The Girl in the Wall (6 page)

It doesn’t sound so bad when I just say the words. It didn’t even sound that bad when she texted me about it, after the fact, when she was in the airport coming home. She said they had just broken into her hotel room and started hitting her when they were caught, so it seemed like maybe it was scary but not that big a deal, at least not when you figured they were there to rape and maybe even kill her.

But then she came home and I saw her.

“They beat her up,” I say. “Bad.” Her eyes were both purple, the flesh around them spongy and swollen. There were scratches on her face and neck that she couldn’t hide with makeup, no matter how much she put on, and greenish-brown bruises on the insides of her arms. “But that wasn’t even the worst part. It did something to her. It was like you’d look in her eyes and no one was there. She started being destructive, cutting school and picking fights with anyone she could.”

“It sounds like she had some kind of posttraumatic stress syndrome,” Hudson says. “That happened to my brother who was in the Army.”

I nod. “Yeah, that’s what the psychiatrist said.”

“So at least she was getting help.”

“No,” I say, the word a rock in the soft part of my belly. “She didn’t want help. She kept saying she was over it, not to worry. I practically begged her to tell someone what was going on but she wouldn’t and she made me swear I wouldn’t.”

I kept my promise too, until the day I saw that she had been taking a razor and slicing up her inner arms, harsh red lines across the pale skin.

“I told the counselor at our school,” I said. “And they reported it and all these social workers came to her house and she had to go to a facility” (mental institution but I can’t say those words) “and have mandated therapy.”

“And I take it Ariel didn’t appreciate you doing that.”

The first couple of days I knew she’d be mad but then I figured she’d see my side, know that I did it to help. I was so wrong.

“You have no idea,” I tell him, staring out the window.

Hudson reaches across the sofa and rests his hand on my shoulder. I’m shocked that even under these conditions I feel a tingle from his touch.

“You did the right thing,” he says.

That’s what my parents said, and John Avery once he got involved. But they didn’t see the fury in Ariel, the hatred that radiated whenever she came within ten feet of me. And how fast she turned everyone against me.

“You don’t believe me,” he says.

“I think if it was the right thing she would have forgiven me by now.”

He shakes his head. “That’s not how it works.” He sighs. “But I hear you.”

He does. And it feels kind of good to be heard after all these months of being invisible. But now I’m done talking about this. “I’m starving,” I say, stretching a little but being careful the arm with the phone stays facing the wall. “Do you think we can get something to eat?”

“It’s worth a try,” Hudson says, standing up.

We walk toward the doorway that leads to the hallway to the kitchen. An agent is standing in the doorway and he moves to block us from going by.

“Um, is it okay to get something to eat?” Hudson asks.

“No,” the agent says. “There’s going to be a search and no one leaves this room until it’s over.”

A bad feeling begins in the center of my chest. “What kind of search?” I ask.

The agent shrugs. “Something went missing in here. The agents are taking each one of you into a room and searching you.”

I think I might puke.

“Okay,” Hudson says, taking my arm and leading me back to the sofa where I practically collapse.

“They want the cell phone,” I whisper frantically.

“We don’t know that,” he says, but he has a cornered look in his eyes.

“We do. I saw agents looking for it before. They were walking around the area where Mr. Barett was shot, looking on the ground for something. It has to be the phone.”

Hudson lets out a long breath and runs his hands through his hair, making it stick up. I have a sudden and inappropriate urge to smooth it.

I look over at my classmates and now there are only fourteen. I look through them and realize that Ella is the one being searched. I cringe inwardly at the thought of any of the agents touching any of us.

“What are we going to do?” I ask him. “We can’t just leave it in the sofa for someone to find.”

Hudson is looking over my shoulder and I look in that direction, past where my classmates are sitting, to the doorway of the study. Ella is being walked out by an agent, her face all scrunched. When she sits down Mike puts his arm around her. The agent points to Franz Collet, who says something as he stands, something that angers the agent I guess because he punches Franz, hard.

