Or did she know who I was?
Doubtful.
Flute Girl was too young to read my books, probably too stupid as well, and Mrs. Dixon didn’t strike me as much of a reader.
Should I tell her who I am?
Would it mean anything if they knew I was a world-famous author?
Somehow, I thought not.
I pretended to be asleep or passed out or whatever kind of unconscious state was plausible for someone who had recently rolled her car and probably had a concussion.
No, actually I wasn’t used to waiting, and yes, I usually did get what I wanted.
And right now, Mrs. Daryl Freaking Dixon, I want you to stop talking, and I want the ambulance to get here, and I want to get some pain medicine, and I want to get my shoulder fixed, and I want my mom, and I WANT TO GO HOME.…
The door creaked.
I sucked in a breath and froze. Was she leaving?
“Mama.”
The voice. The one I’d first heard say my name.
Flute Girl? Was Mrs. Dixon her mother?
My heart sank as I tried to stay motionless.
“Is she dead?” Flute Girl sounded a little too excited at the prospect of my checking out for good. Maybe that had been her intent when she came at me with that club.
Did this woman—apparently her mother—know?
Something poked me in my cheek.
My eyes fluttered open.
Flute Girl stood next to her mother, both of them looking down at me.
Gathering every ounce of ornery still in my possession, I growled, “I’m not dead.”
Flute Girl reached out again to poke me. There was dirt under her fingernails. I reached over with my good hand and slapped hers away. The movement sent a fresh course of pain up my bad shoulder, yet I managed to growl, “Get your filthy hands off me.”
Both of them took a step back. Flute Girl crossed her arms as her mother simply frowned at me.
“Well,” said Mrs. Dixon. “Maybe you need some time by yourself until you can figure out how to apologize to my daughter.”
“Apologize?” I nearly spit out the word. “Are you for real? After what she did? She hit me with a stick!”
Mrs. Dixon looked down at Flute Girl, who shrugged halfheartedly with one shoulder, then turned her gaze to me. Her eyes narrowed. “What my daughter did was come and get me and tell me there was an accident. Then we both got you out of the wreck and brought you here. Do you know how hard that was?”
“You didn’t have to do that!” My face burned as I cried and shouted, which sent fissures of pain out from my shoulder, but I couldn’t make myself stop. “All you had to do was call 911!” And it dawned on me that for whatever reason, she hadn’t called them. Not at all. “Just give me my phone! Let me call myself!” The yelling killed my head, and I had to shut my eyes against the tears pouring out. My pounding heart seriously made my brain hurt.
Just breathe.
The woman’s voice droned on, berating me. “Are you this ungrateful to everyone? Or just people who pull you out of cars and bring you into their homes?”
Breathe. I scrunched my eyes shut tighter against the swelling pain and frustration and anger. Stay rational. This woman is crazy, and you have to stay calm.
I opened my eyes back up and tried to smile as I sucked up to her. “Thank you so much for that. But I really think I should let you all get back to what you were doing before I came along. You have been … so kind.” I almost choked on those words, but I kept going, hoping it would help. “I’m sure you’ll be happy to get me out of here and on my way. So maybe you could try 911 one more time.” And then, the addition of the one thing that most certainly would seal my fate. “I’d be happy to pay you for your trouble.”
Which it did, seal my fate, that is, because Mrs. Dixon’s face clouded over, a sudden thunderstorm on a previously partly sunny day. She grabbed the arm of Flute Girl and whipped around to the door.
Desperation choked me as I cried, “Wait! Where are you going?”
Flute Girl went through the door, and the woman turned back around to face me, glowering. “You think you can buy anything, don’t you? Well you can’t buy me.” And she left, slamming the door behind her.
“And no one is coming for you!”
There was a very distinctive Click!
Did she lock me in? Holy crap, she locked me in.
I yelled, “You can’t do this!” I rolled onto my good side, curled up my legs, and dropped them over the side of the bed. I used my momentum to sit up. “Ah!” The swift stab of pain in my shoulder sent a flurry of white snow across my vision. My balance wavered.
