Delilah

DELILAH

NOW

I hear footsteps. They move across the ceiling above my head. My eyes follow the sound, but there ain’t nothing to see ’cause it’s just footsteps. That don’t matter none, though, because the sound of them alone is enough to make my heart race, my legs shake, to make something inside my neck thump like a heartbeat.

It’s the lady coming, I know, ’cause hers are the bare feet while the man always wears shoes. There’s something more light about her footsteps than his. They don’t pound on the floor like the man’s do. His footsteps are loud and low, like a rumble of thunder at night.

The man is upstairs now, too, ’cause I hear the lady talking to him. I hear her ugly, huffy voice say that it’s time to give us some food. She says it like she’s teed off about something we’ve done, though we’ve done nothing, not so far as I can tell.

At the top of the stairs, the latch unlocks. The door jerks suddenly open, revealing a scrap of light that hurts my eyes. I squint, see her standing there in her ugly robe and her ugly slippers, her skinny legs knobby-kneed and bruised. Her hair is mussed up. There’s a scowl on her face. She’s sore ’cause she’s got to feed Gus and me.

The lady bends at the waist, drops something to the floor with a clang. If she sees me hiding in the shadows, she don’t look at me.

This place where they keep us is shaped like a box. There’s four walls with a staircase that runs up the dead center of them. I know ’cause I’ve felt every inch of them rough, rutty walls with my bare hands, looking for a way out. I’ve counted the steps from corner to corner. There’s fifteen, give or take a few, depending on the size of my steps and if my feet have been growing or not. My feet have, in fact, been growing ’cause those shoes I came with no longer fit right. They stopped fitting a long time ago. I can barely get my big toe in them now. I don’t wear no shoes down here anymore ’cause I stopped wearing those ones when they hurt. I got one pair of clothes. I don’t know where they came from but they ain’t the same clothes I was wearing when I got to this place. Those stopped fitting a long time ago and then the lady went and got me new ones. She was put out about it, same as she’s put out about having to feed Gus and me.

I wear these same clothes every day. I don’t know what exactly they look like ’cause of how dark it is down here. But I do know that it’s baggy pants and a shirt that’s too short in the sleeves ’cause I’m forever trying to pull them down when I’m cold. When my stink reaches the lady’s nose, she makes me stand cold and naked in front of Gus while she washes my pants and shirt. She’s got words for me when she does. Ungrateful little bitch, ’cause then she’s sore she’s got to clean my clothes.

It’s pitch-black where we are. The kind of black your eyes can’t ever get used to because it’s so dang black. Every now and again, I run my hand in front of my eyes. I look for movement but there ain’t none. If I didn’t know better, I’d think my hand was gone, that it up and left my body, that it somehow tore itself off of me. But that would’ve hurt and there would have been blood. Not that I would have seen the blood on account of how black it is down here, but I would have felt the wetness of it. I would have felt the pain of my hand getting tore from my body.

Gus and I play chicken with ourselves sometimes. We walk from wall to wall in the darkness, see if we’ll chicken out before we run face-first into the wall. Rules are we got to keep our hands at our sides. It’s cheating if we feel with our hands first.

The lady calls down from the top of the stairs, her voice prickly like thorns on rosebushes. “This ain’t no restaurant and I ain’t no waitress. If you wanna eat, you’ve got to come get it for yourself,” she says.

The door slams shut. A lock clicks and there are the footsteps again, drawing away.

The lady wouldn’t bother feeding Gus and me but the man makes her do it ’cause he ain’t gonna have no blood on his hands. I’ve heard him say that before. For a long while, I tried to make myself not eat, but I turned dizzy and weak because of it. Then the pain in my belly got to be so bad that I had to eat. I figured there had to be a better way to die than starving myself to death. That hurt too much.

But all that was before Gus came. Because after he did, I didn’t want to die no more, ’cause if I did, then Gus would be alone. And I didn’t want Gus to wind up in this place all alone.

I push myself up off the floor now. The floor is rock hard and cold. It’s so hard that if I sit in the same spot long enough, it makes it so I can’t feel my rear end. The whole darn thing goes numb, and then after numb, it tingles. My legs are worn out, which don’t make no sense ’cause they don’t do much of anything except sit still. They’ve got no reason to be tired, but I think that’s why they’re so tired. They’ve plumb forgotten how to walk and to run.

I slog to the top of the stairs, one step at a time. There ain’t no light coming into this place where they keep Gus and me. We’re underground. There’s no windows here, and that crack of light that should be at the bottom of the door ain’t there. The man and the lady that live upstairs are keeping the light all to themselves, sharing none with Gus and me.

I feel my way up the stairs. I’ve done it so many times I know what I’m doing. I don’t need to see. I count the steps. There’s twelve of them. They’re made of wood so rough sometimes I get splinters in my feet just from walking on them. I don’t ever see the splinters but I feel the sting of them. I know that they’re there. Momma used to pull splinters out of my hands and feet with the tweezers. I think of these splinters living in my skin forever and it makes me wonder if they fall out all on their own, or if they stay where they’re at, turning me little by little into a porcupine.

There’s a dog bowl waiting at the top of the steps for Gus and me to share. I don’t see it, either, but I feel it in my hands, the smooth round finish of the dish. There was a dog in this house once. But not no more. Now the dog’s gone. I used to hear it barking. I used to hear the scratch of nails on the ceiling above me, and would make believe the dog was gonna open the door one day and set me free. Either that or eat me alive ’cause it was a big mean dog, from the sound of it.

The lady didn’t like it when the dog barked. She’d tell the man to shut it up—either you shut it up or I will—and then one day the barking and the scratching disappeared just like that, and now the dog’s gone. I never did lay eyes on that dog, but I imagined it was a dog like Clifford, big and red, on account of the gigantic bark.

Inside the dog bowl is something mushy like oatmeal. I take it back downstairs. I sit on the cold, hard floor, lean against a concrete wall. I offer some to Gus but he says no. He says he ain’t hungry. I try and eat, but the mush is nasty. My insides feel like they might hurl it all back up. I keep eating, anyway, but with each bite, it gets harder to swallow. I have to force myself to do it. I do it only so that my belly don’t hurt later on, ’cause there’s no telling when the lady will bring us more food. My mouth salivates, and not in a good way. Rather, it salivates in that way it does right before you’re about to throw up. I gag on the mush, vomit into my mouth and then swallow it back down. I try to make Gus eat some, but still he won’t. I can’t blame him. Sometimes starving is better than having to eat that lady’s food.

They’ve got a little toilet down here for Gus and me. It’s where we do our business in the dark, hoping and praying the man and the lady don’t come down when we’re on the pot. Gus and I have an agreement. When he goes, I go in the other corner and hum so I can’t hear nothing. When I go, he does the same. There ain’t no toilet paper in this place. There’s no place to wash our hands, or any other part of us for that matter. We’re dirty as all get-out, but things like that don’t matter no more, except for when our filth makes the lady mad.

