I was on my way out the door when he handed my story back to me and said, “It is brave. Very brave.”
And in that second I felt sure we were talking about the exact same thing. That our story was already written. That it would end exactly the way I’d hoped it would.
Of course, Olivia shoved into me the second I was out in the hall, ruining the whole thing. “Oh look, Katrina thinks she’s Shakespeare!” Then she shoved me again, harder the second time. So hard I knocked into the wall. Face-first. Which only made Olivia laugh and laugh. Sometimes I wonder if I would kill her, if I had the chance. If you promised me that no one would ever find out.
Yes. Of course I would. I’d kill Olivia and I’d kill Silas. Two-for-one special. Maybe I’ll take Olivia’s broken spoon and do it one day. The world would be better off.
Cleo
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS GONE
I take the north exit out of the West Fourth Street subway station, then walk toward Washington Square Park instead of heading back to my dorm. In case someone’s following me. I still didn’t see any sign of that car or those men outside when I left my mom’s law firm the second time, but it didn’t exactly calm my nerves that Jules hadn’t responded to any of my follow-up texts asking for an explanation. But then again, maybe that’s proof that she’s having some kind of episode.
I feel a little better inside Caffe Reggio, smooshed safely into the far corner at a tiny round table. I order a cappuccino, waiting for my heart to slow. I give a start when the door opens a second later, but in comes a thin kid with oversize glasses and an overstuffed backpack—cool-nerdy. I jump again when a phone vibrates on a nearby table. I really need to calm down. I stand up and head over to the window, watch the people headed this way and that, minding their own business. No men. No car.
“Excuse me?” The skinny guy is sitting right below me. I’ve been hovering over his table in the window. “No offense, but could younotkeep standing there?”
“Oh, sorry.”
I make my way back to my little table and sit there staring at my mom’s closed laptop. I want to check and see if any of the men she was dating have responded to the messages I definitelyshouldn’t have sent. But another part of me feels sick at the thought, so I place the laptop on the table and dig out her journal instead, buying myself a little time.
November 28, 1992
Silas put a dead rat in my bed! Stuck to a glue trap, tucked it right in between the sheets. I had to throw out my fucking top sheet because there were RAT GUTS all over it.
December 1, 1992
There are only three of us left who Silas hasn’t messed with. We’re all thirteen or younger. Maybe thirteen is his cutoff. If so I’m running out of time. My birthday is in two weeks. Sometimes when Silas walks by he whispers in my ear, “Tick tock, tick tock.” Maybe it’s Silas who I’ll kill first.
Did he end up doing something to her? I flip to the end of the book. The last entry.
December 26, 1992
Director Daitch has had me locked in this room for thirty-eight hours—at least I think that’s how long it’s been. It’s hard to keep track when you’re stuck in a windowless tile box. I’ve been in lockdown before, enough times that I’ve learned a few tricks—like the fact that they walk rounds every thirty minutes, and they serve meals at exactly eight, one, and six. It marks the time. But when it goes past a single day, you still lose the thread.
Of course, those other times I was in here weren’t my fault. They were just Silas being the sick jerk he is.
This time, though, I deserve to be locked away.
The cold is making it hard to think. It’s always freezing—this dumb old building with steam radiators that hiss and pop and clang so much, I know they’re going to explode someday.
But there’s no radiator in here. Only me. And I already exploded.
She may have explained more in another entry, but there are about ten pages ripped out after that date, and all the rest are blank. I leaf quickly through the journal and notice that other pages have been torn out throughout the book. Holes in the story. But did my mom tear them out, or did someone else? I snap the journal shut. Press my palms down against it. I can feel my hands trembling.
My mom did tell me some things about Haven House. Stories I could have listened to more closely. Openings for me to ask about her life, her own childhood. And it wasn’t that I was scared or freaked-out—the truth was, I didn’t really care. I never saw my mom as an actual person separate from me. And now that she’s a person who’s missing, I may never have the chance.
I close my eyes and I’m back at the beach. That day when my mom said I shouldget in the water and stop being such a baby.But, no, she hadn’t actually said that, had she? Those were only the words in my head—me talking to myself—as I stood again at the edge of the ocean later that same day, my skin tight from the sea air, the cold water licking at my toes, hating myself.
“Sorry, we can’t all be like fish from birth, like you,” I said, shooting her a look when she hadn’t even said a word.
I remember the way my mom winced as she looked away and into the sun.
“The first time I saw a pool was in college,” she said. “I didn’t learn to swim until law school. And it wasn’t easy.”
I turned then toward the laughter I heard from the beach. Sitting with Janine and my dad in a circle of striped canvas chairs, Annie looked so happy and carefree. She, of course, could swim in the ocean just fine. And the sun was sinking lower now. I was running out of time.
I waded up to my shins. “You’ll have to come in with me. And make sure nothing bad happens. The whole time.”
