Текст книги "Thr3e"

Автор книги: Тед Деккер

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“No panic, Kevin! We have time. Just get them out as quickly as possible. You hear?”

He slowed to a jog. She pulled up beside him, then took the lead.

“How many study rooms are there?” she asked.

“A few upstairs. There’s a basement.”

“PA system?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, point the way to the office. I’ll make an announcement; you clear the basement.”

Kevin pointed out the office, ran for the stairs, and took them in twos. How long? Three minutes? “Get out! Everyone out!” He ran down the hall, spun into the first room. “Out! Get out now!”

“What’s up, partner?” a middle-aged man asked lazily.

He couldn’t think of a nonpanicky way to tell the man. “There’s a bomb in the building.”

The man stared for a second, then bolted to his feet.

“Clear the hall!” Kevin shouted, breaking for the next room. “Get everyone out!”

Jennifer’s voice came over the PA, edgy. “This is the FBI. We have reason to suspect that there may be a bomb in the library. Evacuate the building calmly and immediately.” She began to repeat the message, but yells echoed through the basement, drowning out her voice.

Feet pounded; voices cried out; panic set in. Maybe it was just as well. They didn’t have enough time for order.

It took a full minute, at least, for Kevin to satisfy himself that the basement was clear. He was putting himself in danger, he realized, but this was his library, his school, his fault. He gritted his teeth, ran for the stairs, and was halfway up when he remembered the supply room. Unlikely anyone would be in there. Unless . . .

He stopped four paces from the top. Carl. The janitor liked to listen to his Discman while he worked. He liked to joke about how there was more than one way to fill the mind. Books were fine, he said, but music was the higher culture. He took his breaks in the supply room.

You’re cutting it close, Kevin.

He whirled and ran back down. The supply closet was to his right, in the back. The building lay in silence now except for the urgent padding of his feet. What was it like to be caught in an explosion? And where would Slater have planted the charges?

He threw the door open. “Carl!”

The janitor stood by a stack of boxes with the words New Bookswritten on pink sheets of paper.

“Carl! Thank God!”

Carl smiled at him and nodded his head to whatever music pumped into his ears. Kevin ran over to him and pulled the headphones off. “Get out of here! They’ve evacuated the building. Hurry, man! Hurry!”

The man’s eyes widened.

Kevin grabbed his hand and shoved him toward the door. “Run! Everyone else is out.”

“What is it?”

“Just run!”

Carl ran.

Two minutes. There was a second, smaller closet to his right– overflow supplies for administration, Carl had once told him. Mostly empty. Kevin leapt for the closet and pulled the door open.

How much explosive did it take to blow a building this size? Kevin was staring at the answer. Black wires protruded from five shoe-boxes and met in a contraption that looked like the inside of a transistor radio. Slater’s bomb.

“Jennifer!” he yelled. He twisted for the door and yelled again, at the top of his lungs. “Jennifer!”

His voice echoed back. The building was empty. Kevin ran his hands through his hair. Could he carry this thing outside? It’ll blow there. That’s where the people are. You have to stop it! But how? He reached for the wires, paused, and pulled back.

Pulling the wires would probably set it off, wouldn’t it?

You’re going to die, Kevin.Any split second it could go. He could set it off early.

“Kevin!” Jennifer’s scream carried down the stairs. “Kevin, for God’s sake, answer me! Get out!”

He fled the supply room in a full sprint. He’d seen the movies a hundred times—the explosion behind, the billows of fire, the diving hero rolling to freedom just out of the blast’s reach.

But this wasn’t a movie. This was real and this was now and this was him.

“Kevin—”

“Get out!” he yelled. “The bomb’s in here!” He cleared the first four steps, and his momentum carried him to the top in two more bounds.

Jennifer was at the door, holding it open, face white. “What are you thinking?” she snapped at him. “It could go early. You’ll get us both killed!”

He ran out and tore for the parking lot. Jennifer kept pace.

A huge arc of onlookers stood a hundred yards off, watching them run. “Get back!” she yelled, sprinting for them. “Farther back! Get—”

A deep, dull whompcut her off. Then a louder, sharp blast and the crash of shattering glass. The ground shook.

Jennifer grabbed Kevin by the waist and pulled him down. They landed together and rolled. She threw her arms over his head. “Stay down!”