We don’t get to take no real bath in this place. But every now and again a bucket of soapy cold water arrives and we’re expected to strip down naked, to use our hands to scrub ourselves clean, to stand there cold and wet while we air-dry.

It’s damp down here where they keep us, a cold, sticky wet like sweat, the kind that don’t ever go away. The water oozes through the walls and trickles down sometimes, when it’s raining hard outside. The rainwater pools on the floor beside me, making puddles. I walk in them puddles with my bare feet.

In the dark, I hear something else splashing in them puddles sometimes. I hear something scratching its tiny claws on the floor and walls. I know that something is there, something I can’t see. I got ideas, but I don’t know for sure what it is.

I do know for sure that there are spiders and silverfish down here. I don’t ever see them, either, but sometimes, when I try and sleep, I feel their stealth legs slink across my skin. I could scream, but it wouldn’t do any good. I leave them be. I’m sure they don’t want to be here any more than me.

I’m not alone down here, not since Gus came. It makes it better, knowing I’m not ever alone and that someone is here to bear witness to all the things the lady does to me. It’s usually the lady doing the hurting, ’cause she don’t got an ounce of goodness in her. The man has maybe an ounce ’cause sometimes when the lady ain’t home he’ll bring down a special treat, like a hard candy or something. Gus and I are always grateful, but in the back of my mind I can’t help but wonder why he’s being kind.

I don’t know how old I am. I don’t know how long they’ve been keeping me here.

All the time I’m cold. But the lady upstairs couldn’t give two hoots about that. I told her once that I was cold and she got angry, called me things like ornery and ingrate, words that I didn’t know what they mean.

She calls me many things. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think my name was just as easily Retard or Dipshit as it is Delilah.

Come get your dinner, Dipshit.

Stop your whining, you little retard.

The man went and brought me a blanket. He let me sleep with it one night but then he went and took it away again so that the lady didn’t find out what he’d done.

I don’t know the difference between daytime and nighttime anymore. Long ago, light meant day and dark meant night, but not down here it don’t. Now it’s just all dark all the time. I sleep as much as I can because what else is there to do with my time than talk to Gus and play chicken with the walls? Sometimes I can’t even talk to Gus ’cause that lady gets mad at us. She screams down the stairs at me to stop my yammering before she shuts me up for good. Gus only ever whispers ’cause he’s scared of getting in trouble. Gus is a fraidy-cat, not that I can blame him. Gus is the good one. I’m the one who’s bad. I’m the one always getting into trouble.

I tried to keep track of how many days I’d been down here. But there was no way of doing that seeing as I couldn’t tell my daytimes from my nights. I gave that up long ago.

The sounds upstairs are my best measure of time. The man and the lady are loud now, trash talk mostly ’cause they ain’t ever nice to each other. I like it better when they’re loud, ’cause when they’re quarreling with each other, then nobody’s paying any attention to Gus and me. It’s when they’re quiet that I’m scared most of all.

I set the dog bowl aside. I did the best that I could. If I try and eat any more I will vomit. I offer some more to Gus but he says no. I’m not sure how Gus has made it this long on account of how little he eats. I never get a good look at him in the darkness, but I imagine he’s all skin and bones. I’ve caught glimpses of him when the door opens upstairs and we get a quick scrap of light. He’s got brown hair. He’s taller than me. I think he’d have a nice smile but Gus probably don’t ever smile. Neither do I.

The spoon chimes against the bowl. I reach down and take ahold of it in my hand. For whatever reason, I get to thinking of the way that lady comes downstairs sometimes. I don’t like that none. She only comes when she’s hopping mad and looking for someone to take her anger out on.

Gus must hear the jingle of the spoon. He asks what I’m doing with it. Sometimes I think Gus can read my mind.

“I’m keeping it,” I say.

Gus tells me that a round spoon isn’t going to do nothing to hurt no one, if that’s what I’ve got my mind set on, which it is.

“You’re just gonna get yourself in trouble for not giving the lady back her spoon,” he says. I can’t ever see the expression on his face, but I imagine he’s worrying about what I’m gonna do. Gus always worries.

I tell him, “If I can figure out a way to make it sharp, it’ll hurt.”

I’m banking on that lady being so soft in the head she’ll forget all about the spoon when she comes to get her bowl. I put the rest of the mush down the toilet so she don’t get angry and call us names for not finishing her food that she made. I put the empty bowl at the top of them steps and start thinking on how I’m going to make this round spoon sharp as a spear.

---

There ain’t much to work with in this place where they’ve got us kept. The man and the lady don’t give Gus and me no stuff. We’ve got no clothes other than the ones we’re wearing, no blankets, no pillows, no nothing. The only thing we have aside from the floor and the walls is each other and that icky toilet on the other end of the pitch-black room.

It’s only after I try to sharpen my spoon on the walls and the floor that I decide to give the toilet a go.

I don’t know a thing about toilets other than that’s where I do my business and that ours has never once been cleaned. The darkness is a blessing when it comes down to the toilet ’cause I don’t want to see the inside of it, not after all this time that we’ve been crapping in there and no one’s been cleaning it. The foul smell alone is enough to make me gag.

“Where you going?” Gus asks as I take my spoon to the toilet. Gus and I have a way of knowing what the other is doing without ever really seeing what the other is doing. That comes from living down here long enough and getting to know each other’s habits.

“You’ll see,” I tell him. Gus and I speak in whispers. I’m pretty sure the man and the lady who live upstairs aren’t home right now ’cause I heard the doors opening and closing not too long ago. I heard their loud footsteps go suddenly quiet. There’s no one up there talking now, no one screaming, no noise from the TV.

But I can’t be sure. ’Cause if they are here, I don’t want them listening in on Gus and me and knowing what I’m doing with my filched spoon. I’d get a whipping if they did—or worse. I ain’t ever tried to run away before or make myself a weapon, but common sense says that’s gotta be a worse punishment than not finishing the lady’s nasty dinner or telling her I’m cold.

I let my hands float over the toilet awhile. I feel it up for a sharp spot. But the toilet is smooth as a baby’s bottom. I almost give up, not thinking I’m going to find a spot to sharpen my spoon here. It’s all one part, except for the top of it, the lid, which I discover by accident comes off. I hoist it up in my arms. It’s heavier than I thought it’d be, all dead weight. I almost drop it.

“What’s the matter?” Gus asks, panicked over some noise I make. I think that Gus is younger than me, on account of how chicken he is, even if he is taller. But anyone can be a chicken, no matter what their age or size.

