Stolen (10 page)
Authors: Lucy Christopher
Tags: #Law & Crime, #Juvenile Nonfiction, #Australia, #Action & Adventure, #Adventure and Adventurers, #Juvenile Fiction, #Australia & Oceania, #Social Issues, #Fiction, #Physical & Emotional Abuse, #Interpersonal Relations, #Kidnapping, #Adventure Stories, #Young Adult Fiction, #General, #People & Places, #Adolescence
Sometime later you put a thin, faded notebook on the bedside table. After you’d left the room, I picked it up and flicked through it. The pages were blank. There was a pencil on the table, too, its lead sharp. I jabbed it hard into the soft skin between my forefinger and thumb. It hurt. I jabbed again.
I tried to draw them, all of them … Mum, Dad, Anna, and Ben. I wanted to remember. But I’ve never been very good at art. The faces I drew were shapeless strangers, a mess of lines and shades. I scribbled jagged black lines over them all.
So I tried words. They were always more my thing anyway. Mum and Dad could never understand it, how I was so good at English and never very good at math or art like them. But even words didn’t flow too well, not then. They certainly didn’t make much sense. Anyone reading them now would think I was on drugs or something, the way those words jumped about.
I tried a letter, but I couldn’t get past “Dear Mum and Dad.” There was too much to say. And anyway, I didn’t know whether you would read it.
So I wrote the only words I could think of:
imprisoned, confined, detained, constrained, incarcerated, locked up, interned, sent down, abducted, kidnapped, taken, forced, shoved, hurt, stolen …
I scribbled lines over that piece of paper, too.
I couldn’t sleep any more. There was a pain in my bladder, and everything was stiff. I wanted to move. Cautiously, I tried bending my knees. I scrunched my toes tight and ran my tongue over my dry lips. My arms felt weak as I pushed myself away from the mattress, my legs shaking as I tried to stand.
I put on new clothes from the drawer. The shorts were loose on my hips, my stomach thin. I went into the bathroom and peed into the long drop. Then I turned the tap on. It chugged into life, spurting out hot, brown-speckled water. I washed my face, then stuck my head under the tap and gulped. In that tiny cracked mirror, I watched the water drip off me. My eyes were slightly swollen, my nose peeling from the little sun I’d seen. I looked older somehow.
You were in the kitchen. Your head was low to the table, looking at handwritten words on sheets of loose paper. You glanced up at me, then went back to what you were doing. Small glass vials were spread out around you; some of them with liquid inside, some empty. You picked up one with a yellow lid and squinted to read the label. You held the container to the light from the window, then wrote something down. The previously locked drawer was hanging open, but I couldn’t see what was inside. There was something that looked like a needle on the bench nearby.
My stomach kind of flipped. Everything around you pointed to one thing: drugs. Perhaps drugs you’d used on me, perhaps ones you were yet to use. I stepped back from the kitchen. You didn’t look up. For once you were more engrossed in something else.
I walked through the small porch area, past the batteries and boards lined up against the wall, and stepped onto the veranda. I looked at the floor while my eyes got accustomed to the brightness. When I could look out without squinting too much, I took a few steps and leaned against the rail. I stared across the sand to the Separates. The fence you’d made was still up, the boulders as still as ever within it. From where I stood, no one would guess at the greenness and life that those rocks contained; no one would believe the birdsong. Those rocks were secretive and strange. Like you.
I glanced at the cloudless blue sky. There were no planes up there, no helicopters. No rescue missions. Lying in bed, I’d had the idea of writing “help” in the sand, but I realized then, it was a pretty stupid idea if no one ever flew over anyway. I turned to see the rest of the view: horizon, horizon, Separates, horizon, horizon, horizon … nowhere to run.
I heard your steps on the wood and the snap of the door before I saw you on the veranda.
“You got up,” you said. “I’m glad.”
I stepped back.
“Why today?” You looked genuinely curious.
But I was full up with sadness. I knew that if I opened my mouth, it would all come spewing out. And I didn’t want you to have anything from me, not even that. You kept trying, though.
“Nice day,” you said, “hot and still.”
I backed up into the couch. I grabbed its arm, making the wicker strands crunch.
“Do you want food?”
I stared straight ahead, looking at the craters in the rocks.
“Sit down.”
I did; don’t know why. You had that tone in your voice, I guess, that tone that would be stupid to argue with, the tone that made my legs weak with fear.
“Why don’t we talk?”
I drew my feet up. A tiny breeze had started blowing the grains around. I looked at the sand that was starting to swirl in front of us, a few feet ahead.
