“No. I’m not talking about that.”
“The newspaper reports about your father, the abuse. The medical report from when you escaped showed old rib fractures, long since healed.”
“I said I’m not talking about that.”
“Were you scared before you were taken? Of your father?”
“Was I scared? No. Scared isn’t the right word. It’s the only thing I’d ever known. But it has nothing to do with anything, and he’s dead, so we’re not going to talk about it.”
“Well, we’re going to have to. You understand why, don’t you? We need to be sure of your daughter’s safety.”
“She’s perfectly safe. It’s the only thing I can do. Everything I’ve done is for her.”
I rewound it, over and over, hearing the slip. Everything I’ve done. Everything I’ve done. Everything I’ve done.
If she could lie then, so readily, for so long—then surely she could lie now.
They came back for something, Jan had said.
But this was what I was starting to think: what if the thing they came back for was us?
I found her that night, in the files. The thing she was most scared of, more than anything, was not of being taken, but of being found.
Jan asked me to drive Cole and Emma to school. This appeared to be the last straw for Emma, who grimaced and waited for Cole to put up a fight, but Cole just said, “Sure.”
My head shot from Cole to Jan.
“I can’t go to school,” I said.
“Kelsey, you have to get back to normal. We have to try. You sitting around here won’t do you any good. We’re both going to work. You’d be here all alone, and for what?”
And that, right there, was enough to get me out of there.
—
I parked in my normal spot in the lot, tried to help Cole into school, but Emma said, “I got it,” and hitched his bag onto her other shoulder.
Cole could walk fine, but he wasn’t supposed to put any added weight on his side.
I was aware of the silence that followed in my wake, the way people stopped and watched. I started to feel sick.
Math class, I had to get to math. This was my routine.
I could see the empty classroom, the door open, and I started moving faster. I rounded the corner, a hand to my neck, trying to stop the inevitable. Ryan was in his seat already, his gaze drifting to the door as I walked in.
“Hi,” he said, and then his face shifted. “Oh.”
You are safe inside the classroom, and Ryan Baker is here, and you’re fine. You’re fine. I dropped my bag beside the desk, slid into my seat beside his.
“Are we okay?” he asked.
I nodded, unable to speak.
“Okay,” he said. His voice sounded far, far away, even as he leaned closer, so close his lips brushed my cheek as he spoke in words I didn’t process. He placed his fingers gently under my chin. “Hey, come back,” he said.
“Sorry, I’m here.” I gave him a smile, but he tipped his head to the side, like he knew.
I felt safer with the door closed, with the people pressing closer, with the witnesses surrounding me. With the people looking and talking and making up stories. I couldn’t disappear—not with them all watching. I couldn’t slip through any cracks without them catching on. I felt, for the first time, completely grounded outside our gates.
And I was sick that I only felt that way after my mother was gone.
By lunchtime, the story had grown, and the rumors were swirling. Cole had allegedly taken a bullet for me. But what were they both doing at my house? Was I playing them both? Had they fought over me, gotten caught up in a home invasion? The story had taken on a life of its own.
The whispers followed from class to class, a lie that I almost wanted to believe. It was a simpler story. It was a story that did not change the fabric of my entire existence.
—
I sat with Ryan at lunch, which turned out to be momentarily terrifying. Leo, AJ, Mark, and Mark’s girlfriend Clara all paused to look when I dropped my tray at their table.
“About time,” Leo said, and then he went back to his conversation.
Ryan grabbed a leg of my chair and pulled it toward him, until we were almost touching. Then he ran his hand down my arm, laced his fingers together with mine, and leaned back in his seat, laughing at something Leo was saying.
I closed my eyes, counted the exits: the double doors behind me, the emergency exit side doors, the windows up high, and I figured there also must’ve been something behind the food preparation area. I felt Ryan squeeze my hand, opened my eyes to find him looking at me.
He leaned in close. “What are you thinking about, Kelsey Thomas?”
“Exit strategies,” I said, which made him laugh.
He tipped his head toward the wall, and his hair fell across his forehead. “My car is right out those doors, if you want to take me up on it.”
My face broke into a smile, and I tried to view the room from his perspective: friends, people he knew, a safe routine. My eyes locked for a second with a guy sitting at the corner table, not eating. He had a phone—no, a camera—pointed in this direction. As soon as our eyes met, he looked down, stood quickly, made his way for the exit. My entire body went on high alert as all the voices faded away.
In his profile, I saw a hooked nose, deep-set eyes, a bunch of mismatched parts that somehow worked….I had seen him before. Seen his picture, at least. On Annika’s phone.
That was Eli.
Ryan looked up at me as I pushed back my chair, standing. “I’m…”
I let the thought trail, and I slipped away from Ryan, pushing my way between cafeteria chairs as I made my way to the exit.
“Hey,” I called, but Eli didn’t stop. He was lost to the crowd, weaving through the halls. I was moving fast, but he was moving faster—as if he didn’t want me to catch up.
I didn’t realize Ryan had followed until he was beside me in the empty hall. “What is it?” he asked, looking both ways down the corridor.
“I saw someone,” I said, my breath coming in quick bursts. “I saw someone from that night.”
His forehead creased, and he grabbed my arm. “Who? Where?”
“His name is Eli. A boy I’ve never seen here before. He was out on a date with Annika that night.”
“Does he go here?”
“No, he doesn’t go here. I don’t think.” Did he? What did Annika say? She met him…he worked doing landscaping…right? Or maybe he worked while attending school, like Ryan did. Was I panicking over nothing?
“Okay, it’s just some kid,” Ryan said. “He probably goes here. Call Annika to check. Okay?”
I shook my head. Not okay. “Annika hasn’t answered her phone since that night.” Not my calls, not my texts, not my emails.
Ryan frowned. “Let’s go, then,” he said.
“Go where?”
“To Annika’s.”
“Okay. Yes, let’s go.” I needed to see her anyway. I needed to be sure she was okay. This was probably nothing. But he had moved so fast, avoiding me…and I needed to be sure. Because otherwise, the fears started circling, and I wouldn’t be able to let go of the thought.
This was the thought: Someone was watching. Someone was still here.
Something was coming for me. I felt it, gathering force and taking shape.
But the thing coming for me was also coming from within. An ache in my bones, the marrow simmering. Something slowly fighting its way to the surface.
—
I worried as we stood in the parking lot before third period that someone would notice. That the GPS on my phone would show I was not where I was supposed to be, and someone would stop me. Before remembering that nobody was there to keep tabs on me anymore. That I had finally gotten what I wanted—freedom—and it had come at the steepest price.
Once inside Sterling Cross, we drove past my place, where there was still a cop car blocking off the driveway entrance. The news vans, at least, were no longer lingering along the roadside. The disaster had moved on. They had moved on. But not us.