“Nothing’s wrong,” I tell him, not wanting to think what would have happened if I did drop the lid. I set it gently upside down on the floor. I tell Gus, “Don’t worry about it. Ain’t nothing the matter. Everything’s fine.”

Gus is a worrywart. I wonder if he’s always been that way or if the man and the lady have done that to him. I wonder what kind of boy Gus was before he got here. The kind who climbed trees and caught frogs and played ghosts in the graveyard at night, or the kind who read books and was afraid of the dark. We tried talking about it once, but then I got sad and wound up telling Gus I didn’t want to talk about it no more. ’Cause most of my earliest memories have that man and that lady in them, and in them, they’re doing wicked things to me, things that I don’t like.

That man and the lady saved the newspaper from when I went missing. The lady read those stories out loud to me, telling me what happened to my momma, showing me pictures of my daddy standing in front of our big, blue house, crying. She told me how the police was looking for me. But then, soon after, she rubbed it in and gloated, saying that the police weren’t looking for me no more. She told me then that I was old news and that they got away with taking a kid that wasn’t theirs.

“Stealing kids,” she said, “is the easiest thing in the world.”

I go back to investigating the toilet. I discover that that tank is full of nasty water, which I mistakenly plunge my whole arm into, right up to the elbow. I cringe and shake it dry, not knowing if it’s pee or what. Then I get down on the ground and run my fingers along the inside of that toilet tank lid.

The inside is much different than the whole rest of the toilet. It’s gritty and coarse, not the same baby’s bottom smooth. My fingers come across a jagged ridge on the inside of it, like a lip. That jagged ridge might just do the trick.

Gus is worried sick that whatever I’m planning won’t end well. I’ve tried for a long time to make him see we ain’t got no other options if we ever want to get out of this place. But that there’s the problem with Gus. He’d just as soon stay here than risk getting caught trying to leave.

I run the edge of the spoon back and forth on that ridge. I get my knuckles caught on it time and again, and feel them getting scraped up. It burns like heck, but I keep at it. It takes a long while, but eventually the ridge of the toilet tank lid begins to mangle the spoon. Not spear-sharp, but uneven, the kind that promises to get sharp the longer I work with it.

“You shouldn’t be doing that,” Gus says.

“Why not?” I ask.

“They’ll kill you.”

I run my finger along that botched edge, feeling hopeful for the first time in a long while.

“Not if I kill them first,” I tell Gus back.

---

I ain’t ever thought about hurting or killing a person before. That’s not my way. I don’t got a mean bone in my body, or at least I don’t think I did before coming to this place. But being locked in the dark does bad things to a person’s mind. It changes them. Turns them into something new. I’m not the same person I was before that man and that lady stole me.

If it wasn’t for Gus, I wouldn’t have survived so long in this place. Gus is the best thing that happened to me.

I don’t know for certain when Gus arrived. All I know is that he showed up out of the blue one time when I was dead asleep. I went to sleep and when I woke up, he was there, crying in the corner, worse off than me.

That man and that lady, he told me, had opened up the basement door, shoved him down them steps, locked up behind him. Gus was twelve at the time. Only God knows if he’s still twelve.

What Gus told me when he stopped his crying was that they used that big red Clifford dog of theirs to cajole him into their car, just like fishing bait. Poor Gus liked dogs. And he couldn’t help himself when the lady smiled kindly at him and asked if he wanted to pet her dog, which was sticking its big red head out of the car window.

Gus had been at the playground that day, playing ball with himself when they stole him. Shooting hoops. There wasn’t anyone around to see them go. His ball got left behind. I wondered why Gus was playing ball alone, and if that meant he didn’t have any friends, but I never asked him. Things like that don’t matter anymore, anyway, ’cause now he’s got me.

---

Day and night, I continue to work on my spoon. I don’t know how long I’ve been going at it, but I’ve whittled it down enough that I’ve gotten myself a point. It ain’t the best point ever. It’s jagged and uneven, but at the top of that spoon, the metal thins to a sharp tip. When I stab it into my finger it hurts. I’m too chicken to stab it hard enough to make it bleed, but before too long I’m gonna have to. I’ve got to test it. I’ve got to know if it works.

I lost track of how long I’ve been carving this dang thing. Long enough that my hand’s tired as all get-out. Gus offered to do it for me, but I said no ’cause I didn’t want him getting in trouble. I know he doesn’t want to help ’cause he’s scared half to death of what I’m doing. He was just trying to be nice, but if someone’s gonna take the fall for this spoon, it’s me.

I hide that spoon when I ain’t working on it. I hide it inside the toilet tank, put the lid back on and cover it up.

But it’s not hidden now ’cause now I’m working on it, even though the man and the lady are right upstairs. I ain’t got no other choice if we’re ever gonna get out of here. I’ve got the lid off the toilet. I’m going at it full tilt with my spoon when I hear the lady declare to the man that she’s got to feed us. There ain’t no warning then because the door yanks suddenly open, and there it is again, that thin scrap of light that hurts my eyes.

All at once that lady’s at the top of them steps. “Come get your dinner,” she says, and I don’t make a move to go ’cause usually when she says it like that, she just sets the dog bowl there at the top of them steps and leaves it for us. But not tonight. Because tonight, when we don’t come, she says, “How many times have I told you before that I ain’t your dang waitress and this ain’t no dang restaurant? You better get your ass up here and get your dinner in five seconds or else. Five,” she barks out, keeping count.

I look at Gus, but he’s scared stiff. I got to be the one to do it ’cause Gus is frozen in fear. He can’t move.

“Four,” she says, and before I know it, the lady’s counting down faster than I can get my spoon back in the toilet, get the lid quietly on and push my sleepy legs up off the floor and run.

I’m not dumb. I know how many seconds it is till she reaches one, and it’s not many. I remember how to count and do math, ’cause my minute math worksheets are one of them things that I do in my head when I’m bored to death. I know that the lady will be at one in no time flat.

“Three,” she’s saying. I ain’t ever gonna get there in time. My hands and legs are shaking. My heartbeat is thumping loud. I catch a glimpse of Gus out of the corner of my eye as I go running by. He’s sitting on the floor with his legs pulled into him, scared as heck, wanting to cry.

The lady reaches one right around the same time my feet hit the bottom step. She’s up there at the top of them steps, looking down at me. I got to squint my eyes to see her because my eyes ain’t used to the light. She’s standing up there holding her nasty meal in the dog dish.

I hear her ugly laugh when she gets to one. She’s delighted in having me run scared.

“You ain’t hungry?” she asks, standing smugly at the top of them steps, like a know-it-all. She don’t wait for an answer. Before I can get a word out, she asks, “You think I got all day to sit around here and wait for you to come get your food?”

“No, ma’am,” I say, my lips quivering.

