“Dollie, get off me.”
“No…” she mumbles and holds me tighter, scratching my skin with those blue-painted nails and finally making my anger boil over.
I force my fingers between hers, bending one of them until it accidentally clicks. She shrieks like it hurt more than it probably did.
Dollie’s dramatics are off again, as Mom would say.
Mom is probably worried sick by now.
Dollie snatches her hand into a tiny fist that just happens to crash into the side of my face.
Pain radiates, and I’m sure there’s already a bruise on my cheek from something Colin did, and I’m sure that it’s already purple.
Blood soaks into my tongue, leaking from my swollen gums, and that’s it, I’m done. I push myself to my feet, leaving her to fall to the watery ground, begging me with screams and demands to go back, but giant steps take me through the water and away from her.
“I’m telling Daddy!”
“When?” I snap, twisting to her with my arms flying out. All my patience with her is gone. “When exactly are you telling Dad?”
“He’ll be mad that you’re being mean to me. He always sides with me.”
True, he has since I moved here. But…
“He won’t this time because we’re never gonna see him again, Dollie. We’re never gonna see Dad, and we’re never gonna see Mom, and we’re probably gonna die down here!”
“No, we won’t. They’ll find us.”
“Just shut up.” My voice is a low whisper. But she either heard it or ran out of things to say.
Instead, she cries.
Ignoring the noise she makes, I hoist myself back on top of the dresser and sit there shivering, arms around one leg and the other stretched out. I try to collect my emotions and hold them tight. Only because I’m unsure what she’s been through as Istare down at her, pulling herself from the water and brushing down her dress that’s now on backward. Her hair is different from the last time I saw her, too. All pulled into pigtails with just the front hanging down.
Still crying, her fingers play with the ribbons hanging from her hair.
My eyes pull away from her, but then the door opens again, and the need to protect my sister drives me from the dresser and back into the water, cursing my leg with each step back to Dollie.
“What’s all the noise?” Colin asks.
“He sounds different,” Dollie states the obvious, sadness still in her voice, and tears still falling from her eyes.
“I asked you a question.” The new voice makes Colin’s appearance so much more menacing. Dollie trembles with it.
Feeling protective over her, I step right up to her side and say, “I was yelling at her.”
“Why?”
“She made me angry.”
Dollie takes a step back as Colin takes one forward. She continues moving back as he rushes down the stairs. Running out of room, she hits the wall. His feet splash through water, but he isn’t heading to her.
His long fingers wrap around my throat, squeezing until they meet. In mid-air, I struggle to claw away his hand.
White noise rings out in my ears, and it gets worse as he rushes us to the wall and slams me back against it. Once, twice, three times, my head collides with the stone.
The number three doesn’t feel so lucky as the pounding in my head worsens. My stomach forces vomit up my throat following a punch. The white noise gets louder, drowning out Dollie’s panicked words that I can’t make out.
Each muscle in my body tenses as another hit catches me between my chest and stomach.
