She hadn’t even turned on the light for me.
I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, ignoring the bite of the frosty air on my bare skin. I launched myself in the direction of the door, fumbling around until I found it. I tried shaking the handle, jiggling it, still thinking, hoping, praying that this was some big birthday surprise, and that by the time I got back inside, there would be a plate of pancakes at the table and Dad would bring in the presents, and we could—we could—we could pretend like the night before had never happened, even with the evidence in the next room over.
The door was locked.
“I’m sorry!” I was screaming. Pounding my fists against it. “Mommy, I’m sorry! Please!”
Dad appeared a moment later, his stocky shape outlined by the light from inside of the house. I saw Mom’s bright-red face over his shoulder; he turned to wave her off and then reached over to flip on the overhead lights.
“Dad!” I said, throwing my arms around his waist. He let me keep them there, but all I got in return was a light pat on the back.
“You’re safe,” he told me, in his usual soft, rumbling voice.
“Dad—there’s something wrong with her,” I was babbling. The tears were burning my cheeks. “I didn’t mean to be bad! You have to fix her, okay? She’s…she’s…”
“I know, I believe you.”
At that, he carefully peeled my arms off his uniform and guided me down, so we were sitting on the step, facing Mom’s maroon sedan. He was fumbling in his pockets for something, listening to me as I told him everything that had happened since I walked into the kitchen. He pulled out a small pad of paper from his pocket.
“Daddy,” I tried again, but he cut me off, putting down an arm between us. I understood—no touching. I had seen him do something like this before, on Take Your Child to Work Day at the station. The way he spoke, the way he wouldn’t let me touch him—I had watched him treat another kid this way, only that one had a black eye and a broken nose. That kid had been a stranger.
Any hope I had felt bubbling up inside me burst into a thousand tiny pieces.
“Did your parents tell you that you’d been bad?” he asked when he could get a word in. “Did you leave your house because you were afraid they would hurt you?”
I pushed myself up off the ground. This is my house! I wanted to scream. You are my parents! My throat felt like it had closed up on itself.
“You can talk to me,” he said, very gently. “I won’t let anyone hurt you. I just need your name, and then we can go down to the station and make some calls—”
I don’t know what part of what he was saying finally broke me, but before I could stop myself I had launched my fists against him, hitting him over and over, like that would drive some sense back into him. “I am your kid!” I screamed. “I’m Ruby!”
“You’ve got to calm down, Ruby,” he told me, catching my wrists. “It’ll be okay. I’ll call ahead to the station, and then we’ll go.”
“No!” I shrieked. “No!”
He pulled me off him again and stood, making his way to the door. My nails caught the back of his hand, and I heard him grunt in pain. He didn’t turn back around as he shut the door.
I stood alone in the garage, less than ten feet away from my blue bike. From the tent that we had used to camp in dozens of times, from the sled I’d almost broken my arm on. All around the garage and house were pieces of me, but Mom and Dad—they couldn’t put them together. They didn’t see the completed puzzle standing in front of them.
But eventually they must have seen the pictures of me in the living room, or gone up to my mess of the room.
“—that’s not my child!” I could hear my mom yelling through the walls. She was talking to Grams, she had to be. Grams would set her straight. “I have no child! She’s not mine—I already called them, don’t—stop it! I’m not crazy!”
I had to hide. I couldn’t let him take me to the police station, but I also couldn’t dial 911 to get them help. Maybe if I waited it out, they’d get better on their own? I dashed toward the storage tubs on the other side of the garage, squeezing past the front of Mom’s car. One, maybe two steps more, and I would have jumped inside the closest tub and buried myself under a pile of blankets. The garage door rolled open first.
Not all the way—just enough that I could see the snow on the driveway, and grass, and the bottom half of a dark uniform. I squinted, holding a hand up to the blinding blanket of white light that seemed to settle over my vision. My head started pounding, a thousand times worse than before.
The man in the dark uniform knelt down in the snow, his eyes hidden by sunglasses. I hadn’t seen him before, but I certainly hadn’t met all the police officers at my dad’s station. This one looked older. Harder, I remembered thinking.
He waved me forward again, saying, “We’re here to help you. Please come outside.”
I took a tentative step, then another. This man is a police officer, I told myself. Mom and Dad are sick, and they need help. His navy uniform looked darker the closer I got, like it was drenched straight through with rain. “My parents…”
The officer didn’t let me finish. “Come out here, honey. You’re safe now.”
It wasn’t until my bare toes brushed up against the snow, and the man had wrapped my long hair around his fist and yanked me through the opening, that I even realized his uniform was black.
When I finally came to in the gray light, I knew by the curve of the rear seat and the smell of fake lemon detergent that I was back in Betty.
The van wasn’t on and running, and the road wasn’t passing underneath me, but the keys had been left in the ignition and the radio was on. Bob Dylan whispered the opening verse of “Forever Young” through the speakers.
The song cut off abruptly, replaced by the DJ’s flustered voice.
“—sorry about that.” The man let out a nervous, breathy laugh. “I don’t know why the system brought that one up. It’s on the no-play list. Uh…back to…the music. This one’s a request from Bill out in Suffolk. Here’s ‘We Gotta Get Out of This Place’ by the Animals.”
I opened one eye and tried to sit up, with zero success. The throbbing in my head was so brutal, I had to clench my teeth to keep from getting sick all over myself. A good five minutes must have passed before I felt strong enough to reach up and touch the pain’s epicenter on my right temple. My fingers brushed against the jagged, raised surface of my skin, feeling each coarse stitch holding it together.