“Tell me about something, anything—your life in London, your friends, even your parents!”
I flinched at the sudden loudness of your words. I didn’t want to tell you anything, let alone about them. I clasped my arms around my knees. What would Mum be doing right now? How upset were they that I had disappeared? What had they done to get me back? I gripped my legs a little tighter, trying to force their faces from my mind.
You didn’t say anything for a while, just stared out at the land. I watched you from the side of my eye as you pulled at your eyebrow with your forefinger and thumb. You weren’t comfortable, hovering on the edge of the veranda. I knew what you were thinking, though; you were trying to come up with something new to talk about, something interesting to entice me out of my hole. Your brain was sweating with the effort. Eventually you leaned your elbows on the railing and let out a low sigh. You talked with a voice so quiet.
“Is it really that bad?” you asked. “Living with me?”
I opened my lips and breathed out. I waited at least a minute. “Of course,” I whispered.
Perhaps there was something more to those two words … some sort of a need to connect, wanting to use my voice rather than risk losing it. Because that’s what it felt like then, when that wind was up and blowing the sand around; it felt like it could blow my voice completely away from me, too. I was disappearing with those grains, scattering with the wind.
You heard my words, though. You nearly stumbled off the veranda with shock. You frowned as you composed yourself and thought about my response.
“It could be worse,” you said.
You left your sentence hanging. What could be worse? Dying? It couldn’t be much worse than being in the middle of nowhere, looking out at nothing … never able to get away from it. And, for all I knew, I was waiting to be killed anyway. I shut my eyes against it all and tried remembering life back home. I was getting better at that. If I took my time, I could easily spend a few hours imagining every tiny thing I used to do in a day. But you weren’t letting me dream, not then. Soon I heard you kicking the tips of your boots into the railings. You started banging out a rhythm. I opened my eyes. This wasn’t like you. Normally you moved like a cat.
“At least there are no cities,” you said finally. “Out here … no concrete.”
“I like cities.”
Your fingers tightened around the railings. “No one’s real in a city,” you snapped. “Nothing’s real.”
I shifted in my seat, surprised at your sudden anger. “I miss it,” I whispered. I buried my head into my knees as the reality of how much I really did miss everything set in.
You took a step toward me. “I’m sorry about your parents,” you said.
“Sorry about what?”
You blinked. “Leaving them behind, of course.” You perched on the other end of the couch, your eyes piercing into mine. “I would have liked to have brought them … if I’d thought it would make you happier, that is.”
I moved away, as far into the other end of the couch as I could.
You scratched at the wicker strands. “It’s better like this, just you and me. It’s the only way it could work.”
I scanned the sky again, trying to work out my thoughts. I swallowed my fear.
“How long had you been planning it?”
You shrugged. “Awhile, two or three years. But I’d been watching you for longer than that.”
“How long?”
“About six years.”
“Since I was ten? You’ve been watching me since then?”
You nodded. “On and off.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said. But something inside me was telling me to think about it. There was something there, at the back of my mind that, if I thought about it a little more, might make sense of all this.
I searched my memory, trying to find your face anywhere in it. There was nothing specific, but there were hazy, half-remembered things; like the man my friends saw once waiting outside the school gates, and that time in the park when I thought I saw someone watching in the bushes … the way Mum was paranoid about someone following her home. Was that you, I wondered? Had you been watching me that long? Surely not. But there was something else, too, something else I couldn’t quite remember.
“Why me?” I whispered. “Why not some other poor girl?”
“You were you,” you said. “You found me.”
I held your gaze. “What do you mean?”
You looked at me curiously. When I didn’t give you the response you were after, you leaned across the couch toward me. There was an intensity in your eyes. “You don’t remember? You don’t remember meeting me that first time?” You shook your head slightly in amazement.
“Why should I?”
“I remember you.” You moved your hand toward me like you wanted to touch me, your bottom lip quivering slightly. “I really remember you.”
Your eyes were opened wide. I tucked my chin into my chest, away from them.
“It didn’t happen,” I said. My voice was shaky and soft, hardly there. “It isn’t true.”
You reached across to me and grabbed my shoulder. I felt your fingers dig into my skin, forcing me to look at you.
“It happened,” you said. Your face was set, your eyes unblinking. “It’s true. You just haven’t remembered it yet.” You stared hard at me, at my left eye and then my right. “But you will,” you whispered.
After a moment, I heard you swallow. Then your eyes clouded over a little, and you let me go. I fell back against the couch. You stood up and turned away. I heard you in the kitchen, slamming cupboards. I was shaking; there were even goose bumps on my legs, though I wasn’t cold.