A sound echoes around the room as Franz falls back on the sofa, crying out in pain. Blood is pouring down his face and his hands cover his nose, his eyes shiny with tears from the blow.

“Get up!” the agent shouts at Franz, towering menacingly over him.

Franz struggles to his feet and the agent grabs his arm, then twists it behind him and shoves him toward the doorway. Blood is still flowing down Franz’s face and his arm is bent at an impossible angle behind his back as the agent continues to manhandle him out of the room.

Then the door shuts and Franz is gone. The room is eerily silent in his wake.

After a moment one of the agents standing in the doorway to the living room clears his throat and speaks. “Your friend forgot who was in charge,” he says coolly. “I suggest you don’t make the same mistake.”

Obviously I didn’t hear what Franz said but I do know he’d never challenge the agent, that I’m sure of. Really none of us would do anything to challenge them, we’re not stupid. I look at Hudson whose dismay mirrors my own.

“He didn’t have to hit Franz,” I say softly, my stomach queasy.

“I know,” Hudson says, glancing at the agent who spoke, then looking away. “They don’t want us to forget for a second who has the power.”

People are starting to talk again, quietly, and I see the agents slouch back against the doorways. Before I’d seen that as a sign of being relaxed but now it feels more like they are snakes, coiled and still, but ready to lash out at the slightest provocation.

“It was mean,” I say.

Hudson looks amused and I realize how stupid it sounds to call machine-gun-toting hostage-holders mean.

“You know what I’m saying. We know they’re in charge, they don’t have to go beating us up to prove it.”

“They don’t have to but they can and they will if they want to,” Hudson says. “That’s what they’re really reminding us.” He lets out a long breath and then presses his hands together. “But we don’t have time to worry about it now. We have to figure out what to do with the phone.” He glances toward the agents when he says it, his voice even lower than before.

My stomach rolls over in a nauseating swirl. I would do anything to be able to undo having picked up this stupid, useless phone.

“This is what I’m thinking,” he says softly. “We’ll put the phone under one of the sofa cushions while they search us. Then the first one of us out gets it and hides it in our clothing. It should be safe to hold onto it once they’ve finished searching us.”

I want to point out how flawed this is as a plan but I don’t because what else are we going to do? “Thanks,” I say instead.

His eyebrows wrinkle. “For what, coming up with a pretty half-assed plan?”

I grin but then I shake my head. “For helping me with this. It doesn’t have to be your problem. I’m the one who took the phone.” Something occurs to me and even though it’s stupid, I have to know. “Why did you come over to me? I mean, out of everyone here, why me?”

The corner of his mouth pulls up in a half grin. “Because you were the one who laughed at my joke.”

When he introduced himself as Hunter, making fun of Mr. Barett who had messed up his name. It’s ridiculous when our lives are in the balance but I have a warm glow from his words. I felt so dumb being the only one who laughed but he liked it.

“Oh,” I say, trying to sound nonchalant but failing pretty badly.

He nods but doesn’t say anything because the agent is heading over to us. My glow is replaced by clammy panic as I stuff my arm in between the seat cushions, let the phone slide out and pull my hand back out.

“You,” the agent says, pointing at me.

I stand on legs that feel like liquid, and follow him into the study.

I spent twenty minutes in the guest office making a sign for Marc. In big, black letters it explains that we are being held hostage, that he needs to get away and call 911. My plan was to hold up the sign when the helicopter got close; he’d read it, follow the directions, and we’d be free within the hour, long before Abby would ever get near the house. It was a perfect plan: simple, easy, and foolproof.

But then came the problem: I can’t figure out how to get to the roof. I’ve been crawling through the tunnels like a rat in a maze and finally realized the only ways to the roof are from outside the house and from the office wing my dad put on the house. There are no hidden back stairs like I’d hoped, which means not only is there no way to get to the roof from the tunnels, there’s no exit from the tunnels anywhere near the stairs up to the helicopter landing pad. I’d have to go through my dad’s offices and those are teeming with agents whom I assume are trying to figure out how to use Abby and Uncle Marc instead of me and my dad to get their money.

