Guardian (12 page)

Stuck in the room as we were, I devoted every second to Colton and Grace, coloring with them, playing make-believe with their stuffed animals, ‘mummifying’ them by rolling them up in their blankets, and finally, reading them bedtime stories until they fell asleep. All the while, deep laughter and the smell of alcohol and smoke seeped under the crack of my door. Once, the doorknob rattled and my body went stiff with fear, though minutes later I heard the bathroom door open and close, so I couldn’t be sure if it had been an innocent mistake or not.

I stayed sitting upright on my bed the whole time, Grace’s head in my lap as a comforting weight. I didn’t even feel tired, only knew that I couldn’t sleep if I tried; I was too on edge, too tense to even fully lie down. I only sat there woodenly, my hand methodically stroking Grace’s hair. Not even my Bible provided the comfort I usually got from reading it, and the idea of praying only made me want to cry.

So I sat and watched the time pass on the clock beside me, ten, eleven, midnight, one, two AM. As the hours passed, the house slowly grew quieter and quieter, voices dimming, glasses clinking against the table less and less frequently, the squeal of chair legs against the kitchen floor softer and slower, as the occupants grew tired or at least too drunk to wield any vigor into their movements.

By four o’clock, the house had been silent for over an hour, despite my mom coming home and throwing a fit at finding all these men in her house. I eased out from underneath Grace, laying her head carefully down on her pillow and pulling the covers up around her. I walked over to the other small bed and kissed Colton’s forehead, picking his pillow up off the floor from where it had gotten tossed during a particularly violent dream and repositioning it underneath him.

Then I walked carefully over to my door, soundlessly undoing all the locks and peering down the hallway. Directly across from my door was my parents’ bedroom, the door tightly closed. To my right was a slight view of the living room through the short corridor. I could hear loud snores now, and see several dark forms asleep on the couch and armchairs, even one on the floor. I couldn’t see the kitchen, attached to the living room, but I knew it would be a wreck, one I would be responsible for cleaning in the morning. That wasn’t my big concern at the moment.

I took a deep breath before stepping fully out of my room and pulling the door closed, not making a sound. Our doorknob had a lock on it, but it was the reason I had four deadbolts over the top of my door. It was an old fashioned lock, one that only turned the knob stiff so you couldn’t turn it to open the door. Provided one had enough of a fingernail, the lock could be turned, or unturned, from the outside. I locked the door and then darted to the bathroom next door to me, which I’d desperately needed for the past two hours.

It took supreme effort to leave Colton and Grace in my room alone, especially with the door not securely locked, but I
had
to go. I stepped out of the bathroom and the shadows next to me in the hallway moved, and someone grabbed my arm. I gave a cry of surprise, and then silenced myself, not wanting anyone else to wake up.

“I knew you’d come out sooner or later,” a deep voice growled in the darkness, one I didn’t recognize. His breath was foul, and in a flash I was back in the alley after the pawn shop, held captive and helpless to do anything.

I shook off the memory and jerked my arm hard, and he let go. I made a desperate lunge back toward the bathroom, the closest door, and he wildly grabbed at my back, catching a belt loop on my jeans, which ripped. I fell to the floor on my knees and grunted with pain, but scrambled across the floor and onto the cold tile of the bathroom, trying to keep desperate, frightened whimpers from escaping. I could still hear them, though; could hear myself panting for air and the rasp of my jeans against the carpet as I army-crawled into the bathroom. A hand grabbed my ankle and I almost lost myself and screamed in fright as I slid backward, losing all the progress I had made on getting into the bathroom. I kicked wildly, turning into a crazy person, my whole body bucking wildly until I felt the fingers lose their hold.

I practically somersaulted into the bathroom and kicked the door closed. The resulting slam echoed through the house, and I froze after I turned the lock, praying with all my heart that everyone else was too drunk or deeply asleep to hear the noise. The doorknob began to rattle, and I held onto the lock so it couldn’t be turned from the outside, even though my fingers were sweaty and kept slipping off. I wouldn’t be able to hold him off forever.

