She nods as she turns on her heel and leaves the room. She returns a couple of hours later and insists that my family needs to leave so I can rest. Mom, Dad, and Meaghan wander off to some waiting room or restaurant where they’ll surely speculate about what happened to me; maybe even feel sorry for themselves for having to see me like this. The nurse returns a few minutes after they leave with a large plastic zipper bag containing a mint-green hardcover book. Smudges of blood are visible on the cover of the book and inside the bag. I don’t recognize it at all, until she holds it up in front of my face so I can see the cover: Black Box.
‘This Black Box is yours to keep, to stash your troubles away. Just lock it up and call my name, and I’ll be there always.’
‘This is your book, right?’ she asks. I nod slowly and she smiles. ‘I’ll keep it safe for you until you’re discharged. They took way too much from you already, sis. I won’t let them take this.’
Chapter 17: CRUSH – January 3rd
I wait outside the bedroom with my hands and nose pressed against the door, waiting for the slightest noise or vibration. I don’t know if I can trust her in there alone. My entire body is on alert, like I’m back in Brockton, driving along Cary Street in the car I torched later that night, praying she doesn’t stop breathing.
‘Are you okay?’ I shout as softly as I can through the door.
I don’t know how to shout softly, but I don’t want to scare her again. She’s so on edge. How could she not be?
She doesn’t respond so I wait a few seconds before I call out to her again. A moment later, the bedroom door swings open and I glimpse her back as she walks toward the bed. She drops a book – the book – onto the mattress, then she sinks down onto the floor with her back leaned against the foot of the bed.
I move slowly toward the bed and my chest aches when I see the book. It’s stained with blood, probably from that night, and I’m almost afraid to pick it up.
‘I knew it wasn’t them who took me to the hospital. They would have left me for dead. I knew that the minute they stuffed me into that trunk.’ I lift the book from the mattress and ease myself down onto the floor next to her. She glances at the book before she continues. ‘There’s a sense you get around someone new and, instantly, you know if you can trust them. I knew the minute that guy called out to me on the street that I was going to regret leaving that party for the rest of whatever life I had left.’
She draws in a deep, stuttered breath and I wish she would look at me instead of the splintered bathroom door.
‘My sister and I have read that book about a thousand times trying to figure out who wrote it.’ She turns to me, her face incredulous. ‘What kind of book doesn’t have any information about the author or publisher? What the hell is Black Box?’
I open the book to the title page and trace my finger over the words Black Box. The pages were already so worn when I left the book with Mikki, but, even after all these years, I can still recognize that the pages have been turned many, many more times.
‘You mean to tell me you’ve read this book a thousand times and you still don’t know what it is?’ I close the book and turn it over in my hands to examine every inch of it.
She lets out a soft huff. ‘I know what it is. I just want to know how you came upon this book. Who gave it to you? Who wrote it? Why did they write it? Because I feel like this book was written for me.’
I smile as I remember the first time I read the last few lines of Black Box; how I felt exactly the same way. ‘That’s because it was written for you. And for me. And for my grandfather who gave it to me.’
She finally looks up and the sheen of tears on her cheeks makes me want to kiss her skin. She’s silent for a moment before she looks away again.
‘You killed that guy.’ She’s not stating this as a question. There’s no confusion about this. ‘You did that . . . for me?’
I nod, even though she’s not looking at me. ‘He was going to kill you or just leave you there to die.’
She buries her face in her arms, which are folded on top of her knees, and she cries softly. I want to rub her back or hold her. I can’t stand to see her bear the burden of this alone. But I’m so afraid of scaring her away. I’ve looked for her everywhere. The police and the hospital wouldn’t release her information to anyone because she was a minor. I was forced to look for that tattoo. I incurred a long list of one-night stands while searching for it. I can’t scare her away now. I have so many questions that only pile up the longer I stare at her.
What happened to her after I left the hospital? Was she treated well? Did she have to identify the body of her attacker? How did that affect her? Would she still be this afraid if they had convicted those other bastards in the van?
I need answers, but, most of all, I need to know that I did the right thing . . . in her eyes.
Finally, she draws in a deep, congested breath and turns to me. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘How’s your head?’
‘No more messed up than usual.’
I smile as I hold the book out to her. She stares at it for a moment before she takes it from me. I rise from the floor and head for the door. ‘You want to look at the room-service menu.’
She smiles and the glint of light on her lip ring makes my guts feel all warm and gooey. ‘You pick something. I trust you.’
*****
Room service arrives twenty minutes later with a cart piled high with plates covered in silver domes. I pretend not to notice when Mikki suddenly needs to get something out of the bedroom when she hears the knock at the door. She comes out of the bedroom a few minutes after the waiter leaves our room, which gives me enough time to set up the plates and accouterment on the dining table.
She eyes the half-dozen silver domes on the table warily as she approaches. It’s past eight in the evening, so I’m not surprised to see her wearing an oversized black T-shirt and pajama pants covered in images of anime characters. But I am surprised by how much it turns me on.
