Sheltered (17 page)

“We’re never doing this again. The next time I leave, you’re coming with me.”

* * * * *

She told herself the same thing, a hundred times a day.
He didn’t really mean it.
And then when her brain informed her that he actually probably had, she tried to tell her brain that he’d intended something else altogether.

There were a million things someone might mean by
you’re coming with me
, after all. Even though she found it very difficult to work out what those things were. Maybe he had tickets to Disneyland and hoped she’d come for a vacation with him?

One on which they’d argue and return early and then threaten to kill each other.

God, she just couldn’t come to grips with it. With him. He offered too much, and took too little. He made promises that thrilled her past the point of bearable, until just the thought of something like that actually happening made her dig her nails into the palms of her hands.

Doing so stopped the thought dead. It blanked her mind, and that was what she needed most of all—a blank mind. No thoughts about Van. No crazy notions about running away with him, because if she thought about it too long she knew she’d want to do it, and what then? What then?

She couldn’t very well tell him that her mother needed to come with them, in case of unfortunate accidents that weren’t really accidents at all.

Though as it turned out, she didn’t really need to. She didn’t have to tell him what had kept her here all these years, because on returning home on Monday evening, she found her reason for staying had gone.

Barely a whisper left. Barely a trace. Just empty hangers in her mother’s side of the closet, and the jewelry box stood open on the dresser. She’d taken everything she needed while her daughter went to college and her husband went to work, and left behind all the things that didn’t matter.

And when Evie finally managed to drag herself downstairs—only to find her father in the kitchen by the counter—she had to wonder. Had her father ever made a deal with her mother, like the one he’d made with her?
If you leave, I’ll kill our daughter
, she thought, idly.

And then not so idly.

“Sit down, Eve,” her father said, but really he didn’t have to. She knew what
his
gray, grave expression meant. The game of pretending he hadn’t known what she’d been doing was over. He’d uncovered something, and now she had to step forward to see what it was. Had she left a book somewhere—one that she shouldn’t have been reading? A tissue left too long in her bathroom wastepaper basket?

The undesirable items ranged from the smallest, simplest thing to near unspeakable transgressions, but she had to be honest. She hadn’t really understood what unspeakable was, until right this moment.

The worst thing possible had happened, and her mother had just left her to it.

“Sit down, Eve,” he said again, while that familiar heat spread over her palms. Soon they’d be wet with perspiration, but of course whenever she tried to wipe them on her skirt he’d catch it, and punish her harder.

Good girls did not do things like that. Good girls did not have thoughts about stabbing their fathers. And above all else, good girls did not invite boys with wallets into their homes.

“Are you defying me, Eve?” her father asked, and it was only then that she realized she had absolutely no intention of sitting down. She’d done it a thousand times before and never blinked, never thought there was an option…

But something had changed now.

She could feel it rising inside herself. Could feel it opening its mouth and hear it saying words—
If your father kills you now, you’ll never see Van again
.
You’ll never hold him, never kiss him, never fall asleep on him. You’ll never get that normal life, Evie.

So do what you have to do. There’s nothing here to hold you back anymore. Nothing to stop you—just go. Go on. You’re free. Go.

Though she was more surprised than anyone, when her body actually obeyed. It didn’t even stop to collect itself, or check with her mind that this was definitely the way to go. It just reached forward whip quick, snatched Van’s wallet—that terrible, terrible evidence of her crime—from the counter and then went for the sliding doors, all in one big, juddering rush.

She couldn’t keep up. She didn’t want to keep up. For once nothing felt clumsy or awkward—she almost flew across the kitchen, and quite possibly would have made it, if it hadn’t been for her hair. Her long, long hair, which her father got his fist around before she’d reached the glass.

She could hardly believe the noise that came out of her when he did it. It sounded like something unearthly, something that wasn’t her at all, and the harder he yanked on that length of hair, the louder she made herself.

It forced another realization—she’d never screamed before. All these years, all the pain, and she’d never so much as made a peep.

But by God she was screaming now. He could go on demanding she stop all he liked. He could pull and pull on her hair—like a leash, she thought, deliriously, like a chain around her neck, yanking hard—for as long as he felt like it, she wouldn’t stop this noise.

And she wouldn’t stop trying to escape either. All she had to do was keep right on running, as though he hadn’t grabbed her at all. Then just as the pain reached some unbearable point, just as she felt sure she couldn’t stand it a second longer, she yanked harder.

Agony seared through her scalp, as something tore. White-hot agony, electric agony, agony so bad she could hardly see the handle on the door. She scrabbled for it desperately, knowing her father wouldn’t be shocked for long. He wouldn’t just stand there, with a fistful of her hair, and let her get away.

Or at least she thought so until she burst out into the cool night air, the back of her head on fire, everything urging her to go go go. The need to turn and look winning out over it, for just one second.

Though she regretted it when she did. He didn’t look like a person anymore, her father. He looked like a statue behind the glass she fumbled closed, frozen forever in this one familiar tableau. Face almost blistering with anger. Fist raised, with his prize still in it.

This is how I will always remember him
, she thought.

And then she climbed onto her bike and rode away.

* * * * *

The address on his license said 374 Benny Heights, but that didn’t mean anything to her. It might as well have said
the heart of the Sahara Desert
for all the chances she had of finding it.

