“When did you get here?” he asks, his voice slurred and confused, a little broken.
We had been in here together for hours and he’d only just noticed me.
I don’t reply, I keep my head to the wall, breathing through my mouth to avoid retching from his fumes.
“Why are you here, boy?” His voice comes again, this time louder.
I pop all ten knuckles, one after the other, closing my eyes, feeling my blood curdle.
“Ch-ch-chase, help.”
“He-he is…hurting her.”
“He sh-sh-sho us, and now…”
Laiken’s voice is all I hear, along with my sister's screams. I’d tried telling Officer James about them a second time, but he’d spat more bullshit and continued to pummel his fists into me.
“Hey, I’m talkin’ to you, kid,” the drunk croaks.
I keep my eyes closed. Hear her again,“Ch-ch-chase, help.”
I didn’t know where they were now, or what would be waiting for me on the outside, and that…terrified me.
I smooth my lips together, crack my neck.
Everyone had disappeared an hour or two ago, including dickhead. The only uniform remaining was the fat prick that sat in the control room watching us on monitors from behind shut eyelids.
I only knew that because his snores were like a freight train that carried his nasally cargo through the open door toward us.
What I didn’t know though was what time it was, or how long I’d been here. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out the following day’s sun had risen, or that the next sunset had touched the horizon.
I hadn’t pissed or eaten. I accepted the water Officer James passed through the bars only to throw it back in his face. He probably laced it with the same shit I was already working too hard to scratch out of me from the party. That had earned me another beating, another broken rib.
A frisson of disgust shudders through my body, my spine turning numb, hot and sweaty at the base when I think about Aria drugging me so Colton could beat me.
I work to shake it off when the old guy's voice rolls across the tank again.
“Pretty young girls,” he mumbles, and the three words are like needles pricking my ears.
I drop my chin to my chest and watch him curl the rust-colored blanket full of holes around his shoulders, shaking. His cheeks are wobbly and saggy, and it looks like he’s on the brink of convulsing. I shift on my ass a little, uncomfortable at the sight.
“So sad, so sad, so sad,” he says on repeat.
I pop my thumb knuckle again, then jerk my chin up at him. “What you talking about?”
He pauses, the shaking too, everything just stops before he raises his eyes. They connect with mine for the first time andthey are gray and sunken,empty.The deep lines at their edge crinkle, along the corner of his mouth, too.
“Doomed, doomed, doomed,” he hisses like a snake, returning to his rhythm of shakes.
That’s when I hear her again, a specter, in the cellar of my mind.
“Ch-ch-chase, help.”
“He-he is…hurting her.”
“We’ve been sh-sh-sho, and now…”
I push my hands through my hair, tugging at the strands, squeezing my eyes closed.
