They tell me that I started screaming in the ambulance. I don't remember the hours after I stumbled into the police officer's car - but, apparently, I had wordlessly sobbed as she drove to the station, where they discovered that I matched perfectly with a girl that had been reported missing 5 weeks ago.
5 weeks. How could it have been that long?
How could it have only been that short?
I was pale and - and I must have vomited, because there was such a sour taste in my mouth - and the days of starving myself had forced a gauntness into my cheeks that wasn't there before, and I was still and silent in a reverberating shock, and so, of course, an ambulance arrived to take me to the hospital.
The EMT tried to help me into the back, I think, and his hands brushed against my arm, and that is when the screaming began. They say that I confessed to killing a wolf that turned into a girl, that I called myself a murderer and begged them to understand that he made me do it. When they asked who "he" was, the words in my mouth dissolved into senseless blabbering.
The next thing I can clearly remember is my moms, hysterically crying, surrounding me in a hospital bed, gripping my hands so tightly that my knuckles turned white. By then, I was so tired and senseless with relief that I slept for a long, long time.
Police officers asked me questions. When I told them what I saw, they checked my blood for drugs.
After that, I tried not to sound insane. I tried to say his name.
But I couldn't.
So I told them I never knew it.
"There were a lot of people," I told them. "They worked with him. They were on - on his side."
"Did you meet anyone else who was captured, like you?"
I choked on the words. "There was one other."
They looked at me. The police officers, and my mothers.
"She's dead."
I tried to give them a description. She might be another missing person, the officers said. But I started crying, again, and couldn't get the words out.
And then, a few days later, I went home. It seems like so much has changed, but I don't know if anything really has. The house seems so much bigger than before, the rooms much emptier. My eyes feel too old for it to be the same. I feel too old for my house, too old for my life.
But I am too young for it, too. It feels like I have forgotten the very basics of being alive - I have to relearn how to walk, how to talk, how to love: in the first week, I cry more than a newborn child.
I have become a walking prototype of contradicting extremes. I am too old - I am too young - I am too empty and I am overfull.
It is exhausting, so I sleep.
-
A week after I get home, Mom tells me that Preston and Tana are asking after me. They want to come see me.
I tell her that I need more time.
The last time I saw Preston and Tana, I was a different person. I was whole. I spoke without thinking. I could look at myself in a mirror without feeling nauseous.
The day after I got home, I caught myself in my bathroom mirror. The girl looking back at me was strangely ashen and pale - she had wide, broken eyes with panicked irises and dark circles, and her perfect curls had withered, hanging around her face like a veil. It was not me. It can't be me. I stared at her, daring her to blink first, anxiety welling up in my throat like a tsunami.
I asked Momma if I could use one of her summer scarfs, and she helped me tie it up over the mirror in my bathroom. I like to think that it is optimistic: I did not break the mirror. I did not rip it off of the wall. I covered it, and that implies that there will come a day when I want it to be uncovered.
But I can't have it, now. Not when the wounds are so raw.
When I look at myself, I think of Sam, in the same way you think of a baseball when looking at a broken window.
So I don't look at the broken window.
And Tana and Preston stay away.
-
The days bleed together. It takes another week before I get dressed for the first time, trading in the oversized pajamas for actual clothes.
I feel better in them. More like myself. I brush through my hair, pretending that it's not so much thinner than it used to be.
A knock sounds on my door.
"One second, Momma," I call, and I,
for a moment, feel like maybe nothing has changed.
But when I open the door, it is neither of my mothers.
"We're doing my nails," Preston announces, pushing past me and into my room. Tana walks in after him, slightly more demure and holding a small makeup bag.
And that's it. We skip the hellos, like it hasn't been weeks since I've seen them. We sit on my bed, like we used to, and Tana examines Preston's nail beds with a small exclamation of despair.
"Colors?" Tana says with forced brightness. "I brought several options."
"What about your dad?" I ask absently. Tana sends me a small, concerned glance, and I realize that I forgot to add inflection to my tone.
"I don't care, anymore," Preston sighs. "I like the color green. Like a nice, masculine green."
I try to laugh, and Tana forces out a smile, pulling out a dark olive green nail polish from her bag.
"Guess who was at the Fourth of July fair?" Tana begins, beginning with Preston's index nail.
I open my mouth, but all I want to say is Not me, so I close my mouth again.
I missed the summer. I missed the Fourth of July. How - how did I not know that it was Independence Day, one of the days when I was gone? Surely - Sam - how did it all wash away so quickly?
I also - missed my birthday. I'm 18, now.