He lay smothered by her for a few long seconds. Screams rolled across the lawn. Jennifer pushed herself halfway up and looked back. Her leg was over the backs of his legs and her hand pressed into his back for support. Kevin twisted and followed her gaze.

Half of the Divinity School of the Pacific’s crown jewel lay in a heap of smoking rubble. The other half jutted to the sky, stripped of glass, naked.

“My God, my God, help us all,” Jennifer said. “He blew it early, didn’t he? I could kill Milton.”

Still breathing hard from the run, Kevin dropped back down and buried his face in the grass.

19

Sunday

Night

THE LIBRARY EXPLOSION on the heels of the bus bomb put Long Beach at the world’s center stage. All the networks played and replayed live footage of the library being blown to smithereens, courtesy of an alert student. Helicopters circled the hole that had been a building and relayed stunning images to millions of glued viewers. The world had seen this before and everyone had the same question on their minds: Terrorism?

But the explosion was the work of a madman known only as the Riddle Killer, the networks all said. Miraculously, no one had been hurt in the blast; in fact, no life had been taken by any of the three incidents. Nevertheless, they all knew it was only a matter of time. He’d killed in Sacramento; he would kill in Long Beach. Unless the authorities stopped him first. Unless his intended victim, Kevin Parson, confessed what the killer demanded he confess. Where was Kevin Parson? He’d last been seen running from the building with a woman, an FBI agent by some accounts. They had them on the student’s video. Stunning footage.

The ATF had entered the fray after the first bomb; now they came in force. The state police, local police, sheriff, a half-dozen other task forces all poured over the library.

Jennifer did her best to keep Kevin beyond the reach of the media’s long tentacles while making sense of the scene. She avoided Milton, for the simple reason that she didn’t trust herself in his presence. He’d come within a few seconds of killing Kevin and countless others by talking to the press. If she’d been frustrated with him before, the sight of him running to and fro made her seethe now.

Still, he was an integral part of the investigation, and she couldn’t avoid him once he finished his rounds with the press.

“You knew this was coming?” he demanded.

“Not now, Milton.”

He took her arm and steered her away from the onlookers, squeezing with enough force to hurt her. “You were here. That means you knew. How long did you know?”

“Let go,” she snapped.

He released her arm and glanced over her shoulder, smiling. “The word negligencemean anything to you, Agent Peters?”

“The word carnagemean anything to you, Detective Milton? I knew because he wanted me to know. You didn’t know about the library because he said that if you were told, he’d blow the building early. In fact, he did blow it early, because you had to announce to the world that we’d found Kevin. You, sir, are lucky we got out when we did or you’d have at leasttwo dead bodies on your hands. Don’t ever touch me again.”

“We could have put a bomb squad in there.”

“Is there something with the air down here that messes with your hearing? What part of ‘he told us he’d blow the building early’ didn’t penetrate that thick skull of yours? You almost killed us!”

“You’re posing a danger to my city, and if you think I’m just going to stand by and let you, you’re naive.”

“And you’re posing a danger to Kevin. Take it up with the bureau chief.”

His eyes narrowed for a brief second, then he smiled again. “We’re not through with this.”

“Sure we are.” She walked away. If not for the fact that half the world was watching, she might have taken the man’s tie and shoved it down his throat. It took her thirty seconds to put the man out of her mind. She had more important things to dwell on than an overzealous fool. So she told herself, but in reality Milton sat in her gut like a sour pill.

Two questions soon preoccupied her mind. First, had anybody seen a stranger enter the library in the past twenty-four hours? And second, had anybody seen Kevinenter the library in the last twenty-four hours? Samantha had raised the question of Kevin’s involvement, and although Jennifer knew the idea was ridiculous, the question raised others. Samantha’s theory that someone on the inside might be somehow tied to Slater bothered her.

The Riddle Killer was remarkably elusive. The last three days were no exception. Sam was in Texas, flushing out something that had her hopes high. No doubt she’d come waltzing in tomorrow with a new theory that would set them back to square one. Actually, the CBI agent was beginning to grow on her, but jurisdiction had a way of straining the best relationships.

As it turned out, no one had seen a stranger around the library. And no one had seen Kevin. The front desk receptionist would have remembered Kevin—he was an avid reader. Short of bypassing the security system, of which there was no evidence, the likelihood of anyone entering the library unseen was small. Carl had been in the closet yesterday morning and there’d been no bomb, which meant Slater had found a way in since then, either at night or under their noses, unrecognized. How?