“No, ma’am, what?” she asks sharply.

“No, ma’am, I don’t think you got all day to sit around and wait for me to come get my food,” I say, the words rattling in my throat.

“You ain’t hungry?” she asks, and I got to think a minute about what the right answer is. I am hungry. I’m just not hungry for her food. But if I tell her that, she’ll be angry ’cause she went to the trouble of making me food.

“I am hungry, ma’am.”

That lady tells me, “It would be good for you to show some gratitude from time to time. I ain’t gotta feed you, you know? I could just leave you here to starve to death.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” I say. My eyes stare hard at the floor so I don’t have to see her ugly face.

She asks me, “What were you doing down here that it took you so long to come?” I don’t like the way she’s looking at me, like she knows something she shouldn’t. My stomach churns, thinking maybe she knows I’ve been up to no good. I feel myself stiffen there at the bottom of the steps. But my spoon is tucked away inside the toilet where she won’t ever find it. My spoon is safe and because of that so am I, for the time.

I lie and say, “I was sleeping.”

“What’s that you say?” she snaps, suddenly madder than she was before. Up there at the top of the steps, her face turns beet red.

I realize my mistake too late.

“I was sleeping, ma’am,” I tell her. I ain’t ever supposed to say anything without saying ma’am at the end. I’m supposed to show some respect for all that she does for me, otherwise I get punished.

The lady’s quiet for a long while. She’s just looking at me, staring. I don’t like the quiet because when she’s quiet, she scares me most of all.

“Looks like someone ain’t gonna eat tonight, after all,” she says, and then she mutters under her breath, “Ungrateful bitch.”

She turns away from me and takes her slop with her. At the top of them steps, she slams the door closed and turns the lock. I step backward and drop down from the wooden step to the concrete floor, thinking that if that’s the worst she’s got for me—taking away Gus’s and my dinner—then I got off pretty easy this time.

But I’m no dope. I know that’s too good to be true.

---

That lady hasn’t fed us since that day I forgot to say ma’am, not that I want to eat her nasty food. But just because I don’t want to, doesn’t mean that I’m not hungry. It doesn’t mean that I don’t need to eat. I don’t know how much time has passed since that day she tried to feed us last. It feels like weeks.

At first I was hungry as could be. But then, strange enough, that feeling of being hungry went away, only to be replaced with something else. Something worse. For the first couple of days, all I thought about was food, until I was sure I could smell and taste the foods I was thinking about. Now I don’t think about it much anymore. Now I just think about what it will be like to starve to death. I wonder if I’ll just go ahead and die in my sleep, or if I’ll know the moment I stop breathing and my heart stops beating ’cause I’ll be gasping for air or something.

The lady hasn’t brought us nothing to drink, either. I’m thirsty as all get-out. Gus and I went without water long enough that we got to drinking that dank water in the back of the toilet tank because it was all that we got. We’ve been taking baby sips only, not knowing if or when it will run out. We don’t ever drink nearly enough to quench our thirst. We’re still thirsty as heck.

I’m not the only one around here who’s hungry. Gus is hungry, too. I hear his tummy grumbling, but Gus don’t say nothing about being hungry, though we both know it’s my fault he is.

Gus is sleeping now. I’m trying to sleep. But I got too much on my mind to sleep. Now that the lady’s starving us to death, I know we got to get out of here if we don’t want to die. We got to take the next chance we get to run, if we ever get another chance. I been doing my calisthenics. It ain’t easy because after all this time not eating, I’m weak as can be. My legs don’t work right, and if I’m gonna stand a chance of running away from here, I got to get them ready. I’ve been spending my time jogging in place, leaning down to touch my toes, marching laps around Gus and my dungeon while he watches on, asks what I’m doing, begs me to stop. Gus don’t like the idea of us running away ’cause he’s scared as heck we’re gonna get caught.

I shrugged when he said that, and said, “Maybe we will, maybe we won’t. But how do we know if we don’t try?” I told him that when I go, he’s got to make sure he’s right behind me. He can’t drag his feet ’cause we’re better off dead than getting caught.

I sit now with my spoon in my lap. I keep it close. It’s not a spear. I don’t think it’ll ever be a spear, but it’s mangled enough that it’s got a chiseled point and could stun someone, if not kill. Stunning someone might be as good as it gets, but it’s better than nothing.

---

All of a sudden, the door creaks open. I hold my breath. It ain’t the lady coming. It’s the man. I can tell by the sound of his footsteps, though he’s trying to be quiet, which tells me the lady is somewhere up there, too, but she don’t know he’s coming down to see Gus and me.

I grip my spoon. The last thing I want to do is hurt the one who’s been nice to me—or nicer, ’cause keeping kids in your basement ain’t ever nice, even if you aren’t the one hitting them. But sometimes you got to do what you got to do, and the man is the least suspecting of the two. I’m ready, or at least as ready as I’ll ever be. I’ve thought this through a gazillion times. In my head I know what to do. But still, that don’t mean that my heart isn’t going hog wild. My arms and legs is shaking and I know I’ve got to get ahold of them if I’m going to do this right. I take a deep breath, count to ten. Release it.

“Where you at?” the man is asking, hissing his words out into the darkness.

Gus says nothing. “Right here,” I say, gripping my spoon so tight it hurts my hand.

He comes to me. He says he’s got a candy bar for me to eat. I hear the sound of him unwrapping it. “Far as she’s concerned, we might as well leave you down here to starve to death. But don’t worry. I won’t let nothing bad happen to you.” He’s trying to sweet-talk me, to make up for her not feeding us for all this time. He feels badly about it. He slips the candy bar into my hand. “Go on,” he says, “eat it.” This ain’t the first time the man’s brought me chocolate. He brought me a cupcake once, ’cause he said it was my birthday. I don’t know if it was.

I bring the candy bar to my mouth. I set my lips on it and taste the chocolate. It’s richer than I’ve ever tasted before. I sink my teeth slowly in. This candy bar is the kind with nuts. It’s got something gooey inside. That gooey something falls to my chin, tasting so sweet that I want to cry. I can’t remember the last time I ever ate something so sweet in my whole life. I nibble at it ’cause I want this candy bar to last forever. I should save some for Gus. Gus would love this candy bar. And Gus needs to eat far more than I do. He’s wasting away. But I don’t want the man to think I’m ungrateful. He’s probably got another one for Gus, anyway.

I take another bite. The sweet sugar rushes through my bloodstream. I make a sound.

“You like that?” the man asks, standing so close I feel his breath on me when he speaks. It stinks.

“It’s good,” I say back with a hunk of chocolate in my mouth. It sticks to my teeth, that gooey something like glue.

