“Hi, Mason. I’m Ms. Walker. Remember me?” The message comes out in the cute little-boy voice with a British accent. It’s Harper’s current favorite. I like this one way better than the gruff old-man voice she had before. That one always creeped me out.
He jerks his head up quickly. Then snaps it back down just as fast.
I quickly tap out another message:
“Do you want to try?” The little boy with a British accent asks my question.
Mason stares down at his hands, unspeaking and unmoving. I take a chance and toss my phone on the bed, hoping I don’t startle him.
“Go ahead; you can use it,” I say, pointing to where it lies next to him on the bed.
He pauses for a second, then snatches the phone and brings it toward him before waiting another few seconds to make sure I don’t grab it back. His eyes widen as he brings it back to life. He taps on the buttons. Words and phrases randomly spit out, then cut off, interrupting each other with jagged stops and starts. He giggles in between his manic taps. Nothing is connected. All the words nonsense.
“Apples. Seven. Bathroom. To be. Toast. Go.”
But it doesn’t matter to Mason. He squeals every time the little boy talks. The British accent is as big of a hit with him as it is with Harper. I wait for him to put it all together, hoping that he can. For every kid who loves TouchChat, who it opens a whole new world for, there’s another that it doesn’t. They don’t make the connection that you can tap the buttons to speak a word or phrase in any way that you choose. Just as I’m about to give up on anything except random tap and play from Mason, he slows. His body stiffens as he stares at my phone in his hand. Concentration lines his forehead the same way it did when I tested him. My eyes are locked on him as he taps, and then:
“Hi!”
Mason lets out a squeal and drops the phone in his lap like it physically shocked him. He claps and lets out a hysterical laugh like he’s completely tickled and pleased with himself. His feet jiggle on the bed. I fight the urge to throw my arms around him and give him a celebratory hug. I don’t want to scare him off. He gives a few more claps before picking the phone up again.
“Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!” Huge shrieks of laughter bubble up from his insides. The kind you only have when you’re a kid. His entire being lights up.
“Hi, Mason,” I say, holding back tears.
His face fills with delight just like Harper’s did the first time she felt like she had control over her communication. She could pick what she wanted to say, and there were so many choices. As quick as the light came, his eyes darken as it’s extinguished. His smile slowly fades until it disappears. He grips my phone in his hand, and his brow furrows as his gaze rolls to the screen. There’s a long silence as he works his jaw. His hair falls forward onto his face, and he blows it off rather than letting go of the phone. My insides freeze, and I can barely breathe as he finally starts tapping and making his choices. Every tap is slow and deliberate. It’s painfully long until he finishes. His hand trembles as he holds the phone straight out in front of him and taps speak:
“Please. Help. Me.”
THIRTY-ONE
CASEY WALKER
“Genevieve is twisted and depraved! She’s hurting Mason, probably more than we even know. Something is seriously wrong with her.” My speech is pressured and hurried. I can’t get the words out fast enough. “Nobody ever suspected her except me. Not once. But of course nobody else did. I mean, if a mother says something about their kid, you believe them, right? A mother knows best and all that. Just this automatic trust.” I smack my steering wheel as I drive, trying my hardest not to speed home. “What kind of a person does that to her own child? And what for? So she could speak at a few conferences? Be on the local news? Seriously?”
“Ms. Walker, slow down. You need to—”
“Arrest her. That’s what we need to do. I don’t know what happened out there with Annabelle, but whatever it was, it was all about her. She’s behind everything. Not him. I got him to talk, Detective Layne.”
“You did? What’d he say?” He’s finally paying attention for the first time since I called instead of just trying to butt in so that he can speak.
“During our visit, we communicated with an app that my daughter and I use so she can speak without having to use her voice. I thought of it before, but Genevieve’s against assistive technology, so I didn’t bother with it. I should’ve. Whatever, though, it doesn’t matter. I used it today.” I want to squeal like Mason did when he first made the voice say hi. “Anyway, I showed him how to use it. It’s pretty simple, but for a while I was afraid he wasn’t going to be able to figure it out, and then he did. He finally did.” This time I do squeal like him. “And he said, ‘Please help me.’ Please help me! That’s what he said. He needs our help, Detective. What do we do? How do we stop her?”
“Did he say it was his mama hurting him?” He doesn’t sound nearly as excited as I expected him to be.
“It has to be her. There’s nobody else around him to hurt him. She’s never let him out of her sight until now.” He tries to interrupt, but I don’t let him. I’m not done talking. “And then the one time he’s finally free, he asks for help? You have to see how significant that is. Not only that, Detective, he’s a different kid. A relaxed and inside-his-body kind of kid, and you want to know why that is?” I’m not giving him a chance to respond. “It’s because she’s hurting him. She’s been doing it all along.”
“Okay, but did he actually say that his mama was hurting him?” He repeats his question, undeterred by anything I’ve just said.
“He said, ‘Ma. Ma.’ Over and over again.” Once he put those sounds together, he spent ten minutes tapping them out and playing them on repeat. I just sat there on his roommate’s bed, nodding my understanding and hoping it was encouraging enough to get him to say more. “That’s pretty telling, don’t you think?”
“Yes and no,” he says. “He could’ve just wanted his mom. Besides, I’ve heard him say that lots of times, and Genevieve claims it’s one of his favorite phrases, so I’m not willing to bank anything on that. We would need a much more detailed statement.”
“A detailed statement?” I respond incredulously. “How can you expect him to go from almost no communication to giving a detailed account about what happened to him?”
“That’s not what I’m expecting at all. But a blanket statement of ‘help me’ and saying ‘ma ma’ could mean anything. Maybe something is going on at the foster home he’s in and he wants you to help get him out, or maybe he just wants you to help him go home.”
I let out a frustrated sigh. He acts like I let him say those powerful words and didn’t ask any more questions. I jumped in immediately.
“Is someone hurting you, Mason?” That was the first question out of my mouth after his cry for help.
He dropped his head and took just as much time to select his words as he had before. The seconds felt like hours until he was finally finished and tapped play again.