eyes time to adjust to the sunlight. Then, she would move slowly and pretend that she was in pain, which wouldn’t be a stretch. She would act like she needed help and Paul, impatiently, would push her or shove her or kick her and then Lydia would throw her weight into her shoulder and hit him as hard as she could in the neck.
She wouldn’t use her fist because the knuckles might glance off. She would stretch open her hand and use the webbing between her thumb and index finger, creating an arc that sliced nicely into the base of his Adam’s apple.
The thought of hearing his windpipe crack was the only thing that kept her going.
Lydia took several deep breaths and let them go. She worked her hands and feet. She pulled up her knees and stretched out her legs. She rolled her shoulders. Having a plan helped the panic die down to a splinter worrying the back of her brain.
The engine changed speed. Paul was taking an off-ramp. She could feel the car slowing. There was a flash of red light around the steel plates, then a yellow pulse as the turning signal was engaged.
Lydia rolled onto her back. She had gone over the plan so many times that she could practically feel Paul’s throat crunching under her hand. There was no telling how much time had passed since he’d put her in the trunk. She had tried to count the minutes from when he took the photo, but she kept losing count. Panic could do that. She knew that the most important thing to do while she waited was to keep her mind engaged with something other than worst-case scenarios.
She grasped for memories that didn’t involve Paul Scott. Or Dee and Rick, because thinking about her child and her lover right now in this dark deathtrap of a space would lead her down a path of no return.
She had to go back several years for a memory that didn’t somehow involve Paul, because even in absence, he had been such a huge part of her life for such a long time. Lydia was twenty-one when Claire met Paul at the math lab. Two months later, he’d managed to tear Lydia from her family. She had always blamed Paul for her darkest days of addiction, but well before meeting him, she was so deep into self-destruction that the only memories she had were bad ones.
October, 1991.
Nirvana were playing at the 40 Watt Club in downtown Athens. Lydia sneaked out of the house. She climbed through her bedroom window, though no one would’ve noticed if she’d walked straight out the front door. She bummed a ride with her friend Leigh and she left behind all the misery and despair trapped inside the house on Boulevard.
Julia had been gone for over six months by then. It was too hard to be at home anymore. When her parents weren’t screaming at each other, they were so despondent that being around them made you feel like an interloper in their private tragedy. Claire had disappeared so far into herself that she could be in the same room with you for ten minutes before you noticed her standing there.
And Lydia had disappeared into pills and powder and grown men who had no business hanging around teenage girls.
Lydia had adored Julia. Her sister was cool and hip and outspoken and she covered for Lydia when Lydia wanted to stay out after curfew, but now she was dead. Lydia knew it like she knew the sun would come up the next day. She had accepted Julia’s death before anyone else in her family had. She knew that her big sister would never be back, and she used it as an excuse to drink more, snort more, screw more, eat more, more, more, more. She couldn’t stop, didn’t want to stop, which was why the day after the Nirvana concert, Lydia was clueless when people started arguing about whether the performance was awesome or dog shit.
The band had been drunk off its ass. They were all out of tune. Cobain had started a mini-riot when he’d ripped down the movie screen hanging over the stage. The audience went nuts. They rushed the stage. Eventually, the band piled their instruments on top of the destroyed drum set and walked out.
Lydia had no memory of any of this. She had been so high during the time of the concert that she wasn’t even sure she’d made it to