The man is trying to wheedle me. He talks soft, buttering me up, and I don’t know if it’s ’cause he feels bad about the lady starving me or if it’s ’cause he’s got something else on his mind. “I got more where that came from. Whenever you want, it’s yours. All you’ve got to do is ask.”

The man is standing so close. Wherever the lady is at, she don’t know that he’s here.

There may never be another chance as good as this.

I’m nervous, ’cause I’m thinking about all the things that could go wrong when I try and stab him with my spoon. The fear almost gets the best of me. I almost talk myself out of it.

But then I get to thinking about Gus spending the rest of his life in this place, and know I’ve got to do it for him. I’ve got to get Gus out of this place if it’s the last thing I ever do.

I hold the spoon tight, wrapping my fingers around the belly of its handle. I got only one chance to do this right. I don’t plan to aim for anything in particular. It’s too dark to see where I’m aiming, anyway. I just got to stab and see where it lands.

The man is telling me what a pretty girl I am when I take a deep, terrified breath and reach out and jam that spoon as hard as I can into him. If I had to guess, I’d say I hit somewhere around the side of the man’s neck because of where he’s standing. When I stab him, the tip of the honed spoon goes into him; I know ’cause it don’t feel like a dead end when I touch skin. It don’t go far, but it goes, leaving behind more than a scratch. The man lets out a screech.

It ain’t a knife I have. It’s something far lesser than a knife. One run-through isn’t going to work. I grab my spoon out of this man’s neck and spear him again and again. I don’t know how much damage I’m doing, but by the sounds he’s making, it hurts.

The man falls to the ground, taking me down with him. He’s grunting, clutching himself, calling me names. I try rising up to my legs. As I do, he reaches out and tears at my hair with his sweaty hands. I pull away, feeling some of my hair go with him. I let out a cry and keep going.

The man reaches out again, but this time I’m standing upright. He gets my leg and tries tugging on it to keep me from leaving. I kick at him. I got only my bare feet, so that don’t hurt none, but I kick hard enough that his hands let go ’cause he can’t hold on to me no more.

I got him on the floor. From the sound the man’s making, he ain’t gonna be quick to get up and follow me.

I call to Gus, “Come on,” as I go charging up them steps. I must’ve dropped my spoon ’cause I don’t have it anymore.

At the top of them steps, I lay my hand on the door handle and turn. I hear Gus’s scared footsteps on the stairs behind me. He’s walking from the sounds of it, when I need Gus to run. I tell him to hurry up. There’s a pounding in my head, a ringing in my ears. Gus is crying.

The man downstairs is making a sound. It’s not so much a scream as it is a bellow. But it’s loud enough that I’m starting to wonder how far it carries. Far enough that the lady will hear?

Once upstairs, I have no idea where I am. I have no idea where I’m going. The only time I’ve ever been up here before was when they first brought me to this place, for those first two seconds before they pushed me down the steps and locked up tight behind me. I don’t remember it. It’s dark upstairs but, unlike downstairs, it’s not black as pitch. Here and there is a faint glow of light that helps me see.

I call to Gus to hurry up. I don’t know how far he is behind. One quick glance over my shoulder tells me he’s there, but lagging behind. I know Gus is scared to death, and I try and reassure him that everything will be all right. “This ain’t no time to be scared, Gus,” I say, trying not to be mean about it, but firm. “We got to go. You got to run.” I reach back and grab ahold of his hand, pulling him with me. His hand is cold as ice. Gus says nothing but every now and again I hear him cry.

I hear that lady’s voice somewhere in the distance, half-asleep and confused. “Eddie?” she’s calling out. “What’s the matter, Eddie?”

The man is making his way up the stairs now. He figured out how to get himself up off the floor, though he’s still groaning as he chases after Gus and me. I hear the man scream to the lady, breathless and mad. “That little bitch got out,” he’s saying. “She’s getting away.”

“What?” the lady asks. “How, Eddie? How in the hell did that happen?”

That man lies and tells her, “I don’t know how.” He’s telling the lady they got to find me, that they can’t let us get away.

I find a door on the wall. I can just barely make out the square shape of it in the faint nighttime glow. I reach for the handle, but the door is locked up tight. My sweaty hand feels up the door, landing on the lock.

The man and the lady are getting closer. I know ’cause they’re still screaming at one another, telling each other which way to go to find Gus and me. Calling one another idiots, telling each other to turn on a light so that they can see. Their voices feel close enough to touch.

They try and negotiate with me, saying things like, “If you tell us where you are, we’ll give you a cookie,” as if I’m dumb enough to fall for that. No cookie is good enough to live here the rest of my life.

But then, in the blink of an eye, they go from negotiating to mean, ’cause right after their offer for a cookie, they’re calling me a bitch again, saying, “I’ll kill you when I get my hands on you, you little bitch, you dumb twat.”

They know this is my doing. They know Gus ain’t so naughty as to try and run on his own.

My sweaty hand turns that lock and the door miraculously opens. There’s a rush of air on the other side of it. It’s hot and sticky, hitting me like a wall. It comes barreling into me and I freeze ’cause I ain’t ever felt it in all these years that I’ve been here. Fresh air.

The outside world immobilizes me at first. But then I get ahold of myself ’cause if I don’t I’m easy prey. ’Cause when the front door opened, an alarm on the house started screaming. If the man and the lady had any question about Gus and my whereabouts before, they know now.

The lady hollers that we’re getting away.

I force myself outside. I start running. I’ve still got Gus’s hand in mine and I pull on it, dragging him with me. There’s fear in being outside as much as there is in staying inside. I haven’t been outside in a long time. I nearly forgot all about outside.

The heat and the darkness swallow me whole and I run faster than I ever have in my life. I drop Gus’s hand by accident, but I pray that he can keep up. Gus hasn’t been doing his calisthenics like me, so there’s no telling what kind of a runner he is. But sometimes being scared makes you do things you didn’t know you could do.

My bare feet run across pebbles first and then the grass. The pebbles cut into my feet, hurting, making them bleed, though I’m not paying any attention to things like that. The grass, when I get to it, is soft and wet, tickling my feet. But I can’t feel that, either, not really, ’cause I’m just running.

I see something shining in the sky. The moon. Stars. I forgot all about the moon and stars. I hear the buzz of nighttime bugs around me. I want to stop and stare and listen, but I can’t. Not yet. Not right now.

“Stay with me, Gus,” I scream back over my shoulder, knowing we’ve got to get far, far away from this place before we stop to look back. For all I know that man and that lady are just twenty paces behind and they’ll catch us if we stop for a breath. I ask Gus if he’s coming, if he’s okay. I tell him to stay with me. To not slow down one bit. “We’re almost there, Gus,” I say. “We’re almost free.”

