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CHAPTER 20
HE’S BACK.
I don’t need to see him to know the Bad Man has arrived. The house tells me. It holds its breath, hunkering down in the growing dark, already fearing the worst.
I sit on the mat in my tiny room, knees tucked against my chest, arms wrapped tight around my legs. I stare at the door, wearing my old summertime uniform that leaves my scarred forearm completely exposed.
The most beautiful thing about me, he had said, as he’d cut the intricate pattern into my skin.
I wonder if tonight I’m the one he’ll come for. Because when the Bad Man visits, someone must pay the price.
I think of the blond police lady who came by this morning. She talked to me. She wanted to know if I was safe. She even held out her bright, shiny cell phone, as if to help. I know phones. I see other people use them. Even young children, their fingers flying across the surface, picking and arranging boxes of squiggly lines that hold meaning to everyone but me.
I don’t understand the shapes. Small kids do. But not me.
Footsteps. Heavy thuds from down the cold, stone-tiled hall. Moving fast, with purpose.
I pull my legs in tighter.
The blond lady said I didn’t have to stay. But she doesn’t understand and I don’t have enough fingers to tell her everything. She and the kind-eyed sheriff are looking for some man who apparently has already come and gone. I vaguely recognized his mean look, or maybe I’ve just seen too many men like him. With expressions that promise pain.
The man in the photo they showed is a bad man. But he is notthe Bad Man.
I don’t know how to tell the pretty blond police lady that, any more than I know how to move my lips and work my throat to share the full horror of this place or list the other girls who are long gone but still need me to deliver their names back to their families.
I have a duty. Like my mother. Run, she tried to warn me. I ignored her. But still, she tried. She was strong and brave. She stood up to the Bad Man. Performed some small act of rebellion that brought him to our home that final night. I’ve spent years wondering about it. It used to make me angry—why couldn’t she have done nothing, just continued with our little lives in our little house?
But now, with my own time winding down, realizing more and more that I will never leave this place, I understand her need to make some kind of stand. To feel, for one moment, like someone who mattered. Because the Bad Man loves to make us less. To dance his blade across our skin until we scream. Then he smiles, and admires his handiwork. And leaves even me whimpering, as I clutch at my ravaged arm.
My mother had a patchwork quilt of lines across her back. As a child, I would trace them with my finger. She never said a word. Now, of course, I wonder.
Thump. Thump. Thump. The footsteps, much closer now.
The house holds its breath.
He’s here. Standing on the other side of my door. His hand closing on the knob. One twist. The door will open. One step. He will loom before me, blade by his side, smile on his face.
Just like that, it will be my turn.
I should offer him dinner, I think wildly. Fix him a plate. Will he remember my mother? Recall that night? Or are we all alike to him? Just girls, disposable in the end?
I have to bear the pain, I remind myself. I will close my eyes, fist my hands, scream if I must. And then... it’ll be done. I’ll be gone. And my soul—will it be the color purple like Stacey’s, or silver like my mother’s? It will rise up, bring me to my mami and we’ll be a pack of two, again. Mamita and chiquita. Because I belong to her, and she belongs to me, and not even the Bad Man can keep us apart forever. I have to believe that.
I stare at the door.
Bear the pain.
Bear the pain.
Bear the...
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Footsteps. Starting up again.
The man, moving on, away from my door, farther down the hall.
I stop rocking. Hold perfectly still. If not me, then who?
