Chapter 9
Her
I woke up with a start, bathed in sweat, panting hard, and terrified. I’d had a nightmare that’d felt so real. In the dream, I’d been attacked by a faceless man, punching me again and again, throwing things at my crumpled form, and screaming obscenities at me.
And then he’d left the room, and another faceless man had entered, who’d begun to assault me sexually.
I knew the nightmare wasn’t simply my subconscious making up shit. Those images that’d felt so real were real. They were part of the memories that my conscious brain was repressing, and given how badly I was trembling, my brain was acting as protectively as it could.
But memories were starting to leak out, and I wondered, there in that darkened room, shivering from both cold and fear, if all my memories were as terrifying as the ones in the nightmare. What if that’d been the story of my whole life?
What if my only chance for a normal life lay in repressing memories of everything that’d happened to me before I woke up in the hospital five weeks ago?
I sat for a beat, trying to get my breathing under control as my now-safe surroundings offered me a bit of relief. I was tucked away in a large room above a diner, and all the doors were locked.
No one was going to come up here and beat me.
Or rape me.
I shuddered. I could still feel the hot breath of the man hovering over me, smelling like beer and cigarettes, the scent of it acrid and nauseating.
Swiveling slightly to pull my feet from under the blanket, I got out of bed and tried to remember where the light switch was.
There was a little light leaking into the room from the window, but it didn’t allow me to see the room in any kind of detail. Something whirred in the corner. The space heater.
I moved to it, allowing the warm air to pass over my freezing-cold legs and feet.
I was still wearing the thick sweatshirt that’d been donated to me, but the room was quite chilly because I’d left only the smallest space heater on, not wanting to drive up Wanda’s electric bill.
I eyed the other two heaters in the room, deciding that if she complained about the added cost to her electric bill, I could always give her a portion of my tips.
Right now, I needed to feel warm, so I headed over to them, fumbling for the power switches in the dark, finally turning on both of them.
Their warmth hit me like a hug.
Moving over to where I remembered the bathroom door was, I flipped on the light switch and took in my visage reflected in the mirror over the sink. I looked pale and clammy. My brown hair was in a misshapen, tangled mess, and my cheeks were hollow below the dark circles under my eyes.
I turned away from my reflection, padding back out to the room and over to the space heater nearest the bed, then moved the unit closer.
After that, I hunted around for the bag with the few clothes that’d come from the church.
It was next to the bed on the other side of where I’d been sleeping, and I picked it up to dig through it, finding the other pair of socks I knew had been tossed in there.
I put them on quickly, along with a fresh pair of sweatpants, which hung loosely about my hips and felt baggy, ballooning out from my thighs.
I pulled on the waistband, finding the drawstring to cinch the pants tighter. It helped but not by a lot. They still felt huge on me.
Looking around the sparse room, I spotted the to-go container with the two biscuits I’d brought upstairs and hurried to retrieve it. I was famished.
On my way back toward the bed, my gaze caught movement outside the window, and I cautiously went over to it to see more clearly where it’d come from.
A figure stood near the back door wearing a hoodie and a blanket over his shoulders. It appeared to be a man, hunching his shoulders against the cold and stomping his feet.
I watched him for a long time, wondering what he was doing there, and then I began to worry if he was going to try to break in.
What if he was a robber, come here to try to get Wanda’s previous day’s earnings out of the safe?
I furtively looked around—I had no weapon up here, but there were knives in the kitchen…which meant I’d have to go downstairs, past the back door, and into the restaurant to retrieve one.
I was going to discard that plan and simply shove the couch against the loft door and hide, hoping the man outside didn’t a) break in or b) come up here and kill me, but then I remembered that there was a phone in the restaurant,
and I could simply dial 911 to send an alert out to one of Cash’s deputies.
Inhaling a deep breath for courage, I tiptoed to the loft door, unlocking it and opening it as quietly as I could before I began to creep down the stairs.
At the bottom of the landing, I kept low and duckwalked down the hallway, hurrying toward the door that separated the diner from this hallway, beyond which was the phone next to the cash register.
Had Wanda left the door unlocked?
“Only one way to find out,” I muttered, trying the handle. To my immense relief, it opened, and I rushed through, closing it quickly behind me.
Then I stared at the phone for a beat before deciding I should arm myself first, make the call second.