For a while I hear that man and that lady calling after us. They’re quiet mostly because they don’t want to cause a commotion. They got flashlights with them, though, ’cause I see the glow of those flashlights moving through the trees. Every so often the light falls on Gus and me and I duck away from it, veer off in some different direction so that soon I’m all turned around and couldn’t find my way back to that house if I wanted to.

But then, after a while, I can’t hear the man and the lady no more, which is a relief, but it also terrifies me. I wish they’d make some sort of noise so that I’d know where they are. Have we lost them? Or are they hiding in the trees, waiting for me?

It’s dark outside mostly, still nighttime. The moon and the stars light the world a bit, make it so I can somewhat see. After all that time in the basement, our eyes are accustomed to the darkness. It gives us an advantage over the lady and man. They’re not used to seeing in the dark, like Gus and me.

I don’t know where we’re at. There are houses, a street. But there aren’t too many houses and what there are is broken up by trees. The trees are big and tall, but not the kind that are big enough that Gus and I can hide behind. The houses are tucked into the trees, and they’re dark, hardly a light on anywhere. The grass everywhere is overgrown. It reaches right up to my knees and is chock-full of prickly weeds that scratch at my bare feet and legs. They’re knifelike, stabbing me and making me bleed.

I run headlong into a tree branch, stunning myself. For a minute, I see stars. My knees lock and I freeze in place, trying to get my bearings. “What happened?” Gus asks. But before I have a chance to tell him, I hear the snap of a tree branch from somewhere behind and know we’ve got to keep running if we’re to survive.

I say, “Let’s go.” I take off again. I hear the sound of Gus’s heavy breathing behind me. After a while, neither of us says another word ’cause we got to conserve our breath for running.

I trip over a felled tree. I go soaring to the ground, where I land on my hands and knees. It hurts, my knees mostly, but I can’t lie there on the ground and cry about it. I get myself up, dust off my hands and knees and keep running. “Watch out for the tree,” I whisper to Gus as I go, knowing he’s got to be just steps behind me, though his breath is getting harder and harder to hear over the sound of mine.

My legs are getting worn out from all the running, my feet heavy as lead. My heart is beating hard, on account of being short of breath, and my fear. I’m scared as hell, wondering what that man and that lady would do to us if they caught us.

Now that I got a little taste of freedom, I don’t want to die.

I run fast past houses. I cut through yards. I run down the road.

A ways down, my legs become tired as all get-out. Gus and I ain’t got a lot of options. There are a handful of houses, but what are the odds that anyone would open up for us if we knock on their door in the dead of night? I’m not sure we can risk it. We’re sitting ducks if no one lets us in.

Hiding out seems like the better choice. I start looking for a place to hide. My running has slowed down some. We’re no longer being tailed by the flashlights, but I’m not so dumb as to believe the man and the lady plumb gave up and went home. They’re playing games with Gus and me.

In the backyard of one of them houses, I spy a shed tucked beneath a gnarled tree.

“Come on, Gus,” I call, knowing the shed would be as good a place as any for us to hide. “In here,” I tell him, spotting a padlock on that shed door, but seeing that it ain’t locked up tight. We can still get in.

I silently remove the padlock from the metal loop and open up the hasp. The shed door pipes when I open it up, so I don’t open it all the way. Just enough to get in. I slip inside, make room for Gus. But Gus doesn’t come. He must have fallen farther behind than I thought. I got to wait for him to catch up.

Only when I’m in, tucked behind the shed door, do I allow myself a look back. I hold my breath waiting for Gus to materialize in the yard in the darkness of night and join me in the shed. But Gus ain’t there.

I look all around and call quietly for him. Gus ain’t nowhere.

---

I hear footsteps. I hear the mashing of leaves beneath someone’s feet, like someone’s chomping on chips. I hear the sound of breathing, of heavy huffing and puffing, and though I hope and pray it’s Gus, I know it ain’t, ’cause that’s the same huffing and puffing that man was making when he was first chasing after me.

I’m in that shed. I got the door pulled to. It ain’t closed up tight ’cause I was looking out for Gus when the footsteps came. I slinked back into the blackness of the shed when they did. I wasn’t quiet enough ’cause that man heard something. Something brought him to me.

Now he’s inches away. I’m crouched down into the corner of the shed, tucked behind a big old garbage can. There ain’t a whole lot of room in this place ’cause it’s chock-full of stuff I can’t make sense of in the dark.

I can feel my whole self shaking. I got to sit on the wood floor, pull my knees into me and wrap my arms around them to keep from shaking so much I rattle the stuff around me. I’m wondering where Gus is. I’m thinking that if the man is here, then that means he don’t have Gus. But maybe the lady has Gus. Or maybe Gus is hiding in his own shed, ’cause even though he’s a scaredy-cat, Gus ain’t an idiot. He can take care of himself.

The man’s footsteps encircle the whole entire shed. They come to a stop right there by the door. His heavy breathing makes me breathe faster and louder, so that I got to hold my breath to keep from giving up my hiding place. I got to press my hands to my mouth so that the noisy air can’t get in or out.

The heartbeat inside my neck is going so wild it makes me dizzy. I got a cold sweat going on. I feel like I could pee my pants. I can’t hold my breath forever. I take one small, quiet breath, and then press my hands to my mouth and hold it.

The moon on the other side of the shed door is bright. It lights up the man, shines on him standing there just outside the open doorway. It makes him glow. I see the shape of him. I see his pointy chin and his straggly hair. His big nose. He’s an ugly man, just like the lady’s ugly. He ain’t super tall, not nearly as tall as my daddy was when I remember him.

The man turns toward the shed door and opens it up all the way. The door whines, sad that the man is coming in. With that door all the way opened up, the moon comes worming into the shed, too, brightening it some. Not a ton, but enough to scare me ’cause with the moonlight on me, I’m not as invisible as I thought.

I close my eyes and burrow my head into my knees, try and make myself small.

I hear the click of the flashlight turning on. Through my closed eyelids, I barely see the blaze of light as it goes roving around the inside of the shed, bouncing off walls. I ain’t ever been so scared in my whole entire life.

The garbage can is tall and wide, taller and wider than me. I’m crouched so low my body hurts. I got myself rolled into a ball, just like pill bugs. I ain’t breathing much, just enough as I have to do to keep from turning blue. But they’re half breaths that I take, never letting enough air in or out, so that my chest aches and burns. I pee myself. My soft pants fill with it, turning soggy.

The light from the flashlight moves on and gets dimmer, but it doesn’t go completely away. He’s investigating some other part of the shed. The moments tick by at a snail’s pace. With my eyes closed up tight, I can’t see nothing, but I imagine the man investigating every crevice, every nook and cranny, in that whole entire shed, looking for me.