An hour after the explosion, Jennifer sat across from Kevin in a small Chinese restaurant and tried to distract him with small talk while they ate. But neither of them was good at small talk.

They went back to the warehouse at nine, this time armed with high-powered halogens that lit up the interior like a football field. Kevin walked through the scene with her. But now it was nearing midnight, and he was half-asleep on his feet. Unlike the library, the warehouse was still silent. No police, no ATF, only FBI.

She hadn’t bothered to tell Milton about the incident at the warehouse. She would as soon as she was done with it. She’d explained the situation to Frank, and he’d finally agreed to her reasoning, but he wasn’t happy with it. He was getting an earful from a dozen different sources. The governor wanted this tied up now. Washington was starting to apply pressure too. They were running out of time. If another bomb went off, they might take the case from her.

Jennifer glanced at Kevin, who leaned his head back against the wall in the reception area, eyes closed. She entered a ten-by-ten office storage room where they were compiling evidence for delivery to the lab. Under other circumstances, she would probably be doing this back at her desk, but Milton would be breathing down her neck. Besides, proximity favored the storage room, so Galager had transferred what he needed from the van and set up temporary shop here.

“Any conclusions, Bill?”

Galager leaned over a drawing of the warehouse floor plan, on which he’d painstakingly redrawn the footprints as they appeared.

“Best as I can tell, Slater entered and left through the fire escape. We have a single set of footprints coming and going, which correlates with the testimony. He walks up and down the hall a half-dozen times, waiting for Kevin to show, descends the stairs at least twice, springs his trap, and ends up in this room here.” He tapped the room next to Kevin’s hiding place.

“How did he lock the door? He shut it with the string, but Sam told me it was open when they first arrived.”

“We can only assume that he had the lock rigged somehow. It’s feasible that with a hard knock the lock could engage.”

“Seems thin,” Jennifer said. “So we have him entering and leaving through the fire escape. Kevin enters and leaves through the front door. What about the footprints themselves?”

“When all is said and done, there are only four clear prints, all of which we’ve casted and photographed. Problem is, they’re all from the hallway and the stairs where both Kevin and Slater walked. Same size. Same basic shape. Both hard-soled and similar to what Kevin is wearing—impossible to visually determine which is which. The lab will break it down.”

Jennifer considered his report. Sam hadn’t entered the building, which was good thinking. But she hadn’t seen Slater come or go either.

“What about the recording?” Galager had already transferred the data to a tape, which he had in a small recorder on the table.

“Again, the lab will have to tell us what they can come up with, but it sounds clean to me. This is the first recording from the hotel room.” He punched the play button. Two voices filled the speaker. Slater and Samantha.

“There, that’s better, don’t you think? The game won’t last forever; we might as well make this more interesting.”

Low and gravelly. Breathy. Slater.

“What good is a game that you can’t lose? It proves nothing.”

She recognized Sam’s voice. The tape played to the end of the conversation and clicked off.

“Here’s the second recording, made while we were here earlier this evening.” Galager punched it up. This time it was Kevin and Slater.

Kevin: “H . . . hello?”

Slater: “H . . . hello? You sound like an imbecile, Kevin. I thought I said no cops.”

The recordings were clear and clean. Jennifer nodded. “Get them to the lab with the footprints immediately. Any word yet on the dagger tattoo or the blood work from the warehouse?”

“Blood’s too old for anything but type. They’re having trouble even with that, though. Twenty years is a long time.”

“So it is twenty years old?”

“Best estimate, seventeen to twenty. Follows his confession.”

“And the type?”

“They’re having a hard time typing it. On the other hand, we do have something with the tattoo. A parlor in Houston says they have a large man with blond hair who comes in on occasion. Same tattoo as the one Kevin drew us. Says he’s never seen a tattoo like it except on this man.” Galager grinned deliberately. “The report came in about an hour ago. No current address, but the parlor says the man was in last Tuesday around ten o’clock.”

“In Houston?” That’s where Sam had gone. “Slater was in Houston last week? Doesn’t sound right.”

“Houston?” Kevin asked behind her. They turned to see him standing in the door. He walked in. “You have a lead in Houston?”

“The tattoo—”

“Yeah, I heard. But . . . how could Slater be in Houston?”

“Three-hour flight or a very long day’s drive,” Galager said. “Possible he’s going back and forth.”