I’m sitting on the floor by the hallway grate closest to his offices, seething, the stupid sign useless next to me. And with way too much time to think about the thing I most don’t want to think about: Sera. What happened in the living room is like a fish hook in my mind. She has to know where I am. We spent hours in these tunnels, practically lived in them the year we were ten. Yes, she forgot a lot but there’s no forgetting something like that. She knows where I am and she didn’t say. Which is a new thing for her—she’s not got a good track record for keeping her mouth shut.

For about the billionth time I feel the surge of hot rage at the center of my belly for what she did, like a furnace blast roasting my insides. My so-called best friend essentially got me put in the loony bin, on the lock-down ward, stripped of my belt and shoelaces for forty-eight hours, until I finally managed to reach John Avery and get out.

But much worse than being in the mental ward was that people found out. The one way I had managed to keep it together was to pretend Mexico had never happened. But thanks to Sera I had to talk about it. It took everything in me not to become a pathetic mound of quivering emotional jelly on the floor of New Canaan Country Day every day.

Hating Sera helped keep me solid, as did my disdain for anyone who tried to sympathize. People learned fast. They also learned not to talk to Sera, though social death felt like much too soft a price for her to pay. If she’d just let it go, the way I asked her, I know I’d be past it now. It’s her fault I still wake up in a cold sweat almost every night, my body clammy, my heart slamming around in my chest, the metallic taste of fear coating my tongue.

But even that wasn’t the worst part.

I hear voices that shake me out of the past, back to the hard floor of the tunnel, but they are too far away to make out actual words. I look at my watch, the dial lit up and telling me it’s 8:58. Uncle Marc’s helicopter is closing in and there’s absolutely nothing I can do to warn him or to get him to help Abby. I want to scream in frustration.

I hear footsteps and I stand up, lean closer to the grate, and peer out. Two agents have John trapped between them. They speak in low voices, the words “still make it work” come through in a whisper but I can’t see their faces, only the backs of their heads so I don’t know who is speaking. I think it might be better that I can’t hear everything they say because it would probably make me feel worse than I already do, sitting here useless.

Their voices fade as they move farther away and I suddenly remember my twelfth birthday. That one was a sleepover with all the girls in my class. At the last minute my dad couldn’t make it home from a meeting in Chicago so John stepped in to chaperone.

He made sure the pizza came on time and he even joined us for dessert, make-your-own sundaes. He didn’t stop me when I poured on a gallon of caramel sauce, or tell me “I told you so” when I got a stomachache later. He also didn’t tell my dad when a game of Truth or Dare got out of hand and Julia Smith hit her head diving into the pool. We got her out fast and she was fine but my dad would have flipped out over liability. John just made sure everyone was okay and suggested we take the game inside. He’s always been cool like that.

I hear the sound of a door shutting, steps, and voices, and I lean my face against the grate again. In a great rush a knot of agents swoops past. At the center, I see a Yankees cap set unevenly over a head of very red hair: Uncle Marc.

The last time I saw him was last month when he came over after my dad’s lawyer’s funeral. Mr. Black was killed in a car accident and my dad was really upset about it. He sat alone in the living room doing shots of whiskey in the dark until Marc got him reminiscing about Steelers games they went to when they were kids, sometimes sneaking in. That cheered my dad up, at least enough that he didn’t drink himself into a stupor. That’s the thing about Marc, he makes everything better.

My chest tightens at the site of my goofy uncle as he is whisked by. I catch only a quick glimpse of his face and see how somber he looks, an expression that’s totally out of place for him, the eternal kid who is always smiling about something. I don’t think he is going to be able to make this better.

A feeling is snaking its way around my stomach, through my chest. It brings with it the smell of Windex and lemon, the smell at the hotel in Mexico. As always I am powerless as it winds its way around my insides, paralyzing me.

It’s not the memory of the guys breaking into my room that makes my throat tighten like a gloved hand is wrapping around it, squeezing. It’s not how they shouted, how one held me while another punched me again and again. And it’s not how they tied me up, put a bag over my head, and threw me on the floor like a sack of garbage.