He was trying furiously to unlock the door, and he would, eventually. This wasn’t my dad, this was a stranger, and he could hurt me, really, truly
hurt
me. My heartbeat pounded in my ears, a million beats a minute, until it was all I could hear, drowning out even the panting that came with every painful rise and fall of my chest. How long until he got in?
How long until he realized Colton and Grace were in the next room?

I did the only thing I could think of. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and called Rafael. I didn’t expect him to answer. I really didn’t, not at four in the morning on a weekend. But after only two rings, his voice filled my ear.

“Hello? Lyla?”

“Help me,” I sobbed into the phone, and suddenly realized I was crying, probably had been the whole time. “Help me!”

I felt the lock give under my fingers and my phone clattered to the floor as I grabbed onto the knob with both hands to keep it from turning. But he was too fast, and the door swung violently open, slamming me into the wall. Stunned, I crumpled to the floor, trying to erase the blackness from the edges of my vision. The man stepped fully into the bathroom, closing the door and reaching for me. I scooted backward along the floor, hitting the bathtub and sobbing even harder when I realized I had nowhere left to run. He laughed,
laughed
with utter glee as he reached for me. I kept pressing into the corner of the bathtub and wall, as though I could make a door appear if I kept on pushing hard enough.

A hand was touching my face, dirty, rough fingers were sliding through my hair, and then there was a
CRASH
as the bathroom door was kicked open, hitting the opposite wall so hard the doorknob was lodged in the wall. My attacker and I both looked up, and I saw Rafael standing in the doorway, like some kind of avenging angel, a slight glow around him that I
knew
I had seen when he was fighting Austin. In that moment he seemed bigger and much more dangerous than the man who stood above me, but he was on
my
side. A point proven only too well when he took two steps into the room and yanked the man away from me, holding him by the neck and banging his head against the sink.

The man crumpled to the floor in a heap, and Rafael stepped over him to get to me, pulling me up without any effort at all. I threw my arms around his neck and he picked me up, allowing me to wrap my legs around his torso so I clung to him, monkey-like, the way Grace always did with me. Grace was only seven, however, and weighed about seventy pounds, while I was nearly double her weight. Still, Rafael had no trouble supporting me, only wrapped one arm around my waist to hold me up and put the other on the back of my head, pressing me reassuringly to his shoulder.

“It’s all right,” he whispered, turning around and stepping back over the man, as though he were a distasteful rug on the floor. “We’re leaving.”

My teeth were chattering noisily and I could feel my whole body shaking, despite how tightly I was pressed against Rafael’s solid body, but I still managed to get out, “C-C-Colton and Grace!”

Rafael opened my bedroom door with little effort and set me carefully down on the bed before turning to my sole window, which looked out over our brown front yard and the street, and pulled it open. In the work of a moment, he had unhooked the screen and was standing in front of me once again, my face in his hands.

“Hand them out to me, Lyla,” he said. His face kept coming in and out of focus as my vision blurred and came back once more. His hands tightened to the point where it almost hurt, and I was able to look him in the eye without my vision wavering. “
Listen
to me, Lyla,” Rafael said, in a voice so serious and almost menacing that I sat up straighter and paid attention. “You’re safe. They won’t hurt you. But we need to leave. I don’t want you to stay here. So I’m going out the window, and I need you to hand Colton and Grace out to me. We’re going somewhere safe. Do you understand?”

I nodded numbly, and stood shakily, almost losing my balance before Rafael righted me, and then stepped out the window. I got Grace first, picking up her limp body and, with some careful maneuvering, got her out the window and into Rafael’s arms. Then came Colton, who seemed already half awake and as though sleep walking, nearly crawled out of the window without much assistance on my part. Somehow, Rafael managed to hold one of them in each arm and still help me out the window, and close it after us.

He led the way to my mom’s car, while I followed in a daze as though
I
was sleepwalking, too worn out and all of the sudden too
tired
to question how he’d gotten my mom’s car keys. I think I dozed on the car ride, which only lasted about ten minutes, but felt longer as I drifted in and out. When the car stopped moving and I opened my eyes, I immediately closed them again against the bright lights that attacked my aching head. Now that I thought about it, I was pretty sure I’d hit it sometime during the melee. But I was trying to block the whole incident out, and looked slowly around to see where we were.

