We stood on the sidewalk outside of the sandwich shop with Nikki’s producer guy, Mr. Hartman. He wasn’t sure about me and got on the phone with another producer guy. I was all ready to go back to the group home when he motioned me over with his finger.
“How old are you, kid?”
“Ten.”
Mr. Hartman squinted down at me, shaking his head. “You gonna be a problem, aren’t ya?”
I blinked up at him, not understanding what he meant. “No.”
“He’s a really good actor, and he doesn’t talk back,” Nikki said. “I know he looks scrawny, but he’s actually really tough.”
I stood up a little straighter, puffing out what little of a chest I had to bolster Nikki’s claims.
“Yeah?” Mr. Hartman said, looking me over. “You gotta do what we say and you can’t be going around telling people. This is a secret project. Can you keep your mouth shut?”
“Yes.”
A bunch of swear words tumbled out of Mr. Hartman’s mouth, and then he shook his head and said, “I’m gonna go to hell for this.”
Nikki giggled. I didn’t. I didn’t like him, but I couldn’t say why.
“Fuck it.” Mr. Hartman opened his car door. “Hop in. Both of you.”
Nikki and me sat in the back seat and watched the landscape go by. It was only later when Mr. Hartman pulled into the driveway of a house with fields all around that I realized we weren’t going to a studio. We weren’t even going to a fancy mansion. I looked at Nikki, but she was talking to Mr. Hartman, so I just sat back and sipped on my milkshake as he drove us through the squeaking security gates and up to the one-story house. But inside wasn’t a home at all. It was all cameras and lights and racks of clothes everywhere. My eyes widened at the sight of men and women walking around with hardly any clothes on, but Nikki didn’t seem to care.
“This is so cool.” She tugged on my arm. “It’s like a real movie set.”
I didn’t think so, but I didn’t know a lot about making movies either. Nikki was more an expert at that.
A man wearing shorts and a tank top like he’d just come from the beach walked out of one of the rooms. “Are these our new stars?”
“They are,” Mr. Hartman said. “This is Nikki and her brother Rory.”
The man looked at Nikki before his eyes landed on me and he stared.
“Damn,” he said, making a weird clicking sound with his tongue before walking away. I’d seen that kind of look before and knew something was wrong. I grabbed for Nikki’s hand but she swatted it away, giving me a warning glare. She wanted to stay. I wanted to go. But she was always the one who got to choose. It was in our files.
“This way,” Mr. Hartman said, putting a hand on my back and leading Nikki and me down the hall and into a space that looked like a kid’s bedroom except one side had only cameras and lights.
The man who clicked his tongue was in there waiting. So were others.
“Shut the door.”
* * *
Time moved differently under sedation.I drifted through the hours… or maybe it was days. People came and went, including detectives trying to identify me, but I barely acknowledged them. Nor did I reveal who I was. If they didn’t already know, what was the point? I was effectively dead to anyone who mattered.
Maybe it was depression talking, but there was a hopelessness that had settled over me. It wasn’t so much the beating itself but what happened in the moments after police interrupted the attack after hearing Nikki’s screams. Instead of choosing safety in the back of a police cruiser, my so-called sister left me lying near death in the alley as she ran off with the man who’d stolen our childhood. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t get over her betrayal. I’d forgiven her once, but never again.
I was moved to a rehabilitation center about two weeks in, and here I’d lingered ever since. Not reallylingered; I was in physical therapy, and my body was slowly healing. But in the process, thoughts of the past slowly overwhelmed me. I withdrew further into my mind, replaying the most horrible moments of my life. I’d always been able to separate the abuse from my conscious mind but no longer. It consumed me now. What they’d done.
At some point during my stay at the rehab center, I had an unknown visitor. Actually, I had two, but one of them was well known to me, a crusty, frizzy-haired social worker named Mary. She had been assigned to me not long after I’d turned thirteen, and we’d had a combative relationship ever since. I was a number to her, nothing more, nothing less. There were two types of social workers: the idealistic, fresh, unjaded ones who still believed they could make a difference, and those like Mary who knew they couldn’t fix things, so they didn’t even try.
Assigned to those of us past our prime, Mary was where teenage foster kids went to die. Her job was to shuffle the unwanted ones around. A bed was a bed no matter where it existed, whether in a debatable foster home, in a rough and tumble group home, in a nondescript office building, in detention centers. Even warehouses were not out of the scope of her bed hunting. When you got to my age, it was all about quantity over quality, and in that respect, Mary was an expert at packing the bodies.
“Yes,” she nodded, her frown deepening. “It’s him. Rory Higgins.”
Mary didn’t bother acknowledging me despite our rocky four-year relationship. Her presence in the room was for nothing more than to identify the body. Such a disappointment. I’d given those detectives a run for their money. The mystery of who I was had persisted all this time. Of all the people to crack the case, did it really have to be Mary Sutlidge?
