Chapter 8
Vale
THE PAST
The room they put me in is cold, and smells of bleach.
I tug at the clothes they gave me after cleaning my hand. They’re too big on me—the shirt baggy and wrinkled. The hems of the sweatpants pooling around my dangling feet.
They’re itchy too. And they smell funny. Like Louise’s washing machine when she forgot to switch the clothes to the dryer. Only these are dry and stiff.
I kick my foot out, pointing and flexing it.
Even the socks I had on had blood on them. So, they took those too. Bagged them up.
There’s a knock on the door. A woman enters, followed by a man.
He hangs back, while she crouches in front of me, her lips stretching upward just like that caseworker’s when she took me from my grandma’s house.
Just like that female cop earlier, who sat with me on the way to the hospital and told me I’d be okay.
I didn’t understand why the caseworker smiled that day. My grandma handing me over to CPS was not a happy thing, as far as I could see it.
I was eight then. I didn’t know better.
Do you really know better now though?
My mind drifts to earlier, in that room. Aston’s grin. His laugh. The blood covering his arms and chest and splattering his face like raindrops.
No…I’m not sure that I do.
“Vale? Did you hear what I said?”
I blink, and lift my head, meeting the lady’s searching eyes head on. I say nothing.
Her mouth thins and she nods, as if she stumbled upon the answer herself.
She goes on to explain that she’s my new caseworker, introducing the man behind her as a detective. If she’s waiting for a response from me, she’s not going to get one.
Selective mutism. That’s what CPS told the Baders when I was left with them.
After my parents died, I didn’t talk for almost a year. My grandma didn’t outright say that was why she got rid of me, but I figure it had something to do with it.
It wasn’t until two months into living with Rick and Louise that I finally found my voice again. Or rather, felt like using it. That’s what the therapist who evaluated me when I was younger didn’t understand.
I can talk.
I just don’t see the point sometimes.
Just like I don’t see the point in listening either.
Like now.
As the lady steps away, still talking—the man adding his two cents here and there—I watch the way my toes turn white when I curl them—white like Rick’s shirt was when I threw myself on his back.
It was no longer white by the time Aston was done with him.
My gaze drifts to the bandage wrapped around my palm, hiding the grizzly looking gash a nurse sewed up earlier. I don’t remember how many stitches, but it was a lot. I almost spoke up when she brought out a needle to numb me, but then I thought better of it.
When I’m alone, I’ll inspect it some more. I’m finally starting to feel the heat. It pulses. Makes it hard to curl my fingers.
I can’t help but think about how this is the first time since my parents were alive that I needed stitches.
“How old did you say he was?” The woman tries to be quiet, but I’m quieter. Which means I hear better.
“Thirteen,” the guy murmurs, and there’s no missing the tightness to his voice.
There’s a heavily weighted pause.
“But…” she starts to say.
Then, “Oh. I see.”
Pity oozes from her voice like sludge, and my brain latches onto it like a starved animal, gobbling it up. My mind’s racing with ideas faster than I can catch them. Ways to use this—use her…
It gives me something to focus on as the itchy burning sensation in my hand slowly worsens as the numbing stuff wears off, and the friction from the gauze becomes unbearable.
I’m bored.
I need this bandage off.
I need out of this room that reeks of bleach.
More than anything though, I need a fucking shower.
In the back of my head, I hear a high-pitched squeal. “You cursed!”
I imagine Aston pointing a finger at me, his eyes all big and wide in that way they get when something shocks and amuses him.
It’s funny actually, now that I think about it. It’s the same face he made tonight when the cops stormed in, and he brought his blood-soaked hands to his mouth, trying and failing to mask his giggling. Eyes so wide, I could make out the whites all around.
My stomach tightens painfully.
I grit my teeth, and seal my eyes shut.
But it doesn’t help.
All I see is him.
All I ever see is him.
Six months ago, it didn’t bother me.
Now, I’d do anything to scrub it from existence.
Rick might be dead…
Aston might’ve been taken away…
But my living nightmare is here to stay.
And he’s the star of it.
Rick made sure of that.