Broken (13 page)

“You can’t run away from me,” he says.

Even in the darkness she knows it’s him. It’s Connor. The same voice and the same stench and the same everything.

“What do you want?”

“I don’t want anything. Not anymore. You took it all away, you piece of trash.”

His outline in the darkness just sits there. A hand finds its way over her skin and wanders.

Laila shivers.

“You don’t get it, do you?” he says.

“What?”

“I’m not here for anything. Except to hurt you.”

He laughs and clutches her, and she tries to pull his hand away but can’t.

He reaches up to squeeze the bones in her face.

“There are things I want to do—that I want to do so badly but I can’t. That doesn’t mean I’m done with you.”

She shivers. “Please…”

“Please what? Please don’t hurt you?”

The grip tightens and compresses, and she howls in pain. Her skull feels like it’s bending.

“Don’t kill you? Why would I want to do that? Why, Laila? Maybe because that’s what you did to me? Leaving me shot and bleeding
to death in a house that wasn’t even my own? Leaving me for the others to find so weak and pathetic and sick and twisted.
You little—piece—of—garbage.”

He presses down, and then he finally lets go of her. His shadow changes, and she sees him slightly bent over, his hands tightening.

The ghost moves back toward her.

“You owe me and you owe my family and there is only one way to get rid of me.”

“How? What? What do you want?”

“You know and don’t tell me you’re too stupid to figure it out.”

His lips touch her cheek, her neck, her chest. Then he whispers back in her ear.

“Don’t make me keep coming back because who knows what I’ll do next. I have ideas. Oh, do I have ideas and… oh, what I can
do with them.”

With that he puts something against her face that feels like a cloth, and she gags and cries out again but then suddenly feels
everything leak out and away toward black.

The smell of chlorine wrings her nose. She feels blurry and smothered as she adjusts her body and sits up to find herself
looking at a blank stone wall that stands above a pool. The lights bear down, and she looks out the window and sees that night
is still around, and then she looks back down at the pool. Something smoky spreads out from the middle of the water.

Groggy, she stands and feels nauseous. Her throat tightens, and she dry heaves a few times, getting control and walking over
to the pool.

She looks around and can’t see anyone.

In the center of the pool something black and wet floats. Like a round mass. And all around it seeps blood.

For a moment she thinks she sees someone’s face. But that’s her imagination. She sees the wavy flakes of hair on the surface
of the water.

It’s an animal in the pool.

It looks like a big dog. Too small to be anything bigger than a dog.

The blood looks fresh, like it was just cut and is still bleeding.

Her eyelids are heavy, and her legs weak. She glances around the pool again, swaying a bit and seeing the clear water a little
too close.

Then she hears the voice. Calling out to her.

She shakes her head and looks where it came from.

A figure is at a doorway. Standing. Waving.

She rubs her eyes and walks toward the doorway. The door is propped open with something. She begins swaying toward it and
leans toward the water and almost falls in. Then she feels the tug of something guiding her along, pulling her away from the
liquid swishing next to her.

Laila reaches the doorway and sees the item holding the door open.

It’s a heavy toy dump truck with big wheels.

She touches it to see if it’s real and can feel the grooves in its side.

Laila walks down the hallway and ends up finding a sofa and sits there, still groggy and drained. She drifts off for a moment,
awakened only by a woman’s voice.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” she asks.

Laila stands. “I locked myself out of my room.” She gives the woman her information in order to get a key.

A clock on the wall says it’s three thirty.

“Did anybody just come from the pool?”

The woman looks at her to see if she’s drunk.

“Anybody?”

The woman only shakes her head.

Laila takes the key without thanking her and heads toward the elevator.

She presses the button and feels her stomach drop slightly as she moves upward.

•   •   •

“How’s everything?”

“You know how everything is.”

“Did she sleep much?”

“No. I was up all night.”

“Sorry.” Lex shifts in the seat of his car. He can smell the coffee in the holder.

“If you were sorry you’d come home.”

“I can’t, Dee.”

“You told me. You promised me. You said you wouldn’t take off again.”

“This is different.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“Why do you keep asking that?”

“Because you keep drinking.”

“Not a drop.”

“Promise?”

“I promise,” Lex says.

“Promise on her.”

“One promise should be enough.”

“Not for you.”

“There’s stuff you don’t understand,” he says.

“Then help me understand.”

“I will, but not like this.”

“Then when?”

“When I find her.”

“You’re not going to find her, Lex. When will you get it into that skull of yours that Laila’s gone? That she might as well
be dead.”

He curses at her, and then he pauses, apologizing.

“No need for that kinda language.”

“Then don’t go on like that.”

“She’s missing because she wants to be,” Dena says.

“I’m going to find her.”

“Probably shacking up with the devil himself.”

“Stop it.”

“That girl doesn’t deserve to be found. What’re you gonna do? Bring her home? Save her soul?”

“I can try.”

“She needs to stay away. She’s no good.”

“So was I.”

“God shined His face down on you.”

“Yeah, I know,” Lex says. “And I’m hoping He’s got some more mercy to spare. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m going to
find her.”

“Heartache is all you’re gonna find. Heartache and death.”

When they raped me, it was really just two of them, the third just watching. I think Ben was scared. More scared than I was.
In his mind he’d probably imagined something different. But when he heard my screams and saw my face, he couldn’t do anything
but watch with his mouth wide open. He couldn’t do anything yet he couldn’t look away. That taught me a lot. If only he could’ve
done something. If only he could’ve tried and stopped them. But he looked and didn’t stop looking, and I’ll remember that
look until the day I die.

