Page 9 of The Fix

The dark abated, and the first gentle light crept in. Cami cracked open her swollen eyes, surprised that she’d slept. She hadn’t wanted to. She’d vowed to stay awake in case an opportunity arose to escape, but her body had overridden her intentions.

She shifted and cried out beneath the tape covering her mouth as every muscle in her body screamed in agony. She hurt inside and out, in places she didn’t want to think about lest the visions of what she’d endured the night before invaded her mind and rendered her insane.

If she wasn’t already. She felt mostly out of her head. Maybe there was no mostly about it.

She heard noises from below, the buzz of conversation, and her heart sank. They were still there. Oh God, why? Why were they still there? They’d robbed them of everything they had to give.

It’s Saturday, Cami. Her father was supposed to leave on a business trip, but his conference didn’t start until Monday. No one will miss him until then. No one will miss any of you.

Oh God, no. She could not live through another twenty-four hours of this. Her body was raw. She’d peed the bed out of desperation, she was soiled in every way possible, and she was still at the mercy of monsters.

Something caught her attention, and she shifted her gaze all the way to the side, her sore eye throbbing.

It looked like a corner of the tape covering her mouth had peeled up just a tad.

Little good it did her with no available hands.

And even if she got it off, what was she going to do then?

They’d be on her in a heartbeat if she started screaming.

It was too early for Mrs. Willoughby to be in her yard.

Most of the world was sleeping—it was barely past dawn.

She leaned up, grimacing at the multiple points of pain in her head, neck, and shoulders.

Her arms were numb from having them restrained in the same position for so long.

She didn’t want to look at her lower body, but she forced herself to.

Her legs were splayed out, and she was only wearing underwear.

Despite her internal and external pain, she looked normal from the outside.

What had she expected to see? She wasn’t sure.

All she knew was that she felt changed in a way that should be visible.

The fact that it was not both relieved and panicked her.

It didn’t seem right that anyone should be able to cause so much invisible pain to another.

When a tiny clink sounded near the wall, Cami froze in the act of lifting her thigh to bring her legs together.

What was that? Slowly and carefully, she pulled herself higher, blinking down at where the minuscule noise had come from.

Oh my God. She saw the edge of the compact she’d used to try to signal Mrs. Willoughby.

It hadn’t dropped all the way to the floor—it had been caught in the quilt, where she hadn’t been able to see it from a completely supine position.

Her breath came quicker as her heart rate jumped.

It must have been there through the night, and she’d been unaware. If it hadn’t moved despite Trig climbing on and off the bed, it was probably pretty stable within the folds of the quilt, but Cami needed to access it now. It was all she had.

She heard Trig’s and AJ’s voices more clearly now as they moved into the breakfast room.

They sounded anxious, voices grittier and terser.

Their sick version of partying through the night had obviously left them feeling rough.

Bastards. She began scooching her body down the bed, reaching her toe for the mirror.

“We shouldn’t have let it go that far.”

“Damn it, this is because of you. I told you we had to stay sharp, and you bring powder.”

“Fuck you. You wanted it too.”

“They’ve seen our faces.”

“Yeah, no shit. This is fucked. And now we gotta fix it.”

“Think, think, think,” one of them said, and there was a soft, repetitive thump, as though whoever had uttered the words was banging his head on a surface.

“We’re gonna have to make it so they can’t talk,” the other one said.

She couldn’t tell their voices apart now—whether that was because her head was pounding, or their voices both had the same hoarse, hungover quality, she didn’t know.

She inched her foot off the side of the bed, holding her breath when she lowered her toe and touched the compact.

It was too risky to try to grab it with her toes from there, especially since she didn’t have a good angle to see exactly what she was doing.

Instead, she bent her leg and then slid her foot down the wall in front of the compact so she could come up from underneath it, hopefully using the quilt to hold it steady as she lifted it.

She moved slowly despite the escalation of their fight.

Or maybe because of it. They were obviously having regrets now that the sun was rising and reality—and sobriety—had reared its head.

Whatever the two monsters downstairs had planned, they hadn’t stuck to it, and now they were coming up with plan B.

And if they hadn’t taken off in the car with the rattly muffler she’d heard them drive into the garage the night before, then her family was still part of whatever was going to happen next.

She’d successfully lowered her foot between the bed and the wall, and now she straightened it slowly and then began to lift it.

The quilt moved, and she heard the compact scrape very lightly against the wall again.

She paused, her breath stalling. Then with a slow exhale, she began raising her leg again, one millimeter at a time, until the compact came into view.

Cami tilted her foot, the compact shifting slightly so that it was now against the side of the bed.

Slow and steady wins the race. You got this.

Her leg was trembling, but still she moved as slowly and precisely as possible so as not to lose the precious tool.

She brought it up high enough and then, with a quick sideways movement, lightly kicked beneath the compact so that it landed on the side of the bed.

The tape pulled at the skin of her wrists painfully, and she grimaced.

Now what?

She needed to break the mirror inside the compact. Make it sharp.

He has a gun. You can’t even hold a weapon with hands that are restrained, much less use it.

She cast her eyes to the side again and looked at that small, lifted corner of tape.