I dropped my head and took a deep breath. As my gaze eventually cleared, I found myself staring down at my feet on the green indoor/outdoor carpeting that covered the floor. My bare feet.
Where were my shoes?
I glanced at my right wrist. My MedicAlert bracelet and gold and silver Rolex were still there. My clothes as well: black leggings, camisole, sweater.
But my shoes, my $300 black Italian leather flats, were missing.
All the more reason to find out what the hell was going on.
I counted to three and stood up.
The white snow returned, but this time as a blizzard that refused to clear. Before I could sit back down on the bed, I promptly fainted.
{3}
MY DREAMS WERE of McGrath’s Fish House, a restaurant in Bend where we went nearly every Sunday after church. For an appetizer, my dad always ordered the bruschetta topped with a tapenade and tomatoes and shrimp and a balsamic vinegar reduction glaze. He reeked of garlic for days afterward. The stench seeped out his pores. Once when his breath sang of garlic, my dad had tried to kiss my mom, but she playfully fended him off.
I tried that appetizer one time. But the taste of garlic lingered in my mouth the rest of the day, making me put my hand in front of my mouth in case anyone got near enough to smell my breath. I didn’t exactly have to worry about someone trying to kiss me. Well, at the moment anyway. Because I knew exactly who I wanted to kiss.
My boyfriend, Rory, lived in Illinois, half a continent away. We didn’t get the chance to see each other much—actually we had never even met in person—but he promised to meet me when my November book tour stopped in Chicago.
Before Rory, I didn’t have a lot of friends my age. Actually, make that no friends. I started writing my series the summer before freshman year of high school. Because I was so immersed in it, we decided as a family that homeschooling would make much more sense than traditional school. So I signed up for an online charter, and Mom resigned from her law firm to stay home with me. I knew how much of a sacrifice that was for her, because she was the sole “minority” partner. The birth mother was an unknown Vietnamese girl; birth father, an unknown GI with some black heritage. Luckily, in the waning days of the Vietnam War, some kindhearted soul had stuck her on a plane evacuating orphans to the US, where she’d been adopted by a wonderful family.
So Mom grew up in Portland, went to Lewis & Clark Law School, and worked hard to make partner in a Bend law firm made up of white guys. She assured me nothing would make her more fulfilled than staying home with me.
I felt guilty about it at first, but soon it was clear how much more relaxed she was when she didn’t have to go to work all the time.
And it was all worth it because shortly after that came my book deal, and that was that: school for two hours in the morning, writing the rest of the day.
After my first book tour when I was sixteen, Rory sent a message to my Facebook fan page, introducing himself. He said he’d been at one of my appearances, but was too embarrassed to meet me so he had his mother get his book signed for him. His picture was nice; he had short dark hair and blue eyes and a charming smile with dimples. I wrote back, telling him I remembered signing the name Rory. That was a lie; I didn’t remember at all, but I didn’t want to make him feel bad. Actually, more than that? I wanted to say something that would ma
ke him feel good, would maybe make him want to write back. Which he did.
He was the first boy my age I’d ever corresponded with. We discovered we had so many things in common: He loved Edgar Allan Poe as much as I did. I told him about the huge poster I had of Poe up in my room, and he had the same one. And we were both deathly allergic to bee stings. He wore a MedicAlert bracelet, too.
After a month, we started talking on the phone. Secretly, of course, because I didn’t think my parents would approve of me spending so much time with a boy they had never met. And only on Sunday nights because he had six AP courses and had to get a 4.0 if he stood any chance of getting a scholarship, so he spent almost every waking moment studying.
I wanted to tell him that I could pay for his college so he wouldn’t have to study so hard and could spend more time talking with me. But I wasn’t sure how he’d take that. (As if my parents would even have let me.) And then we began to Skype. Well, sort of, because the camera was broken on his laptop and he couldn’t afford to get it fixed. So I couldn’t see him, but he could see me.
