Page 1 of Let the Game Begin

Prologue

November was particularly cold that year. Usually I hated the cold, but that night I had discovered its utility. The icy air froze my thoughts.

“Kiddo, look at me.” A uniformed stranger captured my face in his hands, trying to see if I was aware of my surroundings. I was sitting on the porch steps, naked, save for a blanket someone had put around my shoulders. I was shaking and sweaty. I couldn’t speak, though I understood everything that was said between him and his colleagues.

The man, tall and bearded, was misty-eyed as he continued to stroke my cheeks. I usually loathed any type of human contact, but I allowed him to touch me because I wasn’t feeling myself.

“He’s in shock, but he’s okay,” he declared.

The officers continued to speak to me, but I just stared into the red and blue of the lightbars. They flashed, blinding me, and I squinted at their intensity. I was the one who had called the police, even though I was just a child. They thought it was a prank until they saw with their own eyes the horrible situation I had wound up in.

“What’d they do?” The police officer took my chin gently and tried to force me to look at him, but my face just kept turning back in the same direction. I stared at the patrol cars, not saying a single word. There werethree of them. Next to one of them, two other officers gathered around a small, slight body crowned with black hair.

It was a little girl. The same one who had been with me just before. She was drinking water; her bare feet were filthy with dirt and a blanket covered her still-immature frame.

“We called your parents. They’ll be here any minute,” the officer informed me, but no emotion disturbed my impassive face. I could no longer feel my heart beating—maybe I didn’t even have one anymore. My body was empty, without a soul.

The man tried to get my attention, but I was far away. Had they really called my parents? I didn’t feel anything about them, either. I didn’t want to run into my mom’s arms or explain things to my dad.

They were the ones who had never noticed.

My mother thought I needed a psychologist. I’d often listened in on her telephone conversations with a man who wasn’t Dad. I had listened to one just that afternoon, crouching on the stairs that led to the floor above.

I recalled every detail.

Mama walked nervously back and forth in her high heels. She had always been a refined woman, high-class even at home. Her platinum blond hair was gathered severely into a neat bun; pearl earrings decorated her perfectly symmetrical earlobes. Her skin was translucent. Her blue eyes, ringed by long lashes, looked at everything, but in actuality, they saw nothing. She had all the clues right in front of her. I did everything I could to show her, but she just thought I was disturbed, troubled, deviant.

“How can I know if a child needs a child psychologist? You’re a psychiatrist, right? What do you suggest we do?” she asked the person on the other end of the phone. The same person she turned to every time there was an issue regarding me or my strange behavior, especially when my teachers complained about my conduct. I had no learning difficulties; my teachers considered me very intelligent and intuitive, but they claimed that something was wrong with my personality development.

“Why does your son behave so differently from his brother, who comes from the same nuclear family?” my teacher just kept asking.

“He’s not like other children,” Mama answered tersely.

“There’s something wrong with him,” the teacher said, icily.

The worst part was the answer to all of their questions was right in front of their noses.

“I don’t know what to do,” Mama said suddenly, pulling me away from the memory of what had happened at school. Then she burst into tears. She cried frequently during that time. Then she rubbed her belly with one hand. She was pregnant with my sister, Chloe, and I knew that all this stress wasn’t good for her. I felt guilty about all the trouble I was causing. I sighed as I wrapped my arm around my knees and balanced my chin on top of them. My family wasn’t happy anymore because of me.

My father, the CEO of a large company, always came home late at night and was angry all the time. I knew that he had made us one of the richest families in New York, but he was most often a cold man, especially when it came to me. His eyes, as clear as ice, flayed my skin every time he stared contemptuously at me. He hated me. He hated me because Mama almost lost Chloe. He was the one who told me to stop making problems or he’d really hurt me. He insulted me however he could—said I was evil, crazy, a little pervert. He said I’d ruined his life, that he hated the color of my eyes, and he didn’t want me around. He said that I was dangerous, and sooner or later, my mother would realize it too…

I turned to look back at the police cars in fascination.

The police had unwittingly created another problem for me: Mama and Dad were definitely going to yell at me for making public a scandal that I had kept secret for too long.

A secret that was killing me slowly. It was all my fault.

“Two young kids. They were locked in a basement. Naked and terrified,” the officer said to someone else while I floated among my thoughts, staring out into the space in front of me.

“No signs of bruising.” The officer continued to examine me, but I didn’t listen to him. My legs and fingers were numb from the cold, but not a word escaped my sealed lips. I didn’t have the strength to speak. Partly from shame, partly from disbelief that it was all over or, perhaps, just beginning.

I wanted to forget all the ugly things and take refuge in my Neverland.

I wanted to journey to distant lands and rescue myself.

That day, though, escape was impossible because I had to live and face reality.

I couldn’t flee to some alternate dimension. No Neverland.