The Price You Pay #2
“Nah, it’s okay. She’s your friend. I just wish…” He made a face and shook his head. “Never mind. Come on. If she wants to hang with you for a while, I’ll cut a few lawns and we’ll meet up tonight. Watch the sunset from up here.” He grinned at her. “Or that’s what we’ll tell your mom.”
They climbed down. Kara made it almost to the ground before she caught sight of Ingrid and missed the last rung. Eddie grabbed her before she fell.
“Inge?” Kara said, staring as her friend staggered toward them. Ingrid’s T-shirt was ripped, her lip split, dried blood on her chin, her blond hair half out of its ponytail. The worst, though, was her eyes, round and empty. Then Ingrid stopped walking and teetered there, staring at Eddie.
“You…” Ingrid said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“What happened?” He started toward Ingrid, but as her chin rose, eyes blazing, he stopped short. “Inge?”
“Don’t call me that,” she spat. “And don’t you dare ask me what happened, as if you don’t know.” She turned to Kara. “He came to my house.”
Eddie blinked. “Sure. I was there this morning after football practice. You invited me—”
“—to talk about Kara’s birthday. Not to—to—”
“Wh-what?” Eddie stared at Ingrid. “Are you saying I…” He trailed off, as if he couldn’t find words to finish.
“You know what you did, you bastard.”
Eddie wheeled on Kara, his eyes as wide as Ingrid’s had been. “I have no idea what she’s talking about. She asked me to come over, and we talked about your birthday and when I left, she was fine.” He reached for Kara. “I swear—”
“Don’t you touch her,” Ingrid said, her voice a growl now.
He looked at Ingrid. “It was the Vitamin R, wasn’t it?
” Back to Kara. “She offered me some, but I said no, and that’s when I left.
She must have taken some after and…” He looked at Ingrid, blinking as if trying to figure it out.
“I don’t know. Fallen down the steps? Hit her head and got confused and—”
“You bastard,” Ingrid spat the words. “You know what happened to me. I kept telling you to stop, and you wouldn’t. Not until you got what you wanted.”
Eddie’s eyes looked ready to pop as he spun to face Kara. “I-I would never—ever—ever—” He reached out again as Kara stood there, frozen.
“I said, don’t touch her.”
Ingrid pulled something from her back pocket. Kara saw what it was. Saw and didn’t believe it, her brain stuttering, certain she was mistaken. Eddie had his back to Ingrid, his fingers wrapping around Kara’s arm as he begged her to believe him. Ingrid’s arm swung up. The gun swung up.
“No!” Kara grabbed for Eddie, to push him out of the way, but he misinterpreted the move, letting go of her fast, stepping away and saying, “It’s okay. I’d never hurt—”
Ingrid fired.
May 3, 2012
Kara woke on the basement floor. Chained to the basement floor.
The music had stopped, replaced now by sobs.
At first, still dazed from the beating and the drugs, Kara thought they came from her.
But as she focused, blinking past the pain throbbing through her skull, she realized the sound came through the wall.
Kara tried lifting her head, but it hurt so much she gasped and lay down again.
“Inge?” she said, as loud as she dared.
The crying stopped. “Kara?” Then, before Kara could say another word, “Now do you believe me? Do you finally believe me?”
“I—”
“I told you. I told you.” Her friend’s voice turned harsh. “It’s Eddie’s brother. He found me out here, and he said he’s going to make me pay for what I did.” A choked sob. “But I did. I paid. Isn’t that enough?”
“No,” Kara whispered. “It never is.”
Kara lost consciousness again shortly after that. When she woke, the pain had subsided, but she could barely keep her eyes open. Not just beaten but drugged. Injected with something. She started drifting off again, but kept feeling that she’d woken for a reason.
That’s when she heard his voice, in the next room, lowered to a whisper, punctuated by Ingrid’s sniffs and snivels.
“Tell me about Kara’s stepfather,” he was saying.
“I told you,” Ingrid said. “I don’t know—”
“I won’t ask again. Tell me what you did, and remember, I already know, so don’t lie.”
“I didn’t do anything. Anything.”
A smack, like leather hitting flesh and Ingrid screamed. Kara squeezed her eyes shut, scrunched into a ball on the floor and tried to block the sounds. He didn’t ask another question. He just kept hitting Ingrid over and over until her screams turned to horrible, animal-like wails.
Then, “It wasn’t me! I swear! It was Kara. Kara did it!”
Kara jerked her head up. The smack of the belt had stopped. Ingrid keened in pain as footsteps crossed her room. Then Kara’s door opened and she scrambled up as the figure filled the entrance. He shut the door behind him and walked toward her, a thick leather strap hanging from his hand.