Kevin’s brow furrowed. “He has a dagger tattoo? What if this guy turns out to be the boy, but not Slater or the Riddle Killer? You pick him up and now he knows about me, where I live. All I need is another wacko after me.”

“Unless this guy lives in a cave,” Galager said, “he’s heard the confession and seen your face on television. There’s a chance he isSlater. And there’s an even better chance that Slater is the boy. We have a man threatening you who all but admits that he’s the boy; a boy who has reason to threaten you, identified with a very unique tattoo. And now we have a man with the same tattoo. Circumstantial, I realize, but it sounds pretty plausible to me. We make busts on less.”

“But can you put someone behind bars with that?”

“Not a chance. That’s where the physical and forensic evidence comes in. As soon as we have a suspect in custody, we measure him up against the evidence we’ve gathered, which is substantial. We have Slater’s voice on tape. We have his shoe print. We have several bombs, all of which were made somewhere. We have six bugs—all this in three days. A virtual windfall in cases like this. I’d say Slater’s getting sloppy.”

And more so today than yesterday.“He’s at least pushing the pace,” Jennifer said. “Getting caught doesn’t seem to concern him. Which isn’t good.”

“Why?” Kevin asked.

She looked at his haggard face. A blade of grass from the library lawn was still stuck in his shaggy hair. His blue eyes looked more desperate than enchanting now. He didn’t tap his foot or rake his hair as frequently. The man needed rest. “Based on his profile, my guess is that he’s closing in on his objective.”

“Which is what?”

Jennifer glanced at Galager. “Good work, Bill. Why don’t you wrap it up and call the locals?” She took Kevin’s arm and led him out. “Let’s take a walk.”

Two of the streetlights nearest the warehouse were either shut down on energy conservation timers or burned out. A cool ocean breeze drifted over Long Beach. She’d shed her jacket and wore a sleeveless gold blouse with a black skirt—it was actually a bit chilly at this hour.

She crossed her arms. “You okay?”

“Tired.”

“Nothing like fresh air to clear the mind. This way.” She led him toward the fire escape in the back.

“So, what is Slater’s objective?” Kevin asked again, shoving his hands in his jeans pockets.

“Well, that’s a problem. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. On the surface it seems simple enough: He wants to terrorize you. Men like Slater do what they do for a variety of reasons, usually to gratify some twisted need they’ve grown into over many years, but almost without exception they prey on the weak. Their focus is on their own need, not on the victim.”

“Makes sense. And Slater’s different?”

“I think so. His objective doesn’t seem to be himself as much as you. I mean you specifically.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Take your typical serial offender. Say a pyromaniac bent on burning down houses. He doesn’t care whose house it is as long as it fits his needs. He needs to see the flame engulfing this structure—it excites him and gives him a feeling of power beyond his reach in any other way. The house is important—it has to be a certain size, maybe a certain build, maybe a symbol of wealth. In the same way a sex offender might prey on women he considers appealing. But his focus is on himself, not the victim. The victim is almost incidental.”

“And you’re saying that Slater hasn’t chosen me for what I can do for him, but for what he can do to me. Like he did with your brother.”

“Maybe. But this is playing out differently than Roy’s murder. The Riddle Killer filled his thirst for bloodshed by killing Roy and killing him quickly. Slater is playing with you, over three days now. I’m beginning to question our initial assumption that Slater and the Riddle Killer are the same person.” The Riddle Killer didn’t seem to know his victims, other than Roy, whom he’d selected for her benefit. She rubbed her arms against the cold.

“Unless all that was just a cover-up for what he’s doing now. Unless extracting revenge for what I did to him was the game all along.”

“That’s the obvious assumption. I’m not sure anymore. Revenge would be a simple matter. Assuming Slater is the boy you locked up, he could have found a hundred opportunities over the years to extract his revenge. His most obvious course would have been to hurt or kill you. I don’t think Slater’s interested in killing you. Not anytime soon, anyway. I think he wants to change you. He wants to force your hand somehow. I don’t think the game’s the device; I think the game’s the objective.”

“But that’s crazy!” Kevin stopped and put both hands into his hair. “What is there about me? Who? Who would want to . . . to force my hand?”

“I know it doesn’t all fit yet, but the sooner we narrow down Slater’s true motivation, the higher our chances of getting you out of this mess.”

They were at the back, by the fire escape. A ladder reached up to the second floor and curved into a window. Jennifer sighed and leaned against the tin siding.

