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I don’t remember deciding that I was going to stop going to school, but I noticed after a few days of my mother being gone all night and coming home to go right to bed herself as the sun came up that no one woke me up to get ready to actually go. I didn’t know how to set an alarm clock. I didn’t know how to fucking tell time. I was six. I very distinctly remember someone showing up at the house one day to explain to my mother that she’d come from my school and that I absolutely needed to go back to school. She asked about my health and our situation. She asked if my mother needed help with me. I heard my mom mention for the first time that she’d been seeing someone new and that he was going to start taking care of both of us; that I wouldn’t be going back to that school anyway because I’d be starting at a new one soon. Those things weren’t even lies. She moved us right into the same house where Satan lived and ruled.
“Doing alright out here?” Utah asked from fucking right behind me.
“Fuck, man.”
He only smirked while he laid back in the lounge chair next to mine, like he was getting comfy and preparing to stay.
“What are you doing out here?”
He laughed that time. “My bad. Would you like me to just leave?”
How outrageously tempted I was to just say yes.
“It’s hard to listen to them talk technology and electronics for that long,” he said.
“I didn’t imagine you’d be okay with leaving Memphis in there with someone who hits on quite literally everyone.”
He glared at me. “He’s been talking to her for years. If he had any real interest in her, I would’ve heard about it by now.”
“When do we leave for Philly?” I asked, lying back to get comfortable again myself since he didn’t seem like he planned to leave.
“Eleven-hour trip if we drive straight through. We should probably go as soon as we can.”
“Jersey’s car won’t be done by tomorrow for us to leave that quickly.”
He chuckled. “I’m more than capable of driving my own truck.”
“Oh, I wasn’t really worried about you,” I explained. “Something about Jersey and that truck and you and all of it feels like it probably won’t go over very well with him.”
“He’s going to have a problem with my truck?”
“He’s going to have a problem with everything about you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
jersey
They left me in a crumpled heap on the concrete again. Bryson had paid no mind to that doctor’s several warnings that I was already too close to dying for him to continue with his assault, but I’d pissed him off to no end by managing to be this close to death and still getting a couple of solid hits in of my own. Their doctor tried to bandage and cover all the wounds from the last few torture sessions, but nothing had been done about the way that my entire body ached. A single bottle of water was left on the floor directly in the center of the room, but I couldn’t make myself move to retrieve it just yet. Just like I couldn’t make myself move to my regular corner to see if the angel of a camerawoman had left any gifts for me there. The kind of pain that my body was experiencing still didn’t even come close to the kind of chaos that was happening in my brain and my heart.
I tried to say Trista’s name out loud to pull my head away from the memories and the spiral that would take place any minute now if I tried to sift through the shit that Bryson had said. If I let myself start to wonder what had really happened to Liz and Faith or my parents, everything I’d ever felt about my wife from the last few years would be right at the surface again to devastate my very existence. That was a dangerous cliff to play right at the edge of while my physical existence was also being tested daily right now. But I couldn’t get away from it. My entire face hurt, my mouth and my throat were too dry to actually speak. Trista’s name wouldn’t come out. I couldn’t make my head focus on any specific moment that I’d spent with her. She’d faded too far, and I couldn’t reach for her to force her to be the thing that pulled me back from this kind of turmoil.
Liz had been given too many of my years to be able to force her face, her voice, her choices out of my memories; where Trista only had the space of a few days. Too little time, too few moments to be able to cling to what I needed.
I had just enough energy to turn my head when I thought I heard something tap against the door across the room, but it didn’t open. The light beneath it was being blocked by something though, so I hadn’t just imagined it. Someone was out there. The doorknob jiggled for a second like someone was trying to open it. When it didn’t give, the tapping happened a second time quickly before the shadow moved from underneath the door. They were gone.
I stared at the door for a long time, trying to will my brain to make my body move. The trip across the room would be worth it just because the bottle of water was directly in that path. Crawling took way too much effort, walking wasn’t an option, and dragging my big ass with a shoulder that had taken a gunshot and an arm that had been eaten by a potato peeler was a laughable solution. I sat up and started scooting across the floor toward the water. I downed half the water before my brain told me it wouldn’t be wise to drink it all at once, no matter how badly my mouth and my throat were demanding it. Then I worked up the nerve to scoot the rest of the way to the door. I wasn’t even sure why. I couldn’t begin to guess what my head thought I might find there just because somebody had knocked and left.
The fucking tracking device.
I’d stuffed it in my sock before I told the girls to run for it in Tennessee. Then these assholes fucking hogtied me and took everything but my pants. I picked it up to look at it closer, and stopped to wonder if this was some kind of game where I hadn’t been told the rules. Were they waiting for me to turn it back on hoping that it would bring the girls here after me? Or was someone else trying to tell me that help was coming for me? That was a fucking gamble and a half either way.
It wasn’t hard to imagine Memphis sitting glued to a chair in front of a computer screen every second of every day just waiting for a hint of this little device to register with her software. Who would she send here after me though? Because if Trista coming this way was the plan, I had no desire to turn the tracker back on. I was in no shape to be able to get both of us back out of this place. And for as much as she’d proven she was a teeny, tiny Rambo, she would never be able to get us out of here alive either with how many people this organization had just ready and waiting.
Trying to decide what to do with the fucking thing was at least enough to keep me from collapsing into another Liz spiral for the moment.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
trista
