I don’t know why my body keeps fighting even when I remember that. But I have to get out, have to find her, have to know the truth, the reason. I yank the tube in my nose, but it hits the back of my sinuses and makes my head swim. Baron slams his chest down on mine, smacking a call button. “What the fuck,” he growls. “You’re intubated. You can’t pull that out. You’ll rupture your fucking esophagus or something.”
I’m still fighting when the fucking army shows up, the nurses in pale blue scrubs that feature in too many of my nightmares already. I fucking hate hospitals. The drugs that cloud your mind, the helplessness, the way they keep you alive when you don’t want any fucking part of it. It’s all way too familiar by now.
The way they think they’re saving you, but they’re destroying you.
The way they keep you from saving her after you destroyed her.
four
Harper Apple
The first few days are hard. I don’t get out of bed except to use the bathroom, which is excruciating. So is sex, but I don’t say anything when each evening, the stranger comes to the bed, bends me over the side, and fucks me. There’s no point in objecting. What I want doesn’t matter. It never did. Royal kept telling me, but I didn’t understand. Now I do.
The stranger never talks, or kisses me, or touches me, but he doesn’t try to hurt me. He uses a lot of lube, and on the fourth or fifth day, it stops hurting. He asks if I’m on birth control, and I tell him I am. He calls me a good girl, but he still uses a condom. He never takes off the mask.
He takes pictures of my face and body each day, sometimes during sex, sometimes not. I don’t protest. What’s the point? I sleep when he’s not asking anything of me. I appreciate, in some detached way, how little he wants, how little he bothers me. Even during sex, he asks for nothing, not even a response. I think if he demanded intimacy of any kind, I’d shatter completely. But he doesn’t. He barely touches me.
He wakes me and dresses me and brings me to the table each day. He cooks fancy meals for me, but I don’t taste them. I eat, and when I’m done, he carries me to bed, where I curl up under the blankets. The lulling voices onLocal News with Jackiefill my head as they drone on about the cost of gasoline and someone overdosing on a new street drug. I don’t hear anything about a missing girl. I fall asleep praying I won’t wake up this time.
It’s around the seventh evening, as I’m slumped at the island eating some fancy herbed potatoes with glazed Brussel sprouts and salmon, when my savior and captor lays down his fork.
“I have to go out for a while tomorrow,” he says.
I don’t answer. I don’t care where he goes. I sleep most of the day. Sometimes the apartment is quiet, and sometimes I hear him exercising or clicking away at his keyboard in the big, open loft where he has a standing desk against one wall. I haven’t wondered where he goes or what he’s doing when he’s gone. It doesn’t matter.
“Do you need to go home and get your clothes or anything?” he asks.
I shrug.
“I’ll buy you some clothes,” he says decisively.
I don’t answer.
“Where do you live, anyway?”
“Mill Street.” My voice sounds creaky and unused. I clear my throat.
“Right.” He sips his wine and watches me for a minute. “I’m glad I wore a condom.”
I don’t say anything. What is there to say?
“Do you live alone?”
“No.”
“You have a roommate?”
“My mom.”
He swears under his breath. “Shit, that’s right. You’re in high school.”
I don’t answer.
“Am I about to be arrested?” he asks. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
He leans his elbows on the island, closing his eyes. “Thank fuck.”