I have a headache. That’s real enough. My head feels fuzzy and my body lethargic. I wonder once again about drugs. Misted into the air, injected into the water bottle? I can’t smell or taste anything, but I definitely don’t feel like myself. Of course, trauma can do that to you.
But I’m functional. I can sit, I can stand, I can move. Time to do something.
“We need to get out of here,” I say out loud. I sound hoarse. Raw. And determined. Almost like a woman who knows what she’s doing.
The girl doesn’t reply.
I rise to my feet, shuffle forward to the wall where I know the door is. This time, feeling around with my fingertips, I can easily determine its edges. The door opens out—that’s my memory. The door opening out, the silhouetted form stepping in, then myself lunging forward with my wooden dagger.
I push against it now and feel it give slightly.
I stop, stunned by this development. Surely my mind is playing tricks on me. And yet, another experimental push. The door jiggles. It’s closed, I realize, but maybe not locked tight. Ordinarily, you’d simply turn the handle, retracting the latch from the hole in the strike plate, and voilà, open sesame. Except in this case . . . I blink my eyes several times, contemplating options. On this side of the door, there’s no knob to turn. But if I could find a way to suppress the latch, say, shimmy in a sliver of wood? I might get lucky.
Of course, I need a piece of wood. I think there might be one more tucked in the mattress. I can’t remember. My thoughts are muddled. Stress. Fatigue.
The presence of a girl named Molly.
No choice. I have to do this.
I retreat from the secret door, crawling toward the mattress.
I don’t know what to say. Everything will be okay? So sorry to have stabbed you? Who the hell are you anyway?
What I manage is: “Hey.”
She whimpers.
I don’t want to know her name, I decide. I’m not having that conversation. Instead, it’s time to get practical.
“Do you know where we are?”
Fresh whimper.
“Is this room part of a house? Are we on the first floor, second floor?”
More whimpering.
I can’t take it anymore. I sit back on my heels, inches from the mattress, and make my voice as hard as possible. “Hey! We need to get out of here. You need medical attention. Now start talking. Where the hell are we?”
She doesn’t whimper this time. More like a shaky inhale. Then, just when I’m wondering if I’m going to have to slap her or something, she whispers: “Why-why-why are you making me do this?”
I keep my voice firm. “Which floor are we on? Which level of the building?”
“I don’t know. Why—”
“Were you kept in a room?” I interrupt. “Something like this one?” Or maybe exactly this one, as the previous occupant.
I can hear a shuddering exhale.
“How long have you been here?” I don’t mean to ask that question. It’s not relevant. But I can’t help myself.
She doesn’t answer, and a second later, I realize she probably can’t. Certainly, I’m already confused on timeline, disoriented by the lack of light.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” I ask instead.
“Dancing.”
“You were at a bar, a nightclub? In Boston?”
It takes her a bit, but finally, “Y-y-yes.”
“Did you drink too much?”
A small hiccup I take to be yes. Kids, I think. We’re all so young and fearless once. Nightclubs are nothing but a source of adventure. And a fourth, fifth, sixth rum runner the best idea in the world.
I hated myself for my own stupidity, waking up in a coffin-size box. Minute after minute, day after day, so much time to do nothing but repent.
And yet, if there’s one thing I miss . . . One reason I ended up taking so many self-defense classes.
I would give anything to feel that young and fearless again.
“It’s okay,” I hear myself say, and there’s a gentleness to my voice that catches me off guard. “What happened next?”
“Why, why, why,” she mutters, and I can tell she’s on the verge of tears again.
“Do you live in Boston?” I ask, trying to regain her focus. “Your family, yourself, you’re from around here?”
“Y-y-yes.”
I consider my next step. Asking her name directly hasn’t worked, God knows it didn’t for me in the days right after my “rescue.” I can’t explain it. It seems strange, surreal, thinking about it now. Twenty years later, how can you lose your own name, that reflexive, immediate sense of self? All I can tell you is that pine coffins work an awful lot like cocoons. At a certain point, it’s easier to let go, shed the layers, emerge anew.
Become the person he wants you to be, because to hold on to the past, the last sight of your mother’s face, hurts too much. So you let yourself go, assuming one day, when you get out of here, you’ll find yourself again.
Not understanding it doesn’t work that way.
A sense of self is such a fragile, powerful thing. And once you lose it . . .
I wonder again if this girl is Stacey Summers. If we had some light, if I could just see her . . . But now, the two of us are alone in the dark.
It shouldn’t matter. A victim is a victim is a victim, and there are a lot of them out there. Just look at the articles plastering the wall of my bedroom. But something about Stacey . . . The photograph of her smile. The way her father talked about her, so much raw pain in his voice. I wanted to find her. I wanted to be the one to bring her a happy ending.
Maybe her happiness, by association, would rub off on me. I would save her, but she would help me find the light.
At least that’s what I thought three months ago.
Am I crying again? I don’t know. I am not okay.
I reach out. I find her cuffed hands on the edge of the mattress. She flinches but doesn’t recoil as I finger the marks on each of her wrists. Fresh lacerations, old scars. Could wrists accumulate so much damage in just three months? Or am I dealing with someone gone far longer? How long did it take me before I gave up my name?
I don’t know. All these years later, so much I don’t know.
“Why, why, why?” she whispers in the dark.
It comes to me. The work-around. The kidnapper might have forced her to take a new name, but the identities of other people in her life . . .
“Tell me about your parents,” I say.
She whimpers.
“Your father. What’s his name?”
I can hear her head tossing against the mattress, agitated.
“Is it Colin?” I ask.
“Why, why, why,” she says.
“Can you give me a cheer?” I ask the possible former cheerleader. “Give me an E. Give me an S. Give me a C. Give me an A, a P, an E. What does that spell? ESCAPE!”
I might be losing it. The edge of my voice contains a hint of hysteria. But she’s stopped moving, is listening to me intently. Have I finally hit upon the remnant of a memory? Some inner trigger that will help snap her out of this?
“Why?” she whispers in the dark. Then: “Why are you doing this to me?”
“Because we need to get out of here. Because I’m working for Colin Summers. Because I promised him, I promised myself, I’d bring you home safe.”
She doesn’t speak. Is it just me, or do I detect a sense of wonder?
“I can do this,” I inform her, forcing myself to sound confident. “The door, I think I can jimmy it open. I can get us out of here, but I need your help.”
She doesn’t move.
“You don’t need to be afraid of him,” I add belatedly. “First time, he caught me off guard. But now, I’m ready.”
“Who?”
“The big guy. The one who took you from the bar, grabbed me from my apartment. I think he might be drugging me.” I’m babbling now. “I mean, how else can he keep getting in and out of the room without waking me? So we’ll have to think of something. Maybe tear apart the mattress, jury-rig something with stuff, strips of cloth? We have resources, we just have to use them wisely.”
I’m getting ahead of myself. What I really need is the last sliver of wood I’m pretty sure is still stashed inside the mattress. Except she’s still not moving off it.
“Why?” she whispers.
“Why what? Why am I helping you? I already told you that.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because we need to get out! Because I promised your father—”