I start wondering, worrying that I got a foot stuck out, that the sleeve of my shirt or a clump of dirty hair is somewhere where he can see. ’Cause even though I’m hiding behind that garbage can, what if all of me ain’t tucked neatly back?

The shed door squeals open even wider.

One loud footstep tromps into the shed with me. Then another. Then another.

He’s coming inside the shed. Next thing I know, he’s all the way inside the shed with me. I hear that man’s heavy breathing. I smell his rank breath.

He’s saying words, telling me he knows I’m there.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he singsongs, and if it wasn’t for that, I’d think he did see me. But I’m no idiot, whatever that lady thinks. I’m no twat. If he knew where I was, he’d have me by now. But a hunch is all the man’s got.

He swears blind that he ain’t gonna hurt me none. “Just come on out, little girl, and I’ll take you home.”

I don’t believe him. Or maybe I do. Except home is not my home. He don’t intend to take me back to Daddy. No, this man intends to take me back to his home and lock me back in that dungeon of his, after he teaches me a lesson about stabbing people with spoons.

I curl more tightly into my pill bug ball. I hold my breath. I bite my lip and clench my eyes shut tighter, ’cause somehow not seeing makes it feel less real.

Something inside that shed goes crashing down. I start. It takes everything in me not to scream. Whatever it is, the man knocked it from its place, trying to scare me out of my hiding place. Something else falls. He’s knocking things down on purpose. I peek one eye open and see a box of nails spilled on the wooden floorboards. They’re sharp as daggers.

I think of all the bad things this man could do to me with them nails. He’s madder than I’ve ever seen him. I brought out the devil in him when I went and stabbed him with my spoon.

I hear the lady’s voice hissing from the other side of that shed wall. She’s calling for the man, telling him to stop making such a racket ’cause someone will hear.

“You see her?” the lady asks. “She in there?”

The man lets out a big long breath, then says, “Not in here.”

The flashlight light falls away from me. His footsteps retreat and he goes outside.

On the other side of that wall they’re talking quiet-like, making a plan about how they’re gonna find me. He’s gonna go one way, she’s gonna go the other.

I make a plan, too. I’m gonna stay right here.

The man asks, “Everything good back home?” and I know that’s when he’s talking about Gus.

“All good,” the lady says, and I know then that that lady did snatch Gus and bring him back. Now Gus is locked in the dungeon without me. Or maybe he’s dead. ’Cause that’s the best way they could punish me for what I’ve done, by hurting or killing Gus.

I want to cry, but I can’t cry ’cause crying would give me away. I could give myself up and go back to living in that dungeon of theirs with Gus, but I can’t. One of us has got to live through this ordeal and tell the rest of the world where we’ve been all this time. For Gus’s sake, now more than ever, I’ve got to live.

---

Light noses its way into the shed with me. It comes in through the slats of the wooden boards. It’s a golden yellow, something I ain’t seen in years. Seeing the sunlight nearly makes me cry, but I don’t cry ’cause crying won’t do me any good. I’ve got to keep my wits about me if I’m going to try and find my way home.

The shed, now that I see it in daylight, is old and rickety. There’s a lawn mower and a ladder in here, and a bunch of broken bikes. I rise up to my feet, try and step around them, but my legs are half-asleep on account of the way I’ve been sitting. I never did sleep, all night long. I spent the whole night crouched into a ball, waiting for that man to come back.

At some point in the middle of the night, it started raining. I heard them raindrops pounding on the roof and, every now and again, a stray raindrop snuck into the shed with me, landing on my arms and face. I tried to gather that rain into the palms of my hands and drink it, but there wasn’t ever more than a couple drops of it. I’m so thirsty. My throat is bone dry. I ain’t drank in days. My lips is dry, too. They’re split so that, on them, I feel blood. I run my tongue over that blood and taste it.

When it was raining, it took everything in me not to go outside, to leave the safety of the shed, and turn my face up to the sky with my mouth open wide. But I was scared to death the man was waiting for me on the other side. So I settled on just drinking one stray raindrop at a time.

My body hurts now, from running the way I did. There’s dried blood on my hands and legs. That’s from tripping over the tree. My feet are covered in blood, too. There’s wood chips and pebbles stuck in them. It hurts to walk, but I do, anyway, ’cause I got no other choice. In the sunlight I see scars on my arms, from who knows what. Probably all the times that lady went and hit me with her belt, or the time she threw hot water that smelled like a swimming pool on me. That hurt like heck, when it wasn’t itching half to death.

I go to the front of the shed, but I don’t go straight outside. I stand in the doorway first, looking out, surveying my surroundings. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know that I’m alone, that I’m not being watched.

There’s a house outside. It’s big and white and falling down. It’s got a slant to it, the porch is uneven and a broken window is patched up with red tape. Smoke comes from the chimney, which is the only way I know that the house isn’t abandoned, that someone still lives there.

The world outside the shed is wet from the rain, though it ain’t raining no more. The sun is just starting to come up. The sky is full of puffy clouds in shades of pink and blue. Seeing colors like that makes me gasp. I haven’t seen colors in nearly forever. I have to think a minute to remember the names of them. There’s yellow beneath the clouds, the sun sitting there where the sky meets land.

The earth itself looks fuzzy to me, like there’s clouds coming up from the ground, too. The world is overwhelming and big. I find myself missing the darkness of the enclosed basement, ’cause even though it was the worst place in the world, something about being shut in made me feel safe. There was only one way in or out. No one was gonna sneak up on me without me knowing. But here, bad things can come at me from any direction. The sun is getting to be so bright I can just barely open my eyes. I feel danger everywhere, lurking, hiding out where I can’t see it.

The shed feels safe and enclosed to me, like the basement. I have half a mind to lock myself inside and stay put. I got to give myself a good talking-to to work up the nerve to leave.

I take a hesitant step out. I put my bare foot on the wet grass. There’s a puddle there. It’s mud-splattered and warm, but still, I drop to my belly and take a big, long swig of the dirty water before standing back up.

I decide right away that I’m not going to go to that house and see if anyone is home. Because I don’t know who lives there, and what kind of people they are. I don’t know if they’re the kind of people who would snatch up children that ain’t theirs and keep them.

Instead, I move unnoticed across the yard and to the street on the other side of it. The street is at first dead quiet. There’s more than one house, but they’re all the same, big and white, and run-down. They’re spread apart, with land between them, so that I got to walk awhile to get from one house to the next. I don’t walk in the street. Instead, I walk in the ditch beside it so that when a rare car comes soaring past, I drop down in that muddy ditch and hide.

I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where I’m going. I’ve never been in this place before, not so far as I know. But I don’t know where the house is that the man and the lady kept me; I don’t know what it looked like from the outside. With all my running last night, I got turned around. I couldn’t ever find my way back, which makes me think that the man and the lady could be living inside any one of these houses here; that Gus could be inside any of these houses here; that the shed where I spent my night could have just as easily belonged to them.

