The girl’s mouth drops open. She nods. I let go and she disappears, and I’m more than a little surprised that worked.

6

I try to run away several times growing up. Before Kim comes along, I figure I’m old enough to be on my own at around six or seven. But Earl bars the windows and nails them shut, and I can’t get them open no matter how hard I try. He also locks the doors from the outside when he leaves, and no matter how hard I push, they won’t budge. Someday, I think, when I’m stronger, I’m going to smash the windows out and pull the bars apart with my bare hands. Someday.

It’s around this time I begin to ponder why I created my other world. Why I created Dutch. I can be strong there. Powerful. Cunning. Like an angel from the Bible I stole from a hotel room we broke into. Or the superheroes in comic books I found in the trash. Or the Road Runner in my favorite cartoon.

In real life, I’m more like the Coyote. Bumbling. Conniving. An absolute failure at everything I do. I feel like the Coyote when he falls off a cliff and splats on the ground below in a puff of dust.

But not when I’m in Dutch’s world. Her world is so vivid. So tangible. Things happen that I can’t control. If I could, I would make Dutch’s new mother love her. And I would make Dutch love me, so it’s probably good I can’t control it.

Instead, I go see her every chance I get. To feel her light on my face. To see the shimmer in her eyes. I lie back and fall into her world for hours at a time. Earl gets mad. Tells me to snap out of it.

But he’s never been to her world.

I used to ask Earl every day if I could go to school. He always said no. Said we move too much. And, boy, do we. Sometimes, I get to know a few of the neighborhood kids when we move in. Some I like. Some I don’t.

I have to prove myself again and again. The girls want to kiss me. Several of the boys want to kiss me, too. The older girls have something else in mind. Their eyes roam to my mouth. To my shoulders. To my stomach. But that only makes the older boys mad even though their eyes roam, too. It’s a pretty even split between desire and absolute hatred.

I got in my first fight when I was five. Three boys from middle school tried to bash in my face with a rock. The leader was crazy as hell. Which figures. He’s going to hell for shooting a man in the car next to him at a stoplight, but not for several years.

The actual fight didn’t last long. They tried to hold me down while the leader balanced the rock over his head. I pushed one’s face with my hand. Elbowed the other. And simply kicked one of the leader’s arms. The rock crashed down onto the top of his head, and that was that.

He was in the hospital for two days. The boys told the cops I attacked them. Thankfully, I was five and they were eleven and twelve. I told them my dad wasn’t home. I didn’t lie. Earl is not my dad. I’ve known that for a long time. He cowered in our apartment while I told the cops he ran to the store. While they were talking to the other parents, Earl threw our stuff into an old suitcase and a laundry basket and we hightailed it out of there. We’ve never been back to that apartment. We’ve never been back to that side of town.

The apartment we’re in now, we got only because Earl flirted with the landlady. He even dated her a couple of times. I heard them having sex. They both faked it, and the relationship fizzled fast. But we have a shiny new apartment, complete with a washer and dryer that stack on top of each other. The dryer doesn’t work, but that’s okay. I’m just grateful for the washer. We’ve never had one actually inside the apartment.

Earl is always happy when we have a new place. But happy is not always good. He cooks for Kim and me. Dotes on us. Sends her to bed. Calls me to him.

I think he knows Kim and I are leaving soon. He starts locking us in again. Doesn’t let us walk to the store or go to the library. But we’ve learned to sneak out of most of the places we stay at. There’s always a weakness in the structure. Always.

When I was a kid, we had a house once with an access panel in my room that led to the attic. In the attic was a vent. I could push the vent aside, crawl through, jump down onto a pile of logs, and make my way to the library. Not quite as good as school, but close. As long as I was home before Earl, I was good. The couple of times I wasn’t, I paid a hefty price. But it was still worth it.

7

As I’m growing up, I feel myself being drawn to Dutch more and more. Lured. Usually, I go to her. I watch her. But sometimes her emotions are so powerful, I’m actually pulled toward her by an invisible force. Like a magnet. I have to go. To see if she’s okay. Which is ridiculous, I know, since she’s not real.

The first time that happens, the first time I’m drawn to her, I’m seven. Her emotions tug at me. The strongest is anger. An anger that only Dutch can feel. She is powerful, and her emotions, even at four, are a force to be reckoned with.

She is sitting in a car with Denise. She calls her stepmom Denise, in fact, and it makes the woman so mad, her face turns red. But Dutch has figured out Denise doesn’t love her, and no matter what she says or what she does or how she acts, the woman probably never will. So she calls her by her first name instead of “Mommy” like Denise wants. Denise doesn’t even want it for herself but for Dutch’s dad. To make everything seem okay on the outside, no matter how messed up things are on the inside.

But Dutch wants her dad to know how she feels. How distant Denise is. How unloving.

I realize Denise’s face is red for a different reason this time. Her father has died, and Dutch is trying to tell her so. She’s trying to give her a message from him, but Denise is shaking, she is so astounded.

She glares at Dutch. Her hand twitches, she wants to slap her so bad. She decides a good berating will do the trick. “Charlotte! How dare you say such a thing.”

Dutch doesn’t like being called Charlotte. She likes “Charley” better. It’s what her dad calls her. And her uncle Bob. They are her two favorite people in the world. She likes her sister, Gemma, okay, but because Gemma is Denise’s pet, Dutch keeps her distance for the most part.

Denise doesn’t believe her. Dutch repeats the message, trying to get her to understand. Something about blue towels. I don’t get it, but it seems pretty important to the dead guy talking to Dutch from the backseat. He looks over his shoulder at me. His eyes widen, but I’m more interested in the reaction of Dutch’s stepmom. Of his miserable daughter.

“I can’t believe you would say such a horrible, horrible thing.” Denise grabs Dutch’s arm and jerks her closer. “You are a horrible child. I’m going to tell your father what you just said, and I hope he makes it hurt for you to sit down for a week.”

A flash of anger takes my breath away. I hold back. I want to kill the woman for the hundredth time, but I don’t. Still, it’s my dream. Surely I can get rid of her somehow.

They are behind a bar that Dutch’s dad frequents. It’s a local cop hangout. She unbuckles Dutch’s seat belt and pulls her across the seats and out the driver’s door with her. Her fingernails bite into Dutch’s skin. I feel the pain as they tear through several layers. But more than anything, I feel the humiliation when she drags Dutch inside and deposits her roughly on a bench just outside the kitchen.

“You sit here. I’m going to get your father.” She leans down until her face is mere inches from Dutch’s. “And then we’ll see how much he thinks of his little angel.”