Wanted (23 page)

Once I did get there, the pain running through my ankle had me out of breath. I looked at the dark sky as my lungs heaved. I leaned against the back of one of the containers, no more than a few feet from the confessional itself. I took off my sling bag. Already it was completely soaked. Even its Velcro straps threatened to come undone from the sogginess. I cursed myself and my unusual lack of planning. With everything else, I didn’t want to lose Charlie’s sketches. They were the only part of him that I would really have when everything was said and done. I wanted to cry at the thought of him. Though I may have memories of him, they were false and tainted by lies. And when the time came, they wouldn’t even be mine. I would probably have to share most of them with the F.B.I. He had never really cared for me. That had all been a lie to keep me placid. But maybe I could look back on these someday and lie to myself, pretend like I had mattered to him in some way or another.

My eyes ballooned with tears and I began to laugh at the same time. How completely insane! Here I was in serious bodily danger and I was worried about some stupid sketches? Calm, Addie, calm. Take a deep breath and relax. I had to keep it together for a little while longer. I could lose my mind later when I got home. But until then, what about those these sketches? I clasped my bag as close to me as possible, although I knew it wasn’t doing much good. Even putting it under my shirt probably wouldn’t make much of a difference at this point. My eyes scanned the room for a solution…

In the end I opted to enclose the sketchbook inside the Da Vinci coffee table book in the hopes the inventor would protect my lying love. My hands combed over the various contents of my bag, the few scattered bobby pins at the bottom, some coins, a charger for my phone, the frayed ends of my wallet. All practical parts of a life that was probably about to end.

My eyes wandered over to the confessional again. It was just as dark and ominous as when I had seen it last. I could never forget what Charlie had told me about the sorts of things that had gone on in there and what he truly thought of me. My mind could see it all very clearly now in the cold and the rain. I wanted to banish the images away, but they kept replaying themselves in my head. My tears melded together with the rain and ran together into the sketchbook.

I curled deeper into myself, making myself impossibly small. I had drastically underestimated the cold and how it would affect my time hiding in the hold. I shivered uncontrollably, my teeth chattering until my jaw hurt, my flesh a never-ending row of goosebumps that stung at the touch.

I recited poetry in my head and the capitals of every state, but it did nothing to quench my growing fear. After everything I had been through these last few days, would I now die from hypothermia? I reluctantly removed one of my hands from in-between my knees and examined the numb fingertips. Through strained eyes, I could make out a lovely shade of violet that began at the nail and stretched to the base of the knuckle. I laughed and tried to rub my shoulders. What was better, I wondered: dying sooner or later? Freezing to death or dying by the hands of the man I loved?

The tears were hot on my face compared to the icy rain water I could no longer avoid as the wind blew it in without reprieve. Charlie had been my only protector here, the only one defending me. Even the sweet and oblivious Polo might be accepting to my sudden demise if his close friends had been the ones to cause it. Without Charlie to speak for me, I was as good as dead.

I squeezed my eyes and prayed the rain would stop so I wouldn’t turn into a human Popsicle. Maybe I could hold out and tolerate the cold until they made port at Singapore. It would be a lot more difficult to kill me at one of the busiest ports in the world, wouldn’t it?

I continued to clutch my bag and tucked my hands under my arms, hoping to seek some warmth there. I didn’t want to think of Charlie, but I kept picturing his kaleidoscope eyes, wondering what color they might be projecting just then. While it probably would have been significantly easier if he wasn’t so close by, the idea of knowing he was near made it that much worse. My memories were still so fresh, the pain of the lies he told me raw and festering, without anything to distract me. If I was at home I would just go to the library and straight to the reference section. I would probably stay until the librarians politely kicked me out. I had done something similar in those first days after Mom died. But now I had nowhere to escape and I hated him for that.

Instead, I tried to escape the cold through ceaseless memories, living through them one by one as if they had just occurred. I remembered the first time I drank coffee and all the annoying consequences for Mom. I thought of Robbie showing Dad Angry Birds on the phone and his subsequent addiction thereafter. But as much as I hated it, I thought mostly of Charlie and every one of his endearing traits, the smell of his skin after he had just lit a cigarette, the random facts he would share, how his accent thickened when he was angry.

Charlie. Fewer than twelve hours ago he had kissed me and held me like there was nothing else in the world. I slid deeper into the metal floor of the hold and began to sob. Something fragile and beautiful inside me began to wilt away, the cold taking over a willing body.

When my eyes began burning and blurring over to the point that I could no longer see my own self-pity, I shut them with the hope of taking a brief rest. If nothing else, sleeping would kill time and get me out of my head for a little while. I heard the rain continuing to beat on the outside of the ship and it had almost become soothing. I had even begun to count the number of pitter patters from one to one hundred before starting over again. When the dark closed in, I was actually somewhat comfortable on the metal floor; it brought back memories of broken bunk beds at summer camp and camping with Robbie and his friends.

I tried to focus on stuff like that while I drifted off. I thought of a few summers ago when Dad passed out after tree trimming in the hammock, and Robbie and I painted his toe nails. The time when Robbie jumped from the trampoline trying to dive into a snow pile (Mom had practically lived in the E.R. that day). I laughed to myself and wrapped my arms around my body, trying to keep the memories as close as I possibly could.

As I slept, I dreamt of strange and ominous things. On top of everything else, I’ve never really had dreams before and when I did dream, I usually forgot them by the time I finished my breakfast or brushed my teeth; strange now in the last few days that I would have more than one dream that I could actually remember. It wasn’t just the imagery that shook me, it was a feeling. They became etched in my head, a permanent part of me.