“Bottom line is that if I’m right, then the only way to understand Slater’s true motivation is to understand you, Kevin. I’ve got to know more about you.” He was pacing, staring at the concrete, hands still in his hair.

“I want to know about the house,” she said.

“There’s nothing to know about the house,” he said.

“Why don’t you let me judge that?”

“I can’t talk about the house!”

“I know you don’t think you can, but it may provide our best clues now. I know it’s hard—”

“I don’t think you have a clue about how hard it is! You didn’t grow up there!” He paced and smoothed his hair frantically, and then flung his arms wide. “You think any of this means anything? You think this is reality? A bunch of ants running around the globe, hiding their secrets in their deep dark tunnels? We allhave our secrets. Who’s to say that mine have anything to do with anything? Why don’t the rest of the ants have to crawl out of their tunnels and broadcast their sins to the world?”

Kevin was baring himself, and Jennifer needed him to do just that. Not because she would ever exploit him, but because she needed to understand his secrets if she hoped to help him.

And she did hope to help him. More now than a day ago, even if Slater wasn’t her brother’s killer after all.

“You’re right,” she said. “We’re all fallen, as my priest used to say. I’m not interested in your sin. I wasn’t even in favor of the initial confession, remember? I’m interested in you, Kevin.”

“And who am I?” He was desperate. “Huh? Answer me that. Who am I? Who are you? Who is anybody? We are what we do! We are our secrets. I ammy sin! You want to know me, then you have to know my sin. Is that what you want? Every little dirty secret out on the table so that you can dissect it all and know Kevin, the poor tormented soul?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“You might as well have, because it’s true! Why is it fair that I should spill my guts when the pastor next-door has as many nasty secrets as I do? Huh? If we want to know him, we have to know his secrets, is that it?”

“Stop it!” Her anger surprised her. “You’re notyour sin! Who ever told you that lie? Aunt Balinda? I’ve seen you, Kevin. You asked me what my profile for you was. Well, let me be more specific. You are one of the kindest, gentlest, most interesting, appealing men I know. That’s who you are. And don’t insult my intelligence or my feminine discernment by dismissing my opinion.” She took a breath and a guess. “I don’t know what Slater’s up to, or why, but I guarantee you’re doing exactly what he wants you to do when you start to believe that you’re trapped. You’ve come out of that. Don’t go back.”

She knew by his blink that she was right. Slater was trying to pull him back to the past, and the thought so terrified him that he was breaking down. Which was exactly how Slater would accomplish his objective. He would trap Kevin in his past.

Kevin stared at her, stunned. It occurred to her then, looking back into his wide eyes, that she didn’t merely like Kevin, she cared for him deeply. She had no business caring for him; she didn’t even wantto care for him, not in that way. Her empathy had risen to the surface, unbidden. She’d always been a sucker for the downtrodden. She had always had a soft spot for men who were hurting in some way. Now her soft spot had found Kevin.

But this didn’t feel like a soft spot. She actually found him appealing, with his ragged hair and his charming smile. And those eyes. That wasn’t empathy, was it?

She closed her eyes and swallowed. God forbid, Jennifer. And when was the last time you dated a man, anyway? Two years ago? That hillbilly from Arkansas who came from good stock, so says Mom?She’d never known the full meaning of boring until then. She would prefer a man with a goatee who rode a Harley and winked frequently.

Jennifer opened her eyes. Kevin was seated on the concrete, cross-legged, head in his hands. The man never ceased to surprise her.

“I’m sorry, I’m not sure where all that came from,” she said.

He lifted his head, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. “Please, don’t be sorry. That was the nicest thing I’ve heard in a long time.” His eyes fluttered open, as if he’d just heard himself. “Maybe nicestis the wrong word choice. It was . . . I think you’re right. He’s trying to pull me back, isn’t he? That’s his objective. So who is he? Balinda?”

Jennifer sat down beside him and folded her legs to the side. Her skirt wasn’t exactly dress of choice for concrete sitting, but she didn’t care.

“I need to tell you something, Kevin. But I don’t want it to upset you.”

He stared ahead and then turned to her. “You went to the house, didn’t you?”

“Yes. This morning. It took a few threats to convince Balinda to let me in, but I saw the place and I met Eugene and Bob.”

Kevin lowered his head again.

