Page 36 of Trapped: Until The Darkest Of Night

“So that I don’t lose you again,” I answer honestly.

“You never had me. What makes you think you can lose me?” Lou blinks and rubs her hands over her bare knees. Again and again. It reminds me of something I did in the closet. Always the same movement. Back and forth, back and forth. A gentle, lonely rocking that comforted me.

I understand how upset she actually is. She just needs more time. So I shrug in a relaxed manner. “You’re not all there yet. You’re still out of it from the chloroform,” I explain calmly. “And you’re still way too afraid. Your head needs to be clear before we can talk about it.”

She closes her eyes again as if she wants to block out everything around her. At least she stops rubbing her hands over her knees.

I step in place a few times, looking at her sitting there, huddled, a pathetic bundle of fear. “Tomorrow you can have some food.”

No reaction.

The air between us grows thicker and thicker. It seems to me it is filled with Lou’s panic, isolating her completely from me.

“I had to do it,” I say abruptly, wanting to get through to her. “I didn’t have a choice. There was no either/or. Never.”

Little girl hearts.

Louisa Scriver.

404 Not found.

She doesn’t move and, frustrated, I give up and take a shower.

As I rinse off the foam, the camper sways like a ship in thirty-foot waves.

I jump out of the shower, wrap the towel around my waist, and stagger against the glass wall of the cabin.

Hissing damn! I bump my elbow against it and go to Lou.

“The whole RV is rocking. What are you doing?” I bark at her.

She’s sitting on the edge of the bed, hiding the handcuffed hand behind her back.

“Nothing.” A whisper. Her breathing is staccato-like. Fine droplets of sweat run down her temples.

Nothing. Of course, Lou, I believe you!

I circle the bed. I know perfectly well what she was trying to do. What anybody would have done. “Forget it!” I nod to the bracket I’ve chained her to. “Not even I can tear the plates out.”

“Did you try that too?” she snaps.

“Of course.” I give her an appraising look, thinking about my flashes in L.A. “I think you’d need a cordless screwdriver and a ton of patience to get those things off.” She can know it’s utterly impossible for her. “And the handcuffs, forget it. Double lock. The trick with the needle or the paper clip won’t work.” I point to her necklace. “Or with one of those things.”

She bites her lip and looks away. Caught! Of course she thought of it.

Anger rises within me. “You’re not going to escape me, Lou. With or without the cuffs, you’re not going anywhere. Get used to it!”

“Louisa,” she whispers hoarsely. “My name is Louisa.”

No, you’re Lou to me, I think angrily. Just Lou. And for you, everything is somehow easy.

Yet that is not the case. On the contrary. She tries desperately to avoid my gaze and appears as if she’s about to collapse under an invisible weight. But she doesn’t cry. And yet it seems to me that I can feel the weight of her unshed tears on my chest.

I’m sorry, Lou, a voice whispers in my darkness. I’m sorry, but I can’t make it better for you. Giving you false hope wouldn’t be fair. Because to hope is to suffer continuously. Hope is crueler than any other feeling in the world.

Darkness flows out of me. One line at a time, I can’t stop it. My eyes are closed as the black charcoal slides across the paper. Usually, there are delicate, quiet sounds, but today, the sounds are swallowed by the campfire. The crackle is like my inner burning.

Drawing has always calmed me. It started in the slums, when I first got my hands on a pencil and pad in Ramon’s shack. We were hungry because the trash had yielded nothing to eat except a can of moldy dog food. Ramon lived in a corrugated metal shack with his aunt, who was rarely around. His mom had died and his dad was in jail as were his uncle and cousin.

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