Is he joking? Effie doesn’t know what to say to this. Somehow, being grabbed and shoved into a van and waking up in a smelly basement is not quite as creepy as the idea that she could ever be happy her mom was hurt.
“That’s pretty messed up,” she says.
The boy nods, one side of his mouth twisting. “Yeah. I’m kind of a mess.”
“He grabbed me,” she says suddenly. “He told me he had a cute puppy in his van, and when I tried to run, he...he was just so fast. He grabbed my backpack and yanked me back and I lost my balance, and then he hit me on the head. He pulled me into the van, and he stabbed me in the leg with a needle. Then I woke up here.”
“Shit, he hit you on the head? You feel sick or anything? You’re not supposed to sleep if you have a concussion.”
Effie frowns sourly. “Well, it’s too late now if I do, because I’ve already slept. My stomach hurts, but it’s because I’m hungry.”
“Don’t eat that,” the boy warns again. He sits at last. His legs are so long that his knees seem to reach his chin. His hands are really big, too, when he rests them on the worn denim. His fingers play with the torn threads around the holes where his knees poke through.
“I heard you the first time.” Effie eyes the bowl again. “Everything? He does something to everything he feeds you?”
“Sometimes it’s just too much salt or pepper or hot sauce, stuff like that. But sometimes it’s pills or...other stuff. So you never really know. You just get so hungry you’ll eat anything, eventually,” the boy says. “But I try to at least pick through it, make sure there’s nothing really bad in it.”
“Worse than spit?” She can hardly imagine it.
The boy gives her a solemn look. “Oh. Yeah. Way worse than spit.”
And then, just then, Effie knows there’s no getting out of this. The man took her and he’s going to keep her and probably he’s going to do awful things to her that are worse than spitting in her oatmeal. Her stomach clenches and twists, but she forces herself not to choke or gag. She has to keep her head on straight. That’s what her dad would say. If she’s going to get away from here, she has to keep her head on straight.
“How long have you been here?” Effie asks.
The boy shrugs and looks away, again as if he’s telling her a lie but not with words; this time it’s with the things he doesn’t say. “I don’t know. A while.”
Effie pushes herself up off the bed with a wince at the pain in the back of her head. A tentative exploration reveals a few tender spots but no blood that she can feel. Her blistered feet hurt at the scratch of the rough concrete. Her shoes were missing when she woke up. The man must’ve taken them off her along with her white cotton socks. She shudders at the thought of him touching her anywhere while she was unconscious. If he took away her shoes and socks, did he also touch her in other places?
Repulsed, she wants to run her hands over her body to check for any signs of being violated. She settles for forcing herself to stand up straight. Unlike the boy in front of her, she’s not even close to touching the ceiling.
“I’m Effie.”
“That’s a weird name.”
She shrugs. “It’s really Felicity, but I hate it. I shortened it to F when I was ten. Now I’m Effie.”
“I’m Heath.”
“You’re named after a candy bar,” she says, “and you think my name is weird?”
Heath makes a small noise, not quite a laugh, and looks up at her again from under his bangs. He’s older than she is, by at least a few years. Probably old enough to have his driver’s license. If they’d met at the swimming pool or in school, she still wouldn’t think he was cute. Effie likes soccer players. This guy looks like a stoner, the kind who’d hang around the metal shop making raunchy comments as the girls walk past. Effie knows how to deal with boys like that. You ignore them even when they say nasty things.
“Haven’t you ever tried to get away?” she asks.
The boy shrugs again. His voice dips low. It’s really deep, his voice. And rough. It’s almost a man’s voice, but not quite. Not yet, but it’s easy to imagine how it will sound in a few years when he is a man. “Yeah. I’ve tried.”
Obviously he didn’t make it, but she asks anyway. “What happened?”
When he looks at her this time, it’s not the cold room that sends a shiver all through her. “He caught me.”
Effie is silent at this. She looks around the room, which is set up like a bedroom, though it’s nowhere near as big as hers at home. One wall sconce casts that horrible, dull orangey light, and the one on the opposite wall isn’t any brighter. The double bed she’s sitting on sags, a stained patchwork quilt covering the otherwise bare mattress. Flat pillows in decorative shams rather than regular pillowcases. A battered white laminate dresser that doesn’t match the rest of the furniture is in one corner. The chair in front of her. The table. Yellow wallpaper patterned with old-fashioned clocks peels off the walls, exposing dirty plaster. The doorway has no door, and she tries to see beyond but can’t. Too dark.
“What’s out there?” She points. “A bathroom? I really have to pee.”
The boy looks startled and then embarrassed. “Yeah, but he has the water turned off. So you can’t flush, really.”
Effie’s not sure if she ought to be afraid to push past him, but her bladder isn’t going to let her wait much longer. The room outside this one, though, is dark, and she looks at the boy. “Is there a light out there?”
“Umm...” He shakes his head. “The bulb broke.”
“Can you show me, then?” Effie only learned over the summer about the power of a smile when it comes to boys. It’s not easy to find one, but she forces it.
It must work, because the boy stands up so suddenly he cracks his head on the ceiling and lets out a low, muttered curse. It shouldn’t be funny. None of this is. But she laughs anyway before clapping a hand over her mouth to stifle the giggles that are going to become sobs if she’s not careful. And she can’t do that. Has to keep her head on straight.
“Please,” Effie says. “I really have to go.”
The boy nods and leads the way into a space not much bigger than the bedroom. She can make out the outline of a couch and what looks like an armchair along one wall. A small glint of metal that might be a doorknob. Same concrete floor, and Effie hesitates in the small square of dirty light spilling from the doorway.
“Be careful. There’s stuff set into the concrete.”
Her blistered feet already hurt. She doesn’t want to cut them any more. “What kind of stuff?”
“Broken pottery and some glass. He put it there on purpose, I think. To make it hard to walk around out there, so you can’t rush him when he comes in. I’ll take you to the bathroom. You’ll be okay.”
“Thanks.” After a hesitation, he moves and she follows. Three steps, then four, beyond the light as he guides her carefully, telling her where to avoid the sharp places in the floor. It’s not pitch-black, but even so, the shadows here are thick and deep. When he stops, Effie bumps into his back. “Sorry.”
“It’s through here.” He takes her hand, startling her, and puts it out in front of them.
She feels a wooden door frame, also without a door, and empty space behind it. There’s no light at all in there. By now she has to pee so bad she’s afraid she won’t make it, but how can she go into that room without seeing what’s there? What if it’s all a trick? What if he’s working with the guy and has been all along?
“Feel along the wall to the right,” the boy tells her.