“Yeah, I bet you will,” said Ivers.
Conn unshackled me from the chair, giving me a look that ordered me not to struggle. I didn’t, if only because he’d left the firecuffs on my ankles and wrists.
He pushed me down the halls. “We don’t have much time,” he said, casting a wary look at the guards we passed every few minutes. “Can you walk faster?”
“No, I can’t. Know why? Because I’m chained at the ankles.”
“I can’t do anything about that. Not now. Listen, about solitary: it’s not as bad as it seems.”
“No complaints here. At least it will get me away from you.” Compared to everything I’d been through recently, a stint in solitary confinement would be a walk in the park.
“Your chains will be deactivated once you’re inside the box,” he said. “Just remember that nothing there can hurt you. Try to distract yourself. Think about … think about your art project. Or about how much you hate me.”
With that, Conn stopped in front of a pair of guards standing outside an iron door. “Indefinite solitary confinement,” he told them. “Ivers’s orders.”
To me he said, “I’ll be back for you. I promise.”
“Please. Take your time.”
He gave me an inscrutable look, then turned and strode away, almost at a run.
The door clanked open and the guards pushed me into a dimly lit chamber lined with iron on every side, even the ceiling. Standing in the center of the room was a large glass box.
For the first time since I heard the words “solitary confinement,” a worm of worry began to nibble at me. In my limited experience in the world of exploding handcuffs, glass was usually not a good sign. I dragged my feet, but the guards wrapped careful hands around my chains. “Don’t fight it,” one of them said. “You’ll break your cuffs.”
So I let them lock me inside the box, repeating Conn’s promise to myself as if he weren’t a mastermind liar. Nothing in here could hurt me.
I shifted my feet. I could walk two paces in each direction. The sounds I made were small and muffled—the scrape of my shoes, the short beat of my breath, the clack of my chains. I watched, but could not hear, the guards leaving the iron chamber.
I congratulated myself that I wasn’t the claustrophobic type. Conn was so condescending. Solitary confinement wasn’t so bad.
Then I heard a hiss and a click and my world burst into flames.
I reared back. Pure terror sucked the scream out of my throat. Fire was everywhere, flaring at me from all sides, driving away every rational thought. There was only heat and orange and red and fear fear fear. I beat against the glass walls, not caring that I might break my chains. Then I did break my chains, and ground my skin against their shards.
It was those thousand little cuts that began to slice through my insanity. They hurt. Nothing there can hurt you. Just one more of Conn’s lies.
But if I was burning alive, shouldn’t the pain be greater?
I glanced down at my wrists and saw smears of blood, but the flames weren’t touching my skin.
The fire was outside the box.
It was a trick.
A psychological game, designed to make me crazy.
And it worked. Even now that I recognized that this was only mental torture, I couldn’t stifle my panic.
Think, I told myself. You’re supposed to think. Distraction. Conn said.
He said he would come back.
Yet … how could I be so desperate as to trust anything he said?
My sudden anger at myself reminded me of myself. Of who I was. Self-sufficient. Strong. Able to deal.
So deal.
Sweat oozed down my forehead, and I took a shaky breath. Everywhere I looked, flames blazed. I closed my eyes.
Think about how much you hate me, Conn had said. Now that was a topic that could occupy my mind for a long time. Thinking about him, though, only made me furious, and anger couldn’t stop the earthquake inside me. I needed to be calm.
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
The words floated out of nowhere. Where had they come from? I grabbed on to the rhythm that strung the words together.
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers …
They were lines of poetry. From “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Yet they were more than that … they reminded me of something. Of a warm day last summer. A kitten carried by the scruff of its neck, hanging from its mother’s teeth.
Marsha had wanted to go on a road trip to Michigan. “You’ll love it,” she said. “Aunt Ginger lives on a blueberry farm. You can eat all the blueberries you want.”
“I’d rather stay here.”
“It’ll be fun!”
“I’m not in the mood for fun. I’d like lots of non-fun.”
“Well, too bad. We’re going.”
Then hours in the steamy car, with its broken air conditioner and broken tape deck. “Tell me again why we’re doing this?” I had groaned.
“Aunt Ginger’s sick. I spent every summer on her farm when I was growing up. This might be my last chance to see her.”
And see her we did. She greeted us with a double-barreled shotgun.
It took some time for Marsha to calm her down, to remind her that she was her niece, and to explain that the stranger in the car was her foster daughter. Finally, Aunt Ginger lowered the gun and hugged Marsha with scrawny arms. She led us up the path to the peaked farmhouse, her white pouf of hair glowing in the sun. It was only then that Marsha whispered that Aunt Ginger was dying of Alzheimer’s.
Also, we were going to clean her house and spend the night.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I packed a bag for you. You’ll adore sleeping in the attic, like I did when I was little.”
I said she’d tricked me, and that sleeping over was a really bad idea (one word: shotgun).
But she badgered me into the house and then into the kitchen, which I had to admit was kind of cute with its frilled curtains and a lime green refrigerator that was all curves and chrome details like a 1950s Cadillac. Aunt Ginger forgot my name every five minutes, but she also made us chamomile tea and showed me the kittens in a cardboard box under the sink.
Then Marsha shooed me outside, telling me to explore while she gave Aunt Ginger a bath. I certainly didn’t want to stick around for that. I wandered around the farm, checking out the blueberry fields. They probably hadn’t been harvested for years. They were a vast thicket.