Though the situation was made just a little bit worse by the eight miles she’d had to pedal to get into the city, the dark, and the incredible rainstorm that God then decided to dump on her head. For a long, long moment she stood in a parking lot that could have been the middle of ButtFuck, New Jersey for all she knew, and seriously thought about sleeping under a car.

The spaces beneath were dry, after all. And the likelihood of someone actually running over her seemed slim, if not impossible. In the morning things would seem brighter, and clearer, and maybe she could actually ask someone who wasn’t the terrifying doorman of Satan’s Lair.

Though of course, there was another possibility. The hundred bucks in Van’s wallet. Would he miss it? He hadn’t missed it for the last three days. And she’d seen a sign a ways back for a motel that cost half that amount, so it wasn’t as though she’d have to spend it all.

To get some heat, and light, and a bath. God, how she longed for a bath. Any adrenaline in her had left long ago, leaving most of her limbs feeling like limp dishrags. Her face still stung from the rain. Her clothes were soaked through and getting colder by the second. If she could just rest for a second, and really think about where she was…

There’s an alley down the side of his building, and a Chinese restaurant next to it. And then across the way there’s another one, the one he went to—Szechuan Dragon.

The one I can see the blinking neon sign for, just past this parking lot
.

She almost broke into a run before her body reminded her of the state it was in. And then once she’d gotten herself together and started diligently pushing her bike along at some sort of excruciating pace, her mind kicked in. The mind that really needed a bath and some warmth, but also kind of wanted to inform her of a slight issue.

He’s probably not going to appreciate you turning up on his doorstep. He said that thing, but how do you know he really meant it? Men say all sorts of stuff after they’ve had sex, even though you don’t know what any of them actually are.

Lord, she hated herself for not knowing what they were. She hated herself for doing this thing, which had at first seemed brave but now looked pathetic. When she got to his narrow and completely intimidating-looking building—all dark, slick brick and heavy, odd window ledges jutting out, like sulky lower lips—she couldn’t even figure out how to press the buzzer. His name wasn’t listed on one of the little peeling strips, as though maybe she’d gotten it wrong after all.

The address on the license was incorrect. He’d lived here once but had since moved somewhere else, and now here she was, stuck outside some stranger’s building.

It made her want to scream, the way she’d done before. It made her curse herself for being a fool. And then worst of all it made her go around the building into that alley where the chickens had been, and stare up at the fire escape.

Realistically, she knew the idea was mad. Even madder than actually coming all the way here in the dead of night, like some loony, lovesick idiot, desperate for someone to save her. But then, if she could just
check
. Just have a little look, and see if she could tell for sure whether or not Van actually lived here…

After which came a big blank spot, in her head. Who knew what happened then? Maybe he’d see her through his window, think she was some maniac come to rob him, and give her a shotgun blast to the face.

Of course, she didn’t actually know if Van
had
a shotgun, but the whole scenario played out very clearly in her head, when she snagged the ladder and actually managed to climb all the way up to the first floor.

And then the next. And the next.

By the time she’d gotten to the rickety metal landing on the third floor, her bike looked very small, down below. And the air seemed thinner too, as though she’d actually climbed Kilimanjaro, instead of the fire escape outside Van’s building. Everything she clung to felt slick, everything she focused on looked old and warped and rusted, and oh God she was almost definitely going to die in this alley.

Almost definitely.

And then she heard a sound from the apartment beyond the big sash window she’d found herself in front of, and suddenly
actual
death was the last thing on her mind. Instead, dying inside became the order of the day. Her entire body filled with an embarrassed heat—a near impossible feat, considering the envelope of cold around her.

Someone was having sex, in what was undisputedly Van’s apartment. She could tell it was, just from the glimpse she had of its insides. Some of his drawings—big ones, done on canvases—were propped against what might have been the wall by a bathroom door, though even if they hadn’t been she would have known.

There was just something about the place. About the dull wooden floors and the falling-apart dark-green couch—the one he’d covered with a loose-knitted blanket. It looked like him, but more importantly…the guy in there
sounded
like him.

And he was having sex with someone else. She didn’t understand much about the whole thing, but she understood enough to know. She didn’t mean anything to him. It was all just some silly kid’s dream about running away, done in the strange, silent bubble of the home she’d now have to go back to.

Though it wasn’t the thought of the latter that struck hardest. How could it be? Van was in there with some cool, mysterious other girl, who probably painted like him, and wore interesting clothes like him, and almost never had to meet him only once a week because otherwise her father might murder her.

By comparison, returning to her home seemed almost desirable. When she got there, her father could just bash her head in and she’d never have to think about any of this ever again.

If she ever actually managed to get off this fire escape, that was. The likelihood of which seemed slimmer and slimmer, considering her state. She couldn’t see for tears she didn’t want to be crying. And going down felt a lot harder than going up had done—she couldn’t swing her leg over the ladder without skidding on the rain-slicked metal.

Plus, someone was shouting her name. She could hear them, even though most of her didn’t want to hear anything ever again. And after a moment of too many muffled words—mainly
Evie
and
what
and
the fuck
—she had to accept that it was Van calling her.

He’d just had sex with some girl who was probably still naked in there, and now he was shouting for her to come inside, come inside. Likely as not he wanted to do some weird sex thing with her and the other chick, or worse….what if he wanted to get her inside and give her cocoa and say things to his real girlfriend? Things like,
See, this is the poor little thing I’ve been developing into a normal person
.
Soon she’ll be cool, like us!