So, I hurried into the kitchen, looking for a knife, but I had to hunt for a bit because Gus had put everything neatly away.
Striking paydirt with one of the large drawers, I pulled out a knife with a seven-inch blade.
Gripping it tightly, I then made my way toward the register and the phone, but as I picked up the receiver, I had a thought that I’d need to give the dispatcher a description of the man outside, so I set down the receiver, ducked low again, and inched back down the hallway to the back door.
Arriving at the back door, which had a paned window and allowed a view of the back alley, I very, very carefully inched up the side of the door and peeked out from the corner.
The stranger was still there, and I could now see his features. At the sight of him, I gasped.
Backing up, I turned the deadbolt and yanked open the door. It was heavier than I expected, so I had to yank on it twice to finally get the damn thing open, only to see Levi hurrying away.
“Levi! Hey! Don’t go!”
Fifteen or so yards away, he paused long enough to look over his shoulder at me, and I could see that he was also trembling, but not in fear like me. He was trembling with cold.
“Get in here!” I commanded, waving at him. I was in my stocking feet, otherwise I would’ve run out the door and literally grabbed hold of his arm to prevent him from taking one step farther away.
He hesitated.
I put my hands on my hips and made my voice as commanding as possible. “Dude! Get in here! It’s freezing out!”
He finally turned fully toward me, shuffling forward to stand just outside the doorway. “S-s-sorry,” he stuttered, his teeth chattering. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t. Now come inside so I can close this damn door!”
He reluctantly took one step into the doorway, and I impatiently grabbed a handful of the blanket and letterman coat he was wearing, pulling him inside before I slammed the door closed.
I didn’t say a word about finding him there in the alley, freezing his nuts off. I simply lowered my hand to his wrist and led him down the hall to the dining room. We got through the doorway, and I walked him over to a booth right at the front. Pointing sternly to it, I said, “Sit.”
He did, even though he was a shivering mess from head to toe.
The diner was chilly; no doubt Wanda had turned down the heat before she left to save on the electric bill.
I had no idea where the thermostat was, so I quickly left Levi to run back upstairs, grabbing the blanket off the bed and one of the smaller space heaters, bringing them back down to the dining room.
Levi was hunched over, hugging himself tightly, his body wracked with shivers.
I threw the blanket over him, layering it over the painfully thin one he was already wearing, then plugged in the space heater to the closest outlet I could find, turned it on, and blasted heat at him. I then moved to start a pot of coffee.
While it was brewing, I filled a mug with hot water from the hot water tap and brought that over to him. “Here. Use it to warm your hands while the coffee brews.”
He took it greedily and wrapped his palms around the ceramic.
“Thank you, Maddy,” he said softly. I could barely hear his voice above the chattering of his teeth.
Once the coffee was done, I poured him a mug and brought it over. “Cream?”
He shook his head and eagerly traded the mug of hot water for the coffee. Holding it to his lips, he took small, tentative sips.
I then went around the corner again and started digging under the pie case where I’d seen some single-serving boxes of cereal the night before.
I grabbed a box of Cap’n Crunch and a box of Raisin Bran, and brought them, two bowls, and some milk to the table, setting the Cap’n Crunch in front of Levi.
A tiny quirk formed at the corner of his mouth as he reached for the cereal and turned it over in his hand. “I used to love this stuff.”
“Then you’ll still love it. Eat,” I ordered.
He pulled the blankets around him a little tighter and with trembling fingers did as he was told, emptying the contents into the bowl and pouring milk over the top.
While he busied himself with the cereal, I went to the coffee pot and poured myself a cup.
“We could get in trouble,” Levi said as he poked at the cereal with a spoon and I sat down opposite him to prepare my own breakfast.
“Over cereal? Are you joking?”
“We shouldn’t be in here without Wanda around.”
“Did she say that to you?”
He stopped poking at the cereal in the bowl and stared at the tabletop. “Uh, no. But still, she’d be pissed if she found us stealing her food.”
“No one is stealing anything, Levi. Wanda told me I could grab breakfast down here as soon as I woke up. Plus, that cereal will probably only set her back seventy-five cents. She’s not gonna miss it when she’s barely paying you something even close to minimum wage and not paying me a thing.
Trust me, it’s cool.”