“No one’s home,” he said.
“I know. They’re all at the hospital.” She had told me to let myself in. That someone would be bringing Emma back soon. “I know where they keep the spare key.”
I reached for the seat belt, and his hand covered mine. “Yeah, not going to happen,” he said.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“You’re not staying here.”
“It’s Jan’s house.”
“It’s empty,” he said.
“They’ll be home later.”
“Tell her you’re staying with a friend,” he said.
He shifted the car into drive, and I tried to find the words to explain that I had nowhere else to go. Nobody else who would take me in.
“Me, Kelsey. You’re staying with me.”
I pictured his father at the station, his worried mother at home. “Your parents will let me?”
He kept driving, didn’t look at me when he answered. “I find it’s sometimes better not to bother them with such questions.”
—
I discovered how this was possible when we arrived at his place—a ranch set pretty far back from the road—and pulled into the detached garage at the end of a winding driveway. He held a finger to his lips and opened a door at the back of the garage, leading me up the stairs to an apartment over the top.
“Ryan? Is that you?” a voice called from down below.
“Stay here,” he whispered.
He jogged down the steps, and I heard him talking to a woman. His mother, I assumed. “Yes, I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said, and I smiled—my mother would be the same way. There were some similarities in our family after all.
I stood in the middle of the room. There was an unmade bed in the corner, just under the window. A couch against the other wall, a small television across the way, and a low table in between. A bathroom behind me, and slanted roofs on either side, so you could stand upright only in the middle third of the room.
When I turned back around, Ryan was standing at the top of the steps, watching me. He didn’t come any closer.
“So,” I said, “this is where you live.”
“Sorry, I know it’s not much. But there are people here, and my dad is kind of a badass for an old guy. I promise you’ll be safe.”
As if he could see straight through me.
“Thank you,” I said.
He was still watching me from across the way. “Um. I’m gonna, um.” He went for his dresser, pulled it open, reached a hand in, and froze. He raised his hands and backed away. “No, you do it. I don’t want to be creepy. This is the T-shirt drawer. And there are sweats below but I don’t know if they’ll fit, but you can try, and I’ll just…run to the kitchen….”
I looked down. I was covered in blood still. As soon as he left, I stripped off my jeans and purple shirt, and threw on the top shirt from his drawer, which fell almost to my knees and, honestly, probably covered more skin than most of what I’d wear all summer. I used his bathroom and scrubbed at my hands and nails with the bar of soap, watching as the pink water swirled down the drain. The tips of my fingers were cold, and no amount of hot water was able to change that.
Ryan still wasn’t back, so I sat on his couch and tucked my legs up inside the long shirt, trying to calm the ever-present nerves.
I heard a door from somewhere in the garage, another at the bottom for the steps, and my spine stiffened until I heard his voice from just out of sight. “Okay if I come in?”
“Yes,” I called. He came through the open doorway with two bottles of water and a bag of chips, which he placed on the table in front of me.
Then he dragged a canvas bag from his closet. “Here,” he said. He opened the bag, which was full to the top. “I’ll put in a load of laundry, so you have something to wear tomorrow. Before we can see if we can get into your house.”
I crammed my ruined clothes into the bag. “You do your own laundry?” I asked, and then I blushed.
He almost smiled. “Part of the arrangement. If I’m going to claim to be an adult, I kind of have to do the adult stuff.”
I thought of all the firsts that were supposed to be so important. Realized nothing had prepared me for this one: First time a guy does your laundry. It suddenly felt bigger than all the rest. More intimate, more meaningful. Everything within me warmed.
Ryan headed back down the stairs with the laundry sack, and I stared at my phone on the coffee table. Jan hadn’t called. There was no sign of my mother. And the people who had come—who had tried to take me—were out there still.
There was a window into the night, and people that could be watching. There were no alarms, or bars, or gates. No first or second or third line of defense. Just me and the empty night, every possibility on the other side of the thinnest window.
I stood across from the glass, but all I saw was my face in the reflection. My hair that was falling in a mess past my shoulders. A girl disappearing in a too-large shirt, with too-wide eyes staring back.
Ryan’s reflection appeared behind me, and I felt his hands move to my arms. “Hey,” he said. “I got you.”
His eyes met mine in the window reflection, and I sank back into his chest, let him wrap his arms around me, felt his breath on the side of my face, his fingers trailing down my arms.
I shivered, and he stepped back.
“Sorry,” he said. He took another step, cleared his throat. “I’m gonna watch some TV. Over there. On the other side of the room. And you can take the bed. And try to sleep.”
“I can’t sleep,” I said. “I can’t close my eyes.”
“You can,” he said. “I’ll be right there. Nobody knows you’re here. Nobody.”
I wasn’t sure whether I should take that as a comfort or not.
—
In my dream, I saw his face. The shape of his mouth, his eyes, the way he looked straight into me. In my dream, like in reality, I knew exactly who he was. The poison in his voice, my name dripping from his lips.
He was the mirror from which I came.
I woke gasping for breath. There was a hand on my arm, and I jerked back.
“Hey, hey,” Ryan said, hands held up. “You were having a nightmare.”
I stared at the walls, the shadowed corners. The dark window, the sloped ceiling, trying to orient myself. You are sleeping in Ryan Baker’s bed, because you have nowhere else to go.
“You’re safe,” he said. “We’re safe.”
I stared into his eyes, trying to latch on to his compassion. But I felt a tear roll down my cheek, and he pulled me closer. The nightmare existed whether I was sleeping or awake. My mother was gone, and I was alone.
No gates or bars or alarms would change it. No words or promises.
He repeated the words “We’re safe” until I felt them in my head and in my body, but what he didn’t know, what he couldn’t know, was that the words weren’t real. It was a temporary sentiment. All pretend. Nothing more than a beautiful illusion.
I woke before Ryan, who was sprawled on the bed beside me. I wasn’t sure exactly how that happened, or what that meant, but he was here, and I was okay, and the world kept turning, despite the fact that my life would never be the same.
The first thing I thought was: My mother. But what could I do, except wait to hear? Who could I call, and where could I look? I had never felt so helpless—not when I was trapped in the safe room, and not when I was hanging over the edge of the cliff in my car.
There was a bird on a branch outside the window, and it quickly took flight—a beating of wings in the crisp air. My body shuddered as it disappeared from view.