And so they went out for dinner at his fancy house in the north of town. At the last minute the mother told the girl she was to sit in the car and wait for a few minutes. With a fat black marker she wrote down a combination of numbers on the girl’s hand and told the girl she was to go around to the back of the house, go in the second window, and once inside go for a certain door. In the room she’d find a safe. She’d use the numbers on her hand to open the safe and take the money out. Then she’d leave the way she came in.”
I paused.
“I’m listening,” Camden said quickly, sounding enthralled.
I took a deep breath and went on. “The girl did as she was told. But she was so nervous that she opened the wrong door. She went into a very black room and before she knew it, there was no ground beneath her. She fell down a flight of stairs and landed on the cold hard floor, crying out from the fall. It took her a few minutes to snap out of it, to realize what had happened. But it was too late. The commotion brought people to the top of the stairs. The light flicked on. It was Travis, with her parents behind him.
He came running down, waving his arms. The girl’s parents were quick with excuses, ‘We couldn’t find a baby-sitter,’ the mother said, ‘we told her to wait in the car.’ They yelled at the girl but it wasn’t enough for Travis. He helped the girl to her feet, grasping her unkindly around the wrist, and he looked down at her hand. He saw the combination to the safe written on top. It was all over.”
Camden sucked in his breath and I had no choice but to power through the story. It was easier pretending it happened to someone else.
“Travis grew very quiet. For a few seconds there, he didn’t say anything. The girl had never been so terrified. The silence choked them all. Finally, he grabbed the girl by her arm, twisting it behind her back until she cried out in pain. Her parents started running down the stairs to stop him but Travis picked up a container from the shelves behind him. The girl didn’t know what it was, except that it had one of those warning labels on it. All the shelves had similar bottles, different colors, shapes and sizes. The girl had fallen into a sterile, cold basement. It almost looked like a lab but not quite. The man, Travis, threatened her parents. He said that if they told him the truth of what the girl was doing there, he’d let her go. But if they lied, he’d throw the bottle in her face.
Her parents told him the truth. The mother said she set it all up with the daughter because they were going to rob him. Because Travis deserved it. Because it was only fair. The mother didn’t say much more than that. It was enough. Travis smiled, and it looked like he was going to let the girl go. But he didn’t. Not at first. Instead he held the girl in place, and while smiling at her parents and telling them ‘thank you for your honesty’, he poured the contents of the bottle on the girl’s leg, where it ran down from her knee to the bottom of her foot. She was wearing sandals and shorts at the time. She’d never wear shorts again.”
I trailed off, realizing I had a life before all of that happened. That I had been so free and happy once. That I knew what it was like to walk down the street and not have people stare at you. I had so much potential back then and I never appreciated any of it. I never appreciated my future until it was ripped away from me.
“They never found out what chemicals were in the poison,” I told Camden before he could comment. “The doctors said it looked like battery acid or methylene chloride, which made them immediately suspicious. To them, it sounded like the girl’s parents were operating a meth lab. It made them sic Social Services on them. They asked the same questions about the accident over and over again. And over and over again, the girl had to remember her lie. That she was playing in the dump near her house, searching for car parts for her dad when she accidently kicked over a bottle of unmarked liquid and it spilled on her. The girl didn’t understand why she had to keep lying, why she couldn’t tell them the truth. It was Travis’ fault. He’s the one who did it. Why were they protecting him? But her parents just said, ‘no darling, it’s our fault.’ And so the girl would spend the rest of her life blaming all of them. She’d blame them until she died.”
The story was punctuated by an overwhelming silence. It filled the room to the brim, heavy with the truth and about to run over. Finally, after what seemed like forever, Camden sighed.
“What is it?” I asked, almost annoyed at his response.
“I don’t know what to say, Ellie,” he said sadly, “and I wish I did. I wish I had the words to take it all away. I am so sorry.”