Page 37 of Kings & Chaos

It was a boy’s voice. He was scared but he was mad too.

I could tell.

The door was like the others in the hall, except this one had a lock. A big one, like the one on my front door that turned with a loud click.

I was reaching for it when a voice sounded next to me.

“You shouldn’t,” a boy with dark eyes said solemnly.

And then, on the other side of me, a boy with bright blue eyes and yellow hair like mine. “You’ll get in trouble. Big trouble.”

“Let me out of here! It’s dark! Please…” The voice on the other side of the door had turned pleading.

Sad.

I lifted my hand and turned the big lock.

My heart was thumping when I opened the door. Maybe it wasn’t a boy at all but some kind of monster. Maybe that’s why the two boys were warning me. Maybebig troublemeant that I would get eaten, torn into a million pieces if I opened the door.

But it was just a closet. A regular closet with no clothes inside, just a boy with eyes that looked yellow from inside the dark closet. He was crouched on the floor, his arms wrapped around gangly legs in suit pants.

Antonio.

Neo.

“Close that door right now, young lady.”

This wasn’t a boy’s voice. It was a man’s, big and deep, angry and coming from one end of the hall.

I turned my head and he walked slowly toward me. He was so tall I had to tip my head way back to see his face. When I did, I saw that he had sharp cheekbones and dark hair and eyes that were cold and empty.

Neo’s dad. He always scared me even though he smiled a lot.

“Did you hear me?” he barked, louder now. “Close. That. Door.”

“He doesn’t want to be in there.” My voice was small but firm.

“It doesn’t matter what he wants,” the man said, stalking toward me. “Now close that door.”

The two boys that had been standing next to me were moving slowly away from me and the man. I could feel their fear, a match for my own.

“No,” I said. “He doesn’t want to be in there.”

“It’s okay,” little-Neo sniffed from inside the closet. “Just close the door.”

“It’s mean to put someone in a closet,” I explained to Neo.

He didn’t have time to respond before a hand clamped painfully down on my arm. Neo’s dad drove me back against the wall, his grip like iron on my tiny arm, my childish flesh.

Now I was really scared. No one had ever laid hands on me like this before. Sometimes my mom got mad and screamed at me and my sister, but I’d never once been hurt by an adult.

My body shook with the shock of it, and tears welled in my eyes as the man put his face close to mine, close enough that I could smell his gross breath, laced with grown-up drinks and smoke from the cigars my dad smoked with his friends.

“Listen you little cunt,” he hissed. “You are a child and a guest in my home. You will do as you’re told or you will be—”

He didn’t have time to finish. A cacophony of screams sounded behind me like a war cry, and then the boys were on him, all three of them, one of them tearing at his shirt, the other on his back, the third pulling his hand away from mine with small fingers.

He reared up in surprise and swung his hand, knocking Neo back as if he were no more than a fly.

---