She knew that whatever the others plotted, she would be at a disadvantage. But she also knew to look for a signal. And to act.
Olive pulled up her panties and flushed the toilet. She rolled the paper back up, with the writing carefully tucked in a way that it couldn’t be seen until it was unspooled. She washed her hands and opened the door and smiled at George. “There,” she said. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
—
WHEN OLIVE CAME OUT OF the bathroom, Joy stood up, letting herself be manhandled by that crazy asshole before she stepped inside. While she peed, she looked at the pad in her underpants, which was soaked but not soaked through, and this was a good thing since she didn’t have a replacement. Then she pulled the roll of toilet paper to ball it up in her hand.
Except, she didn’t.
She read.
Then she took the Sharpie, and began to write.
—
JANINE HAD HOPED THAT THE shooter would cut her a little slack. Forgo the pat down, or let her close the door. After all, they both believed in the same sanctity of life—even if he had a pretty bad track record with that at present. Instead, he treated her just like one of the other women.
Janine unraveled the toilet paper roll. She looked at the notes in different handwriting. Olive’s first statement, and then Joy: What if we jump him?
She could do one of two things, right now. She could take all the toilet tissue and flush it, sabotaging the work of the other women. Or she could admit that through a strange twist of fate, her goals had aligned with theirs.
Right now, Janine was not holding a sign with a picture of an unborn child on it. She was not praying for the mothers who were walking past her. She was the person being prayed for. On any given day, she could have told you that, inside this clinic, lives were at risk. Today, the life was hers.
She reached for the Sharpie. Trip him, she wrote. And go for the gun.
—
WHEN WREN WAS GROWING UP, she thought there was nothing worse than having a mother who had actually chosen a life that did not include her. Her mom still hit the high-water marks—birthday, Christmas—with a card and a present, usually something from Paris that was so not Wren’s style she buried it in the back of her closet, not having the heart to throw it away. Her mom had hinted that, now that Wren was older, maybe she wanted to come spend summers in France. Wren would have rather vacationed on the front lines of a war zone. She may have owed her mother for the nine months she carried her in her womb, but that was it.
On the other hand, if there was some divine power, He or She had made up for the loss of her mother by giving her a father who was there for her 200 percent. Unlike her friends, who were always complaining that their parents didn’t get them, Wren actually liked being in her dad’s company. He was the first person she texted when she got an A on a test she had been sure she failed. He told her, honestly, if a pair of jeans made her hips look wide. He taught her about the night sky.
Her dad was also the person you wanted next to you in an emergency. When she went to Lola Harding’s birthday party and a few idiots were getting drunk and a kid accidentally sliced his hand open cutting limes and everyone was freaking out, Wren had called her father, who called 911 and came over and took control and didn’t go ballistic and call everyone’s parents, but somehow managed to put the fear of God into the guy who’d brought the J?germeister. When Wren was ten and had, on a dare, tried to climb a rose trellis and wound up in the hospital with a broken leg, her father had sat beside her trying to distract her when the painkillers didn’t. Pant sweat, he had said, and she’d been distracted enough to stop crying and obsessing over the fact that she could see her bone through the break in her skin. Her dad had tugged at the leg of her sweatpants. There are just some compound words that you should never reverse.
Finger chicken, she had said.
Litter kitty.
Pot coffee.
All things considered, she wished he was here. She had liked being able to text him—it was the next best thing. But since she and Olive had been dragged from their hiding place, that wasn’t a possibility.
Except now. The second it was her turn to go to the bathroom, she was going to fire up her phone again and tell her dad everything that was going on.
From where she was sitting on the couch, Wren narrowed her eyes and stared at George. He had been on the phone with her dad, but now the phone was on the receptionist’s counter. He held the gun in his right hand. He was sweating.
He had ghost eyes, so light, with the pupils just pinpricks. Almost like you could see right through him.
And if the doctor and Izzy were right, he had a daughter. That may even have been the reason he’d come here. Wren knew better than anyone that you couldn’t choose your parents, but she wondered what it would be like if she had grown up with this man, instead of her father.
She wondered what his daughter was thinking right now.
Suddenly he was waving the gun in her face. “What are you waiting for?” he said. “Get moving.”
She stood and held up her bound hands. “I can’t … you know … like this.”
For an awful second she thought he was going to tell her to deal with it. Then he scrabbled at her wrists, feeling for the edge of the tape, and unraveled her. Wren felt blood flood to her hands; she shook them at her sides. “Do not,” he said, “do anything stupid.”
Wren nodded, but she had a feeling that what she thought was stupid and what he thought was stupid were two very different things.
The door was left open. She sat down on the toilet lid and fished in her sock for her phone. Olive had managed to turn it off, so that it wouldn’t keep buzzing. When she powered it up again, though, it would make a noise. Wren reached toward the sink and began to run the water to mask it.
She held her breath, muffling the phone against her shirt. She waited for a signal, so that she could text her father.
No service.
That made no sense; she’d had a full signal when she was in the closet. And her phone had buzzed when she was taken into the waiting room, before Olive had turned it off for her. Wren fiddled with the cellular settings. She tried to find a Wi-Fi network.
Nothing.
When her aunt had been shot, Wren had turned into a statue. She hadn’t been able to move. She probably would have stood there, just waiting to be killed, if Olive hadn’t dragged her into the closet. Her heart had been pounding so hard she thought it would break the cage of her ribs. She had never been so scared in her life, and every time she closed her eyes, she saw that bright banner of blood unfurl on Aunt Bex’s chest. But being able to text her father—knowing her father was right on the other side of that brick wall—well, it had tethered Wren to sanity.
Now that was gone.
What if she never got out of this clinic? She was fifteen years old. She hadn’t had sex. She hadn’t gone to prom. She hadn’t smoked a joint or pulled an all-nighter.
Her dad was always telling her to be careful—that he saw far too many mangled car wrecks or drunk drivers who were teens who thought they were invincible. Maybe it sounded ridiculous, given the fact that she had been jerked out of the closet and had a gun pointed at her face, but for the first time Wren now really understood she could die.
A fresh wave of terror settled over her, and she started to shake.
She grabbed one hand with the other. She closed her eyes tight, and tried to imagine every detail of her father’s face.
If her dad were here, he’d tell her to take a deep breath. He’d say, Make sure you’re safe. Make sure everyone else is, too.
He’d say, …
He’d say, …
Bed water, she thought.
She let a tiny smile slip out from inside that knot of fear.
Way high.
Paper toilet.