Strange in Skin (36 page)

 

“I had to pry the information out of Helene to find out where you were, but she didn’t tell me they
had done this to you,” she quickly explained. “Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe John didn’t tell her.”
“I thought you left Seneca. When’d you get back?”

She shook her head, motioning for me not to ask so many questions all at once. “I did leave. We can
talk about all of this later. I have to get you out of here.” She examined the cast on my leg and then
looked around the room. Her eyes rested on the door across the room with the humungous lock
hanging from it.

“Yeah, I don’t think it’s possible to get out that way,” I said, reading her mind.

 

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I must’ve left my bolt cutters at home this time.” She laughed, and I
couldn’t help but laugh along with her at her sarcasm. “I guess you would’ve already thought about
that anyway. I can’t believe you’ve been down here.”

 

“How long have I been down here?”

“I’m not sure exactly. I came back and you were gone. It took me a couple days to sweet talk
Helene just enough to get her to slip. I was thinking about getting her drunk and getting her to talk that
way.”

“But she doesn’t drink.” I winced as she put an arm underneath my shoulder and helped me stand.
My muscles ached from lack of use.

 

“That’s what made getting her drunk so impossible.”

 

She helped me to both feet and gave me a moment to steady myself and regain some sort of balance.
I lifted the injured left ankle in the air behind me and depended upon balance on the right leg.
“Sorry if I stink,” I said sounding like a joke but really serious as I could only imagine how
horrible I really did look and smell.

 

“You do, kind of.” She smiled at me and then helped me move over to the bottom of the basement
stairs.

 

“We’re going out
that
way?” I raised my eyebrows, questioning her decision.

 

“Can you think of a better way?” she asked, irritated by my lack of trust. “Besides, they’re not
here.”

“How can you be sure?”
“Because I came in through the front door, and because I know they wouldn’t be missing it.”
“Missing what?”

She helped me get up a couple of the stairs as I still hobbled on one leg. She looked hesitantly at
me. “The end of the trial.”

 

“What?” I hissed as the realization of what they had been talking about swarmed my brain.
“Emry’s?”

She pressed her lips together as if she might be sorry that she had told me and then nodded her
head. “They’re giving him the jury’s verdict this afternoon. I’ve come to break you out of here. We
don’t have much time to waste.”

I paused a moment to look her over. “Wait. You mean you’re going to help get me there, to the
courthouse, I mean?”

 

She raised her eyebrows. “That’s right. Do you want to stay down here and talk about it some more
or get the hell out of here?”

I shut my mouth and concentrated on hopping up the stairs. We made it to the top, and I didn’t even
bother to glance behind me at what had been my cage over the past few days. I nervously glanced
around the open rooms upstairs as we passed by them. Carlin was right. No one was home. And then
we walked outside, the warm, fresh air, heaven to my lungs from the dampness I had been inhaling all
that time. I felt even stronger and knew that a shower would make me feel even better.

Carlin’s car was parked right in front of the porch. She helped me hobble down the steps, and
within a few minutes, I was safely inside her getaway vehicle. Relief washed over me.

“Let’s get out of here,” she suggested.
“No argument here.” I focused on her getting out of the driveway and smiled as I thought of how
Mrs. Anderson would feel when she knew I’d escaped. It was a brief moment of satisfaction. I
couldn’t go back to my house. My parents would forbid me to go to the trial. Once I saw we were
securely on the road and speeding quickly away from Mrs. Anderson’s house, I decided I should
probably voice my concerns to her. “I don’t think we should go back to my house.”

“We’re not,” she replied, her eyes glued to the road, every once in a while glancing in her rearview
mirror as if to make sure no one was following us.

“I have to get a shower and get cleaned up before …”
“You need to just relax,” she said, interrupting my little rant. “I’m not an idiot, you know.”
“I didn’t mean that you were.”

She looked over at me and gave me a little smile. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t dream of taking you
back to that place. We’re going to my place.”
“Your place?”

She nodded. “I’m not staying with John and Helene. I have my own motel room a few miles away.
You can get showered, and I’ll let you borrow some of my clothes, since you’re so fond of borrowing
them anyway,” she added.

I blushed then, the dress of hers I had ruined popping up into my mind. “Thanks, Carlin. I really
mean it. Thanks.”
“I couldn’t let John get away with just leaving you there with those crazies. I never did like the
Andersons. They’re a little off, don’t you think?”
I laughed at the word she had used to describe them. “No, they’re as normal as they come.”

She chuckled. “See, I always knew you and I had more in common than met the eye.”
Within minutes, we were pulling in front of a small motel that had doors on the outside leading into
the rooms. She pointed to which one was hers.

 

“I’ll help you get settled in there, and then I have to go see what I can do about finding you a pair of
crutches.”

