“If that means it made me feel mixed up, then yeah.”
Her lips curved into the ghost of a smile. She rubbed the small piece of paper on her shirt, drying it. She supposed she was free to keep it. What would they do to her if she didn’t give it back? Come and get it? Good. At least then there’d be someone to fight. Though if there was something to do with a small square of paper that would turn the tide in her favor somehow, she didn’t know what that might be.
“What would be the point of mixing us up about how long we’ve been here?” he asked.
She considered that. “I don’t know. But it could be positive. It could mean they plan to release us at some point but they don’t want us to be able to give the police any information.”
“Others will be aware that we disappeared, though,” Evan said. “They’ll know how long we’ve been missing.”
She drummed lightly on the bars. “Probably.” She’d left work with three days off in front of her when she was taken. Her father certainly would have realized after a few days that something was wrong when she didn’t answer one of his usual calls or texts. But even so, the exact timing of her disappearance might be unclear. Then again, it also could probably be investigated using cameras from the area.
She glanced to the corner of the cage where she’d stacked her empty water cups. There were sixteen. But that didn’t help determine the exact amount of time she’d been there, because they’d been delivered randomly, sometimes with only a few sips of water and sometimes almost full so that she rationed what she’d been given. “I don’t know,” she finally answered. “Maybe us being left in the dark was simply to torment us.”
He let out a chuffing sound. “Mission accomplished.”
She acknowledged his statement with an agreeable sound in the back of her throat. “Why do you think they finally turned the lights on?”
Evan was quiet for a moment, obviously trying to work that out. “I think we can assume that they want us to see the things in this room. You were given a rope for a reason too. They expect something.”
A shiver snaked down her spine. Funny that she could still be chilled by anything, all things considered. Could it really get creepier and more horrifying than this? She shoved the thought aside violently, refusing to think about that question lest she work herself up into a terror cyclone. It would be so easy, so easy. She’d been skating the edge of that storm since she’d first woken here, and she refused to let her mind do to her what they had not.
Yet.
“But what? What could they possibly want from us? And why don’t they tell us what it is?”
“Look at me,” Evan said, and she did, turning her body and leaning the side of her forehead against a bar as she peered through them over to where he sat in a similar position. “Let’s try to put our emotions and our fear aside so we can think as rationally as possible, okay? We don’t have a positive view of the other person. Is that fair?”
“Sure.”
“And we have a connection that makes us natural . . . enemies, I guess.”
She tipped her chin in agreement.
“So here’s what I’ve got. Let’s assume that connection is no coincidence. Who benefits from this?” He gestured his arm around the small space. “Is it an exercise to get us to work together somehow? Sharing our food? Trying to figure out how to get out of here?”
She wrinkled her brow. His theory sounded far fetched. “Who would do something like that, though? We’ve been terrorized and half starved so far. Our parents wouldn’t do this to us, at least I know my dad wouldn’t. And if not them, who?”
“That redheaded friend of yours who always gives me the death stare when I pass her in the hall?”
She felt a sliver of indignation lodge under her skin. Of course he was assuming it was one of her people. “Paula?” She let out a short, humorless laugh. “Paula didn’t do this.”
“How do you know?”
“This isn’t the work of a shy eighteen-year-old girl who cries at sad commercials and dreams of working in the publishing industry because books bring her such joy.” Plus, Paula was smart and kind and loyal. She had to be scared to death right now by Noelle’s disappearance.
“Why not? Still waters run deep.”
“Oh, shut up.” She turned her body more fully. “You know nothing about us.”
“Okay, then. Why’d you accept that scholarship anyway?” he asked.