Emma
Emma didn’t know day from night anymore. The light flickered, burned out. No one to replace it. She waited hours for the terrible food to come. She didn’t know who slid it in, who made it, or how long she’d been there anymore.
She was being punished, and it was her own fault, she knew. When she let her thoughts travel in reverse—because from what she could see, in the murky, hazy present, there was no forward, only back—she saw where she had gone wrong. She could make lists of her own stupidity. No one needed to come in and torture her with idiotic questions. She could beat herself up just fine. Was that the point? Was that what all solitary confinement was for? To point you toward regret?
Finally, the tiny door opened. Light bled in from outside, brighter than sunlight, and once again, she could see the red marks on her ankles and wrists, from when she fought the shackles. From before she’d given up. Here are your latest mistakes, they seemed to say.
Squinting into the brightness, she could see there were two people this time, a man and a woman. One wearing white, one wearing black. If she was writing a story, a story that came to her, that detail would be significant. That’s the kind of thing she needed to notice. Concrete, but a metaphor.
“Emma?” a voice said, floating toward her. No one else had used her first name. So formal with their inmates. So proper as they manipulated your body and asked so much, too much, of your mind.
“Yes,” she said, in case a rescue was imminent, in case this person was a helicopter sent to ferry her out. In case this voice wasn’t her roommates, her teachers, that asshole RA. She’d stopped saying their names, trying to tell her story, fearing they’d go get them. That speaking them was a summons, a prayer. She’d stopped telling them anything.
“It’s Mom,” the voice said.
“Oh no, they got you too,” she said.
Maggie crouched down and held Emma’s face in her hands. She smoothed her skin, fingered her short hair.
“It’s okay, honey,” she said.
“I had to cut it,” Emma said.
“That’s all right. We can fix it.”
“It’ll grow back.”
“Yes, but I kind of like it this way. I can see your eyes.”
“They took everything,” Emma said. “They took all my stuff.”
“It’s all right, sweetheart,” Maggie said. “We’ll get you new stuff, I promise.”
“How did this happen?” her mother said to the other one, the one in white. “How could she have been here for days without the police knowing?”
“She signed herself in,” he replied. “Voluntary. We had no idea there was a missing girl in the area.”
“I needed to sleep,” Emma said. “They said I could sleep.”
“You can sleep,” Maggie said. “There’s plenty of time for everything else.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” Emma whispered.
“Me, too, Em. Night. I love you.”
“Night. I love you,” she parroted back softly before closing her eyes.