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I jerk wildly, nearly running my truck off the road.
My heart is racing. I don’t know what time it is. Well after midnight. I’m about a half hour away from home, I think.
But my mind doesn’t stop. The images… The feelings… Being in a fishbowl, breathing in water…
Choking.
I pull to the side of the road and close my eyes.
These things I never think about. That I never let myself think about. Why now? Why?
I thunk my head on the steering wheel, and I let the pictures play.
I’m coughing. Throwing up warm water. I gasp.
Gasp.
Gasp.
Air. I’m breathing air. What happened?
Miss Ruby sits above me. I’m lying on carpet somewhere. She’s crying. Why is she crying?
A man holds her. One of the men who rescued us.
“It’s okay, baby. He’s okay. He’s breathing.”
The man named Talon touches my forehead. “Can you sit up?”
I cough. This isn’t supposed to happen. “No. I was supposed to die!”
“You’re alive,” Talon says. “And we’re all glad you’re alive. Your brother will be glad.”
I cough again. It’s hard to talk. Hard to breathe. “No, he won’t. We made a pact. If either of us had the chance to end our own life, we’d do it.”
Talon shakes his head. “Why?”
“So the bad men wouldn’t hurt us anymore.”
He grabs me and pulls me to his chest. I gasp in some air.
“The bad men won’t hurt you anymore. I promise. They won’t. You’re going to have a long life. I promise that too.”
But Dale… I promised Dale…
He’ll be mad. He’ll be mad because I wasn’t strong. Like him.
“It’s my fault.” Miss Ruby’s voice.
“How is this your fault? Ruby, you saved him. He’s alive because of you.”
“No. I put him in the tub. He said… He said his bum hurt. I thought sitting in a tub would help. He said he could do it himself. But I kept watch. The door was cracked. It was only a few inches of water. I didn’t leave him!”
Voices keep talking, but I’m not sure who they belong to anymore. I pant against the man’s chest.
“Of course you didn’t. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“But then I heard something from the office.”
