She’s dying. I know that, kneeling over the box. Because that’s what happens to girls trapped in coffin-size boxes. Physically, mentally, is there a difference?
This girl, whatever made her her, is ebbing away, leaking into the wood, the floor, the black-painted room. Bit by bit. Inch by inch. Soon, Evil Kidnapper will pop open this lid and she’ll do whatever, say whatever he wants because it won’t matter anymore. The person she was will be gone. Only the shell will remain.
Girl Bot. Ready for programming.
The type of automaton ready to give up her own beloved father’s name.
I hate this girl in the box. As I discover myself slowly but surely shredding my own fingernails, a habit hard broken four years ago.
I fist my hands. Feel the pressure of my nails digging into my palm. And will myself into the void once again.
While she continues to breathe. In. Out. In. Out.
Padlock. Standard issue. That’s what secures the lid.
I have a moment, tracing the metal latch, where once again I’m in a filthy, food-stained, sex-soaked basement, studying my own box from the outside in. The sense of déjà vu unsettles me, makes this whole thing feel way too personal. More like Evil Kidnapper went looking for me than I went looking for him.
Back into the void, back into the void, back into the void. Feel nothing. Analyze everything.
Her breathing. In. Out. In. Out.
Stacey Summers? Could it be possible? Have I found her at last?
Suddenly, the void is gone. I feel only panic instead. I hate her, this girl, Stacey Summers, whoever, I don’t care! She shouldn’t be here. I left behind this fucking box. I dealt with the devil; I bargained my soul; I did what, according to Samuel, survivors do in order to see another day.
So how dare some girl get herself trapped in a box again? How dare she ruin this for me?
In. Out. In. Out. Breathing. Breathing. Breathing.
And just like that, moving before I even know I’m going to move, I fist my bound hands together and smash them against the top of the box. Again. And again and again.
Wake up, wake up, wake up.
Wake the fuck up!
Breathing. In. Out. In. Out.
What the hell? Who can sleep through this? It must be drugs. The only answer.
I bang again. I can’t help myself. I’m furious, at her, at me, at him? I don’t know anymore. The box, I think. I’m furious at the fucking box. It must go. I need it to be gone.
I find myself shaking the whole thing. It’s cheap enough, wobbly enough, to move beneath my angry ministrations.
While she breathes. In. Out. In. Out.
I pound the box. Its corresponding shudder gives me another idea. Under different circumstances, I would pick the lock. But having been abducted from the comfort of my own bed, I lack the tools I would normally have on me: two very tiny, innocuous-looking black plastic clips that are actually universal lockpicks. But maybe I don’t need them. The box shudders and shakes every time I hit it. It’s definitely cheap construction.
I batter against it with fresh determination. I shove it side to side, feeling the top loosen, the joints give. Until, with a horrific scream, I toss it onto its side, roll it all the way over, a full 360. When it rights itself again, rocking beneath my fingertips, I can feel the lid is ajar.
Breathing. In. Out. In. Out.
How can that even be possible? I grab the lid, wrench it further, until it dangles from its metal latch. Take that, Mr. Amateur Hour.
Breathing. In. Out. In. Out.
I can’t see. The darkness encroaches. The darkness obliterates. So I reach my hands in, fully prepared to grab the occupant from its depths and yank her to salvation.
Except . . .
Nothing. No body, no warmth, no solid mass. I find emptiness, emptiness, emptiness. And yet I can still hear it.
Breathing. In. Out. In. Out. Forever steady.
The rhythm of my heartbeat.
I search the entire coffin-size box. With my wrists bound together, my fingers fluttering like butterfly wings. Empty, empty, empty.
Until finally, at the base . . .
A tiny recorder. Taped to the bottom of the casket. Apparently playing over and over again: Breathing. In. Out. In. Out.
And in that instant, I’m sure the breathing is mine. Prerecorded while I was unconscious. Just as the box is mine.
There is no second victim.
There is only me.
Always me.
I look up at the glass window. I can’t see it in the dark, but I can feel it before me. I know he’s there. Watching. Waiting. Enjoying the show.
So I smile. I lift my wrists. I offer him one middle finger. Then I rise from the demolished coffin. I head to the single mattress.
And though my heart is thumping wildly, and my pulse racing uncontrollably, though I understand now that this isn’t a matter of a simple kidnapping, that this man seems to know things he shouldn’t know, that I am even less in control than I thought, not just another victim but perhaps the intended victim, I force myself to lie down and turn my back to him.
Find the void. Live in the void.
In the void, no one can hurt you. And if no one can hurt you, then you never have to be afraid again.
*
IF I COULD GO BACK IN TIME, if I could do one thing, I would drive to my mother’s farm. I would sit across from her. I would eat her homemade muffins, accept her sun-brewed tea. And I would let her love me.
Except, having spent so much time in an empty void, I no longer know how to feel again.
Chapter 19
ONCE THE DECISION WAS MADE to take me with him on his trucking route, “Everett” swung into full preparation mode. He adopted my father’s name, while I would be called Molly. He drilled me. My name, his name, made me sign another postcard for my mom. I wrote what he said, signed what he wanted. I thought my handwriting looked foreign and strange. Maybe this is what handwriting looked like for girls named Molly.
When I was done, fake Everett handed over stiff blue jeans and an oversize white T-shirt declaring Florida the Sunshine State. He’d included underwear and a bra as well, but the bra was several sizes too large and looked like something only a grandmother would wear. When I held it up questioningly, he just shrugged and knocked it to the floor.
He ordered me to shower—on account of the close quarters, he informed me. I noticed he had also recently bathed, hair actually combed, and was wearing one of his less-stained T-shirts.
He watched me in the bathroom as I quickly soaped up my dirt-encrusted skin, scrubbed my long, matted hair. He continued staring as I awkwardly sorted through the cheap, oversize clothes, doing my best to pull them up over my still-damp skin. My hands shook. I kept my gaze on the dirt-brown carpet, certain at any moment he’d snatch the clothes away, toss me down, and . . .
But he didn’t. If anything, he seemed irritated by my clumsiness.
When I finally dragged the T-shirt over my dripping wet hair, he produced a comb from his back pocket and ruthlessly dragged it through my hair himself. Next up from his back pocket: scissors.
I flinched. In response, he chuckled.
“Hair’s a fucking mess,” he said, his way of making conversation.
I wanted to tell him, of course it was a fucking mess. No hair, and certainly not my fine blond hair, was meant to be shampooed with a cracked bar of ancient hand soap. My locks were accustomed to a soothing regimen of tea-tree-oil-based shampoos and citrus-scented conditioners. Then there was the weekly deep-conditioning hair masque to add volume, and the monthly highlights for shine.
Once upon a time, I’d been a teenage girl. With standards. And gorgeous, glossy California-inspired long blond hair.
Now . . .
I kept my gaze lowered, feeling the stiffness of my new denim jeans, as he fisted the first clump of hair, then went to town.
Three snips. That’s all it took. Three giant handfuls. Three decisive cuts. The wet strands rained down onto the carpet.
“Crap,” he said. “I think I made it worse. Oh well. That’s what hats are for.”