“Harper? Are you in here?”
Daddy? No, not Daddy. Can’t be Daddy. Somebody else. Somebody bad. My eyes felt cold. Dry. Wide open, like I couldn’t blink at all. Against my back the damp wood beneath the kitchen sink pressed into my favorite Beauty and the Beast tee shirt. The cabinet was dark and smelled really bad, like the old faded pink sponge Mama sometimes washed dishes with. I pulled my knees closer to my chest, held them tight with my arms, and squeezed my cold dry eyes shut. Pushed my head against the wood. Further into that smelly damp place I sank, further, further, and I shivered. Go away! You’re one of them! Go away...
“Come on out, honey. It’s okay now. No need to hide anymore. I promise.”
The man’s deep voice seeped through the cracks of the kitchen cabinet I hid inside of, and no, it wasn’t gonna be okay. Never was it gonna be okay.
Footsteps, heavy, gritty, as if dragging through sand scraped across the torn kitchen floor, suddenly stopped. “Harper, my name is Detective Shanks. Me and Detective Crimshaw are here to help you.”
“Harper?” This time, a woman’s voice. “Come on out, sweetie. You’re safe now.” A pause. “The bad people are all gone. We won’t let them come back.” Another pause. “I bet you’re hungry, aren’t you? We’ll take you for a hamburger. Would you like that?”
I said nothing. I hardly breathed. No, I didn’t want a hamburger. My stomach felt sick. The voices sounded close, yet stuck in a tunnel somewhere, and I think I wanted them to stay that way. My eyes pinched shut, and I squeezed my knees so tightly the bones hurt my chest. Please, just go away…
“Jesus, Shanks,” the woman called Crimshaw whispered. “She’s been gone for days.” Another pause. “You don’t think she’s really in here, do you?”
Footsteps closer to my hiding place made my breath catch like a high-pitched whistle in my throat. In the next second, the cabinet door eased open on creaky hinges. The sound made the skin on my arm grow cold. A dark head lowered and looked inside, and I closed my eyes back tight. My breath came fast now, faster and faster and I couldn’t help it, and my arms began to slip from around my knees…
“Crimshaw, she’s here!” Big hands that looked like rubber doll hands reached in and grabbed me under my arms and dragged me out, my legs knocking over an old plastic bottle of dish detergent. I tried to scream but the noise pushed silent out of my throat, so dry it was like a scratchy old pipe. The sound came out like a creaky whisper. I was lifted, and the man called Shanks held me tight to stop my wiggling.
“Shh, shh, Harper,” his voice comforted quietly. He patted the back of my head. “Just breathe, just breathe. It’s okay, honey, everything’s going to be okay now. We’re the police. We’re here to help you and take you outta here.” He patted me some more. “Shh…”
He was the police. He was gonna take me out of here. I buried my head into the man’s shoulder, and he smelled good, like pine cones, and although he said everything was going to be okay, it wasn’t. My breath continued, faster, faster, and then everything started growing darker and darker. My arms felt heavy, my legs just dangled.
“Dammit Crimshaw, call for an ambulance!” I heard the man say. “She’s going into shock or something.”
“Already called them,” the woman said. “Jesus, Frank. She’s been in here alone with them for days...Jesus.”
Just as the smell hit my nose and then my stomach, my head felt light, felt like a balloon that was gonna float away into the air. The room got so dark I couldn’t tell if my cold eyes were open or hidden hard against the man’s shoulder, and I felt the air leave me. I gasped. Blackness filled my eyes. I’d smelled that awful smell before, when Mama had found a dead cat in the trashcan out back. I gagged, gasped, and began to shake.
“Poor kid. She’ll never be right after this…”
The glass shattered against the old green and gold linoleum kitchen floor. My gaze darted fast to my sister, whose eyes widened in terror. She stood there, her hand in the C shape it’d been in before the wet glass slipped out of it. Her lip quivered. We both knew what was coming. It was just some old NFL team glass he’d gotten from Burger King. It’d come with a value meal. Cheap. Stupid. So stupid. It mattered to him, though. He’d make it seem like the end of the world.
Footsteps pounded in the hallway. Heavy, familiar. Grew closer.
“Get behind me, Katy,” I whispered harshly. She did, her small fingers threading through the belt loops on my jeans and holding tight. As her face pressed against the small of my back, I drew a deep breath in, steadied myself.
He burst through the kitchen and stood, staring at the broken glass on the floor. His frame filled the doorway. His face was beet red; his nose was redder. Bloodshot eyes flamed and narrowed as he fixed his angry glare on me.
“What in the goddamn hell did you do?” he thundered. Fury rolled off him like waves from a drum fire.
I drew myself up. “It was an accident. Glass slipped.”
His hazy eyes moved, and he tried to focus on my sister. “Did she do it? You coverin’ for her again, Kane?”
“No,” I answered. “It was me.”
In two steps he was there, grabbing me by the collar of my tee shirt and yanking me hard enough that the material ripped. I stumbled onto the glass and winced as a piece of it dug into my palm.
“You lyin’ sack of shit,” he spat. “Girl, did you do it?”