“How’d you break it down?” he asked.
I almost laughed. Edan was so unflappable. It was nice to tell this story to someone who didn’t immediately become uncomfortable and start pitying me.
“I just kicked it until I made a hole big enough to escape through. Made a run for it.”
“Badass.”
“And yet I’m right back here.” Locked in a room by a dude who didn’t trust me to make my own decisions.
“We’re getting out of here,” Edan said.
“But if we don’t, you don’t think they’ll send us back, do you?”
“Send us back where?”
“Home. To the US.”
“No. Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know. It’s just . . . I didn’t have my parents’ permission to come, and maybe they reported me missing or something.” I glanced at him and then quickly away. “MDG has a lot of former military and law enforcement people working for them. You don’t think they’d care, do you?”
“No,” he said, but he sounded a little unsure this time. “I’m sure they don’t care. And you got out of the country. If your parents could have stopped you, they probably would have back then.”
“Right.” I let out a breath. “That makes me feel better.”
There was a long pause before he spoke again. “But . . . if something happens and you do end up back in the US, don’t go back home. OK? Even if they say it will be better this time. Don’t go.”
I met his gaze, wondering what I’d said that made me so transparent. He understood, or he suspected, without me having to actually explain it.
“You didn’t ask why,” he said quietly. “When I said I left home, and I told you Grayson kept trying to get me to go back, you didn’t ask why I wouldn’t.”
Right. Normal people probably asked why. Even if they suspected, they asked, hoping for an answer that was better than what they were thinking. I didn’t have that kind of hope.
“And you said your parents were assholes,” he continued. “And your dad locked you in your room. Bedroom doors don’t lock from the outside, so either he installed a special lock”—he pointed to the shiny new lock on the old door of our room—“or he did something to the door. Either way, it’s not a normal thing to do.”
“He used a rope,” I said. “Tied it to the doorknob next to mine so it held it shut.”
“Wow, that is some quick thinking.” He did not say it like he was impressed.
“Yeah.”
“My mom never would have locked me in my room. She really preferred it when I was gone, so that would have been counterproductive.”
“Your mom . . .” I didn’t know how to ask the question.
“Was the one to kick the shit out of me? Yes. Mostly.” He’d said it easily, like he was used to telling the story to people. It was probably his way of coping with it, making it sound like it was no big deal anymore. It was how I’d always imagined Laurence would tell people about our dad.
“My dad did some too, before he left, but I was nine when that happened. Sometimes my mom’s boyfriend got in on the action, though.”
“Oh.”
I’d never been on the other side of this conversation. But it didn’t seem right to let him share that without offering something in return. It felt like a betrayal, to just say I was sorry and move on, while keeping the truth locked inside.
“It was always my dad,” I said, the words a little strained as they got stuck in my throat. “My mom never did much to stop it, but my dad was the one who . . . kicked the shit out of us,” I said, stumbling a little as I repeated his words.
“Were you there until you joined?” he asked. “Like, this was the first time you left?”
“Yeah. I never had anywhere else to go. Then this opportunity came up, and I guess getting killed by scrabs seemed preferable to getting killed by my dad.”
“Yeah. Seriously.” He said it like he totally agreed. Like it wasn’t a crazy thing to do at all. “Your brother . . . he’s older?”
“Yes. Three years older.”
“Was he still around?”
“He was, but he left when I did. Dad went after him too sometimes,” I said, knowing what Edan was getting at. “Not like me, because I was the bad one. But he got it some. And he tried to stop it some when he got older, but . . .” I shrugged. “Do you have siblings?”
“No. Not that I know of, anyway. Who knows what my dad did after he left. Maybe he’s out there beating the shit out of a new family.” He arched his back and checked his phone—3:45 a.m.
“Did it make it easier?” he asked. “Having a brother to talk to?”
“Laurence isn’t much of a talker. I think he mostly wanted to pretend like it wasn’t happening. He and my mom were alike in that way. I’d think that things were going to change, that we’d finally acknowledge how bad he’d gotten, but the next morning it was like nothing happened.”
“My mom did that to me all the time. She’d look at me all baffled, like she couldn’t believe I was still upset. It made me feel like a crazy person. Like I was remembering things wrong.”
“Yes,” I said, my relief coming through in my voice. No one had ever voiced that exact thing to me before. “And you stop trusting your own memory, because maybe you actually are just overreacting or creating things in your head.”
“It must have been worse for you, huh? Having a mom and brother also latch onto the lie. It seems lonelier, actually. Having people to talk to about it and being rejected.”
“Maybe,” I said quietly. “I think it’s just bad either way.”
“Yeah.” He let out a long breath. “I’ve never talked to anyone about this before. It’s weird.”
“What?” I looked at him in surprise. “Really?”
“I mean, I’ve told a few people. Like Grayson. But it wasn’t like this. He just got uncomfortable and
