Broken (25 page)

“I see girls like you and I wonder what happened. I wonder what went wrong. Pretty little angels when they’re eighteen or
twenty-two, but boy you get to be thirty-two and you’re just rough and then it keeps getting worse. Because all you have and
all you’ll ever have are those pretty little looks. Then they fade away. And you’re left with nothing. But you can’t understand
that, can you? Whores like you just never understand it.”

The red starts to stabilize. The buzzing begins to fade. The white-hot taste of anger is now on her tongue.

“Get it over with,” Laila says.

“What? You want to meet your maker?”

“Who says I have one?”

“Oh, we have one all right. You know what the Bible says? It says that even the demons believe in God. And they tremble.”

“You going to quote Bible verses after what you just did?”

“No,” the man says. “I’m just telling you the truth. Just because you think there’s a God above doesn’t mean you have to serve
Him. I mean, look at this. Look around us. Where was God when Katrina hit? He was strangely absent, just like He is absent
whenever he’s really needed. Good thing you don’t have faith because you could call out right now. But in the end, where would
it get you?”

“Get it over with then.”

“Why did James and Connor follow you down here?”

“They want money,” she says.

“And that’s all?”

“Why else would they come all this way?”

“And your family has a lot of it?”

“You could say that.”

“Why didn’t you just give it to them?”

“Would you?”

The man nods. “Good point. I wouldn’t give those two idiots anything except what I’m going to give them later tonight.”

Laila feels the world begin to weaken and wobble.

“Who else knows you’re here?”

“Nobody.”

“Who else?”

“I said nobody.”

“Who was that man back at the hotel?”

“I don’t know.”

He doesn’t move and doesn’t blink and doesn’t breathe. He just stares at her for a long time.

“If you don’t tell me who that was, I’m going to find it out myself and then I’m going to kill him just like I killed your
boyfriend there. Tell me now.”

Laila utters the words slowly and carefully. “I. Don’t. Know.”

He nods. “Okay then.”

He goes to the front of the car and spends a moment looking for something. She thinks of running away, but there is nowhere
to run. There is nothing around. And he would follow her and find her and do the inevitable.

She hears a latch open.

“Get off the car,” he tells her as he pulls open the trunk.

She looks at him and looks in the trunk. It’s small and empty.

“Get inside.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so. Because if you don’t, I’m going to sandwich that little body of yours and do it myself.”

“Just shoot me.”

“I don’t want to.”

“You just shot Kyle, why can’t you do the same for me?”

“You really want to die, don’t you? But you see, there’s no reason for me to kill you. I needed to kill him to make sure I
got information from you. That man is your brother, I’m assuming. Because you would tell me otherwise. And I’m guessing your
family knows where he is at least. And that we don’t have much time. So as for him, he’s a dead man. But you, well, all I
need you to be is out of sight and out of mind. So get in the trunk.”

“And do what? Just wait to die?”

He looks around and smiles. “Well, I’d say if you were the praying sort of girl, you could call out to God and try to get
Him to pay attention. But you’re not, are you? So you’ll have a lot of time to spend thinking about yourself and your life
and all those little things you could and should have done. And since you don’t believe in anything, then anything can happen.
Maybe someone will be passing by and check out this random car in the middle of nowhere. Or maybe you’ll just fry like an
egg in the back of this trunk. Gets pretty hot out here, doesn’t it? Who knows. Anything can happen because that’s what you
believe, right? In anything? And nothing?”

He waves the gun at her, and for a moment Laila thinks of wrestling the gun away and dying in the process. There is a tiny
little light that’s on in the trunk, and she doesn’t want to get in there.

But then she thinks of him.

She thinks of Lex.

And then she thinks of Kyle.

And she knows that if he did it to Kyle, he’ll do it to Lex.

And maybe, just maybe, Laila will be able to help Lex.

“Now,” the man says.

So she climbs in, and the trunk closes down above her. He taps the car several times.

Laila hears him talking and realizes he must be calling someone.

Then she doesn’t hear him at all.

She is left in black static, in this tiny stuffy box, this metallic coffin, knowing she will die inside it.

I sometimes wonder why I didn’t turn out normal. Why I couldn’t simply have a normal childhood and grow into a normal adult
and live a normal life. Gaining weight and growing wrinkles and having kids and dealing with dysfunctional family and friends
and the highs and lows of life. Why couldn’t that be me? Why did everything about my life need to be so ugly? Why couldn’t
I simply airbrush it the way so many do? By settling in and settling down and just settling?

They say it’s what’s on the inside that counts, and I agree. And every day I awaken with a hole inside me. A hole of my own
making. A hole I’ve never been able to fix or sew up or fill.

They say God can fill it, but how can this be? How? Nobody’s ever explained that to me fully. Will God wrap up a little ball
of hope and fill my gaping wound? Is that how it works? I know it sounds silly, but that’s how it sounds to me when I hear
this.

Tyler used to say–the love of my life, my soul mate–he used to say that he carried it around too. He used to say he was so
tired and so confused and so sad. He drank to fill up. He ran to escape. He laughed because he didn’t want to cry. And I would
look at him and not believe it because here was someone with a good life. And I grew to realize that we all have holes and
that nothing can fill them and that
those who say they’re filled are just like airbrushed models looking perfect on the magazine cover.

There is no such thing as perfection.

We all live with it. Some fight it. Some grow immune to it.

And then there are some who are wounded and limping and who have no hope whatsoever.

God I wish there was a way to change that.

But it’s not faith that I need.

It’s proof that the ache and the hole can go away.

Even for a moment.

L
aila has been listening for some time now—she’s not sure how long because she’s not wearing her watch, and even if she was,
she couldn’t see it in this blackness. She’s been listening, but hasn’t heard anything. A part of her has wondered if the
man with the guns would decide otherwise and open the trunk and kill her just like he did Kyle. It’s been five minutes, maybe
ten, maybe longer.