S
leep stays away, so Laila eventually takes a shower and gets ready to leave around midmorning on the overcast day. She pays
cash for the room and goes to the parking lot. She knows now where she’s going to go, even if she has no idea what she’s going
to do when she arrives. But it doesn’t matter now because Laila finds the tires slashed. Not one but all four of them on the
Honda. Slashed and shredded. She glances around, but there’s nobody nearby.

Somebody is surely watching. She knows this.

She waves her hand high and then tosses her bag back into the vehicle. She keeps walking across the small entrance road to
the hotel to the fast-food restaurant. She’s hungry and doesn’t care who’s watching or who slashed her tires. Perhaps the
same person who slashed her tires slashed the throat or stomach of the animal in the
swimming pool. Or perhaps that was all in her head just like the figure of Connor sitting on her bed and touching her.

Still able to order breakfast, Laila finds herself hungrier than she thought. She sits near a window periodically looking
outside. An elderly couple sit across from her in what appears to be a morning ritual of biscuits and coffee and reading the
morning paper. She watches them for a long time and finds herself smiling at them. In some ways the couple acts like little
kids with their innocent, sweet conversation and their obliviousness to the rest of the restaurant.

The large coffee wakes her up but doesn’t get rid of her headache. She sips it and tries to rework her plan.

She may be derailed for the moment, but it doesn’t change where she’s going.

She looks up at the sky and remembers another overcast day and a conversation.

A decade has passed and still she remembers like it was yesterday.

“I need your help.”

Lex stares at her. “My help for what?”

“To know what to do.”

“I don’t know.”

“Just tell me.”

“Tell you what, Lai?” her brother says. “I don’t have anything to tell you.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t go.”

“Maybe.”

“Tell me,” Laila says.

“Tell you what?”

“Should we go back home?”

“I don’t know, Laila. I don’t. I don’t know what to say.”

“What about Ava?”

“She doesn’t know.”

“Nothing?”

“No. I told you.”

“Maybe we should go home.”

“If you want to.”

“I don’t know. I really don’t.”

“Laila—it’ll be okay. Don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying.”

“Okay.”

A little while later she watches them hoist the CR-V onto the flatbed truck and then drive away. They tell her it will be
a few hours, but it’s already lunchtime. She doesn’t want to stay at this hotel but has gotten a room just in case. The wind
blows and storm clouds gather above her. There’s a blue and yellow kite gliding above. She looks around to see who is holding
it, but she can’t see anybody.

For a few minutes she watches the kite. It dips and then takes a nosedive and lands in the field beyond her and the road.

She doesn’t see anybody retrieve it.

Laila goes back into the hotel and knows it’s time to make a call.

•   •   •

For the last twenty minutes, Lex has watched as Kyle loads up his small car with a suitcase and a couple of duffle bags. He’s
inside the apartment now, and Lex is still waiting, ready to follow if necessary. His gas tank is full, and he’s had enough
sleep and coffee to make him wide awake even if his back is sore from sleeping in the car.

He knows what he heard and what he saw in the apartment, and
he knows he needs to follow the man. It’s the only chance he might have to find Laila.

Kyle eventually gets into his Toyota and drives off. Lex follows him and nearly misses getting on I-85 when Kyle does. He
sees that they’re heading south toward Atlanta.

Maybe Kyle knows something he doesn’t. Greenville was a lost cause, and the only nugget of hope he has is this guy suddenly
getting away.

If this proves to be nothing, then he’ll go back to Texas and his family. At least he’ll be able to tell himself he tried,
and if he sees Laila again one day, he’ll be able to tell her the truth that he finally decided to go find her and reach out
even though it might be too late.

What is real beauty?

The question is a cliche' used a hundred or a thousand times before in commercials and ads and slogans and billboards. But
the question is still one I’ve asked again and again.

Studying the photos, glancing at the ads, looking at the images.

I remember one of my teachers in seventh or eighth grade sitting me down for a nice chat. She was probably early thirties,
but to me she was old. I’d been goofing off and being rebellious, and she pulled me aside and told me to stop the nonsense.
And then she told me something that has stayed with me ever since.

“Your beauty is going to get you a lot of things in this life, Laila, but don’t let it define you. Don’t let it change who
you are on the inside.”

Sometimes, after winning the model competition and heading off to New York City and being in ad after ad and being touted
as this kind of girl or that kind of girl, I’d think about that teacher’s words. I don’t even remember her name, but I remember
her words. I would recall them when the doors would open and when the smiles would come and when time after time after time,
I would get my way.

I didn’t take her advice.

Sometimes I forgot there was somebody inside to even concentrate on.

I was given so much and had the great opportunity to travel and see the world all because of the genes I was born with. It
had nothing to do with my personality or my mind or my drive. It was the color of my eyes and the texture of my hair and the
shape of my legs and the curl of my smile.

Over the years, I used every bit of those looks I could.

And over the years, I grew to detest them.

What is real beauty? I don’t know. I don’t know because I’ve seen so much ugliness I’ve forgotten where to even look. I’m
oblivious to the beautiful things in this world. They’re overshadowed by my dark deeds and my dark soul and all the darkness
that follows me.

The beauty is broken with far too many pieces to pick back up.

J
ames calls again but doesn’t get anybody. He looks at his watch, then gets out of the car.

“Enough with this,” he says.

He walks through the sliding glass doors of the hotel and past the lobby and the desk to the elevators. He goes to the third
floor, then he finds her room.

He looks at his cell and then ignores it as his other hand finds the plastic key card. He swipes it and opens the door. It
opens easily without catching on a bolt. James walks inside and closes the door.

Laila jumps out of bed and screams. He moves toward her and slaps her in the head hard enough to send her to the ground. He
steps on her back and holds her down and tells her to be quiet. She’s wearing jeans and a short-sleeved top. Dark hair spills
out onto the floor and her back.