“I know it’s hard, but I need to know what happened in that house, Kevin. For all we know, Slater could be someone Balinda hired. That would fit the profile. She wants to change you. But without knowing the whole story, I’m floundering here.”

“You’re asking me to tell you something no one knows. Not because it’s so horrible—I know I’m not the only one who’s had a few challenges along the way. But it’s dead and buried. You want me to bring it back to life? Isn’t that what Slater’s trying to do?”

“I’m not Slater. And frankly, it doesn’t sound dead and buried to me.”

“And you really think this whole game has to do with my past?”

She nodded. “I’m assuming that Slater has an objective that is tied to your past, yes.”

Kevin remained quiet. The silence stretched, and Jennifer sat beside him feeling his tension, hearing his breathing. She wondered if it would be appropriate to put a hand on his arm but immediately decided it wouldn’t.

He suddenly groaned and rocked. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“You can’t slay the dragon without luring it out of its hole. I want to help you, Kevin. I need to know.”

For a long time he just sat there rocking. Then he stilled and his breathing slowed. Maybe it was too much too fast. He’d faced more than most could stomach these last three days and she was pushing him even further. He needed sleep. But she was running out of time. Slater was escalating.

She was about to suggest that they get some rest and consider it in the morning when he turned his face to the night sky.

“I don’t think Balinda’s intentions were necessarily evil.” He spoke in a soft monotone. “She wanted a good playmate for Bob. He was eight when they adopted me; I was one. But Bob was retarded. I wasn’t, and Balinda couldn’t accept that reality.”

He paused and took several deep breaths. Jennifer shifted and leaned on her arm so that she could watch his face. His eyes were closed.

“Tell me about Balinda.”

“I don’t know her story, but Balinda creates her own reality. We all do, but Balinda only knows absolutes. She decides what part of the world is real and what part isn’t. If something isn’t real, she makes it go away. She manipulates everything around her to create an acceptable reality.”

He stopped. Jennifer waited a full thirty seconds before prodding him. “Tell me what it was like to be her son.”

“I don’t know it yet, because I’m too young, but my mom doesn’t want me to be smarter than my brother. So she decides to make me retarded too because she’s already tried to make Bob smarter but she can’t.”

Another stall. He was switching tenses, dipping into the past. Jennifer felt her stomach turn.

“How does she do that? Does she hurt you?”

“No. Hurting is evil in Balinda’s world. She won’t let me out of the house because the world outside isn’t real. The only real world is the one she makes inside the house. She is the princess. She needs me to read so that she can shape my mind with what she makes me read, but she cuts up stories and makes me read only things she decides are real. I’m nine years old before I know there are animals called cats because Princess thinks cats are evil. I don’t even know there is evil until I’m eleven. There’s only real and unreal. Everything real is good and everything good comes from Princess. I don’t do anything bad; I only do things that aren’t real. She makes the things that aren’t real go away by starving me of them. She never punishes me; she only helps me.”

“When you do something that’s not real, how does she punish you?”

He hesitated. “She locks me in my room to learn about the real world or makes me sleep so I’ll forget the unreal world. She takes away food and water. That’s how animals learn, she says, and we are the best animals. I can remember the first time because it made me confused. I was four. My brother and I are playing servant, folding dishtowels for Princess. We have to fold them over and over until they’re perfect. Sometimes it takes all day. We don’t have toys because toys aren’t real. Bob asks me what one plus one is because he wants to give me two towels, but he doesn’t know what to call it. I tell him that I think one plus one is two and Princess overhears me. She locks me in my room for two days. Two towels, two days. If Bob doesn’t know how to add, then I can’t either, because it isn’t real. She wants me to be dumb like Bob.”

An image of Balinda seated under a stack of clipped newspapers filled Jennifer’s mind and she shivered.

Kevin sighed and changed tenses again. “She never held me. She hardly even touched me unless it was by mistake. Sometimes I went without food for days. Once a whole week. Sometimes we couldn’t wear clothes if we did unreal things. She deprived us both of anything she thought might feed our minds. Mostly me, because Bob was retarded and he didn’t do as many things that weren’t real. No school. No games. Sometimes no talking for days. Sometimes she made me stay in bed all day. Other times she made me sit in the bathtub in cold water so I couldn’t sleep all night. I could never ask her why, because that wasn’t real. Princess was real, and if she decided to do something, anything else was unreal and couldn’t be talked about. So we couldn’t ask questions. Even questions about real things, because that would question their reality, which was unreal.”