Most victims of childhood trauma are not asked what their role might have been. Again, not about blame. We don’t blame the child victim. Just giving them a new way to frame the situation.
“What do you think you could have done differently, Hank?” asks Tess, snarkily.
Not left the pack out of reach, for one.
Not let my guard down.
“Did you do anything right?” asks Tess.
Maybe one thing. There is one person who knows where I am tonight, I’m pretty sure.
“I tried to fight him,” Billy tells me. “When I realized I couldn’t beat him, and that my mom wasn’t going to stop him, I ran away.”
“Was there someone you could have called? A family member. A teacher.”
“My stepdad told me that they’d take me away,” he says. “That I’d never see my mom again.”
I’m guessing Tom Walters found him at the bus station, offered him a place to sleep and something to eat. He was probably kind, warm—an irresistible lure to a boy like Billy.
I wait a moment, let his words hover. Meanwhile, my own wheels are turning. I think my only option is to wait for Tom or Wendy to return, as they must.
“I guess that’s what happened to me anyway,” he says softly.
“Let’s see if we can work together and find a way out of this, get you back with your mom and find some help for your family.”
“That’s what Tom said,” Billy answers, sounding frightened. “He said he’d call my mom, offer her a place to stay.”
“And that was a lie,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Well, Billy,” I tell him. All we have at first, therapists, is our words. It takes time to earn trust, especially with young people who have been gravely injured by people or life, or both. “I’m not lying. I want to help.”
It sounds really weak, especially given our current circumstances.
“Okay,” he says after a pause.
There’s a crash overhead then, and another. I leap from my place at the bottom of the stairs and hide against the cold cinder block of the staircase. My only plan is to trip whoever comes down first, use the dark to my advantage. Billy starts to weep.
“You are so fucked,” offers Tess. “What a mess.”
Another crash, then another. Then a heavy thud; the outer door opens slowly, someone grunting on the other side. Finally, a face appears above me like a moon.
I don’t believe my eyes. I’m dreaming.
Or, this time, I’ve lost my mind completely.
FORTY
The locked box opened, that was the best way that Rain could describe it. It wasn’t just the fear and sorrow, the shame she felt about the day she lost her best friends, that she hid instead of helped. It was the rage.
At the sight of Kreskey in that doorway, his words, something burst inside her and the world was colored red. Hank was frozen; limbs stiff, his face white, jaw slack with terror. Though Hank towered over her, was nearly double her weight, Rain could see he would be useless.
She grabbed the knife.
The weight of it in her hand, the gleam of that blade. It felt good.
And before she was even aware of herself, she was running.
In her mind there was a horrible film reel—standing on the bridge with Tess, Wolf issuing that guttural sound, his teeth in her flesh, Tess’s terrified scream of pain, Kreskey’s blow, her own mind-numbing shock and pain, Hank’s warrior yell. She was back there. But this time, she wasn’t cowering in the hollow of a tree while he took her friends. This time, she was armed, she was strong. This time she ran to him, screaming with all her power, knife raised.
She could save them, save all of them. And they would all escape, grow up healthy and whole, raise their children together, watch each other grow old. They would have normal lives of proms and weddings, baby showers, moms’ nights out. They’d cheer each other through the good days and carry each through the bad. Friends. They’d be friends forever.
She wasn’t present that night in the Kreskey house, she wasn’t herself.
Afterward, she’d claim—to Hank, to herself—that she didn’t fully remember what happened. That night, too, she’d lock inside. Another box. Another nightmare.
But the truth was, she took that hunting knife of Hank’s and ran without hesitation to drive it straight into Kreskey’s heart.
He never had a second to react; she hit her mark and used all her weight to drive it in, knock him down onto the tarp beneath him, and fall on top of him. He issued a