Chapter 39
Adriana looked up at the dead cow print again. There was something about it.
Something ...
She hummed Mary had a Little Lamb to herself.
A wooden frame, glass covering, picture with flies buzzing around the carcass in a green pasture—what drew her to this? Disgusting dead cow, grass, flies. Glass covering. Wood. Glass. Sharp glass?
Yes!
She moved around the pole so that she was facing the picture. She leaned back and lifted her foot above her head and kicked at the frame. It swayed. She kicked again. It swayed more. With another kick, it came loose. Closing her eyes tightly, she heard a crash and tinkling of fragments.
She opened her eyes. Hundreds of diamond like cuts of glass glistened on the floor, and for her, they were as valuable as diamonds.
A few pieces were inches long, sharp on the sides. She reached for the closest with her bare foot—careful not to cut it—and dragged the shard to the pole. There, she picked it up with her hand and began working on the rope binds with its edge.
Cindy was still uncomfortably quiet in the other room.
Adriana worked faster, cutting her fingers in the process, but not caring. She had to get to her friend. If they couldn’t be there for each other, who else would? It wouldn’t be their parents, their foster parents, or the state. The state had tried, but it wasn’t a very good parent.
Maybe Sharon’s friend, Laif. Yes, I wish he was here. He would be perfect to save us. Maybe he had a big house somewhere, and we could go live there forever. Her heart ached just thinking about that. A permanent family. A good home. Somewhere where I wouldn’t have to switch schools every two months.
Every time she switched schools, a brand new group of kids delighted in tormenting her. Their energy went down slowly as they got used to her being different. But when she had to go to a new school, it started all over again with renewed intensity. And it made her wonder if most people in the world were bad. These thoughts made her feel depressed.
She could feel the rope tearing and becoming looser. She worked harder.
Thinking how both she and Cindy experienced horrible abuse, how they both survived, how they were now both trapped, Adriana didn’t want their good fortune of survival to end. She needed to save her friend. Saving Cindy was like saving herself.
When she had lived with her demented father and passive mother, she loved them without knowing just how badly they treated her. If she could save Cindy, maybe—in a roundabout way—that would make up for the part of herself that wasn’t saved before.
Adriana’s mother had always pretended everything was all right. Even after Dad beat them both in the same night, Mom would come to Adriana’s bedside and say that Dad loved them and that they just needed to try harder to please him. Then she abandoned Adriana, leaving her alone with her father. Adriana didn’t want to be like her mother. She had read stories in books where children grew up and turned out like their parents.
She wouldn’t abandon Cindy.
She worked her bleeding fingers harder. The binds loosened more. Her hands felt numb. She tried to pull them free, but the rope still held.
As she continued moving the glass knife up and down, despite the numbness, cuts on her fingers stung, but she kept on.
After a couple of minutes, the rope snapped free, and she wiggled her hands out.
She wiped her bloody fingers on the inside of her blouse, where the paint hadn’t reached. Feeling slowly returned to them, along with painful tingles and bad stinging where the skin had been split.
With an old newspaper, she brushed aside a path through the sharp glass fragments. She stood, wished she had crutches, and began to hop to the door.
A month ago, Sharon told her that a prosthetic leg for her had been delayed because the state hadn’t approved it. The government was calling it "cosmetic" and not a necessity, which was holding back the procedure. But that was okay by Adriana. She didn’t want some plastic, imitation leg anyway. She told Sharon she would rather just keep her single real leg rather than have two with one being fake. She thought the kids at school would tease her worse for having a plastic leg, perhaps earning her new nicknames such as plastic girl, robot, doll girl, statue, and others. And they would have an actual part of her they could steal. She imagined that they would toss her leg amongst themselves, playing keep-away from her, and they might not even give it back. They might throw it somewhere she couldn’t get to, like in a tree or the roof. She wouldn’t be able to handle that. Then they would make fun of her for trying to pretend she was normal, pretending to have two legs. They would push her over easily with her single leg, like they already do now, and make fun of her lying on the ground.
Sometimes the kids would take her crutches away from her during lunchtime, but they weren’t a real part of her. She wasn’t pretending to be normal. If she ever got approved for a plastic leg, she knew she would eventually begin to think of it like a part of herself. She would risk feeling almost normal. And when it would be taken and played with by the mean kids at school, it would hurt too much.
But she sure could use a spare leg now.
She saw the kitchen sink out of the corner of her eye and almost hopped to it to quench her dry throat. But she could get plenty of water later. The most important thing now was to free Cindy.
A few more hops and Adriana was at the door. She stood there and listened, making sure Mary wasn’t close by. Then she creaked it open.
The hallway was long, with five doors—two to the left, two to the right, and one at the end. Cindy’s cries had sounded from the left, probably from the closest room. She hopped to it on her toes, trying to do so as quietly as possible, little springs at a time.
She leaned against this door and pressed her ear to it. She thought she heard whispers.
