Eleven
“NO!” The younger girl screamed, throwing a wooden chair in the direction of the older woman holding out the spoon. “I don’t want that crap! I want FOOD! Real food! I’m outta here!” Emma bolted for the door, enraged when she figured out for the hundredth time that she was locked in. “Let! Me! OUT!”
The kind woman simply watched Emma’s antics, her expression remaining completely impassive. She didn’t reinforce the girls’ outbursts by trying to talk to them in this state, but she didn’t react to them either. Years of training and experience had taught her how to handle someone coming off a meth addiction, but every single addict was different and suffered in her own way.
“Emma, I promise you’ll feel better if you get some food in you,” the farm’s teacher, Ms. Crane, began in a calm, level voice, still holding out the spoon and bowl. She flinched only slightly when Emma stomped toward her and knocked the bowl out of her hands, sending cream of wheat splattering across the floor and up the wall of the cabin. “That isn’t necessary. Remember to speak to me with words if you need to tell me something.”
Ms. Crane picked up a chair that had been kicked over and righted it at the table before sitting in it. She reached for the deck of cards from the middle of the rough wooden table and began shuffling them idly, doing her best to ignore Emma’s screams. The girl was so skinny even when she first showed up, and a week and a half of trying to fight the effects of the drug that had invaded practically every cell in her body had left her emaciated and scabbed.
“I don’t have to use my words!” Emma screamed in the woman’s ear, slapping at the teacher’s hands and scattering the cards in every direction. Ms. Crane sighed, then wordlessly stood up and crossed the large single room to sit on the overstuffed sofa, picking up a magazine and flipping through the pages without looking at Emma.
“Emma, I understand you’re suffering and I know you will be very sad when you find out that you’ve slapped me. For now, remember to keep your hands to yourself. If you need to hit something, remember what I’ve told you: you may hit the couch cushions.” Ms. Crane pointed to the end of the sofa, which had already been pummeled to the point of lumpiness.
Ms. Crane couldn’t help but notice that Dee was still curled up in a ball on the floor, her face resting against the cool surface of the hardwood floor. She’d stayed there most of yesterday and all through the night, not even letting the older woman cover her with a blanket or wipe at her damp forehead, screaming in actual pain at the slightest touch on her skin. She had been so eerily quiet through her ordeal, Ms. Crane had to keep fighting the urge to check her pulse, mostly because she was afraid of what she might find.
Both girls had been as wretched looking as drowned kittens when she took them from the Carson Hill main house to this cabin some miles away. Mr. Carson had only just bought this smaller ranch at auction, intending to give it to his new daughter-in-law as a wedding present, and it was lucky he did. When Dee and Emma had shown up on the Carson’s ranch one day, there was no way they could go back to town, not after what they’d suffered at the hands of Crazy Mack. When the drugs left their system and they finally began the healing process, they both would face years of therapy to help them overcome the horrors he’d put them through, first getting them addicted and then using that very drug to make them complacent as he prostituted them.
Now, they both alternated between screaming and writhing, with periods of unnerving silence in between. Luckily, at least so far, they had stuck to an impromptu schedule of alternating for Ms. Crane so that they weren’t both screaming at the same time. Thank goodness for small favors, Ms. Crane thought to herself sourly. I don’t know if I could handle both of them freaking out at once. This is why I left teen rehab behind.
“He’s coming for us,” a small voice said during a lull in Emma’s screaming. Ms. Crane immediately jumped up and ran to crouch beside Dee on the floor.
“What? What did you say, dear?” The woman asked, smoothing the sweaty hair back from where it was plastered to the girl’s clammy forehead.
“He’s coming for us. He’ll find us and he’ll kill us.”
“No, sweetie, Mack isn’t going to hurt you. I promise. I won't let him hurt you.”
“He’ll kill us,” Dee repeated quietly, her eyes not moving from the spot on the wall where they’d stared for hours. “He said so. He said he’d kill us if we ever left.”
Ms. Crane sighed, closing her eyes and willing God to give her the words to say that would comfort this poor girl. Even she was surprised at what came out of her mouth.
“No, sweetie. He won’t hurt you, and that is my promise. I swear to you, I’ll kill him first myself.” Ms. Crane gave Dee a determined, confident smile and patted the girl’s hand firmly. She pushed herself up off the floor and was relieved to see that Emma had pretty much burned herself out and was now lying on the floor across the room from her friend. The two girls reminded the teacher of paper dolls, thrown to the ground after their owner tired of playing with them.
Ms. Crane breathed a sigh of relief and went to get some rest herself, settling on the sofa after checking the locks on the doors and each window one more time. Something about Dee’s haunting, hollow voice had her spooked too, or maybe it was just the way the girl seemed so calm, so resigned to what she thought would happen to them. Covering each girl with a blanket before turning in herself, she decided to keep one small lamp burning and her hand on the semi-automatic handgun Mr. Carson had armed her with before sending her on this lonely adventure.
Everyone says things will look brighter in the morning, but someone forgot to tell Dee and Emma. Dee was still curled in a ball and Ms. Crane’s mind went immediately to the possible shutdown of her kidneys, given that she hadn’t had to get up to go to the bathroom in almost forty-eight hours. The girl hadn’t been able to eat or drink anything in that time, either, but that shouldn’t have done it.
“Dee, sweetie, you have to get up,” the teacher began, shaking the girl awake and feeling flooded with relief when she opened her eyes slightly. “Come on, you rested all day yesterday. I’m sorry, but you have to get up and move today.” She put her hands under Dee’s arms and began to lift her, horrified that the girl weighed almost nothing.
Dee didn’t fight her, but she didn’t help support her weight either. She hung limply in Ms. Crane’s arms, too weak from the exhaustion and lack of food to do anything more than be carried. After she managed to get Dee cleaned up and in the bed, Ms. Crane turned her attention to Emma, who was lying in the floor next to a small puddle of her own vomit. She carried Emma next, cleaning her up and putting her in the bed with Dee.
Ms. Crane returned to the small kitchen and got to work making a thin broth, peeling a pot full of potatoes and putting them on to boil to mash into the broth when the girls felt like eating something again. She made sure there was plenty of bottled water in the fridge, and filled a kettle with cold water and tea bags so it would be ready to make sweet tea when the girls felt like drinking something.
After finishing the random chores and cleaning up a little bit around the cabin, she checked on the sleeping girls once more before returning to her chair in the front room. From her chair, she watched out the window for any signs of Mack, all the while keeping a pistol close to her side.
Chapter Twelve
Miranda pulled her cowboy hat further down over her eyes to block the bright sunlight that was intruding on her nap. She’d spent the last week lounging in a chaise beside the hotel pool with Casey, when the two of them hadn’t felt the need to head back up to their room for a while, that is. Ordering in from
