“Instead of what?”
She’s silent.
“What were the marks before?”
But I know. I know. I don’t want to, but of course I do. Her silence says it, and I feel like I might die, right there and then, like I can’t exist with this knowledge.
“I’m going to kill you,” I tell her. It comes spilling, automatic, out of my mouth, so I guess it’s the truth and nothing but. It certainly feels like that.
She laughs. She actually laughs at me. “Baby, you are such a drama queen. You don’t have to worry about your sister. She’s a grown-up and she’s fine. I made my mistakes with her and I paid for them, didn’t I? She’s not here with me like a daughter should be.”
No, she’s not, is she? She got away. I know why now. She’s free now. The thought sparks something in me.
“I learned from my mistakes with your sister,” she says. “That’s why you’ve had the life you do. You got to be a little girl for as long as I could give it to you. And I worked hard to give that to you. But bad things creep through in the long run, baby. That’s life. You need to learn that and get over this so it won’t destroy you, because you’re better than that,” she says, and her voice softens, but I don’t. “And you need to listen to your father. He’s trying to protect you. That’s what fathers do.”
She leaves me alone in my room, all those clothes still spread out on the bed, and I slide against my closed door to the ground because my bed feels tainted now.
I press both hands against my mouth as the tears trickle down my cheeks. I’m not holding in sobs, I’m not holding in anything; I’m just holding myself, and my mouth has always been a lot more reliable than my heart.
I think about the bloody dish gloves and her wild eyes. Did she learn from her mistakes? Or did she just learn how to bury them better?
（She killed for me.）
（She wouldn’t have had to, if she hadn’t chosen him.）
I think about her. My sister. About how strong she is and how she keeps coming back to see us, and what both those things mean now, with this new knowledge.
I think about that phone number, memorized long ago.
I think about what I want for the first time in a very long time. Maybe forever.
I take a deep breath. And another. And then maybe about fifteen hundred more before I’m ready.
But I do. Get ready. Slowly and surely, I start to make some decisions of my own, without anyone else’s input.
I decide to lift the old butcher knife from the kitchen a few nights after Mom buys Raymond a new set for his birthday. He’ll never miss it now that he has his shiny new toys.
I decide to steal the gun that I find tucked in the corner of one of the linen cabinets, a forgotten backup that he really should have locked in the safe. Just think of what could happen.
I decide to dig up the just-in-case box I buried under the dock the first week they brought me here.
I decide to pull out the burner cell I have stored there.
I decide to call my sister.
I decide to run. Just like her. Because now I know:
I want to be strong. I want to be free.
I want to be just like her.
— 49 —
12:10 p.m. （178 minutes captive）
1 lighter, 3 bottles 1 bottle of vodka, 1 pair of scissors, 2 safe-deposit keys, 1 hunting knife, 1 chemical bomb, 1 giant fire starter, the contents of Iris’s purse
Plan #1: Scrapped
Plan #2: On hold
Plan #3: Stab
Plan #4: Get gun. Get Iris and Wes. Get out.
Plan #5: Iris’s plan: Boom!
“I’m sorry,” Iris tells me.
I shrug, because it’s hard to accept some things, especially apologies for things the people who love me had nothing to do with.
“Sometimes I’m not okay, either,” she says softly, her eyes on the hourglass instead of on me.
I’m quiet, waiting.
“I’m the reason my mom left my dad.”
“No,” I say immediately, because the idea of it is so strange. Her mom loves her. She’d never . . .
Oh. My mind catches up with my heart, because she looks so tentative when she finally glances up.
She flips the heart pin. Six minutes.
“I got strep throat last year before we moved,” she tells me.
“What?”
“They put me on antibiotics. I thought I had timed it okay with my birth control. But Rick, my ex, he always complained about wearing condoms because hello, selfish jerk, and I just . . . I thought I would be okay. It was stupid. I should not have been sleeping with a boy who complained about wearing a condom in the first place, but there I was.”