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She’s alone. “Shit shit shit.” She’s going to be scared. I hope she listened to what I said. I need her to keep herself calm and alert instead of letting herself get freaked out. I hate the idea that I might have left her to deal with her fear all by herself. She’s not going to handle this well.
“What’s wrong, Skids? What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I’m almost there.”Big red stop sign. Phoebe is fine. She’s strong and smart. She's not going to be even thinking about me while I’m gone. She’s safe. I know she’s safe. I’ll just check the cameras from my phone when I get to BIBO.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Phoebe
“Five things you can see,” I whisper to myself, breathing life and memory into what he told me. He asked me to stay calm even before he left, but the walls of this house are closing in on me. You’d think without his giant body taking up half the space, this place would feel bigger. It doesn’t. I’m suffocating.
I can see the… past. I’m back in the foster home. The green-striped wallpaper and scratched hardwood floors, the rickety beds with sheets so old and worn they were always coming undone from the corners of the mattress. I’m drowning. I need Josiah back. When will he be coming back?
“Five things you can see, Phoebe. Do it.” The lines of my reality are blurring. Should I list the plain white walls or the green ones? Do I see six computer screens or a faded gray door with a brass knob? Am I in danger or am I safe?
“Monitors. Desk. Windows. Couch. And my feet.” My feet aren’t bruised and bleeding. I’m not running. I’ve been sitting on the floor in the same place Josiah left me. When he drove away my legs crumbled and I folded to the floor like a wilted flower. I didn’t realize how much I lean on him for strength until he left, and now I’m not sure I’m going to survive however long it takes him to get back.
I’m not running. I am safe. Josiah would never let anything happen to me. He intends to keep me- I have to be alive to be kept.Okay, breathe. “Four things I can feel? The floor.” It’s smooth, not scratched. “I feel…” The air in my lungs and my belly full from breakfast because I no longer have to worry about my next meal. I feelsafe.
Tears leak over my cheeks. I’m safe. Years of running and I’m finally fucking safe. The feeling probably won’t last for long. Soon, Josiah will be home with the man that traumatized me, that traumatized Rose so badly she killed herself.
“Are you sure that’s what happened, Phoebe?” the female officer asks. The male cop that brought me in would have listened to me. He comforted me the entire drive and promise me I’ll be safe and nothing bad will happen to me. This woman doesn’t seem to believe me.
“These are serious allegations,” she continues. They sent her in to be the one to speak with me because ‘a woman should handle this discussion’, but being a woman doesn’t make her more gentle or easier to deal with. She’s actually a piece of shit. “We wouldn’t want to ruin someone's reputation because you were confused, right? He might have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life if you go through with this.”
“Heisa sex offender! He raped her, and he would have done it to me too! You have to believe me! If you send me back there, he’s going to do it to me too. You’re a cop! You’re supposed to protect people.”
“Sweetheart, I am. That’s why I’m trying to make sure that what you’re saying is accurate before I haul another kid to the station. I have to protect him too. So I’m asking, are you sure that what you saw wasn’t….consensual?”
I have never been more sure of anything in my life, but the constant questioning makes me silent for a moment, trying to figure out how to convince her that what I’m saying is the truth. It is the truth. I am sure. But, fuck, if this woman’s job is to make me doubt myself, she needs a raise.
A knock comes at the door after I’ve been silent for a while, and I look up to see who’s coming in. The male officer I met on the street, whose name I can’t remember, enters the room with a grim look on his face and waves for the woman to meet him there.
I want to look away, but, like watching a car crash, I can't turn my gaze away. The air is thick with uncomfortable silence and I strain to hear the words that the man whispers to her, blocking me from reading his mouth with a folder. The beginning of what he says is inaudible to me, but then… “Examiner has the body, but they said it looks like… there is evidence.”
“Shit!” the female officer curses, taking a peek at me and then turning to whisper something back.
My mind is whirling. I’m so confused, twisting around every word he said to make the pieces of this puzzle fit together. Someone’s dead, and there’s evidence of something… “No.”
“Phoebe, relax. It’s okay, honey,” the male officer says, taking a step towards me.
“No!” I jump from my seat and back up to the wall. I have to escape those words. Evil keeps coming. “He’s not talking about Rose, right? Rose is fine, right? She was okay when I left. I asked her to come with me. She said she was fine. She’s still fine, right?”
“Phoebe, I’m sorry.”
“No, no, no.”
“Five things you can see. Couch, walls, window, monitor, coffee cup.” I can do this. “Four things you feel. Floor, shirt, air…” I grip the fingers of one hand and draw a circle with my thumb the way Josiah always does. “I feel that.” It almost feels like he’s here again, like he never left.
“Three things you can hear. Silence.” The silence itself is terrifying. It leaves too much room for me to think, to remember, but the Foster Factory was never quiet. None of the homes I ever lived in were truly silent. But this one is. “My voice and my thoughts. I hear those too, because I’m real. I’m alive.”
Push through. You can finish this. “Two things you can smell. Coffee, and Josiah’s manly soap.” The smell of him is always here, tying itself around me and warming my insides. “One thing you can taste- coffee.” The last thing I tasted, but also, fear. I can smell and taste my own fear too.
I’m terrified, but I’m here. I have survived every situation. The fire at my parents’. The foster homes. Tony. I survived being emancipated at sixteen and having to figure out how to live on my own. I’ve been stalked and found, and Josiah has essentially been holding me hostage for months to keep me safe.
But I’m alive. I survived all that shit, no matter how bad, how horrible. I’ve survived.
A beeping sound breaks through my personalRocky Balboamontage, followed quickly by the garage door opening. He’s back. He’s finally back! I push myself to my feet and I sprint for the door, yanking it open and then stalling.