The dream gave me venom-producing snakes slithering their way up walls, trying to get to an unknown destination. How I knew they were poisonous but not where they were going is beyond me. Instinctually, I just knew they were dangerous, deadly. There were dozens of them, all sorts of different colors and sizes, though equally terrifying with their proportions. I couldn’t see myself, but I knew I was nearby enough to be in some serious danger. With the loud hissing coming closer and a hundred tongues and attached fangs approaching, I wanted to call out, to scream for someone, for anyone—for Charlie. And yet I couldn’t. I had no voice, no lungs, and no mouth. I watched them gain momentum as they increased their speed up the wall.

When I opened my eyes, my face was wet from fresh tears and my legs shook from the intensity of the dream, so much that it took me several minutes to stand up straight again. I tried to remember the last time I had even had a nightmare, but I couldn’t. Nightmares were for children, or people who ate too much junk food before bed.

It was just a dream
, I told myself.
Just a dream.

I don’t know when I stopped acting like an idiot and calmed down. When I finally gave in to the claustrophobia and the cold, I couldn’t do anything more than lie back down and shiver into myself.

I was too busy waiting for death.

I was curled against the web of the hold, alone and quaking as the wind continued to ransack its exterior walls, sending in the occasional splash of rain to provoke me. I tried to go back to those places of memory that made me so happy before: Mom and Dad trying to ride a tandem bike, attempting to help Robbie pick out a Christmas gift for some girl he liked. And even though I didn’t want to, though I tried to avoid it, I also thought of Charlie. I tried to push him out of my head. I didn’t want my final thoughts to be of him; he didn’t deserve them. But eventually, I gave in and recalled every word, every smell, and every sound that was ever him. As the night gave way, so did my mind…

What a funny sort of way to die, I thought.

Something familiar and desperate called out my name. Its voice was pleading aggressively, begging for something I couldn’t understand. It reminded me of being choked to death and I wanted to laugh—had I met the Devil then, too?

“Addie? Addie!”

Warmth touched my face. I pulled away.

“Hey, Addie?” That was my name. Of course the Devil would know my name. That would make sense. I tried to think it through, but the drums were pounding in my head, making my ears ache miserably. I wanted it to stop more than I could describe. And the Devil was babbling incoherently, making things that much worse. All of his words were incomprehensible, clouded by a fog of pain and cold. What did the Devil have to be so miserable about? All at once, I had to know. Though he continued to say my name through sobs and what I thought might be profanities, it made my heart hurt to think he could suffer so much on my account. Perhaps if I did his bidding, though, he wouldn’t be so disheartened.

But when I tried to open my eyes they were fastened shut. Maybe it was a trick? At the very least, the drums were beginning to fade a bit and my head didn’t ache so much. I could hear other voices now, and the Devil was angry with them. I’m not certain why, but I heard him yelling, bellowing like the great monster every legend depicted him to be. I hoped not to make him angry.

I tried to open my eyes again. This time I focused on the shadows that lay just beyond my eyelids. There was something strangely comforting about them. And while my surroundings felt familiar enough, I couldn’t give them definition. When my eyes finally did open, everything was blurred by my swollen lids. I could see the outline of shapes and figures clearly enough, but I could hardly see any detail. The only thing I could really retain as the images became clearer was the side of the Devil and serpent gaining momentum.

“Ch-Charlie?” He turned so quickly at the sound of my voice I wondered if the serpent had been there at all.

“Addie.” He sighed my name as though it brought some great relief.

The shapes of the other people vanished through the door. It was only as I squinted that I recognized them as Yuri and Reid.

So I wasn’t dead? Or were we all in hell?

I was very cold. Only corpses could be this cold. I reached for something that was wrapped around me, but Charlie got to it before I did and tucked it in more closely around my neck. I still heard the drums, though they were skimming out into the distance, fading out in the darkness of bad dreams.

“Are you all right?” His hand held out a glass of water, except I flinched at the sudden movement. The hurt in his face was evident.

In an attempt to regain my self-pride, I tried to sit up. I was in Charlie’s cabin again. The mattress had been put back in its frame and the crate was in its original corner. But before I could do much more of anything else, Charlie had me by the shoulders and gently pushed me back on the bed. As his touch registered, everything he last said to me rushed in as an extraordinary combination of memory and heartache.

“Don’t overdo it, Vicious.” Everything about him was clenched now: his stare on me, his voice, every muscle.

I quickly shoved him from me and retreated as far away on the other side of the bed as I could possibly get. With my back against the wall, I huddled with my knees against my chest and pulled the blanket up to my neck. It was the only protection I had, and I was miserably aware of how pathetic it all was.

“Get away from me.” The words felt like lather in my mouth but they were effective enough because he stood up from the floor and moved across the room to be as far from me as he could be. I must have disgusted him with my attempted escape. I figured it was the reason he wouldn’t look at me now, why he stared passionately at the floor.

I hated myself intensely. Not only had my plan failed miserably, but I had also earned Charlie’s hatred in the process. I turned my head away and dug my nail into my palm to keep myself from crying. It would have been so much better if he had just let Wallace kill me when he had the chance. How much longer would it have taken to freeze to death? Though now I could feel my fingers, my toes were just starting to thaw. I tried to assess the danger of my situation. If I didn’t have any food to fuel my muscles, didn’t consume any water and just let myself fall asleep, it might have only taken a day.