Page 79 of The Death Row Club
I imagine myself suspended in midair—except instead of plummeting off a bridge, I’m floating through the soft pine needles, into the blackened sky where it’s cold and quiet and still. I’m watching my dad slice through my skin, but little does he know I’m long gone. I’m shooting for the stars, baby; I’m hanging the moon.
Maybe this is the only way out.
Maybe this is how you break free.
Or maybe, a voice whispers,this is how you lose.
It’s not my voice, I realize. It’s the man’s. The one who kidnapped me. It drags me back into my body, and the knife blade, which has skidded down the length of my chest, has gotten, holy fucking shit, so much sharper. I turn my head desperately from side to side, trying to figure out if the man’s actually here, or if I’m hallucinating him in my dying moments.
It’s no good if you want to die.
That’s when I notice the rock next to my hand.
And that my dad’s grip on my wrists has slipped. He’s so focused on cutting me up, he’s forgotten about holding me down.
I grab for the rock.
When it smashes against my dad’s temple, I can feel the force of the blow vibrate through my entire body. Right up my elbow into my shoulder. My dad jerks back; blood cascades, a liquid curtain, down his forehead and into his face. “You—” he starts again. But this time, he’s unable to get the rest of the words out not because of his piss-poor vocabulary, but because something’s stuck in his throat.
Blood trickles out the corner of his mouth.
Both of us look down at the same time to find a large red splotch spreading across his shirt. My head whips up just as the man pulls his screwdriver out of my dad’s back. Gore drips off the business end. “If you want me to let him go,” he says, his voice soft and soothing, “I will. He could still live.”
My dad staggers upright, mouth twisted in anger. “Fuck you!” He swivels around, but the man jams the screwdriver in between his ribs. Another blood patch forms on his shirt.
The man cocks his head. “Well.” He twists the screwdriver, and my dad lets out an agonized gurgle before the tool comes loose. “Hypothetically, he could.”
My dad brings his hands down to staunch the wound, blood spilling out from between his fingers. He stumbles toward the man, who pulls the screwdriver back but doesn’t go in for the kill. He’s waiting for me, I realize. I’m the one who gets to make the choice here.
My dad must realize that, too, because he turns to look at me. “Steffani,” he says, blood sluicing down his chin and onto the bib of his shirt. “Steffani, everything I’ve done has been for you.”
He takes a step toward me, holds out his hand. His palm is coated in syrupy blood.
“It’s just you and me.” His face softening, he smiles at me with pink-streaked teeth. “Just you and me until the end.”
Part of me wants to run to him. Not to backhand him across the face orpunch him in the gut. Tohughim. To wrap my arms around him the same way I did when I was little, before the bad times started, and have him lift me into the sky, high enough so my fingers can skim the sun.
I don’t, though.
I’m done with running.
“What happened to Mom?” I ask, and his smile takes on a sharp edge. There’s blood in the water now, and it’s not his.
“She ran off with another man,” he says, then presses his thumb to his lips and adds, “Or maybe not. Maybe she went back to her relatives in Portland. Maybe she tried talking to the police, but they didn’t believe her. Maybe she’s selling herself on the street; maybe she overdosed on crack, and no one cared. Maybe she’s dead. And maybe—” A fresh stream of blood slips from his mouth. “Maybe you’ll never find her.”
Not if you kill me. That’s what he doesn’t say. If I want to know what happened to my mom, then I not only need to spare his life, I need to call an ambulance.
I need to save him.
I try my best to summon a memory of her. Of the two of us cutting photos out of AAA guidebooks. Our closet door covered with scotch-taped photos of Santorini and Kyoto and Yellowknife. Her finger tapping the postcard of Red River Bridge in Washington, her gentle whispers: “We’re going there together. Just you and me. Just you wait.”
“You’ll never know,” my dad says.
“Well.” The rock still rests heavy in my hand. I lift it up, and for the first time, his confidence falters. “I’ll live with not knowing.”
33NICOLA
“HE SAYS HE’S COMINGto get you.”