He was the first person who ever told me I was beautiful.
I wasn’t beautiful, I knew that. But my skin was a nice mix of Mom and pasty-white Dad, and my hair was good, finally. My nose wasn’t too big and my eyes were a lovely brown and my teeth were white and even. I wished I looked more like my mom, but my lips were kind of thin, like my dad’s, and I knew that even on a great day, I wouldn’t pass much beyond “kinda pretty.”
But when Rory told me that I was beautiful? My heart pounded and I blushed. And I would make sure that when we did meet, and we did get a chance to kiss for the first time, I would not eat any garlic beforehand.
Garlic. Why was I dreaming about garlic?
I opened my eyes.
Flute Girl knelt next to me on the floor, orange stains on her chin, breathing garlic breath all over me.
I started to sit up and the pain in my shoulder made me freeze and fall back onto the floor with a groan. I lay there and tried not to focus on the throbbing.
She scooted back, not taking her eyes off me as she called out, “Mama! Oh-liv-ee-ah is awake.”
I wanted so badly to reach up and smack my name off her lips, tell her never to say it again. But all I could do was lie there, bracing myself until the wave of agony receded enough that I could start breathing again.
Footsteps neared and Mrs. Daryl Dixon walked into the room, holding a plate of noodles and marinara sauce and a slice of garlic bread. She smiled. “Well, good. Just in time for dinner.”
Through gritted teeth, I said, “I need medical attention, not spaghetti.”
She tilted her head slightly. “But you must be hungry.”
Let this be a dream. I shut my eyes. Let it be some stupid dream.
Then the stench of garlic again, as Flute Girl’s breath puffed on my face.
“Get away.”
I opened my eyes. Flute Girl sidled away from me, like one of those weird slack-limbed creatures in a horror movie, her pigtails swinging from side to side as her skinny arms and legs drove her backward. Really, it wasn’t much of a stretch to envision that pint-sized asshat as a spawn of evil, come to kill us all.
Mrs. Dixon set the plate down and stood above me, looking down. Her hair fell around her face as she shook her head. “You probably shouldn’t try to get up on your own.” She looked at her daughter. “Help me get her back in bed.”
Mrs. Dixon reached for my good arm as Flute Girl headed for my bad one.
“No!” I straightened out my right arm and thrust my palm at her. “Don’t! Not the bad side—please!”
Flute Girl didn’t listen. Instead, she gripped my bad arm with both her grimy hands and twisted.
The pain was a sharp knife slicing through my shoulder. I screamed and tried to hit Flute Girl with my other arm, but her mother already had a firm hold on it. So I kicked out with my legs, which did nothing but make the pain worse. They dragged me off the floor by my arms as I screamed.
Flute Girl backed up onto the bed, still wrenching my shoulder.
“Stop it! You’re hurting me!” I began to dissolve into ugly crying. “Stop! Oh please, stop!”
Flute Girl finally let go, and Mrs. Dixon shoved me so that I found myself facedown on the bed, my bad shoulder twisted under me. I bawled at the pain, unable to move. Tears mixed with snot smeared onto the bed.
I gathered all the strength I had left and pushed off with my good arm, until I was lying flat on my back. Then I maneuvered until my bad shoulder was in the air, as close to elevating it as I could get.
The sobs took away my breath, and between gasps I said, “You’ve got to get me to a hospital.” At first I wondered if they had even heard me. Are they gone?
I rolled my head to the side. Both of them still stood there, watching me.
Flute Girl wrinkled her nose. “Her face is a mess.”
Mrs. Dixon walked over to the desk and brought back a box of tissues. She pushed it at me. “Here. Clean yourself up.” Then she took Flute Girl’s hand and led her to the door. Flute Girl walked through, but her mother turned back to me. “Maybe you’ll be hungry for breakfast.” Then she picked up the plate of spaghetti and shut the door after her.
Click!
I lay there, sobbing, until the only sounds coming out of me were ragged sighs. My God, I was in a freaking Stephen King novel. Only in Misery, Annie Wilkes gave the dude painkillers.
