My mom reached out and grabbed my hand as we watched him, but neither of us moved to follow. She was in a robe that was tied at the waist, and the hand not holding mine clutched the lapel in what was both a nervous gesture and a way of keeping the fabric covering her breasts. I was a little grossed out that both of my parents had dressed in a hurry, but I didn’t focus on that because most of my attention was at the front door. I wasn’t ready to face whatever was happening, and naively believed, for just a moment, that if we stayed in the hallway time would stop and I’d never have to find out what was going on.
Time slowed as we waited for my dad to reach the door, and we stood quietly listening to the turn of the deadbolt and the snick of the latch.
When he opened the door, I heard him say, “What the hell?” before gunshots tore through the quiet house. I stopped breathing, my confusion and horror paralyzing me. What was happening? I couldn’t seem to wrap my mind around what was going on until my mom squeezed my hand tight and jerked me to get my attention. She was wearing an expression that I’d never seen before, and in my haze it took me a minute to interpret it. Fear—all consuming, unrelenting, hope stealing fear.
Fear, but not panic.
Then time sped back up.
“Escóndete en el closet detrás de las decoraciones de Navidad. Te quiero. No salgas,” she whispered, her voice so low that I had to watch her lips.
Get in the storage space. Behind the Christmas decorations. I love you. Don’t come out.
I tightened my grip on her, shaking my head frantically as she wrapped her arms around me in a quick hug. I didn’t want to let go, and I tried so hard to drag her with me as we heard the men moving around on the bottom floor of the house, but the minute they sounded on the stairs she pushed me hard, causing me to stagger across the hallway.
“Go!” she mouthed to me before turning her back and facing the stairs.
I raced into my parents’ bedroom, scrambling to the wall. There were storage areas beneath the eaves that we kept Christmas decorations in, and I quickly slid one of the little doors open, put my phone between my teeth, and scrambled inside. My hands were sweating so much that I had a hard time getting the door closed behind me, and I bit down hard on my phone, sobbing silently as my fingers tried to find purchase on the smooth wood.
It only took me seconds before there was no light shining from my parents’
bedroom, and I crawled silently behind the boxes of Christmas ornaments as quickly as I could. Cody and I had used the storage areas as hideouts when we were little, playing hide and seek and pretending that we were hiding from bad guys. Little did I know how an innocent game would end up being the thing that saved me.
I was shaking hard, my teeth clenched to keep them from chattering, when I heard a man yelling at my mother in the hallway. Whatever he was saying was muffled, there were too many boxes between us for me to hear clearly, but the gunshot wasn’t. It was as clear as if he were standing right next to me.
I bit my arm as hard as I could to muffle the screams in my throat when I heard a loud thump in the hallway. I was hyperventilating, rocking in small movements back and forth, my mind spinning. My chest felt like it was cracking open, like any minute it would just spontaneously split apart, but still, I stayed silent.
I heard the men come through my parents’ bedroom, tearing apart the bed and lifting the mattress up off the frame before dropping it loudly. They were calling me by name, telling me to come out from wherever I was hiding, and somewhere, behind the mind numbing fear, I was mortified because I felt myself peeing my pants.
I don’t know how long I sat there after they left, shaking. It could have been minutes or hours, but I was afraid they were just waiting for me to make a move, so I did nothing. I just sat there in my own mess, with my head on my knees and my fingers twirling slowly in my hair—a habit I thought I’d grown out of when I stopped sucking my thumb in kindergarten.
When I finally felt safe enough to do something, I slowly reached my hands to the floor around me, searching for the phone I’d lost in the darkness. When I found it, I took a short breath of relief until it fell out of my shaking hand with a loud clatter, startling me and causing me to curl into a tighter ball of fear. I didn’t hear anyone, but I waited a few moments before reaching out with both hands and grabbing the phone again.
I knew I should call 911, and that was my intention, but when I accidently pushed send with my trembling fingers, I didn’t hang up when I saw the name ‘Grease’ come across the screen. He didn’t say anything right away, and it took me a couple of seconds to realize that the phone had stopped ringing.
“Grease?” I was whispering, terrified that my phone call had somehow alerted the men in the house and any second they’d slide open the door of my hiding place.
“Yeah?” he answered in his gruff voice, and I was instantly filled with a choking feeling of both relief and terror.
“Asa?” I asked again, desperate to know it was really him. “I’m scared.”
When he spoke again, worry lacing his voice, I felt like I could finally breathe. I quietly informed him that I was hiding, and when he told me he was coming to get me, I believed him. He’d saved me before, hadn’t he? So when he told me to stay where I was and keep quiet, that’s exactly what I did. I never called the police, and I didn’t leave my hiding spot. I did exactly what he told me, because I was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t.
I didn’t answer when I heard people walking around, yelling that they were police, and asking if anyone was still in the house. I didn’t call out when they searched through my parents’ room and called back and forth to each other. And I didn’t make a sound when they talked about my dead parents as if they were science projects. I couldn’t be sure they were safe. Without seeing their faces, I didn’t know if it was all a game they were playing to try and find me. So I stayed hidden, waiting for Asa, until finally, the house was silent once again.