“Oh, but we can,” he laughing mockingly. “That’s actually the saddest part of all, knowing that so many girls can disappear and nobody even thinks to look for them.”
He leaned forward again and stared directly across at me. “Who would come for you, Everly Hayes? Who would even notice if you went missing? Your loser boyfriends? I doubt that!”
I wanted to say the Kings. I even wanted to say Ryker. I wanted to say Penny or my Mom and Nat. Maybe my grandparents, who I barely talked to.
But the truth was, I didn’t truly know. The Kings would mourn my disappearance and I could even see them filled with sorrow over losing me, but I couldn’t imagine them standing up to the Organization that ran their lives and the lives of their families. Penny would be even more helpless and unable to save me.
And of course my Mom would probably think I ran away or something. She probably wouldn’t even look for me. Nat would be helpless, and my grandparents would believe anything my Mom told them.
So who would come for me?
In the end, it might wind up that I have to rescue myself. That I’d have to understand nobody would come for me, so I had to be there for myself.
I was so far into the gloom of my own thoughts that I believed for a moment that Mitchell was right. Nobody would care if I disappeared.
But then my heart lurched and I realized something very powerful and immediate. A truth. The Kings and Ryker would do something. They would notice my disappearance, and they would want to know where I was. They’d tear the world apart looking for me, if they could.
“They would come,” I said with renewed confidence. They really would. I had just been silly, falling back into my little pit of despair..
“They’re a bunch of stupid boys,” Mitchell said. “Boys who have no agency on their own. They have no money of their own, they have no abilities of their own. You’re fucked if you think the Kings will save you, Everly.”
I hated the way he said my name, like it was the brand name of an exotic bubbling water company. Like I was a commodity to be bought, tasted, and consumed.
“They’d come,” I repeated stubbornly and finally Mitchell grew tired of trying to annoy me into a reaction. I’d been around my little sister Nat long enough that I could play this game all day. I could ignore his desperate attempts at getting me to react.
“Okay, little whore,” he said and stood. “I have people waiting for me. Make sure you stay hydrated. I want your mouth nice and juicy when I fuck it.”
And with that, he left, and I was blessedly alone again.
I would never lament my solitude again, not when there were always worse things that could happen.
* * *
“Your life sounds horrible,”Penny told me a week or so later. We were already in December and we’d been allowed to meet up at the mall to do some early Christmas shopping. I wanted to get Nat an iPad, and the Kings had given me money for it. “I can’t believe I was so envious when you got into Covington, I was so jealous and imagined you living such a glamorous existence.”
“And now you know,” I said and took a deep breath. “I thought it was going to be awful, but not because of this. This is all insane and sometimes I feel like I’m trapped in a horrible nightmare.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish there was something I could do to help.”
“I know, but even just being here for me is helping me get away from the madness,” I said. We were sitting on a bench in the middle of the mall, but even there in that public space, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was being watched. I felt like that all the time, now. It wasn’t just that I’d been photographed and recorded by Reg and Rick, but it felt like the Organization had their fingers extending everywhere all around me.
“You know, you could tell your Mom that you were going to spend the night at my house if you ever want to sneak away with your Kings,” Penny suggested. “I don’t mind helping you avoid the Organization.”
“I don’t want to drag you into this anymore,” I said. “I love you for wanting to help me, but I’m so scared it would get you hurt. I would never forgive myself if you were harmed again because of me.”
I still felt sick when I thought about what had happened to Penny, and I still wondered how I’d ever been in such a fog that I’d thought hiding it from her was a reasonable solution. The drugs were long gone out of my body at least, and I was so clear-headed now that it caused me shame, thinking of how bizarre my reactions had been.
My trauma responses had been so off kilter, I barely recognized that girl anymore. Once again, I was so happy to have my ride or die best friend sticking with me through all of the shit.
“Come on, Everly,” Penny said and kicked my leg with her foot in a playful fashion. “You can use me, besides, I could sneak out with my new friend Mark. You’d be helping me out, too, we could sneak out together.”
I thought about it a couple minutes longer, and I knew I should tell her no, but the appeal was too great. I couldn’t resist the idea of seeing them without being watched and reported on.
“Yeah, let’s do it,” I said. “We could say we want to go shopping in Ashton. That would buy us some time during the day, and then we could go out after dark.”
“Exactly,” Penny said and leaned against me. She smelled like peaches, she always smelled like that. It hit me hard, how much I’d missed her and my former, boring life at Oakville High. I almost let the tears spill over, but I blinked them back and looked to the future instead. “This is a foolproof way for us to have some much deserved fun.”
I nodded and felt a flutter of excitement in my stomach at the thought of a moment’s freedom.
It was foolproof and we deserved it. Nothing would go wrong. I told myself that again and again, nothing would go wrong.
If only I’d been able to see the future, I never would have agreed to it in the first place, because as it turned out, everything went wrong. It went terribly fucking wrong in the worst possible ways.