Chapter 3 #2
"Small school." He closes his eyes. "Small everything—in Hamden.
That's kind of why I loved it. You knew every kid's name, every family.
Jamie Churden couldn't spell 'necessary' to save his life, but he could take apart an engine in twenty minutes.
Priya Kaplan wrote the best personal essay I've ever read, about her grandmother's garden in Kerala.
" His voice softens, and for a second, the basement and the blood disappear, and he's just a man talking about the life he was ripped out of.
"I saved for three years for this trip. Ate ramen four nights a week. My colleagues thought I was insane."
"Ramen's not bad."
"Violet, it was the twenty-five-cent kind. The flavor packets gave me heart palpitations."
He falls asleep shortly after that. Curled on his side, like he's trying to shrink himself into something too small to find.
That night Elena motions me over.
"Your friend," she whispers. "The teacher."
"Yeah."
"Did you now him before?"
"No, he was already here when they took me."
"Be careful."
My spine straightens. "Careful of what?"
She takes a big gulp of the water from her cup.
"When I was first taken, there was this young guard.
He was kind, or what passed for kind in a place like this.
" Her eyes stay on the water. "He brought me extra food.
Told me the schedule so I could prepare.
Shared personal things. His mother's name, where he grew up, the girl he loved back home.
" She drinks. "I thought he was different.
I thought in a place full of monsters I had found the one human being. "
"What happened?"
"He was not different. He was patient." She looks at me then, and her eyes are ancient. "Patient is more dangerous than cruel. Cruelty you can see. You can brace for it. But patience. Patience makes you open the door yourself."
The hair on my back stands and I can't help but think of Matt's bread in the dark. His jokes. His timing.
"He wasn't helping me," Elena continues.
"He was building trust. Learning what I would say, what I would share, who I knew on the outside.
And when he had everything—" She stops. Sets her cup down.
"They sold the information to the people who wanted me found.
My family paid. A lot. And the man who collected that money got promoted. And as you can see I'm still here."
My pulse kicks.
"Respira. Ricorda. Resisti." She says the words without preamble, the way you'd recite a prayer learned so young it lives in muscle memory.
"What does it mean?"
"Breathe. Remember. Resist." She taps three fingers against her sternum, one for each word. "My grandmother taught me. For when the world tries to make you forget who you are."
"Does it work?"
"It keeps you from drowning. That's not the same as swimming. But it's enough."
She stands, brushes off her pants, and walks to the other side of her cell.
Respira. Ricorda. Resisti.
I mouth the words without sound. Three Rs. Three acts of defiance small enough to hide inside a body.
I go back to my thin mattress with Matt sleeping less than a foot away on the other side of the chain-link fencing and stare at the ceiling until the cracks in the concrete start rearranging into patterns that aren't there.
Elio. In the estate, behind locked doors, armed guards, and garden walls that might as well have been prison bars. I clung to him. Slept in his bed, arched into his hands, told myself the wanting was mine. Not manufactured. Not a survival mechanism dressed up in silk sheets.
And now. Concrete instead of marble. Matt instead of Elio. A different cage, a different man who makes the walls feel less close.
I don't finish the thought. Press my thumb hard into the scar on my palm instead and count the drips from the leaking pipe in the corner until my brain goes somewhere quieter.
"Hey, Vi?" Matt's voice, groggy, from his mattress. Not asleep after all.
"Yeah."
"Can I ask you something?"
"Depends."
A pause. Long enough that the dripping water marks three beats.
"Is there anyone who might be looking for you?"
My fingers go still on the scar across my palm.
A simple question. Reasonable. A fellow captive hoping someone on the outside knows, someone with resources, someone who might come.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because if someone is, if there's even a chance, that changes things. That changes what we do next."
He's right. The honest answer is yes. God, yes. There's a man in Palermo who will hopefully tear this country apart to find me, whose name alone would make the guards in this place shit themselves, who kissed me like I was his everything.
But I don't say any of that.
"I don't know," I say. "Maybe."
Matt is quiet for a long time. "Okay. Maybe is better than no."
I turn onto my side, facing away from him. Another wave of nausea rolls through and I breathe through it, slow and deliberate. Bad water. Bad food. Stress.
Behind me, Matt shifts on his mattress. When he speaks again his voice is careful.
"Vi? One more thing. The person who might be looking, are they the kind of person who has the means to actually find you? Like, resources?"
My hand presses hard against the scar on my palm.
"Go to sleep, Matt."