Light chased me as Dad and Nino tried to catch me and turned on the lamps hanging from the low ceiling. But I turned one corner after the other, never slowing.
Their calls echoed in the basement, hunting me.
Tears burned my eyes, blinding me. But I didn’t need them to see. I followed my memory until I reached the basement below Fabiano’s mansion and hid in the storage room in a big carton that was filled only halfway with discarded clothes.
I curled into a small ball and closed the box over my head.
I stared into the darkness, fighting nausea and trying to quiet the whooshing in my ears. Soon the dark and quiet took effect and my pulse slowed, and then later the whooshing in my ears settled down as well. Sweet oblivion.
Voices carried through the room.
“This is a fucking mess,” Fabiano muttered.
“Can you imagine how scared she must be?” Leona said, sounding heartbroken.
Hearing her voice, my own heart ached. Then I realized who she was talking about—me.
She was heartbroken for me, worried I was scared. Was I scared? Should I be?
Of Dad? Of every man in my family? Of my own brother? I didn’t know what I was feeling. Mostly, I didn’t want to feel. I just wanted to be, in the dark and quiet, all alone.
“I doubt that’s all she is. Seeing something like that changes you,” Fabiano said. They didn’t think I was here because they didn’t know I had the code to their part of the basement.
Their voices disappeared, probably to help my family search for me.
Eight hours later—at some point I’d started counting the gentle thud-thud of the second hand of my wrist watch—I had to leave my hiding place. I needed to relieve myself and my legs and back hurt from being curled up for so long. When I was certain I was alone, I opened the lid and climbed out. The blood on my clothes had made the fabric stiff, but I didn’t smell the coppery scent anymore. My nose was desensitized to it by now.
I shivered. It was cold in the basement even at this time in the year. I hadn’t noticed before, but my fingers and toes were stiff from the cold. I looked around for a place to pee, but every corner felt as bad as the other. I felt bad about sullying Fabiano’s basement like that.
The memory of the blood puddle in the cell entered my head and I shuddered once more. Maybe I could hold on for a few more hours…but what then? I couldn’t return to my home, not yet.
I hugged myself and shivered harder.
What was I going to do now?
I glanced to my right and went into the corner. I retched as I touched the bloody fabric of my leotard to push it aside so I could pee. Squatting in the corner, I hurriedly emptied my bladder, then got dressed as quickly as I’d undressed and rushed back to my hiding place. I needed quiet, needed dark, darker than the storage room, dark enough to black out my too accurate memory replaying every detail of the man’s anguished face. I didn’t even know his name. Would anyone remember him? I wanted to forget but was it wrong of me to wish for something like that? I curled up as small as I could on top of the clothes in the box then closed the lid.
I didn’t sleep, though I was tired and hadn’t slept in more than a day. I kept counting the seconds, trying to let the familiar sound calm me.
Eleven hours had passed since I’d run away when I heard voices again but this time it wasn’t only Fabiano and Leona. Dad, Nino and Nevio were with them.
I made myself even smaller and breathed very slowly and low so they wouldn’t hear me. They weren’t in the storage room but in the corridor in front of it. I strained my ears to listen to their conversation.
“Are you sure she doesn’t know the fucking codes to leave the premises?” Dad snarled. “That’s hard to believe considering you slip out all the time.”
“Maybe she does. Greta is observant,” Nevio said. Despite what I’d seen him do, a part of me wanted to go to my brother. He’d always been the person who consoled and protected me. Now I hid from him and my family.
“She isn’t in our basement and she isn’t in the spare house basement. That leaves this basement,” Dad said.
“She hasn’t left the premises yet from our side. I checked the log of the last twelve hours,” Nino drawled. “The only code that was entered from our premises was the one to the door leading to your basement, Fabiano.”
I didn’t know they could see who put in a code.
“I don’t have a log of entered codes. Leona felt it was too stalkerish. There’s only an alarm if a wrong code is entered, and it wasn’t.”