“Tell me about your stepfather,” he said.
October 8, 2004
It was an old story. One told so often, by so many, that Kara wondered if it had lost its power to horrify and disgust. When forced into mandatory counseling, she’d hesitated to even tell her tale.
They’d told it for her, those other girls, so many of them, variations on a theme that ultimately landed them in that room, bitter or broken.
When the therapist finally coaxed Kara to spill her secret, she swore the woman’s eyes had glazed over, as if to say, “Not this again.”
His name was Bill. Her mother brought him home when Kara was nine, two years after her dad left.
Well, two years after he left, and eighteen months after her mother finally realized he hadn’t just taken off temporarily, as he’d done all of Kara’s life.
They’d never gotten married so he’d seemed to feel free to disappear at will, chasing some more exciting life.
Come back when the money ran out. Stay until he got some again.
This time, he must have found what he was looking for. Kara never saw him again.
Bill had seemed like a trade-up. That’s what her mom called him, giggling to her friends, “I sure did trade up, didn’t I?
” They’d agree, with varying degrees of approval and envy.
Bill was a proper family man, one with a proper job who cared for his new wife in a proper fashion.
As for his stepdaughter…Kara was certain that, in Bill’s mind, he was caring for her in a proper fashion, too.
That’s what he always said, anyway. That he was showing her how much he cared.
Old story. No further explanation required.
Hers fit the other girls’ like it was a script they’d all memorized.
The main role varied—boyfriend, stepfather, even Daddy himself—but the plot stayed the same.
Creaking door. Creaking bedsprings. Our little secret.
Can’t tell Mommy, because Mommy loves him.
Mommy is happy. We want Mommy to be happy.
Kara was thirteen the night everything changed.
She was in her room doing homework. Ingrid was staying the night, as she usually did on the weekends when Kara’s mom worked late.
Bill hated that. He knew exactly why Ingrid stayed over, and he’d yell at Kara’s mom about how this was his house and he didn’t like strangers in his house.
Kara’s mom would say Ingrid wasn’t a stranger and this was the one thing she defied him on and later, in those therapy sessions, Kara wondered if her mother knew what Bill did when she worked late, and that’s why she insisted on letting Ingrid stay over.
The reason didn’t matter. If Ingrid stayed, Bill stayed out and that was all that counted.
Usually Ingrid got pissy when Kara did homework during their overnights. But it was the only time Kara could concentrate, safe in the knowledge that her bedroom door handle wouldn’t turn.
That night, though, Ingrid had encouraged Kara to do her homework.
“I’ll make Rice Krispie squares,” she said. “That’ll keep Bill happy.”
So Kara worked while Ingrid baked, and Kara had almost finished her worksheet when she heard the sound. Like a car backfiring.
She went into the hall and looked toward the kitchen. A moment later, Ingrid appeared. There was blood on her T-shirt. Kara gasped and ran down the hall. Ingrid put up her hands to stop her.
“It’s okay. It’s not mine. There’s been an accident.”
“What—?”
Ingrid motioned for her to follow. Kara jogged after her, through the living room, into the back hall, wheeling around the corner into Bill’s workshop, hearing a song playing on his tinny radio. Leonard Cohen. Everybody Knows.
There was Bill. Sitting at his bench. Laying facedown on his bench. His head…
There was blood. Blood and bits of…Bill’s head. The insides. His brains. Everywhere. On the bench. On the wall. On Ingrid.
Ingrid pointed at Bill’s shotgun on the floor. “He was cleaning it. I don’t know what went wrong. I came in to give him a snack and boom.”
Kara stared at Ingrid. Then at Bill. Then at the marshmallow-cereal square on the bench, speckled with blood.
“I should get rid of that,” Ingrid said, taking the Rice Krispie square. “I’ll need to get changed, too, after we call the police. It’ll be easier if we don’t mention I was in here.”
Kara nodded, unable to speak.
Ingrid walked over and clutched Kara’s arm. “It’ll be okay. Everyone knows he cleaned his gun on Fridays during hunting season. Accidents happen.”
When Kara still didn’t move, Ingrid leaned down to her ear and whispered, “He won’t touch you ever again, Kare-Bear.” Then she walked past and headed for the bathroom.
May 3, 2012
“Kara?”
“Kare-Bear?”
“Are you there, Kara?”
Kara lay there, listening to Ingrid calling for her. Then, quietly, Kara said, “I heard what you told him.”
Silence.
Kara raised her voice a notch. “You told him I shot Bill.”
“N-no. I-I never—”
“I heard you, Ingrid. You told him and he beat me, and you let him.”
“He was going to kill me. I panicked. I didn’t mean to say it. It just came out.”
“Like with Eddie?”