A loud clunk. My neck jerks as the van slams to a stop.
He’s closing in. I shift into drive and move forward. He jumps to the side as I pass, but then he’s back, driving his fist into the passenger-side window over and over. The glass breaks with a crackling sound.
I step on the gas, but he’s got the door open. No!
He gets in, smashing over me like I’m not even there. He jams his foot over mine, onto the brake. He shifts it into park and gets out, yanking me right out with him by the arm.
“That wasn’t smart at all.”
I clutch my dress to my front as he shoves me forward.
I fall onto something hard—a downed tree, maybe. He’s right there, picking me up.
I kick and struggle, but he just lifts me into the air, squeezing me so tight against him that I can’t do anything at all—one arm under my knees, holding my legs together, and one around my shoulders—and he’s somehow got my arms pinned together.
“No,” I beg.
“Shhh,” he says.
“Help!” I yell. “Help!”
“Nobody’ll hear you out here, little bird,” he says, sounding almost sad. Not angry at all, like I expected. He killed the other guy out of anger, but me he’s killing out of sadness. It pours out of him as he walks to the river, carrying me there. “That’s what you’re like, you know? A pretty little bird and you keep singing, thinking someone’s going to understand. But all we hear is a song.”
I hear the slosh of the water around his feet. He keeps going, eyes dark, fixed up above, like he’s concentrating really, really hard on the moon.
“Please.”
“Stop talking.” Still he stares at the moon, wading into the river. He keeps walking, deeper and deeper. I gasp when the water hits my bare feet. He seems to clutch me a little tighter.
He’s going to drown me.
I struggle with everything I have, but it’s like fighting steel.
He doesn’t react to the cold, rushing water at all, just goes deeper and deeper. I feel its icy fingers climb my bare back where the zipper to my dress gapes open. I hold him tighter.
I get a new idea—I won’t let him go. He can’t drown me if I don’t let go of him. But then I realize he probably can. He can do anything.
If he goes deep enough, he’ll be able to breathe and I won’t. I’ll drown and die, clinging onto him.
And then I’ll die and stop clinging to him. And he’ll let me go.
No—he’ll let my body go. I’ll just be a body.
I kick and fight for all I’m worth, but he just clutches me harder. My pulse races. It’s the weirdest thing, somebody killing you while they’re holding you so tightly.
I try to remember the last time somebody held me so tightly, and I can’t. Certainly not my parents. Things have been bad with them for a long time. Halfhearted hugs and air kisses. My friends would never hug me like this, with every muscle.
Just this guy. And he’s murdering me.
So this is what you have to do to get a hug around here? I think wildly. You have to die?
My face is hot, and I realize I’m crying. I push my face to his shirt, which is still warm. A weird last consolation, like the food, clinging to my own killer.
He’ll be watching the moon, still. He won’t ever look at me again. Nobody will ever see me alive ever again. They’ll just see my body. The water is up to my waist and knees, up to his chest.
I imagine floating off, my dress billowing out around me, floating off. They’ll find my body mostly naked. “Can I ask you one thing?” I say.
“No,” he growls.
“Please?” I say. “Can you zip my dress back up?”
He stops walking. “What?” The water rushes around us, freezing.
“I don’t want them to find me…”
He stands still for so long I think he doesn’t understand. Or maybe he’s not going to do it. Why would he? Then he turns and goes to the shallower water and sets me down. Water rushes around my ankles. He looks at me hard. “Hold up your hair.”
I hold up my hair and turn around. He pulls my zipper up a tiny ways, or at least he tries. The zipper won’t budge. He tugs at the dress, trying to get the two sides together, just like my mom did a world ago. But the sides won’t come together, and the zipper keeps cutting into my back. He swears, and I hear a snap and see the flash of metal. I suck in a breath and pull away, but he has my dress, and he yanks me back. There’s a rip and a snap again. And then the sound of a zipper going up.
He cut the dress. I imagine a tear down the back of it. But at least I won’t be naked.
“Thank you,” I sob.
He presses down the sides to get it looking more together, I suppose. “Fuck,” he says. “Fuck.”
We stand like that for a few seconds that may as well be an eternity. I’m lost in the harsh sounds of our breaths. Isn’t it strange how they mingle, even though he’s working against me? Even though he’s about to extinguish mine? All I can feel is the cold water at my legs and his hands hot on my hips.
The world goes upside down as he hauls me up over his shoulder.
And carries me out of the river.
He sets me down on the bank and stands over me, dripping wet, burning green eyes rimmed with thick black lashes. “You remember what I said about your phone? It’s still in the front seat of the van.”
I’m huddled at his feet. I don’t know what he’s saying.
“How I could kill all the people you called last? Remember?”
“Yeah,” I say, shivering in the cold.
“But there’s a chance I won’t kill them. If I read in the news about a girl found in the woods. She witnessed a murder outside her party, but she didn’t see the guy’s face. She tried to call 911, but he came up behind her and he put a bag over her head—a pillowcase or something. He drove her here, and she got away. That’s all she knows. She remembers nothing. She never saw this.” He points to the white scar design on his arm. “She definitely doesn't do something stupid like tell the cops what really happened when they promise to keep it out of the paper. Because he finds out.”
It dawns on me slowly. I don’t know why I take so long to get it, except that I’m freezing from the river and in shock from the violence—and full for the first time in years.
He’s going to let me go.
It doesn’t feel real that he would take me captive. It feels even less real that he would let me go.
“I won’t,” I whisper. “I won’t tell.”
I don’t know whether I’m telling the truth. I don’t know what I’ll say if my mom and dad are looking at me, if a police officer is asking me questions. It’s a future that may never happen. It’s more of a dream than even this.
He must see uncertainty in my eyes or hear it in my voice. He shoves large wet hands into my hair and pulls me up to face him. His grip brings tears to my eyes, but I don’t whimper. I don’t fight.
His mouth is close to mine. Almost like a kiss, that’s how close.
Is this how you get your first kiss?
I can almost feel his lips, his breath tactile against mine. We’re both breathing hard, both fighting. I know why I’m fighting—for my life, for tomorrow. For a future I can barely imagine. I don’t know why he’s fighting, why he could kill that old man but not me.