Page 34

I must make a sound. I don’t know. All I know is Sasha’s head turns, and he looks right up the stairs at me. His face doesn’t change. No surprise. No nothing. Just cold blue eyes, the ones I’ve only ever seen him use on other people.

Then they land on me. On his T-shirt hanging off me. My bare legs.

And they change.

“Go back to bed, Dylan,” he says. In English. Soft.

I go back to bed.

I lie there in the dark with my heart trying to come out my chest, staring at that ceiling twenty feet up.

Girl. What did you just see? What was that? What is he doing to that man down there?

I’m scared. I’m so scared my hands are shaking under the covers. And I can’t stop seeing it. His big hand on the back of that man’s neck. The same exact way he holds mine.

And when he comes back to bed an hour later and pulls me back against his chest, and his hand slides around the front of my throat and stays there, I don’t move.

I don’t sleep the rest of the night.

I’m wet the whole time.

* * *

The fifth day, I call Tasha.

I take the phone into the closet, the big one, and shut the door and sit down on the floor between the shoe racks, because it’s the only room I’m sure doesn’t have a camera.

“Girl,” Tasha says. “Girl. Where are you?”

“Bel Air.”

Silence.

“Like Fresh Prince Bel Air?”

“Like Fresh Prince Bel Air.”

“Bitch, what?”

I tell her everything. The boxes. The gate. The guards with rifles. The cops driving away. The chef who won’t turn around. Misha in the library with his World War II book.

Tasha’s quiet for a long time.

“Okay,” she finally says. “I’ma ask you something, and I need you to be real with me.”

“Okay.”

“Do you want out?”

I open my mouth to say yes. Of course yes. Obviously yes.

Nothing comes out.

I sit there on the floor of the closet with all the clothes hanging over my head. Silk and cashmere and things with tags I can’t pronounce. I think about the ocean outside the window when I wake up. About the chef making my eggs exactly how I like them. About not setting an alarm for a double shift. About my tuition paid. About sleeping eight hours for the first time in three years.

I think about him on top of me on that railing with nothing behind me but air, saying You’re not going anywhere.

And I think about that man on his knees on the white rug. Bleeding. His neck in Sasha’s hand.