I made myself bait because that’s what I was born to be, and now I’ve got to pay the price. At least Iris and Wes will be safe.
“You gonna fight me?” he asks.
“You gonna hit me again?”
“Depends.”
“Then ditto.”
He’s quiet for a moment. His grip shifts on me. Changes. When his hand clenches tighter around my arm, it’s nothing like before. Before was punishment.
This is violation. A prying sort of touch that sends every single sense inside me clamoring; running for cover, charging to fight, freezing in place.
“Hitting you is not the only thing I can do to make you behave,” he says, and there it is, in between the lines and in the lick of his lips: the real threat.
Run. Hide. Do it. Now.
No. Calm. Breathe. He wants the fear. The gun didn’t stop me. The hitting got him nowhere. So now it’s this.
Breathe.
Run. Hide. Fight.
No. Swallow that fucking spit in your mouth, Nora. Speak. He can’t know.
“I see we’ve reached the rape-threat portion of the day. Very original. Do you have some evil-dude bingo card stashed somewhere?”
I’m talking too fast. My voice rising. Shit. Shit.
Run.
He shrugs, and it’s terrifying, how casual it is. And then, he gets a whole lot more terrifying, because he says, “I don’t need to do anything to you. All I need to do is go get the girl in the poofy dress. Both you and the boy keep putting yourselves in front of her.”
There is no controlling my reaction. The blood drains out of my face so fast it has him sucking a breath in with a kind of sick joy, and I am so fucking stupid. I didn’t think. I didn’t even think he’d . . .
He steps forward.
Hide.
He’s too close. Too, too close.
My hand curls around the handle of the scissors tucked in the waistband of my jeans.
Fight. Kill.
— 37 —
Katie （Age 10）： Sweet, Spirited, Smart （In Three Acts, Reversed）
Act 2: Spirited
Forty Minutes After
My button-down is stained. I pull my jacket closer around me, trying to hide it as I pick up speed. My sneakers slap through puddles, the chill of the streets almost as bad as the late-night buzz in this part of the city. Seattle sucks in the winter and my jacket’s thin, but I didn’t have time to grab my winter coat.
I didn’t have time to grab anything. My phone’s back there, along with my warm coat and clothes that aren’t rusty with blood.
I need to find a pay phone, something that’s almost impossible. But I keep walking, because if I stop, I’m going to remember what happened.
No stopping. Keep moving.
I’ve been Katie for six months. Katie is Lucy’s daughter. Katie just turned ten. She’s athletic; she wears a rose-gold charm bracelet around her right wrist, little tennis rackets and hearts and the Eiffel Tower dangling from it. Katie is a country club dream; her clothes look like they’re out of a Ralph Lauren for Kids catalogue, and her thick blond hair is always swinging in a ponytail. Katie is not quiet. She is not silent. She is not invisible. She is the first spitfire Mom lets me be, the closest thing to me I’ve been in years.
Maybe if we hadn’t been so similar, this wouldn’t have happened?
Don’t think about it. Keep moving.
I walk for what seems like forever. I’m soaked by the time I get to the twenty-four-hour laundromat. There’s only one person inside, a college-aged girl with headphones who doesn’t look up when I come dripping inside.
There’s a pay phone in the back, but I don’t go straight to it.
I go into the dingy bathroom instead. It’s trashed, like most public bathrooms. I lean against the sink anyway. My jacket gapes open. I look down at my once-pristine white button-down. The buttons are askew, off by one. I didn’t notice until now.
I had to fasten on the run, my fingers slipping on the buttons as I bolted. My hands shake as I stare at my reflection in the mirror, and then I’m clawing at the shirt, frantically trying to get the buttons right. It becomes the most important thing. They have to be right, and then that frisson of fear and hysteria flashes wide and true. It crashes in me, and I can’t stop it.
I finally get the buttons right, but it doesn’t make me feel any better.
I could go back. Already, the idea is tugging at me. I want to curl up in her arms and cry. Mom will be home soon, and what she’s going to find . . . She’ll be worried. There might be police. She’ll hate that.
I could tell her. I could trust her to be on my side.