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Maybe one day I’d be able to use my voice again.
But seeing her now brings everything tumbling down.
My legs tremble and every fiber in me tells me to run.
Now.
“Don’t even think about it, child,” she says, her voice low and unpleasant.
I never liked Mrs. Pratt. Even before the kidnapping. Call it a self-preservation instinct or pure disdain for stunted people. I just never felt comfortable around her and preferred my Russian teacher at the time. Something Mrs. Pratt didn’t react to so well.
She takes a few steps toward me, her hold on the gun steady, and I nearly hyperventilate.
Stop coming closer. Stop coming…
“Now, tell me, Mia. Did you open your mouth, or—more accurately—your hands to tell that boyfriend of yours about the past?”
I gulp, sweat trickling down my back and gluing my dress to my skin. I can’t move.
I can barely breathe.
As if paralyzed, all I can do is stare at the monster from my past.
A shudder snakes through me and I can barely breathe, let alone think about escaping.
Is this the end?
Finally?
“You couldn’t have, right? It was supposed to be our secret, wasn’t it?” She stares up at me with her lifeless eyes.
I often saw Mrs. Pratt as an educated, normal woman, but it wasn’t until the kidnapping that I realized monsters aren’t only disfigured beings and can take different forms.
Monsters aren’t the work of cartoons and comic books. They’re not even the big buff men with scarred faces that Mom and Dad deal with on an everyday basis.
They could be something entirely different.
An apparently harmless woman with a strong moral compass could suddenly become a monster herself. Or maybe she was a monster all along, but she excelled at camouflaging that part of her.
“I warned you about what I’d do to anyone who finds out, didn’t I? Does that mean you’re ready to see your boyfriend’s blood splashed all over your pretty little face?”
Panic explodes behind my rib cage and shatters all over the ground around me.
Don’t touch him. Not him.
I open my mouth, but none of the words come out. My hands remain limp at my sides as if they refuse to speak anymore.
“You were so good at keeping secrets for over a decade, so what’s changed, Mia? Why are you being stupidly stubborn now?”
I want to open my lips and beg her not to hurt anyone I love.
Please. Not Landon or my parents or…
“Mia!”
Maya runs down the street, her clothes disheveled and her hair flying all over the place. Her face is so white, it could be mistaken for a ghost’s.
I’ve never seen her like this, except for when I came back home after the kidnapping.
