Why I liked you. Why I like you. It’s not because of the car. It was from before, back at the Lodge. I thought you were fearless.”