Twenty-Five

I’m almost eleven years old when I wake up inside a car trunk.

At first, I don’t know what the hell is going on. I remember being in my bed. And then…nothing. When I open my eyes, it’s all darkness tinted red, the tang of gas strong in the stuffy air.

The car’s moving. I’ve been taken.

I keep my eyes closed, because if they’re closed, I can pretend that’s why it’s dark. I can pretend I’m not locked in here. I tuck my knees into my chest and wrap my arms around them tight, curling myself into a ball.

I’m not here. I’m not here. I’m somewhere light. Somewhere it never gets dark. I’m just gonna wait this out.

I suck in a mouthful of musty air that smells of gasoline and rubber. Breathe in, breathe out. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t pretend any longer. I can smell the exhaust, feel the spare tire underneath the lumpy carpeting, rubbing against my belly.

It’s so dark.

I concentrate again on my breath huffing in and out.

Suddenly, the driver guns the engine. I don’t have time to grab hold of anything—my body’s tossed to the side, slamming hard into the back of the trunk as the car gains speed. I’m rocked back and forth. All I can do is clamp my arms over my head, trying to protect it as I try to jam my legs up against something, anything for leverage.

Warmth trickles down my face, and I don’t know if it’s sweat or tears or blood until it leaks into my mouth.

Blood.

The taste of it centers me. Clears the fog and loosens the tight feeling in my chest.

I’ve been taken. I don’t know who did it. I have to concentrate.

What do you do, Harley-girl? What do you do when someone takes you from me?

Be calm. Find a weapon. Run at the first chance. Kill if you have to. And never, ever stop trying to get free.

I have to get out.

The brake light. I need to smash it.

I take a quick breath in and slam my palms up, scrambling for a hold. My fingers scrape smooth metal, catching on a loop of wiring that leads to the locking mechanism. I grip it like it’s my lifeline, swinging my legs down so they’re braced against the bottom of the trunk where the bumper must be.

I need to get to the brake light.

The next second, the car chassis scrapes against the blacktop and the back end flies up—we hit a big bump. I grit my teeth and hang on, my legs smacking hard against the side of the trunk as the driver takes a sharp right.

More blood trickles down my cheek. I tilt my head, wiping it away with my shoulder as I squinch down onto my hands and knees and angle my foot down, stretching it toward the brake light. My feet are bare, but it doesn’t matter.

You do anything it takes to get back to me, Harley-girl. Anything.

I smash my heel against the plastic, hard, ignoring the pain that shoots up my foot. Sweat or maybe it’s blood gathers at the small of my back and my thighs tremble from the effort. I kick and kick and kick again, ignoring the pain, ignoring the blood.

I have to get out.

I finally burst through, the cracked plastic slicing my ankle, but I can feel cool air against the torn sole of my foot.

Okay. Okay. Now I just need to get my hand through and pray someone will see. I pull my foot free, whimpering as it scrapes against the broken plastic and glass. Blood trickles down my toes, drying in the spaces between.

I wiggle toward the busted brake light, and poke my hand into the space I broke through. I wave frantically, just like Daddy taught me to.

The car comes to a sudden, shuddering halt, and all the panic I’ve managed to push down rises up inside me.

Run. Find a weapon. Aim for the crotch or the head. Kill if you have to, Harley-girl.

The trunk pops, and sunlight bores into my eyes. I blink, tearing up, trying to make out the blurry person in front of me.

I need to come out fighting. I need to do anything I have to so I can get away.

But then my eyes clear. It isn’t Carl Springfield in front of me. And it isn’t some strung-out tweeker.

It’s Daddy.

For a second, my mind just does this loop-de-loop. Like I’m on a roller coaster and my stomach hasn’t quite caught up with the rest of me. And then I realize: This is a test.

Another lesson for me to learn. Just teaching me theory isn’t enough.

No, Daddy has to know his lessons are sticking.

“Under twenty minutes,” he says, nodding. “Not bad.”

Then he reaches down, not to grab me, but to flip up the carpeting covering the spare tire. He pulls out a tire iron and places it in my hands.

“Next time, think before you panic,” he orders. His mouth is a determined line, but there’s something lurking in his face, hiding beneath the beard, maybe, that looks like regret. “You could’ve gotten free a lot sooner if you’d thought for a second and used the tire iron. Then when they come for you, you’ll be ready for them—you’ll be armed. You’ve got to stay cool and be smart. You can’t panic, Harley. Panicking will get you killed.”

I lick my lips. They’re raw—I must have chewed them bloody without knowing it. I want to scream at him. I want to swing the tire iron and smash his face in with it.

I want him to hug me and promise me he’ll never do this again.

But Daddy never makes promises he can’t keep.

“Do you understand?” he asks me, when I don’t say anything.

