“It’s a ploy,” I whispered.
“What?” Carly asked, smearing her tears away. “A play?”
“Ploy,” I said. “It’s a game he’s playing to try to get you to remember him and what he did for you while you lived here with your mom. He wants you to think about all the good things.”
She wrapped her arms around her knees. “He failed,” she whispered. “All this does is remind me that he let every fucking disgusting old man in the place grope me!”
Carly flung the container at the wall and it exploded down the side of the shed, dripping meatballs and tomato sauce. The pasta clung for a moment, then started to crawl down to the floor.
She started shaking and crying and I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her into my lap. “Let it out, sweetie. Just let it out. Your mom will get you to the right people to help you with this.”
Carly shook and shivered and sobbed. She was horrified and terrified at the same time. “I don’t want to tell her,” she whispered. “I don’t want to tell her what they did.”
“They hurt you, Car. Bad. You don’t have to go through that alone, without help. We’ll be there for you, doll.”
“I’m not any good—”
I put a finger over her lips. “No. You will not say that. You will not vocalize the negativity. You’re eleven, Carly. Eleven. No one your age is damaged so badly they can’t be fixed, repaired. You might have scars, but they’ll fade over time.” I tapped her nose. “Trust me on this one.”
“You were…”
“Not sexually assaulted, but I was repeatedly attacked for my sexuality. Noah and I.”
She looked up at me. She seemed so small and vulnerable. “You and Noah. Wow. You’re both gay…”
I nodded. “High school washell.”
She smeared the tears off her face, and looked down at her hand that was now wet with the tears. “Don’t let them touch me again, please, Uriah. I’ll talk to whoever I need to to fix me, but don’t let them touch me.”
“I won’t, sweetie,” I said. I held out my pinky. “Swear.”
“Swear,” she said, and smiled. Her smile fell a moment later. “Shit. I tossed my dinner.”
“You can have half of mine,” I said. “They’ll feed us again in the morning.”
“Do you think that Mom is coming after us?”
I pursed my lips. “You know that they say twins have a special sense of each other? Like a telepathy kind of thing?”
She nodded.
“Noah is pissed, and I don’t exactly know what’s going on but just through that weird little connection we have, I know they are coming for us.”
“Good.” She grinned. “Do you think that Uncle Austin will let me take karate?”
“I think that if he doesn’t, I will,” I said.
“You guys love each other, don’t you?”
My heart jerked. “I…I don’t know, Carly. We’re in a weird place. Being gay isn’t easy and I know that Austin is having some trouble with it.”
“Yeah, but if you love each other, isn’t that enough?”
I huffed a sardonic laugh. “I wish it was, Carly girl. I wish it was.”
She slipped off my lap and plopped back on to the hay-covered mattress where Devon was snoring like it was his tiny six year old job. She pushed the box out of the way, and grabbed the container with the hamburger and fries. Reaching into the box, she rustled around a bit and stopped dead, staring at me.
“There’s a false bottom on this,” she whispered.
