Page 87 of That's Not My Name

The ground below me comes back into view. I focus on those boots, stepping through bracken, onto dead grass, and my brain snaps the details together. I’m on someone’s shoulder. Slung over like a duffel bag. My fingers splay out looking for purchase—I need to get away. I see part of the driveway. I lift my head and an elbow smashes me in the face. I know it hurts, but I can’t feel it.

I see nothing again.

I can’t blink anymore. My eyelids won’t work, but I feel something cold against the side of my face. I think some time has passed. Everything is cold now. There’s something wet on my nose, dripping down my cheek.

And I remember.

Like a flash flood. A dam exploding. He’s knocked all the pieces back into place.

I remember my home. I remember my family. I remember tearing through the trees after escaping the van and running down the mountain, desperate to get back to my mom. To my friends.

To the life he tried to steal from me.

I remember him catching up to me. Grabbing ahold of the back of my hair and slamming my face against a tree. Pain ricocheting around my brain as blood gushed from my nose. I landed a wild, frantic shot to his nuts. He let me go. I remember branches dragging at my face as I blindly sprinted through the trees until the ground dropped out from beneath me and I fell.

Down.

Down.

Down a steep embankment, hitting everything along the way—trees, rocks, branches.

I have no idea how I ended up in the ditch, or how far apart these memories are from each other. Maybe he couldn’t find me after he gathered his nuts up off the forest floor. Or was unwilling to jump off the same ledge I fell over. I must have crawled out of the woods, trying to find the road and get help. Trying to get away from Wayne.

A man who’s most definitely not my father.

He’s the stranger who took me from my family.

Wayne Boone is my kidnapper.

A long creak breaks through the darkness, and I get one eyelid to open enough to spot a lone lightbulb dangling from a fixture. I’m lying on something that yields to my weight, barely, and in the darkness, something cold wraps around my ankle and bites into the skin.

Panic crawls through the darkness and covers me like a blanket made of rocks.

I can’t be here.

I have to run.

I have to get away from Wayne. Someone like him doesn’t leave witnesses. But I don’t know how to make my body move. All my limbs feel too heavy. Too useless. And the cold dampness seeping across my face is most assuredly blood.

I can’t make myself function, and all I hear ishim.

You don’t remember me?

Mary?

I’ll see you in a minute.

Mary.

Once we get home, we don’t have to leave for a long time.

Mary.

Sleep well, my Mary.

Mary. Mary. Mary.

You

---