Hold Me Close Read online

  “Yeah. I can see that.” Dee nodded and sipped her coffee.

  She didn’t mean to ask, but the words came out anyway. “Dee...when you told me about him getting out of prison...”

  Dee looked embarrassed. “Yeah, that was crappy. I’m sorry.”

  “No. It wasn’t. It’s not true, I don’t think,” Effie said. “But if you could tell me where you heard it, so I could look it up?”

  “Oh. Shoot. Well, I heard it from one of the moms. I’m trying to remember who.” Dee bit her lower lip, frowning. “I can’t think of it, or where she heard it. But I’ll ask around, okay? If you really—”

  “No, that’s okay,” Effie cut in quickly with a small laugh and a wave of her hand. “I’ve heard for years, off and on, that he’s getting out. It’s never true. I’m sure it’s not this time, either.”

  Awkward silence. Dee still looked embarrassed. Effie didn’t quite know how to fix it. At last, Dee shrugged and smiled.

  “So, tell me about this dating site. Think I should join up?”

  chapter fourteen

  Effie is down to her last piece of paper in her drawing pad. She’s worn her colored pencils to nubs and the charcoal pencils that were in her backpack are entirely used up. She tries to shade a line with her fingertips the way Madame Clay taught her, but the paper tears, and with a sigh, she crumples it into a ball and starts to toss it into the trash can before thinking again and smoothing it instead. She adds it to the small and precious pile of paper they hoard for the bathroom. They hide the spare paper under the mattress, behind the dresser drawers, under the couch cushions. Somehow the indignity of having to use scraps of paper for the bathroom is worse than the awful food or the bad lighting or the relentless monotony. It makes them into animals.

  Heath looks at the picture, then at her. “You drew me?”

  “Yeah. The nose is all wrong, though.” Effie gestures at him. “I couldn’t get it right.”

  She studies him. Locked in these three small, dank and often dark rooms, at the mercy of a crazy, moody man, Effie would never have thought she could be bored, yet she is. The days have blended into one another, which is why she started keeping track with the hash marks on the wall beside the bed. She thinks she’s been here about two weeks so far, but it could be longer. The only way to really tell for sure is that every morning the orange lights come on and every night they go off, except sometimes it feels as if the day lasts forever and other times it’s definitely much shorter.

  Twice since she woke up here the blazing white overhead lights have come on, and the man who insists on being called Daddy brought them food. A half a jug of water. The first time, he also brought two glasses of chocolate milk he forced them to drink. It made them both fall asleep. The second time, he gave them each a shot of “vitamins.” Effie knows it was a sedative. Maybe she’d rather be unconscious than awake. It passes the time.

  Effie has asked Heath a few times about escape, but he won’t give her the details about what happened when he tried it before. There has to be a way out of the basement, but though she cuts her feet by navigating the other room, there are no windows that she can find. The door, of course, is locked. There’s always a warning before Daddy comes into the basement, the music and the bright lights coming on overhead. They could jump him, couldn’t they? Force him to let them out. Next time, Effie thinks and stifles a yawn. She’ll do it the next time.

  “Try again,” Heath says.

  “I can’t. I’m out of paper. And pencils.” She holds up the drawing pad, flipping through the pages to show him.

  Heath snags the book from her and sits on the rickety chair to slowly page through it. Every so often he pauses to look at one page longer than the others, and Effie tries to figure out why but can’t. She doesn’t see anything special in the pictures Heath seems to like best—a rose with a bee circling it, a bowl of fruit, a stop sign. The ones Effie is most proud of, the castle and the koi pond, he barely glances at. Finally, he looks at her.

  “You’re good.”

  “Thanks.” She shrugs and scoots back on the bed to rest against the wall with her knees drawn to her chest.

  They have spent most of their time in the bedroom because the small living area is so dark and the couch out there has springs poking through the cushions. In here, at least, the orangey light from the wall sconce is better and the bed provides a softer place to sit. Effie could tell you the exact dimensions of this room. Ten short paces in one direction, ten slightly longer paces in the other. None of the walls seem to align. Everything’s skewed. If she looks too long at the corners, she’ll get a headache. Everything is an effort.

  Heath reaches the end of the sketchbook, closes it and hands it back to her. Effie clutches it to her chest for a moment, remembering when all the pages had been fresh and clean. She’d wasted so many of them, but how was she supposed to know she’d end up here?

  “We should hit him with something,” Effie says.

  Heath looks around the room, then at her. “There’s nothing to hit him with.”

  “I could stab him with a pencil,” Effie says. “If I hadn’t already used them all up. I was so stupid!”

  “He doesn’t look strong, but he is.” Heath frowns. “You’d have to do it in the eye or something. How good is your aim?”

  Effie closes one eye to keep his face from blurring. Both eyes are gritty. Sore from rubbing them. “I don’t know. Why aren’t you trying harder to think of a way?”

  “He said he’d kill...”

  The searing bright lights come on overhead. The music starts, but it’s not the same song. This one’s not that soft-voiced, high-pitched one about sailing; it’s harder edged. She knows it after a minute, though. “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” by the Beatles. Effie laughs, confused, but the sight of Heath’s face stops her.

  “What?” She was hot a moment ago, the basement is almost always too hot or too cold, but her skin crawls and bumps into gooseflesh now. “What’s wrong?”

  “Go get under the covers. Pretend you’re asleep.”

  “But what...”

  “Go,” Heath says as he backs up into the living area, already turning away from her. “Please, Effie, just do it.”

  The rasp in his voice convinces her. Effie hops into the bed and pulls the blankets up over her ears. Beyond the doorway, she hears Daddy saying something, but it’s not in that too-bright and jovial voice he’s used every time before. He sounds worse than angry. He sounds as if he’s gone...dark.

  “Sister, Sister, Sister. You stay in here,” Daddy says from the doorway. “You be a good girl now and stay where you are. You won’t like what happens, if you don’t.”

  Nearby, there is a woman’s voice. She sounds drunk. Laughing, but slurred. Effie sits up, meaning to get out of bed and run, run to this new person, because surely whoever it is will save them. Before she can, though, there’s a crack of flesh on flesh and a low, soft cry. Daddy’s voice, louder.

  “Don’t just look at it, boy. Put your face in that goddamned mess and eat it.”

  Another rise of drunken laughter. Another sound of slapping. A moan, it sounds like pain but could be something else.

  Effie pulls the covers over her head and turns herself to the wall. Her parents weren’t much into going to church, and Effie’s not even sure she believes in God, but she prays now.

  Whatever he’s doing, please, oh please, don’t let it happen to her.

  Please, oh please, don’t let it happen to her.

  When the sounds get louder, she plugs her ears with her fingers. It lasts forever, whatever it is, until her stomach is sick with anticipation and she has to press a hand over her mouth to keep herself from gagging. Her eyes are closed, but she can tell when the bright lights go out, leaving her in the pitch-dark again.

  She waits and waits, but Heath