I turn my attention back to the food and begin removing the lids from the plates. ‘I didn’t know what you wanted, so I thought we’d try a few different things.’ The first lid I remove reveals a plate of plain spaghetti with marinara sauce. ‘I’m not sure if you’re a vegetarian, so I told them to hold the meat.’
She shakes her head as she takes a seat at the table. ‘I’m not a vegetarian, but I don’t eat meat in restaurants. I don’t trust it.’
‘Well, then you should be happy with the other items I ordered for you.’
I lift the next lid and she laughs when she sees a pile of blueberry muffins with the tops cut off. The woman who took my room-service order must have thought I was crazy when I asked for these, but it was totally worth it to see Mikki’s reaction.
‘That’s a lot of muffin stumps. I can’t eat all of those.’ She grabs one off the top of the pile and shakes her head as she peels away the crinkled paper.
‘You don’t have to eat them all right now. We’ve got at least a few more minutes before the advocates for fair treatment of muffin tops bust down our door.’
Her eyes widen. ‘What are you going to do about the bathroom door?’
‘It’s just a little damage. I’ll pay for it when we leave.’
‘Just like that, huh?’ And she shakes her head. ‘I can’t believe I was saved by a rich boy.’
‘Twice. And why does that surprise you?’
‘I don’t know.’ She shrugs as she takes her first bite of blueberry muffin. ‘I guess I just expected it to be some punk kid who spent way too much time on Twitter while hanging out in dark, deserted parking lots.’ She takes a swig of the iced water in front of her then looks me in the eyes. ‘Why were you there in that parking lot?’
Chapter 18: MIKKI – January 3rd
The confident smile Crush was wearing when he unveiled the muffins is gone. A chill lifts the hairs on my arms as I think of the very far-fetched possibility that I’ve considered for the past three years: that the guy who saved me also raped me, but he had a change of heart when he realized I was about to be murdered. The only thing that stopped me from allowing myself to give in to this theory is that there were two sets of fresh tire skid marks in the parking lot and the trail of my blood led toward a set of tire marks that did not match a mini-van. But that hasn’t stopped me from wondering if maybe he used another car to take me to the hospital. And Crush’s silence following this question is troubling.
Finally, he looks me in the eyes. ‘I’ll be honest with you. I’ve spent the last three and a half years trying to find you while also trying to forget what happened that night. I was in a very dark place.’
‘Oh, fuck,’ I whisper involuntarily as I begin to feel woozy. ‘I need a cigarette.’
‘What’s wrong?’
I shake my head as I set down the muffin in my hands. ‘Were you . . . were you with them?’
‘What? Fuck, no! I was parked there alone when the van pulled up.’ I let out a loud sigh of relief and he continues. ‘I was . . . I was thinking about my cousin. Jordan died a year before that. I was with him when it happened.’
I have a strong feeling he’s holding something back, but he’s been so patient with me today that I think it’s time for me to return the favor. ‘Hey, look at that. You ordered booze.’
I grab a bottle of beer out of the bucket of ice in the center of the dining table and he quickly reaches for it to take it away. His fingers graze mine and I drop the beer onto the table. Luckily, it doesn’t break and he swiftly saves it from rolling off and onto the floor.
‘You need a bottle opener for these,’ he says, his eyebrows knitted with worry. ‘How about I crack these open and we can go out on the terrace for a smoke?’
‘Yes,’ I reply quickly, bumping my knee on the table as I hastily rise from the chair and make my way back to bedroom to get my cigarettes and coat.
I yank my coat off the chair in the bedroom and decide I’d better put a sweater on between my T-shirt and coat. Then I pull on two pairs of socks under my boots and head out to the living room. Crush is standing just inside the enormous glass door leading out to the terrace. He’s wearing a gray beanie and a serious expression that makes me smile inside.
‘Pull up the hood of your coat,’ he says, holding out an open bottle of beer as I approach.
‘So bossy.’ I accept the beer, taking a large swig as he reaches for the door handle.
He twists the handle slowly and carefully pulls the door inward. The snow falls softly over the outdoor table and chairs. But it’s the glow of the city lights, muted by the haze of snowflakes, that’s mesmerizing. Crush pulls his coat tighter as he waits for me to step outside.
‘I should have changed into some jeans,’ I say, my teeth chattering as I trudge through the snow toward the large stone spheres poised atop the iron railing surrounding the terrace.
The terrace is huge. Four wrought-iron tables covered in snow fit comfortably in the space. I find myself imagining rich people in their tuxedos and cocktail dresses hobnobbing on the terrace, sipping thirty-year-old bourbon and discussing the stock market. Crush could be one of those people, though he certainly doesn’t look or act like one.
‘Where are your gloves?’ he asks, shutting the glass door behind him.
‘I forgot them.’
‘I’ll hold your beer.’
He holds his hand out and I shake my head despite the fact that I can already feel the cold penetrating the soft pads of my fingers and into my bones. ‘No, thanks.’
The stone spheres on the railing are covered in cone-shaped piles of snow. I brush the snow off the sphere nearest me and attempt to balance my beer on top.