I grab the pen and write quickly: I live up there. I walk every morning.
They exhale simultaneously and exchange glances.
“And you just happened to stumble upon a girl in a hidden hole in the ground?” Britton’s voice is dripping with sarcasm.
I nod but write: Yes. I heard a noise. It was the dog.
“What dog?” Nelson asks, frowning.
The girl’s dog.
The detectives glance at each other. “We didn’t find any dog,” Nelson states firmly.
It ran off. It was there. It was making a strange noise. It was debarked.
“Debarked?” Nelson reads my words out loud, confusion on his face.
I shift in my chair and scribble some more. It’s when a dog’s vocal chords are severed so it can’t bark.
Nelson raises a suspicious eyebrow. “And you know this…how?”
I read a lot.
The detective tilts his head to the side and smirks at me. “Maybe you’re the one who took the girl. Maybe the guy who’s dead is the one who was trying to save her. That’s what everyone is thinking.”
A demonic laugh comes out of me, and while not deliberate, it’s fitting.
Stop fucking with me, I write. I didn’t do anything.
“We don’t like you, Tyler,” Britton states coldly. “We don’t like your creepy ass living in the woods, and we don’t like your fucked-up face riding that piece-of-shit motorcycle through town in the middle of the night and annoying the good people of this nice, quiet town.”
I lean back and chew the inside of my cheek then grab the pen again. There’s no law against being ugly, living in the woods, or riding a motorcycle at night.
Nelson scoffs. “There is a law against murdering people, though.”
It was self-defense. He pulled a knife on me. He had that girl in a hole. Ask her. Check the evidence. You guys know how to do that, right?
“Well, that’s the funny thing,” Nelson drawls. “Maybe what you have is contagious because the girl won’t talk.”
I don’t blame her. Most conversations aren’t worth having.
Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to two assholes, I write.
Nelson looks up from my writing and glares at me. “Watch yourself, buddy. Why were you chasing her when the officers found you? Why was she screaming get him? Care to explain that?”
I wasn’t chasing her. We were chasing her dog that was running away.
“Nobody saw a goddamn dog,” Britton says, his voice rising. “What we have is a dead man who left a widow and two kids, a junkie that strangled him with his bare hands, and a scared shitless girl running through the woods that was supposedly found in a hole in the ground after being missing for ten years.”
Fuck off. I’m clean. I want a lawyer.
I snap the pen in half and throw it at them. I’m done with this bullshit.
It’s then that I recognize Nelson as a guy I went to high school with. Ten years hasn’t been so good to him, taking most of his hair and the muscular build he had when we were on the lacrosse team together. He hauls me up out of my chair and, the next thing I know, I’m thrown in a cell, where I pace like an animal until my oldest brother, Toren, can get a lawyer to come fix this mess for me. As I walk the perimeter of the small cell, my thoughts wander back to the girl in the woods. The terrified look in her eyes and the way she held onto that dog will haunt me for the rest of my life.
I can’t shake this eerie feeling in my gut that I’ve seen those eyes before.
4
Holly
My parents are picking me up from the hospital today, after two weeks of being questioned, stuck with needles, examined endlessly, bathed, and given IV fluids, medications, supplements, and food several times per day. It’s been exhausting and frightening. I went from living a life where I would go weeks at a time with no human interaction at all to having people practically on top of me all day long. Several times I’ve found myself wishing I was back in the dark, cold room with Poppy, my books, and the television. My time there was easier.
Most of the time, that is. When I was alone.
It feels strange wearing the jeans, sweater, and shoes that Mommy brought for me a few days ago. The clothes I had on when the man took me were all I had until they no longer fit and became too thin, torn, and dirty to wear anymore. After that, I was given an old white shirt to wear and a pair of his sweatpants. Nothing else. Now I’m hyperaware of the texture of the denim against my legs, the boots squeezing my feet, and the tag of the sweater scratching the back of my neck. I wish I could take it all off.