Stolen (9 page)

I didn’t struggle. I didn’t do anything. My body went limp. In the house you wrapped me in blankets. You put something hot in my hands, which you made me drink. But my body and my brain and my insides had frozen solid and nothing would thaw them. I had slipped down, down into a dark, dark, empty place. You were saying something to me, your voice muted. I didn’t want to surface. The truth was too hard to hear.

There was nothing on the other side of those boulders, only more of the same.

Wherever I went, you’d only catch me.

I couldn’t get away.

I closed my eyes. Behind my lids it was dark and calmer and I sunk into it. I didn’t move or make a sound. I retreated, stepping back through my mind, through the couch and floorboards, until I reached that dark, cool place underneath the house where I curled up in the dirt. There, I waited for the snake to find me.

There was nothing else I could do

…. only wait for the dreams.

I slept.

Mum was nearby, stroking my forehead and shushing me. She spoke quietly, her words a lullaby. She put something around my shoulders and wrapped me into her. I felt her arms surrounding me, her breath sweet like sugared tea.

The next time, I was older. I was home sick from school. Mum had her laptop set up on the kitchen table, her phone by her elbow. I was on the couch, wrapped up and warm. I didn’t want to watch the Teletubbies and Mum wouldn’t let me watch the talk shows.

“Can we play a game?” I asked her.

She didn’t answer.

“Hide-and-Seek?”

After a while I got up off the couch and tiptoed to the utility closet. I scraped the heavy door across the carpet and stepped into the darkness. The air was warm and moist, and smelled like my school blazer when it got wet. I found a place in the corner and waited, imagining I was at the bottom of the sea…. I was in the belly of a ginormous creature.

I could hear the tap of Mum’s keyboard through a hole in the wall. But at any moment she would stop typing and come find me. I knew she would. Sometime soon she would wonder where I was.

I sank farther down into the darkness of the utility closet … waiting….

Then I was in a hospital. There were machines plugged into me, beeping quietly. I couldn’t open my eyes, but I was awake. People visited: Anna and Ben, people from school. Dad sat beside me and brushed the back of my hand. He smelled like smoke, just like he used to smell when I was little. There was a nurse nearby, saying it was important to keep talking to me. Another nurse dabbed my forehead.

I reached out at Anna, clawing at the air near her face. But she didn’t see me. I tried to scream, tried begging them to stay, all of them. But my mouth wouldn’t open, and the noise remained in my throat.

When I opened my eyes, they vanished. The only person left was you.

I didn’t talk to you. I just lay on that bed in the plain wooden room and looked at the walls. My voice had shriveled up and disappeared and I didn’t know how to find it again. I forgot about the notches on the bed. I tried to forget about everything.

Sometimes you sat beside me. Sometimes you tried to talk, but I didn’t look at you. I tucked my knees into my chest and clasped my hands around them.

Then I’d remember.

I’d start with waking up, with the feel of my thick down duvet around my shoulders and the softness of flannel pajamas on my skin. If I concentrated, I could almost hear the whir and the grind of Mum making her morning coffee. I smelled the bitter richness of the grains boiling on the stove, the way the aroma used to waft under the crack in the door and into my bedroom. The clunk of the central heating kicking into gear.

Then Dad was up and banging on my door. He always lectured me over breakfast, about getting good grades and about which universities I should start looking at in the summer. I shut my eyes and tried to see his face. I gasped a little when I couldn’t. What shape were his glasses exactly? What was the color of his favorite tie?

I tried for Mum next but even she was hard to see. I could remember her red dress, which she liked wearing to gallery openings, but I couldn’t remember her face. I knew her eyes were green, like mine, and her features delicate … but somehow I couldn’t put the pieces back together.

It frightened me, this amnesia, and I hated myself for it. I felt like I wasn’t worthy of being anyone’s daughter.

But I could remember Anna. And I could remember Ben. I spent hours thinking about him, imagining he was there with me, my fingers in his floppy, sun-bleached hair. When I shut my eyes, he was in the bed beside me, keeping watch.

He was spending the summer surfing, in Cornwall. Anna had gone with him. That summer was the first one Anna and I had spent apart, ever. I wondered what they were doing in their beach hostel, sitting on the sand every day … such different sand from mine, so much softer. I wondered if they even knew I was gone.

When I opened my eyes again, you were next to me, biting the skin at the side of your fingernails. After a moment, you saw me watching.

“How are you feeling?”

I couldn’t answer. It felt like my body had turned to stone. If I even moved my lips, I would crack.

“I can make you food,” you tried. “A drink?”

I didn’t blink. I thought that if I stayed still long enough, you were bound to leave.

“Maybe … maybe we should change the sheets?”

You angled yourself a little toward me. You reached across and pressed the backs of your fingers against my forehead but I hardly felt them. Right then, you were a million miles away, existing in a parallel universe, some sort of dream. I was back home, in my bed … any moment I would wake up and get ready for school. It was Ben sitting beside me, not you. It couldn’t be you. You sat back on the chair, watching me.

“I miss those words of yours,” you said.

I swallowed; it hurt my dry throat. You looked at me, your eyes resting on my lips.

“I know how this works,” you said. “I went silent once, too.” You found some rough skin on the corner of your finger and moved it back and forth with your thumb. “People thought I’d never spoken, like I was … what do you call it? Mute. Some of them thought I was deaf, too.” You chewed the bit of skin free. “That was right back after I found this place.”

My eyebrow twitched then, and you saw.

“Got you interested now?” You rested your head back against the wall. There was a drop of sweat traveling down your cheek, running over your faint scar. “Yeah, that’s right,” you said, nodding, seeing where I was looking. “I got that when I was silent, too.” Quickly you wiped the sweat away, your hand lingering on the puckered skin. Then your finger and thumb moved together and you flicked at your cheek. I jumped at the sound. “A net can hit skin so quickly,” you said, “so easy to make a mark.”

You stood up and went to the window. I shifted, turning my head a little so I could see you. You noticed.

“Not so dead, then,” you murmured. “Not so gone.”