I look up, and it’s the closest I’ve ever come to hating him. But there’s nothing I can do, nothing I can say. His crooked world is my school, and it’s been that way forever…will be that way forever.

I am my daddy’s girl, and I do not flinch. Not even in front of him.

But it takes me two tries to say, “Yes, sir,” in a hoarse voice.

Daddy grabs me beneath the arms, heaving me out of the trunk and setting me on my feet. We’re still on the property, but now we’re a long way from the house, near the western part that sinks into nothing but forest for acres. My head’s spinning, and so’s my stomach. I want to puke, but I breathe hard through my nose, a long, shuddering gasp, and hold it in.

“Are we done?” I ask Daddy, clenching my teeth. I won’t throw up. I won’t.

“We’ll go back to the house,” Daddy says. “Clean you up. Your head—” He reaches forward, and I finally flinch.

“Sweetheart,” Daddy sighs. “I know this is hard—”

“Are we done?” I ask again.

We’re at a standstill for a long moment, when all I can feel is the blood trickling down my face, and something else, something deep inside me that hurts more than my foot or lips ever could.

Then he looks down. “We’re done…for today.”

I nod, just once, my chin jutting out. And I turn and walk away, ignoring him when he calls out for me. The world starts spinning beneath my feet, my arms feel wobbly and my legs tremble, but I stagger forward, aiming for the splash of dark green ahead of me.

I barely make into the forest before I collapse onto my knees, vomiting helplessly into a fern bed.

  

Eventually, seeking solitude like a wounded animal, I get up and stumble deeper into the woods until I end up in one of my favorite spots, the ruins of the stone house, the one that my great-times-a-bunch-granddaddy built. Only two walls and the river-rock chimney still stand, overgrown with manzanita and blackberry bushes. I’m sitting with my back up against what’s left of the chimney, fiddling with a loop of barbed wire I’ve picked up along the way, when Will finds me.

He doesn’t say anything, just drops down next to me onto the ground, his legs stretched out in front of him. I know there’s blood on my face, so I don’t look up, but after a few minutes of silence he holds out the paper bag he brought.

I scoot until I’m sitting cross-legged in front of him. Will sets the bag down between us, grabbing a washcloth and bottle of water from it. He wipes my cheek, dabbing gently at my temple where the gash is.

Will’s good at patching me up. I suck at doing the same for him, but I’m teaching him how to climb trees right to make up for the last time, when I accidentally elbowed him in his fresh black eye when I tried to clean it. He’d been really nice about that. He’s really nice about everything. Sometimes I wish I was, too, but I don’t think I’m built that way.

I don’t think Daddy built me like that.

“You hurt anywhere else?” Will asks, pressing a bandage onto my cheek with his thumb. His eyes scan up and down me, checking.

I start to shake my head, but stop halfway into it, closing my eyes, because my brain feels swollen and sore inside my skull. I can’t help it and it shames me, but I can feel a tear sliding down my cheek. I raise my fist and wipe it away furiously.

Will shoves the box of Band-Aids back into the bag a little too hard. It rips, the contents of his makeshift first-aid kit scattering onto the forest floor.

“He shouldn’t have done that,” he says quietly, like he’s expecting Daddy to be looming, listening. Ready to teach me another lesson.

I shrug, unable to meet his steady gaze. But I can feel the sobs rising in my throat. So I swallow them down and go back to fiddling with the barbed wire again, twirling it back and forth between my fingers.

“Hey,” Will says, and I finally look up. He tries to smile at me, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “It’s okay. You got through it. Maybe he won’t make you do it again.”

We both know he’s lying through his teeth. If Daddy doesn’t do this again, he’ll do something worse.

“You can get through anything,” Will says.

“You don’t know that,” I say, because the years have taught me that sometimes people don’t. Sometimes houses blow up. Sometimes mommas die. Sometimes daddies are something that shouldn’t live in the same skin as the man who tucks you in at night.

“I believe it.” Will tugs at the wire in my hands. “Look,” he says, running his finger down the barb. “You gotta be like barbed wire. Tough no matter what, ready to tangle with anyone who gets too close. If you stay like that, you’ll be too strong for anyone to hurt you. Not inside. Not where it counts.”

He grabs my hand and loops the wire around my wrist. Digging in his pocket, he comes up with his hunting knife and uses it to twist the ends together to form a bracelet. Then he presses the flat of the blade against the barbs, bending them inward so they can’t scrape me. When he’s done, he looks up and smiles, this time for real.

“So you don’t forget,” he tells me.

I smile back. My stomach’s tight, there’s the taste of blood in my mouth, and barbed wire wrapped around my wrist, like a gauntlet, a badge of honor, a tie that binds him and me.

I’m too young for this feeling and too old and too scared and a little happy, and it’s years till I realize this is where I start turning away from Daddy and toward Will instead.