You're Next

‘Is she gonna be okay?’

‘We don’t know yet.’

She stiffened, recoiling from the words. ‘What happened to her?’

‘She was stabbed.’

‘Like in the movies?’ She stood abruptly, hugging her stomach, shifting from shoe to shoe so quickly it seemed she was stamping her feet. ‘I want to go see her.’

‘We can’t, honey. Daddy’s in some trouble. I’m not sure what’s safe right now.’

‘Why don’t we call the police?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know which cops we can trust.’

‘You mean they hurt Mommy?’

‘I don’t know, sweetheart. I don’t have many answers. I know that must be really scary. But I’m going to figure this all out and keep you safe. We’re gonna be fine.’

‘And Mommy, too?’ He swallowed hard.

Her face seemed to collapse. He sat on the corner of the bed and rocked and shushed her until her jagged breathing settled.

He said, ‘We need to stick together. I won’t let anyone hurt you. But I need you to be strong as we figure out what to do. If you can be strong, we’ll get through this. Deal?’

She nodded against his chest, her face flushed in streaks. Her tiny hand poked up, and they shook. ‘Deal.’

Fifteen minutes later they were in Target, a dead-on-their-feet march through the aisles. Wonder Bread, peanut butter, baby monitor and batteries, a powder blue child-size sleeping bag. He wouldn’t let Kat out of his sight, not around a corner, not for an instant. She trudged beside the cart yawning, scratching her head, rubbing her eyes. The black vinyl bag, filled with cash, strained on his shoulder. It occurred to him that Kat had left her eyeglasses back in his truck, but there was nothing he could do about that now, and besides, she only really needed them to read. In a bin on the checkout lane, Beanie Babies stared out with doleful stuffed-animal eyes. Mike plucked a polar bear from the heap, wiggled it at Kat. ‘Snowball II: Bride of Snowball?’

She read the tag. ‘Its name is Aurora,’ she said flatly.

Its.

He bought it anyway.

The checkout lady said, ‘What a pretty girl you have.’

Mike’s thumb had moved to the cool gold of his wedding band. He had to concentrate to get his mouth to move. ‘Thank you.’

The woman looked at him, uneasy, and rang them up without another word.

Back at the Bates Motel, he loaded batteries into the baby monitor and tried the reception with the connecting door closed and Kat on the other side. ‘Testing one two three,’ she intoned. ‘Testing one two three.’ Some static, but it worked well enough. The parent unit had a belt clip, which he hooked onto his waistband. It maintained a decent connection to the edge of the parking lot and down to the front desk.

When he came back, Kat’s face was gray with exhaustion. On the little counter, he made her a peanut-butter – no jelly – sandwich, grateful to have something to do, some way to provide something for her. Meticulously, he spread the peanut butter and cut off the crust. His hands were shaking, and he thought of his father’s arms in the station wagon, his arms shaking as he held the wheel. For the first time, Mike felt a stab of empathy for his father’s situation: the blind panic of watching one’s life come unraveled. The feeling felt forbidden, threatening; he tamped it down with anger. After all, his father had captained his own fate.

Mike focused on the sandwich, centering it on the plate and slicing it on a neat diagonal. What did he think, that a lovingly made sandwich could mitigate the hell his daughter was going through? Yes, that was his hope.

He gave her a half, and she took a few nibbles before setting it aside.

He was crestfallen. ‘Can you eat any more?’

‘It’ll make me throw up.’ She pulled her legs in Indian style and scratched at her head.

‘Okay, sweetheart. Okay.’

She was really digging at her hair behind her ear and it hit him: head lice.

He sagged against the counter. For some reason this above all else seemed an insurmountable obstacle. It reminded him of those endless first nights they’d had Kat home from the hospital, the baby cries, the feedings and changing and burpings. He remembered the comprehensive exhaustion, himself and Annabel lying there in the dark, trying to rise to the wails, reaching back for more that they just didn’t have but that as parents they had to produce, because if they didn’t, no one else would.

Slurping at a leaky juice box, Kat was having trouble keeping her eyes open. He went over, turned her head, and parted the fine hair at her nape. ‘Honey, your head lice are back.’

She had fallen asleep against him.

‘Sweetheart, we gotta run back to Target. I have to buy mayonnaise and Saran Wrap and get this taken care of.’

‘Can’t I just stay here?’ she mumbled. ‘Can’t I just sleep? Please, Dad?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and her shoulders rocked with dry, soundless sobs.

An exhausting forty minutes later, she was curled in her new sleeping bag atop the starchy sheets, her head wrapped in mayo. Mike nestled the baby-monitor transmitter into the sleeping bag right beside her. And then he retrieved the polar-bear Beanie Baby from the Target bag.

‘This isn’t just an ordinary polar bear.’

Her eyes slid over, found him.

‘This polar bear has magical protective capabilities,’ he said.

‘A magical polar bear.’

‘That’s right. He will keep us safe.’

‘If we get attacked by animal crackers.’

‘We have to name him. Do you like Aurora?’

‘Hate it.’ She picked it up by the tiny scruff, studied its face. ‘Snowball II. Like you said.’

‘Snowball’s Revenge.’

Reluctantly, she tucked the Beanie Baby into her sleeping bag. She scratched at the plastic wrap on her head, doing her best not to look miserable. ‘Will you read me a story?’

They didn’t have any books, but he couldn’t bear handing her another disappointment. Desperate, Mike opened the nightstand drawer, and there, instead of Gideon’s Bible, someone had left a dog-eared copy of Green Eggs and Ham. It might as well have been water into wine. He ran his hand across the beloved orange-and-green cover, then held it up triumphantly.

Kat said, ‘Dad, I’m eight.’

‘Oh,’ Mike said. ‘Too old for it.’ He made a show of putting it back.

‘I mean, if you really want to read it.’

‘I do,’ he said.

‘Then okay.’ She yawned, half asleep.

‘I heard Dr Seuss wrote this after someone bet him that he couldn’t write an entire book using only one-syllable words.’

‘“Anywhere.”’

‘What?’

‘“I will not eat them anywhere.” Three syllables.’

‘Oh. I guess I heard wrong.’

‘Mom does the best voice for Sam-I-Am.’

He collected himself. Read the first page. And then Kat was out cold.

He brushed an eyelash off her cheek. For a time he sat watching her sleep, waiting for the lump in his throat to dissolve.

Finally he crept into the connecting room with his vinyl bag of cash, easing the door shut behind him. He adjusted the volume on the receiver clipped to his belt until he could make out the faint whistle of Kat’s breathing. Slanting the blinds a half inch, he pulled a chair around and sat for a good half hour with his feet up on a rickety radiator beneath the window.

At last the Mustang’s headlights swept the glass, scanning bars of light through the blinds and across Mike’s