Sophie Littlefield - Unforsaken

He could tell that made the lady with the brown glasses kind of mad. But she didn’t do anything about it except try harder to play with him. But she wasn’t very good at playing. She had square cards with pictures on them. Apple. Bell. Truck. On a table there was a hiding thing, and on the floor in a box were an apple and a bell and a truck and lots of other things. The lady with the brown glasses would take something out of the box and put it on the table, but it was behind the hiding thing so he couldn’t see it. Then she would ask him which thing was on the table.

He didn’t know. He couldn’t see behind the hiding thing. He could have told her that, but that would mean he would have to say words and today he wasn’t saying words.

For lunch there was a sandwich but not like Hailey made them. Chips with bumps. Chub only liked plain chips. He drank his milk and ate his sandwich. He didn’t want to make the lady mad. She didn’t eat with him but she watched him eat. He wished she would stop watching him. He started to miss Hailey more and he almost let the words out but then he didn’t. He wanted to go outside bad and almost told the lady but then he didn’t. After lunch it was the table with the hiding thing again.

He got sleepy but the lady didn’t know about taking a nap, so she didn’t let him take a nap and he didn’t tell her. At dinner he cried a little even though it was a good dinner, a hamburger with ketchup. The lady with the brown glasses came back with a man Chub hadn’t seen before and that was scary. For a minute he thought maybe the lady was mad and brought the man to spank him but he didn’t, he just asked Chub the same things the lady asked him, did he know where Hailey was, but Chub kept the words inside extra tight, he didn’t know where she was but he was afraid the words would come out anyway, he kept them inside.

The lady with brown glasses gave him a new pair of pajamas, the ones from yesterday were gone, he didn’t know where they were. Yesterday’s pajamas had lions on them. Today’s pajamas had stripes on them. He liked the lions and he liked the stripes but he did not like the way the pajamas smelled. Chub cried. But quiet, so the words couldn’t get out, and then he went to bed and was very quiet and the brown-glasses lady left after a while.

But now he had woken up and there was a small light in the corner in the shape of a star, enough to see that there was no one in the room with him, just the bed and shelves and the desk with the hiding thing, but the lady had taken her toys away with her.

Chub knew it was okay to cry because Hailey said it was fine to cry if he felt like it but he was too scared right now. He closed his eyes and squeezed himself even smaller and made a mind-picture of Hailey’s face and then Prairie and Anna and Kaz. These were his very own mind-pictures, the ones he made himself, not the ones that just opened up bright in his head sometimes.

Chub couldn’t help being very scared. But Prairie was somewhere near. He knew that. And Hailey and Kaz were coming because a mind-picture of them popped in between the ones he was making by himself, Hailey and Kaz right here in this room.

There was one other mind-picture he’d seen a few times. But he didn’t like this one at all. It was Monster Man.

Monster Man lay in a bed with things stuck in him, white looping lines that went into machines. Monster Man was covered up mostly with white covers and there were lights coming from the machines but they weren’t very bright. Where Monster Man’s hands should have been were giant white pillows. And his face… his face was broken, red and black and pink where there weren’t more white bandages. He didn’t have any hair, just shiny red skin. His eyes were regular except crazy crazy and there was a bandage where his nose went and a hose thing that went into his mouth hole. But his mouth hole wasn’t a mouth. It was red and it was a hole and the hose went in it, and even though the mind-pictures didn’t have sounds, he could tell the Monster Man was screaming almost all the time, the mouth hole shaking and the eyes going up inside his head.

Chub wished he didn’t have to see that mind-picture.

A long time ago he was a baby and his name was Jacob and he lived in a room with a lady who slept a lot and she was broken and he was always hungry. Then he went to live with Gram and she talked too loud and she was broken too.

But then there was Hailey. Chub wondered how long it would take her to get there. Until she came he would be very small and he would wait.

I WOKE UP WITH THE SUN in my eyes. I blinked and for a moment I couldn’t remember where I was, couldn’t identify the boxy room with strips of sunlight slanting in on the two beds and the plain brown furniture.

But then I saw Kaz, adjusting the blinds, dressed in the jeans he’d had on yesterday and a worn gray T-shirt that fit him snugly, showing off the muscles in his arms and back.

Then I remembered.

“Good morning,” I said, stretching and yawning.

“Hailey.” Kaz turned from the window, took a step toward me. Stopped, looking self-conscious, and jammed his hands in his pockets. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up. I brought you some coffee. Bagels.”

“What time is it?” I ran my fingers through my hair, hoping that it wasn’t doing that sticking-up thing it had been prone to since Prairie had cut and dyed it pale blond.

Remembering that haircut brought all my guilt back. The makeover was only the first of many things Prairie had done to try to protect me.

“Nearly nine. You slept in.” Kaz picked up one of the coffee cups sitting on the desk, peeled back the plastic lid and handed it to me. I held it under my chin and let the steam bathe my face.

I was wearing only a thin tank top and my underwear. I pulled the covers up under my arms. I’d have to put my clothes on in the bathroom, maybe wait until Kaz wasn’t looking to get out of bed.

I felt my face get warm when I thought of his having spent the night just a few feet away. In a separate bed, but… still. We had taken turns in the bathroom, Kaz going first because he was faster, and when I’d come out after washing my face and brushing my teeth and combing my hair, he’d already been asleep, one arm thrown over his head, the other hand clutching the blankets to his chest. I thought it would take me ages to unwind enough to sleep. Prairie and Chub getting kidnapped, running from the scene, kissing Kaz, waiting in the lobby while he checked us in with the debit card-all of it had left me anxious and unsettled. But I didn’t remember a thing after getting into bed.

“How long have you been up?” I asked, taking a sip of the hot, bitter brew.

“A while,” Kaz said, and hesitated, like he wanted to say something more.

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing. It’s okay,” he said quickly. “But listen, Hailey, does Quadrillon mean anything to you?”

“Quadrillon?” I repeated, confused. “Yeah. It’s some sort of high-tech company. They built an office park out east of Gypsum when I was a little kid, back during the whole high-tech boom, because they got the land really cheap plus tax incentives or something. Quadrillon was supposed to move in first. Only that never happened. They went bust right before construction was finished and it’s been empty ever since. Sometimes kids go out there, break windows and drink or whatever, and the sheriff comes around. I guess eventually it’ll just fall apart and turn into a landfill.”

Kaz nodded, as though I’d confirmed a bad suspicion. “That’s where they took them. Where they took Chub, anyway. I saw it this morning, right when I woke up. The word Quadrillon , with a sort of squared-off four-leaf-clover logo. And then I realized it was a sign on a building. I saw Chub going in the door, over and over. He was with two guys in a car with black windows. Only, the building looks brand-new.”