I’m worried about Gus. But I don’t got any idea what to do. All I know is that I got to save myself first before I can save Gus. The thought of that knocks me sideways. It just don’t feel right leaving Gus behind, though I know if I go back to the man and the lady, we’re both dead.

I try and memorize my surroundings. If I’m ever gonna find my way back I got to remember things like the fence, which sits waist-high and is brown, falling down. I got to remember them smokestacks billowing not so far in the distance. I got to remember the houses, which are old, every single one of them, with paint that flakes off. There are trees on one side of the road, but on the other there’s a field, with crops that grow. I go to the crops and snatch an ear of corn for myself. For a moment, I hide myself in the field and take a bite of that corn, not remembering the last time I ate, but especially not remembering the last time I ate something that wasn’t mush. The corn is hard and starchy. It ain’t tasty at all. It hasn’t been cooked. But that don’t matter at all. I’m so hungry I’d eat dirt if it was my only choice.

I rise back up to my feet when I finish that corn. I’m tired, but I don’t got time for napping. I trudge on through the edge of the cornfield, which hides me some. It’s not easy on the feet. The ground here is mushy from last night’s rain, and soon the bottom half of me is covered in mud.

The sun keeps coming up. After a while, it dries the puddles some. It warms my skin so that I go from cold to hot real quick. The fields thin and, little by little, trees crop up so that soon I’m marching through a forest. Like the cornstalks, the trees hide me, too, though I hear the street not so far from here. I hear the cars go zooming past. In the woods, I cross a little crick. I pause for a sip of water. I splash a handful of it on my face and hands, cooling me down, washing the caked-on blood away. I rub it over my arms. It feels good, but it don’t do nothing to get rid of the scars.

The sun is hot now. It burns my eyes. I keep them trained on the ground, ’cause looking anywhere up hurts bad. My eyes aren’t used to the sunlight.

I don’t see the lady and her little girl and dog come walking through the woods at first. It’s the dog that sees me. I turn sharply at the sound of its bark, rise up quickly from the crick and think about running. Energy floods my legs and I nearly bolt.

But the dog is small and white. It yaps more than it barks, its tongue hanging out sideways. Its little tail wags like it thinks that seeing me is the best thing in the world. The girl says hi. She says it about a gazillion times, like it’s a new word she’s learned and she’s trying it on for size. They put me at ease. I don’t bolt, because the dog and the little girl are pleased as Punch to see me.

The woman is slack-jawed. Her eyes are wide and she’s pulling on the leash, trying to stop the dog from running to me. But then, by accident, the leash slips from her hand. The dog breaks away and comes running. At first I flinch ’cause it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a dog, and here this dog is jumping on me, licking me, peeing.

“That’s Cody,” the woman says. Her voice is kind. “He won’t hurt you. He just gets excited when he meets new people,” she says, coming closer to pick up the dog’s leash, but she leaves him where he is ’cause the dog is nice, and after a quick second, I’m not scared of it no more.

The woman is looking strangely at me. I have no idea what I look like. All I can see is my arms, my chest, legs and feet. I can see my hair, too, ’cause it’s long, but I can just see the part of it that dangles. I got no idea what it looks like on my head. In that dungeon where they kept me, it used to fall out in clumps for no good reason at all.

“Are you new?” the woman asks, ’cause she knows she ain’t ever seen me around here before. I shake my head. Her eyes go to my bare feet, which is bleeding. There’s a thin stream of blood coming real quick. There’s still blood on the knees of my pants and I ain’t bathed in weeks. My breath and my underarms is raunchy. I keep my arms down so the woman can’t smell what I smell when I lift them up. The little girl is still saying hi.

“Are you hurt?” the woman asks. She doesn’t wait for me to tell her ’cause she can see for herself that I am. I’m hurt bad all over. “You’re hurt,” she says. “You’re bleeding,” she says, pointing at my feet and then my knees. “Right there. And there. How old are you?” she asks, and when I don’t answer right away, she starts rattling off numbers. “Eleven? Twelve? Fourteen?”

I nod at fourteen ’cause I’ve got no idea how old I am. Fourteen is as good an age as any.

It hurts to stand or walk, ’cause my feet on the underside is all torn up. My legs are sore and my belly aches.

The woman is still staring at me. She’s got yellow hair like the sun. She smiles at me, but I can tell that it’s not a real smile. It’s a worried smile. The woman don’t know what to make of me, though soon she ain’t looking at my face anymore ’cause she’s looking at my hands and my arms and my knees and my feet.

I like the sound of her voice. It’s soft and kind. “Are you lost, sweetheart?” she asks me, her eyes coming back to mine. I say nothing.

“Do you live around here?” the woman asks.

I shrug my shoulders. I open my mouth to speak, but my voice is just barely there. I got to stop and start over a time or two. “I don’t know, ma’am,” I say, ’cause truth be told, I got no idea where I live, other than that the house is blue. But I couldn’t find that blue house if my life depended on it.

“You don’t need to call me ma’am, honey,” she says. “You can call me Annie.” But of course I can’t do that ’cause when I don’t say ma’am I either get a beating or I get starved. “You’re really lost, aren’t you? What happened here?” she asks, meaning those scars on my arms.

I just stare dumbly when she asks. I don’t say nothing but I feel tears pooling in my eyes.

The woman asks, “Can I call your parents for you? Do you know their phone number?”

I shake my head. I don’t know nothing about that.

I can see the worry in her eyes. She looks me up and down. I feel uncomfortable with her looking at me like that, so I look at my hands instead. There’s gravel buried into the palms of them. I pick at the tiny pebbles with my dirty fingernails so I don’t have to look this pretty woman in the eyes.

“What’s your name, sweetheart? Would you be willing to tell me that?” She takes a breath when I say nothing. She says, “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

I’m scared as heck, wondering what she wants to know my name for. But I tell her, anyway, ’cause I don’t know what else to do and ’cause the woman seems kind. She don’t seem like the kind of lady who would snatch kids that aren’t hers and keep them in her basement.

“Delilah,” I tell her, my voice rattling.

I see in her throat that she swallows hard. There’s a bulge that moves up and down. The little girl is tugging on her hand now, asking again and again, “Who dat? Who dat, Mama?” but the pretty woman don’t answer her.

“Delilah what?” the woman asks me. She got her eyes set on me now. She’s not looking at my feet or my knees, but now she’s looking at me. Her eyes have gone from wide to wider and her skin is suddenly white-like. The dog’s yapping up at her, trying to get her attention, but she pays it no mind.

“Delilah Dickey,” I say.

The woman don’t say nothing this time, but her hand goes to her mouth and she gasps.