“Brandon, relax. You’re fine,” James said as his hand patted my stomach over the fleece. I covered his hand up again with the blanket and set my hand on top of his.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Garrett and Roz.
“It’s alright, Brandon,” Garrett said. “Honestly, from what we’ve gathered so far by talking with the others, you all have been through hell.”
I reached for my water and sipped on the straw while Dr. Chisholm sat down between James and Roz.
“Do you know the others?” Garrett asked.
“Well, I knew Scott, Char, and Shannon. There was another girl too,” I mumbled as I thought about Alicia. Tears threatened, and I looked down again.
“Salem?” Garrett asked. Salem? That must have been the new girl. I guessed she was Alicia’s replacement. Oh, fuck! Had I been someone’s replacement?
“No. I don’t know her,” I admitted.
“Who was the other girl that you were referring to?” Garrett asked as he leaned forward and then looked back at Roz.
“Alicia.”
“Do you remember how long ago it has been since you last saw her?”
I shook my head, but then things started tumbling out as I recalled mentioning it to Sebastian.
“He killed her. He said there was an accident. She hadn’t kept her head still, or something. I knew he killed her, but I just don’t know when. They started separating me from the four of them. We used to all stay in one room. The four of them were closer with one another than I was. So I guess that other girl replaced Alicia.”
“How often did you see the others?” Garrett questioned.
“I don’t know exactly. Sebastian held parties every few days. They just kept the others happy by dumping drugs in the room we all stayed in. That’s why the others were closer to each other. They liked the drugs and the sex.”
Garrett pulled his phone out and then turned it around so I could see it. Starting back at me was a photo of the wooden waterboarding thing. I could hear the beeps from my heart monitor pick up in pace, and James rubbed his hand over my stomach.
“Do you know what this is?” Garrett asked. I nodded and started playing with the ear on the bear. “Did they put you on this?” I nodded. “We talked to the others, and none of them had seen it before. Three of them didn’t even know what it was.”
The rest of the conversation was a blur to me. I answered everything they asked, but talking about all of this felt weird.
“Do you remember how you ended up there with Sebastian?”
Eli. My heart ached. He said he loved me and cared. He was the only one who cared. Some tears snuck out from my eyelids, and I lowered my head to wipe them away. I didn’t understand why I felt like crying so much. I couldn’t stand bringing Eli up.
“I ran away from home.” I couldn’t bring up Eli’s place, or the home he provided for me. “I was living on the streets.” I wiped my eyes again as I came up with the story that didn’t make it sound like what I thought I had with Eli was all fake. Anything to make it sound like Eli hadn’t traded money for me and left me. “I ended up at the house for a party. And I never came out.”
“Do you remember when you went to the party, or who you went with?”
I shook my head because I couldn’t come up with a name of someone fake on the supposed streets that I lived on. But I could give them a time frame.
“It was about a month after I graduated high school. I was eighteen, and I’m twenty now.”
Garrett looked down at his notepad and then at everyone in the room before he looked at me again.
“So, we’ve run your name in police systems for missing persons and nothing came up. We knew you were very young, so after Dr. Chisholm gave us your name this morning, we ran it through the education databases. This came up.” Garrett leaned forward and handed me a piece of paper that he pulled from a pocket inside the notebook. I glanced at my school record. That was me. “Is that you?” Garrett asked.
When I nodded, he looked at James and Dr. Chisholm and then said, “You’re twenty-one, Brandon. Just as of last week.”
Oh.
Okay.
How do I recover from that blunder?
