That should do it. If Jake was listening, this would surely be the moment he opened his eyes. Nothing. Really?
“I’d never tell you this if I thought you could hear me. It would only bring you pain, and that’s why I’ve never said anything. I’m not even sure why I’m telling you this now, except maybe I want to say it out loud. Acknowledge that it was real, and maybe even relieve some of the pressure of knowing what I know.”
Jake neither confirmed nor denied receipt of my explanation, so I continued.
“I saw him, Jake. A couple of days before he took you, I saw Ray.”
There—I’d said his name. Ray. Jake’s kidnapper. The man my brother hated with every fiber of his being. The man he’d battled in a fight to the death. Ray Davis. The monster who lived in both our heads.
“He talked to me. I was four years old at the time and didn’t understand the interaction. I can’t even remember his face. All I remember was the baseball cap he wore and the words he spoke to me. Growing up, I had dreams about the encounter, but I never knew it was real until I got the courage to look up details about the kidnapping a couple of months back. I’d probably seen a picture of Ray before, but I hadn’t made the connection, not until I saw one specific image of him wearing the same baseball cap from my dreams. On the front was the logo of a company: an embroidered deer.
It was then that the memories came flooding back. Of us at the store. You, me, mom, Kyle, and Quinn. Mom was buying school supplies for you boys, and she was distracted. She left me sitting in the cart a few feet away, and the rest of you were behind a display rack. I saw Ray peek around the endcap. He smiled at me. We started playing this waving game, back and forth. And then he walked right up to me, so brazen, and whispered in my ear.”
I stopped then, gulping back the horror. I couldn’t tell Jake what he’d said. Even if he was asleep, I physically couldn’t. The words wouldn’t come. The cruelty of them. What I did know for sure was that Jake was never meant to survive. Yet somehow, at thirteen years old, he’d become his own hero, saving himself when no one else could do it for him.
“And then days later, he took you. No one told me what happened. All they would say was that you were coming home soon, acting like you were away at some really sad summer camp because everyone was crying. It didn’t connect in my mind—the man with the deer on his hat, the words he spoke, and you suddenly gone. I’m so sorry, Jake. I wished I’d been older. Smarter. The interaction stuck with me through the years. I dreamed about it, sometimes waking up crying and trying to explain to Mom and Dad about the man with the green and white baseball cap with the logo of a deer on the front. Everyone thought he was a figment of my imagination. My make-believe friend. Eventually, I stopped remembering. Maybe that was why I didn’t want anyone around me to talk about the kidnapping.”
I drew in a deep breath, knowing I needed it for the final reveal, but if Jake was in there listening, then he surely already knew what was coming.
“Jake, Ray is the Reindeer Man. And when he whispered in my ear, he confessed to a crime that hadn’t happened yet.”
My brother’seyes flew open.
* * *
Disoriented distress.That was the only way to accurately describe those split seconds after revealing my secret. Jake jerked upright, his eyes blinking rapidly and his hands clawing and ripping at anything in sight, sending tubes and wires flying. No joke, I thought I was witnessing a zombie uprising. I froze in place, my eyes wide open and suspended in horror. Slow and measured, his head turned in my direction, and I gulped. Audibly.
Jake’s eyes narrowed in on me, his laser beam shrinking me down in size. Suddenly, I was my four-year-old self again, hiding behind Emma’s protective leg as our dad steered a bruised and broken Jake into the house, proudly proclaiming that all was right in the world again. Um, no, it wasn’t. One look into teenage Jake’s lifeless eyes was all it took to convince me he was not all right. A ghost, Quinn had called him. A monster, I’d secretly thought.
And now he’d risen again, trying to speak despite no decipherable sound coming out. Jake seemed confused and panicked, dropping back onto the bed. With his pinpoint focus no longer paralyzing me in place, I sprinted for the door, away from him and toward the strength in numbers that would protect me. Running away like I’d done when we were kids. Like I promised I’d never do again.
“Help!” I screamed, swinging the door wide open. “Help me.”
I meant him, of course. Helphim.
* * *
Help came running,nearly spinning me around like a revolving door as hospital staff dashed into Jake’s room. I didn’t follow them back in; I couldn’t have even if I’d wanted to. My feet were glued in place, my mind a jumbled mess. It wasn’t like they needed me anyway, I reasoned with my guilty self. They were the professionals, and I’d just get in the way. Besides, I’d done my job. I’d awakened the sleeping giant. My words had reached inside Jake’s head and coaxed him out. That was a good thing. The world would rejoice and so would I, once the shock subsided. I loved my brother, and all that mattered now was that he get better. So why then did it feel like I’d just sacrificed myself to resurrect my superstar brother?
“Tell me again what happened,” Kyle demanded, flipping around the chair he’d dragged from the nurses’ station and straddling it.
“I already told you twice,” I protested, hating to have to deceive my family. But what choice did I have? I couldn’t very well reveal the truth, so instead, I spun an improvised, fanciful tale of Jake miraculously awakening to the image of Chuck the kitten, our new furry brother. As each new family member came to me for the story, I just kept repeating the same thin kitty lie over and over with such airheaded enthusiasm that I couldn’t believe anyone would buy it. But they did. Each and every one of them… except for Kyle, who relentlessly attempted to poke holes in my story. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what offended me more, that Kyle didn’t believe me or that the rest of my family did. Who did they think I was, the Nickelodeon Channel?
“Again,” Kyle repeated, beckoning my lie forward with the flick of his hand. “From the start this time. Speak slower, and please tone down the Minnie Mouse impersonation.”
My lips flattened at his not-so-subtle insult. Kyle always let it be known that the pitch of my female adolescence got on his nerves, and normally, I fought back with a smear of my own, but I didn’t have the luxury of a counterattack today, not when all of my brain power was going toward getting my story straight. Never a prolific liar, I could feel myself cracking under the pressure. I’d already whittled away three brightly colored nails, their tiny shards littering the floor below, and given that I still had round two with Jake to contend with, the odds werenotin favor of the other seven making it through the day.
“Like I said before, I was showing him a video of Chuck…”
“Video? I thought you said picture?”
“Video. Picture. I showed him both,” I said, throwing my hands up in frustration. “I don’t remember which form of media interested him most.”
“And he just woke up?” Kyle snapped his fingers. “Like that?”
I hesitated a split second before raising the pep level to throw him off course. “Yep, just like that.”
Kyle shook his head, clearly not pacified by my lies. “And he didn’t say anything to you when he woke up?”