Rafael was getting Colton and Grace out of the back seat, handing Grace to me once I slowly opened the car door and got out. “Come on,” he said, and walked briskly up to the entrance of what turned out to be the Hyatt Regency. A hotel. He’d taken us to a hotel, so Colton and Grace and I could sleep. Sleep and be safe.

I felt like a zombie while I held Grace as Rafael checked us in and got a room, herded me to the elevator and pressed the appropriate buttons, holding a sleeping Colton all the while. I couldn’t think of anything to say, wasn’t sure there
was
anything to say. Well, there was one thing to say, but I waited until I found my voice again, until Colton and Grace were safely in the king size bed in our suite, and I had arranged myself between them, needing the comfort of both of them touching me. Lying on my right side, I looked to where Rafael was sitting in a chair, his legs apart and elbows resting on his knees, staring at the floor.

I finally found my voice. “You came,” I whispered, but he still heard, looked up at me in the semi-darkness. “You came.”

“Of course I did,” he whispered. “I promised I would, didn’t I?”

After that night, things were different between Rafael and me. The cell phone, which I had previously been afraid to use, became a treasured gift. I no longer hesitated in giving my number out to all of my friends, didn’t feel guilty texting Natalie all the time or surfing the web and playing games. Rafael and I even texted from time to time, reassuring me that he was still out there, ready and waiting if I needed him. School became unbearable, my concentration unfocused as I sat at the edge of my seat, waiting for that final bell to ring so I could run to the park and be with Rafael.

I had been looking forward to spending my days with him, with no end in sight (though I had spared only a single troubling thought to what would happen in the winter time when it grew too cold to be at the park) when Natalie came flying up to my locker on Friday and announced that I should pack my bags, because I was riding a bus to Alabama next week, courtesy of a full ride of financial aid.

Absolutely thrilled as I was to be going, I realized that it meant a whole week where I wouldn’t see Rafael, would barely get to speak to him, I would be so busy. When I slowly walked to the park and broke the news to him, he seemed less than pleased, which only made me happy once more – if he didn’t want me to go, didn’t that mean he liked me? Possibly just as much as I liked him?

“But, where are you going?” Rafael seemed unable to comprehend what I had told him. His face had been stunned when I said I would be gone the whole next week.

I fought back a grin. “They finally came through with the financial aid at my church. I’m going to leave this Monday morning for the missions trip with the rest of the youth groups in the diocese. It’s in Alabama.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“I’ll be back Sunday morning, early. Hopefully in time for noon mass. So we can just meet after that, okay?”

“Who will I talk to while you’re gone?” Rafael asked, looking mulish at the news. He looked like Colton when I told him no candy before supper. “How will I know you’re safe? How will you know that
I’m
safe?”

I was almost flattered and quite pleased to see that he was so upset that I was leaving him. It meant he cared. Rafael, whose feelings were always so hard to interpret, was upset that I would be leaving him, even for a grand total of not even six full days.

“I can’t follow you all the way to Alabama. Not right now,” he continued.

I got the feeling he was almost serious. “Look,” I said, sitting on the bench and primly crossing my legs. “It’s for barely a week, and I promise first thing on Sunday after church we’ll catch up. I’m sure that I’ll have a lot to tell you. And I was wondering if you could do me a favor while I’m gone, just to, you know, keep you busy so you don’t miss me too much.” I made my tone lightly joking, but watched Rafael closely for his reaction. Would he really miss me? Or would he just throw some kind of tantrum? He seemed prone to doing that.

His face remained mildly expressionless. “Keep me busy?”

I avoided his eyes. “Could you, you know, keep an eye on Colton and Gracie while I’m gone? Just check in on them every so often. I’ll be calling them daily, so I’ll give you permission to eavesdrop on our conversations, so you know I’m alive. I’m sure you would be doing it anyway.”

“Of course I would,” Rafael said, totally honest, as always.