Slowly she opened it.
A weak lamp on a small table against the wall dribbled light onto the floor. A crate was in the middle of the room. She guessed at once this was Cindy’s prison. It was small, only about two feet high. The rest of the room was bare.
A shadow caressed the side of her leg. She thought Mary might be standing behind her.
As she supported herself with her left hand against the door frame, she spun around, her heart leaping out of her chest.
But the hallway was empty, and the shadow was gone. The ceiling light from the plastic panel above flickered a bit, then shone steadily. Her scare had probably been just a flicker of the hall light playing tricks on her eyes.
She took a deep breath and turned back to the room.
The crate was painted black, and putty filled all the cracks between the wood, sealing out light. When she reached it, she suddenly was afraid to touch it.
She felt hairs on the back of her neck prickling. She twisted her head around to catch anyone who might be behind her.
The hallway was brighter than this room, and she could clearly see that no one was there.
Why was she so jumpy? The parents were such rotten people that they probably had planned to leave their child imprisoned for at least a few hours longer.
“Cindy,” she whispered so quietly she could barely hear herself.
Something was stirring inside. Whatever it was, it couldn’t stir much because there wasn’t much space. Even small Adriana—absent one leg—would be cramped in that tight cell. She put her ear closer to the lid, trying to hear.
Whispering, murmuring from inside.
Did she really want to open this? Was Cindy inside for sure? Maybe she was somewhere else, and something terrible had been locked inside here. She remembered a cartoon she saw last weekend that had a crate holding a Tasmanian devil. When the rabbit opened it, the devil whirled around so fast you couldn’t see it.
“Are you in there?”
Muffled whispers.
With one hand supporting herself on the crate, she used her other to knock on the top.
The whispering stopped. Cold silence remained.
She swore she saw another shadow darting inside the room from the hall, stealing away into a corner. She turned so quickly around, she lost her balance, causing more noise and commotion as she fell onto the floor.
Like a metal spring, she jolted upright to look to the hall.
A moth was fluttering by the top of the door frame.
It’s just a moth, she told herself, attracted to the light, making shadows. Her heart shook her chest. Just a moth. She consciously breathed slower now, forcing herself to take deep breaths. A moth. Nothing more, just a moth.
She pushed herself up. She knocked on the crate again.
This time the whispering was clear. “Daddy, please stop. You’re hurting me.”
She recognized Cindy’s voice. She slipped off the two open locks that were in the latches and pulled open the lid. At first, it was dark inside, then a little bit of light sprinkled in, and Adriana saw Cindy: a crumple of arms, legs, and body at the bottom.
“You’re heavy, Daddy. Please stop.”
“It’s okay,” Adriana assured. “It’s just me.”
With the speed of a snake, Cindy’s arms untangled, her neck straightened, and she popped out of the box.
Adriana fell backward with Cindy on top, mouth eagerly searching for flesh, then a sharp pain on Adriana’s left shoulder where teeth submerged. But she pushed the head away. Then the gapping mouth struck Adriana’s neck, but as she struggled, the teeth just grazed the skin. Quickly, they found her arm though.
“Stop, Cindy!” She slapped her friend on the face, but the crazed girl wouldn’t loosen her jaws until Adriana’s hand tried prying it off. Then the jaws closed on her hand, and Adriana screamed.
She hated doing this, but she punched Cindy in the mouth and pushed her to the side, then quickly scooted for the door.
Behind her, there was scraping, shoes slapping the floor, but she didn’t turn around. She was focused on getting back to the messy room where the small box was—the box that everyone here feared, the box that perhaps held the answer.
She wished she had taken the time to get it before, but she had been too consumed with freeing Cindy.
Hearing nothing behind her, she found herself wishing she could somehow move faster, and then a heavy weight slammed into her back, driving her chest into the ground and pushing out her breath, arms pulling to turn her over. She threw an elbow behind her and connected and heard a grunt. She threw another, heard a cry, tilted her body, slid the girl off her back, and kept scooting with two arms and one leg toward the door.
As soon as she got into the hall, she closed the door.
She stood up and hopped back to the other room with the pole.
This room, which had previously been her prison, was now sanctuary.
She looked for a lock, but there was none. Hopping to the pile of bottles, cans, and books that covered the little wooden box, her hopes rose. She didn’t know what was in it. She didn’t care. She just knew she needed it for the power it held over her friend. She didn’t want to hurt Cindy, but if Adriana didn’t get that box, she would have to punch Cindy again just to survive.
She hurtled cans and bottles and books behind her, pushing over boxes of powdered mashed potatoes, tearing plastic wrap away. That was when something terrible entered.
She just felt it.
A cold feeling in the room. The feeling of uncaring.
She threw one last can behind her and looked over her shoulder. The can quietly thudded on the beanbag. No one was there. The door was still closed. But it felt like a presence haunted the room, something that hated her.