Then she tucked the compact under a fold of quilt with her toe in case they came back into the room and lay all the way back down.

Cami turned her head to the side and began rubbing her cheek over the pillow in an effort to remove more of the tape.

She rotated her head faster and faster, lifting her cheek slightly so as to expose as much of the sticky surface to the pillowcase as possible.

She gritted her teeth as it came off her skin, taking the top layer with it.

I don’t care. I don’t care. It made her work harder and faster, her head spinning with the effort.

Of all her wounds, this one was welcome. This one she controlled.

Slowly and painfully, the tape lifted and the tension loosened until she was finally able to use her tongue to disengage it from her mouth.

With a final tear that removed most of the skin of her lower lip, it fell away and Cami opened her mouth wide and gulped in the first full breath of air she’d taken since the day before.

For several seconds she allowed herself to suck in the oxygen that filled her lungs completely, listening as the two men continued to argue below.

She could hear the sounds of what she assumed was them loading up the car in the garage with their things.

They’d almost certainly obtained the combination to the safe from her mom or dad and raided that, and who knew what else they were stuffing in their trunk.

Good. Keep taking every last item you can. Give me the time I need to get free. That hatred rose in her again, and the absolute fury gave her the fortitude to keep trying .

Cami dug her foot under the folds of the quilt and picked up the compact with her toes.

Then she brought it close to her hip and used her body to move it to the location she thought best before lifting her hip and lowering it directly onto the small, enclosed mirror.

Because of the give of the mattress, it took her three tries before she heard the small crack from within. Yes.

A few more steps.

Then what? Even if you get free, you’ll need a better weapon than a tiny piece of glass.

As she endeavored to scoot the compact up toward her mouth by nudging it with her body, her mind raced.

Her father owned a gun that he kept tucked in the far back of the bottom drawer of his dresser.

She’d seen it a few years before, when she’d gone to find an old T-shirt she could cut up as part of a Halloween costume.

It’d felt a little like coming upon a snake unexpectedly.

She’d jumped back and closed the drawer and never mentioned it.

Her father was a judge who must have had enemies, or at least people who felt bitter toward him. It made sense that he’d have a weapon to protect his family, even if he hadn’t wanted to worry them by alerting his daughters to its presence.

They’ve seen our faces.

Yeah, no shit. This is fucked.

And now we gotta fix it.

She had no idea if the gun was still there, or if it was loaded. And she’d never fired a gun before. Even so, it’s what she would go for first.

Once she’d nudged the compact high enough, she bent her neck, straining against the bonds at her wrists as she grabbed it with her teeth and then raised her head and set the small item next to her on her pillow.

She turned toward it and used her teeth to hold it while she worked on the small clasp with her tongue.

Come on, come on, she chanted in her head as she fumbled with the stupid thing, easily flicked open with fingers but seemingly impossible with her mouth.

The unsteady surface didn’t help, and a drop of sweat rolled down the side of her forehead as she labored, considering whether she should move the compact back down the bed and work on it with her feet the way she’d done before.

Down below, the mudroom door opened and then closed and opened again. Just leave. Leave us here. Please.

The clasp came open and Cami let out a small whimper of victory, turning her head as much as possible so she could see the broken glass inside.

It was cracked in half, which was another tiny triumph because it would have been useless if it had shattered into a hundred slivers.

She used her tongue again to pry up the broken glass, which was easier than getting the clasp open, as it was only attached with a dot of glue. Both pieces fell onto her pillow.

She wasted no time. She picked up the sharpest-looking piece with her teeth, and then she adjusted her body and strained her neck so that her mouth was at the tape on her wrist. And then she began sawing.

Back, forth, back, forth. She barely felt the small slices to her tongue and her lips, but she tasted the blood.

That didn’t stop her, though. She didn’t even slow.

Fast, but not so fast you drop the piece through the wrought iron bars of the headboard.

Slow and steady wins the race. Slow and steady wins the race.

She heard what sounded like the trunk slamming in the garage, and then their tromping feet as they came back into the mudroom, the door opening and shutting behind them. Back, forth, back, forth.

They walked through the kitchen, still talking, but Cami only made out a few words, her focus directed on her work. She wouldn’t stop until she had to.

“ . . . no choice . . . man up, dipshit.”

“Somewhere far . . . didn’t sign up for . . .”

The broken glass cut through the edge of her tape, and she sped up, almost dropping the tool and slowing again, every muscle in her traumatized body screaming in pain, her spirit straining toward the freedom that was—literally—just within her grasp.

They’d stopped and were arguing again. One of them sounded like he was shedding tears, his voice whiny and cajoling. “I can’t, Trig. You gotta.”

“Fuck you, man. I gotta do everything. Fine.”

The tape gave and her wrist came free, the dead weight of her arm dropping as she sucked in a breath and worked to raise her arm again and hold it next to the post it’d been tied to so that it appeared it still was.

Oh my God, it worked. It actually worked.

She licked the blood off her lips as she dropped the piece of glass on the mattress below the pillow.

Then she scooched the pillow slightly to cover the shard and took a gulp of air before pressing her face to the pillow to stick the tape to her cheek as best as possible with what little glue residue there was left.

And then she pretended to sleep as the monsters approached.