We lay side by side, our arms touching and my head resting against her shoulder like when I was little and she used to rub circles on my forehead until I fell asleep. I could hear her breathing for a long time, not slow and measured but faster, like she was still awake.
“Skylar, you can’t tell anyone about this, okay?” she whispered.
“Okay.”
“I mean it. Not Emily or Taylor or anyone else.”
“I won’t.”
Finally she drifted off, but I stayed awake for a while, thinking about what might have happened down at that river. I knew Mom hadn’t told me everything, had probably held back a lot, and my mind spun with questions. I couldn’t stop thinking about Crystal saying, “They’re going to kill us this time.”
She’d sounded so sure.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I drove over to Crystal’s the next afternoon. She opened the door still wearing the shorts and tank top she’d pulled on the night before, her hair a mess. Her face didn’t look too bad, but one side of her bottom lip was a little swollen and she had a faint blue shadow around one eye.
“Good. It’s you,” she said. “I thought it was Dallas checking up on me again.”
“Did I wake you?” I said.
“I was just dozing on the couch. Come in.” She walked into the living room, collapsed back down onto the couch. The blinds were closed on all the windows, the room dark.
I sat at her feet. Her ashtray was full of cigarettes, and there were already two empty beer bottles on the coffee table and one on the go.
“Have you been out today?” I said.
“The liquor store,” she said with a smile. “Had to get my medicine.” Normally I’d have laughed, but it didn’t seem funny today.
“Are you okay?” I said.
“Yeah,” she said, but she didn’t meet my eyes as she sat up and reached for another cigarette.
“You want me to make some soup?” I said. “Have you eaten anything?”
“You sound like your mom.” She leaned back on the couch, lit her smoke.
“Sorry. I’m just worried about you.”
She gave me a sad smile. “Sorry for scaring you last night, kiddo.”
“You freaked out.” I picked up the tinfoil from an empty cigarette pack on the coffee table, started making an origami crane. The smooth foil felt comforting under my fingers.
“I shouldn’t have been doing coke.”
“I didn’t know you did that.”
“Haven’t touched it for years, but Larry had some.” She shrugged. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.” She looked at me. “Boy, he turned out to be a fucker, hey?” She shook her head. “You never know.…”
“Mom told me what happened to you guys in Cash Creek.” I paused from my work on the bird, waiting to see how my words would land.
She took a hard drag of her cigarette, her gaze sliding away like she didn’t know where to look. “What did she tell you?” She blew the smoke up toward the ceiling, showing her neck and the scar on her jaw.
“How your truck broke down and those guys picked you up, and then you worked at their ranch, but they … they hurt you.” I didn’t want to tell her exactly what Mom had said. She met my eyes, and it was like all the life had gone out of hers. They were just dark pools of pain so deep I wanted to pull away, wanted to run outside and suck in the clean air and feel sunshine against my skin.
“She told you what they did?” Her voice sounded hollow.
“Yeah, but she didn’t say much. She got upset.”
She reached out and grabbed the beer off the coffee table, took a few mouthfuls, one after the other.
“What happened?” I said in a soft voice.
My question hovered between us as we sat there for an endless minute. I stared down at the foil bird, counted the beats of my heart, wondered if Crystal’s was beating this fast. I wished I could reach out and snatch my question back, but I’d thought about it a lot during the night, feeling this weird mix of fear and curiosity. I needed to know what had happened at that river. I felt bad asking her when she still seemed so depressed, but that was when Crystal talked the most.
“They tied us up in the back of their truck and took us to a warehouse,” Crystal finally said. She took a drag of her cigarette. “They kept us for five days.”
“Five days?” I almost crushed the bird in my hands.
She exhaled slowly, the cigarette smoke pushing into my nose.
“They were sick assholes, like, really sick.”
I didn’t know what to say, the enormity of what she had told me sinking through me like a stone. Mom had lied. Those men hadn’t just gotten “rough” with them. They’d hurt them badly, held them captive, did terrible things.
“Do you really think they’re still looking for you?” I thought about how Mom would get up in the night and check the locks. I glanced at the door now—had Crystal locked it after I came in?
“No,” she said. “I was just messed up.”