She can move around a little, but she can’t twist all the way around. She’s afraid to do that and end up in an even worse
position than the one she’s in now. The car is small—it’s a Toyota Celica that’s a few years old. There’s nothing back here,
and thankfully it seems like Kyle has kept it clean. Not that that matters. Not that any of that matters anymore.

She thinks of Kyle and tries to control her emotions. She wants to scream. She wants to cry. She wants to explode. But she
can’t do any of those things. She can’t even mutter his name. Her words feel inverted, her heart squashed into some tiny little
hole that’s being suctioned from the inside out.

Laila breathes. It’s stuffy, almost chalky back here.

Her hand feels around the trunk. The metallic top and the sides. The slightly carpeted floor. She feels the back to see if
there’s any type of lever that pulls the seat down. For a few minutes she explores the back of the trunk and finds and touches
every single tiny hole and knob and bolt and indentation, hoping to find one of the emergency trunk releases. She thinks about
the articles she’s read, about knocking out a taillight and waving her arm, which would only work if there was someone around
to see.

Then there’s something. A lever to something that opens a small door.

But it’s barely big enough for her head to fit through, much less anything else.

Her hand claws through the pass between the trunk and the backseat. She flails out to try and find anything in the backseat
that she can use, but there’s nothing.

Her mouth takes a breath of air from the backseat, but it’s no better than what’s in the trunk, and the open door presses
uncomfortably against her in the tight space.

She shuts the compartment and shuts her eyes and listens.

There is nothing outside.

She pictures again where she is. Somewhere in New Orleans. Someplace that Hurricane Katrina ravaged that hasn’t been saved,
that perhaps will never be saved. How often do people drive by here at night? Or even in the day? And what will happen when
the sun beats down on the black car and it starts to heat up like an oven?

She swallows, and her throat feels raw and dry.

She’s going to try and scream, but then another voice tells her to save her breath.

She’ll need it.

She’ll need it for tomorrow.

A burn fills her back and lower legs. She is already sore and aching and it’s only been fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.

Is this the way she’s going to die?

It’s strange that some things still don’t change.

She doesn’t feel the burn of tears on her eyes. They’re dry.

She doesn’t even find this to be completely surprising. In the middle of nowhere dying. In the middle of nothing, dying. For
so long she’s been nowhere and she’s been nothing.

For so long she’s been dying.

“Is this what I get?”

Once again the image of Kyle comes to mind. His smile. His sweet tone. His sensibility. His faith. All crumpling to the ground
in seconds.

God wouldn’t allow that if He was really up there. If He was really paying attention.

“Would You?”

She swallows again.

And she thinks.

She wonders how life can be like this, how twenty-seven years can end up like this, how random every single second of every
single life can be.

How fruitless, how damning, how meaningless.

“Why here? Why like this? To prove a point?”

She knows she’s just talking to herself. She can’t pray her way out of this. That’s not going to bring him back. That’s not
going to bring back a single soul.

Every sound she makes exaggerated in the small vicinity of this trunk, Laila moves her arms and legs slightly to try and keep
blood flowing through them.

She controls her emotions. She wants to just slip away. She wants to close her eyes and not open them again.

But then she sees his face. Her brother who came all this way for something. To perhaps save her. After all this time, he
wants to save her.

Laila knows he’s doomed just like she is. Just like Kyle was and like the rest of the men following her.

Men who come into her life are doomed and always will be.

“Why have anything to do with me when the rest of the world doesn’t want anything either? Why bother? Why even care? You couldn’t
save my mother, so You saved my father for a life of looking back? And what’d You do for his daughter? What’d You do with
her?”

Her voice is loud, but it doesn’t matter. Nobody is around. And if they are, that’s fine with her. Let them do what they want.
It’s public property. She’s public property. Nothing about her is her own.

Nothing.

Because the only thing that was hers, that belonged solely to her that was a gift, was something that she took away. Something
she erased. Something she dotted out.

“But I can’t just turn my back, can I? I can’t just forget. Not like You. I can’t forget and I’m haunted and freaked out.
I’ve been living every day with this burning, aching, angry set of scars that I put on myself. That I chose. So there. So
there. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about my whole life. I’m sorry, but what are You going to do? You’re not going to do anything
because that’s the difference. My fears and my guilt get me nowhere, and all You do is just ignore. You just ignore, and You
just abandon, and what do You care? You killed a whole city by not caring, didn’t You? Didn’t You? So why bother? Why bother
with someone stuck in this little tiny hole who’s helpless and can’t get out? Why care?”

Laila slows down her breathing and closes her eyes and wishes she could die. She’s never wanted to die more than this very
moment.

And that’s when she hears the tap.

A tapping that sounds on the trunk.

Perhaps the big guy is still there, getting his kicks out of listening to her break down. Perhaps he has been wanting this
all along.

She screams out a curse and dares him to open the trunk. “Go ahead and open it. See if I care. I don’t. Do it. Do it.”

The tapping is slight and continues along the side of the car.

Then she hears the door open.

And as she does, she tries to see who it is through the small door to the backseat. But there’s no time.

The trunk opens.

She hears the shuffle of feet scampering away.

Laila sits up in the trunk and expects the worst.

But instead nothing comes.

There is nobody there.

She climbs out and looks around. A slight breeze cools her down.

She can see Kyle’s legs sticking out from the front of the car.

She stares down the street but doesn’t see anybody. Even walking around the other side of the car, still avoiding the front,
she sees nobody.

Laila looks up to the sky, peppered with light clouds.

A moon hangs behind them. Behind it, stars.

And behind them?

She doesn’t know.

She doesn’t know and doesn’t want to begin to think about it.