I reached for the tissue and blew my nose with one hand as best as I could. I didn’t plan on hanging around long enough to let Mrs. Dixon start hacking off any of my extremities, that was for sure.
No more crying.
I wiped my face.
Crying isn’t going to get you out of here.
I didn’t know what Mrs. Dixon and Flute Girl were up to. Were they insane? Or was this some game they were playing so I would think they were insane?
Because it was abundantly clear that they had not called anyone: not my parents or the authorities or the first responders. Didn’t Oregon have some sort of Good Samaritan law? Whatever it was, they had broken it. No phone call made it clear they meant to do me harm.
Which meant it was me against them.
“So no more crying.”
I swallowed, wiped my nose, and sniffled.
“No more.” I shuddered. “You have to be strong if you’re going to fight.” I kicked myself for not taking the food, because I was hungry. And thirsty.
“You’re smart. Do what you do best.”
I’d written my first novel fairly quickly, going where the story led me. But since then, I researched each new book. And then I outlined, meticulously. Sometimes I spent months on the outline and then whipped out the novel itself in a few weeks. I didn’t mind spending time and effort on the preparation, and maybe that fortitude would be my salvation.
I needed to plot. To plan. Sure, at the moment they had the upper hand physically, but there was no doubt in my mind that I was smarter. I had to think my way out of this.
Mrs. Dixon had mentioned dinner. I had no idea what time it was, although it was dark outside. In the summer, that meant it had to be at least eight, possibly nine, maybe even later.
The windows were small and high up on the wall.
Could I escape?
Sucking in my breath at the pain, I slowly sat up and slid over to the side of the bed. Then, forcing myself to take it inch by inch, I grabbed the headboard for support and stood up. I felt wobbly, so I sat back down until my head felt clear enough to try again.
I stood up, took a few deep breaths. Woozy, for sure, but better than earlier. I shuffled to the closest window. It was about a foot over my head, but I could see outside. The glow from a big yard light illuminated part of a white-flowered bush and the side of a red wooden building of some kind.
Given the height and size of the window, I had to be in a basement. Getting through the window, if I could figure out how to do it, would be a tight squeeze.
Oh, and one more thing:
Getting out that window is gonna hurt.
And so would what came after: trying to find my way to the road and then walking, for who knew how far, barefoot. And they might come after me, try to drag me back.
I would have to be prepared to fight.
Climbing through the window, escaping, maybe having to fight my way out of there … all of that would take strength, strength I did not have yet.
Plus, I wasn’t stupid. I’d seen it time and time again in movies: The captive tries to escape right away, before she thinks things through. She discovers her captor has left her an out, an opening, and she takes it. But she always takes it too soon, and she always gets caught. I supposed she has to—otherwise the movie would be over in the first half hour.
But that was a mistake I was not going to make. I knew I might only get one shot, so I was going to make sure my escape was foolproof.
I was going to take my time.
Since I was finally standing, I had a better view of the room. There was another door. At a glacial pace, holding my bad arm motionless with my good, I limped over and pulled it open.
A small bathroom.
Which I hadn’t realized I seriously needed until I noticed the toilet. It took me a while, given that I was minus one arm. I sat there, looking at everything. Save for a plastic pump bottle of Bath & Body Works coconut lime hand soap, there wasn’t much. When I finished, I slurped water from the faucet for a long time.
Then I looked at myself in the cheap metal mirror. My dark hair had drifted out of the pretty French braids my mom had done around my head. My face seemed puffy, and there were bruises, probably from where I hit the steering wheel when I crashed. Which reminded me that when all this was over, I would have to write a strongly worded letter to the CEO of Audi about their crap air bags.
Or maybe the bruise was from when Flute Girl hit me.
Rory wouldn’t think I was beautiful, not if he could see me now.
I blew out a breath and shut my eyes. I needed to rest. I needed to eat. I needed to get strong before I could try to escape.
I opened my eyes and told my reflection, “I will. I will.”