Tana stills for a moment, like she was thinking the same thing. She winces, regretting the question.
"Christopher West," Preston finishes.
"Really?" I say, genuinely shocked.
"Yep," Preston continues, and his smile is a little more genuine, less forced. "He showed up for about 5 seconds before brooding away."
"Is brooding even a verb?"
"It is for him."
Tana sniffs. As she moves on to Preston's middle fingernail, her hands begin shaking.
"Here," I say, holding out my hand. "Let me."
I haven't gotten one fingernail finished before Preston speaks.
"What happened, out there, Jane?" Preston asks, his voice soft and his eyes pinning me in place.
"You know what happened," I reply, a little tired. I put the brush back in the polish bottle.
"No," he presses.
Preston pushes at my sleeve, exposing the red lines where my own nails had scratched my wrists raw. His eyes go slightly further up, where a deep, yellowing bruise wraps around my wrist in the shape of Sam's hand. It is where he caught me, halfway off of the balcony.
"What the hell happened?" Preston says softly. Tana remains silent, but her eyes are trained on me with furious intensity.
I wrap my arms around my legs, tugging them closer. I examine a poster that I hung up forever ago and consider my answer.
"He found me in the woods," I decide, "The next thing I knew, he was taking me away. I finally escaped and ran until I found a police officer. That's it. That's the story."
"But who was he, Jane? Did he ever tell you his name?"
"I don't want - I don't want to talk about it," I bite out, more angrily than I intended. I had already given all my lies to the police.
Preston looks slightly startled.
"Okay," he says guiltily. "Sorry. We were just. We were really worried."
"No, it's okay," I sigh, "I'm just - I don't want to think about it."
Tana bursts into tears.
I blink at her, surprised. I hadn't seen Tana cry - ever. Including when she told me her parents were getting divorced. Tana leaps forward, enveloping me in a tight hug.
"I made you come on the camping trip!" she hiccups, tears distorting her words. "You didn't want to, I know you hate camping, but you did any way, for me, and then I left you alone. This wouldn't've - wouldn't've happened - "
She continues talking, but her voice is too contorted by sobs to understand.
"Tana. Listen."
I push her back slightly, brushing her dark bangs out of her face. It feels a little nice, honestly, not to be the one crying.
"It's not your fault. It's not my fault. It's - his fault. It's his fault. If he didn't find me there, it would have been some other girl."
But it wouldn't. If he hadn't found me - he would have looked for me. It would only have been a matter of time.
But this is one of the thoughts that I don't say. It is one of the reasons I have to think before I speak.
"How did you get away?" Preston whispers, like the words will mean less if they are quieter.
He let me go. But I can't say that, either. Because then there is the why - and if I ask the why, I realize that maybe he didn't let me go. Maybe he just extended the leash. A shudder as frigid as an icicle runs down my spine.
"I got lucky. I just got lucky," I lie.
We cry together. Half of Preston's nails - the half Tana does - look beautiful and clean, and the other half that I do look strangely stripey. When Tana asks if I want her to sleep over, I tell her no. I want to sleep alone.
It feels like I'll always want to sleep alone.
-
Then the nightmares.
I am afraid of monsters again, like I was when I was a child. I see them when the room goes dark, shifting in the night, white irises glowing at me from the window. And there are hands, false sensation of fingers touching every inch of my skin, leaving me bruised and burning.
I don't sleep much.
-
"Christopher called, earlier," Momma tells me the next morning, handing me a plate full of breakfast. "He was wondering if there was anything he could do."
I look up at her, startled. "Christopher is still here?"
Momma gestures at the pancakes. I swallow another bite. To my relief, it settles in my stomach. I feel a little more full.
"He's been a big help, Jane. He came over a few times a week, just to keep us company, and he went out with all the search parties. He's been worried to death about you, but I asked him to keep his distance, for a little while. I just thought you should know how much he cares."
"I - I heard he was at the Fourth of July Fair," I say after the burst of nerves in my stomach dies down.
Momma smiles, cupping my cheek gently.
"Do you remember how close you were as kids? A day didn't go by without you seeing each other."
"I remember."
I do. It's dangerous, these days, to try to track my memories - so much of it is him. But if I step carefully through my mind, I remember all of those moments from my childhood. Hopscotch. Popsicles up in the treehouse. Comic books and sleepovers and movie marathons.
Little Jane.
She didn't even know what was coming to her. It almost breaks my heart.
"I don't want him to see me like this."
I put my fork down. I can't stomach any more, right now.
But maybe I'll have more luck tomorrow.