The room was neatly kept as I wondered how long Carlin had been back in town. I figured not long.
I wondered why she had come back here and why she wasn’t staying with her sister. Maybe they had
had a fight. All sorts of questions popped into my head, but mostly I was wondering what the rest of
the day had in store for me.

Mrs. Anderson and Lauren, even my father, were all hiding the trial from me. I felt as if I had a
thousand questions squirming around in my head about that as well. And what was everyone going to
say when they saw me there? Would they throw me out? Could they throw me out? I had so many
emotions rushing through me all at once. I had this new sense of adrenaline from Carlin helping me to
escape, that I had lived through that situation, and now I was going to see Emry today. But then I had
to realize that it might be a sad day. Mrs. Anderson’s scheme may have worked as she had tried
desperately to turn everyone against him, to get enough false evidence to make the jury believe he was
a murderer and call out the verdict guilty. He might be going to spend his entire life in jail. The
sudden sadness didn’t go well with the adrenaline. I felt a little woozy from it all. I hopped over and
quickly sat down on the queen-sized bed.

“Are you okay?” Carlin asked me, walking into the bathroom and grabbing towels and shampoo for
me to use and tossing them onto the sink.
“I will be.”
“A little overwhelming for one day?” She peeked her head back out and smirked.

“You could say that.” I rubbed my temples with my fingers and tried to focus solely on just
breathing.

“Listen, I need to get you some crutches. Are you going to be all right showering on your own? I
have this plastic bag that you can use to cover up your cast so it stays dry.” She held up the bag for me
to see.

I nodded. “Just give me a moment. I’m trying to absorb this thing called my life at the moment.”
Carlin laughed aloud.

“It’s not really that funny.” She had this odd habit of inappropriately laughing when she shouldn’t. I
didn’t know if it bothered anyone else, but it always struck a nerve with me.
“Sorry.” She flashed me another quick smile. “It’s just, you sound like a whiny teenager.”

“Do I?” I narrowed my eyes at her. “I will be forever grateful for you rescuing me, but please don’t
pretend to have a clue about what I’ve been through or compare it to a drama-filled teenage girl.
There’s no comparison.”

“No? All right. I’ll shut up.” She threw a few more things in the bathroom and then arranged them
so I could have easy access to them with my gimp leg. When she appeared again, she paused to look
at me. “It’s just, it kind of is the same.”

Why did she always have to be like this? Couldn’t she just ever let things be without giving me the
full analysis of her opinion? I didn’t ever want to hear it, but especially not right now.
“You know,” she continued. “First loves and all. The obsession, the desperation. I mean, it’s totally
normal, but it’s worse with first loves.”

 

“You make it sound as if there will be others.”

She shrugged. “Perhaps. Who knows. But the first one, that’s the one that seems to always stick
with you. The memories linger throughout the years. They’re vivid, clear, haunting.”
“I know what you’re comparing this to, Carlin.” I ran my hand over the smooth burgundy-colored
comforter underneath me. “I know all about Russell.”
The mention of the name alone seemed to pain her. “Helene told you.”

I nodded.

 

“Well, you’d better get showered and all prettied up. You look like you just got ran over by a
truck.”

“Thanks.”
“I’ll be back. You sure you’re all right on your own?”
“Yeah.”

I watched Carlin leave. If I had known that all it took was talking about Russell to let me alone, I
would have used it as ammo in the past. I immediately felt remorse as I thought that. She had been in
love with him, and it obviously still bothered her. I actually felt sorry for my aunt. Then I glanced at
the clock on the nightstand beside the bed. It was almost noon. She hadn’t told me what time the
verdict was being read, but I assumed I’d better hurry nevertheless.

It had taken a little getting used to at first from the awkwardness of not being able to use my left leg
to stand on, plus hoping that I had the plastic bag on tight enough so that no water leaked in to make
the shower a little tougher than I had anticipated. The warm water rushed over my dirty skin and felt
wonderful, despite a few balance issues. I had never enjoyed taking a shower this much before. Then
again, I had never been this filthy before either. I wrapped a towel around myself and opened the
bathroom door to peek out. Carlin still wasn’t back yet. I wondered where she was going to find
crutches. Then I used the palm of my hand to wipe the steam off the mirror so I could get a look at
myself. I had some bruising on the side of my face that had turned dark purple. I took a closer look. I
hadn’t even remembered feeling any sort of pain or discomfort there. My body was probably full of
bruises and scrapes that I had been unaware of, masked by the stronger pain of the ankle and ribs.
Richard had initially wrapped a large bandage tightly around my ribcage, so I decided to try to wrap
it back around myself, but it was too hard to manage alone. I would have to wait for Carlin to get back
and ask for her help.

I looked down at the sink full of all kinds of things in front of me, powders, lotions and soaps. I
doubted any amount of makeup was going to fully cover up that bruise. I would just have to do what I
could to make myself look decent. I laughed out loud thinking that that could even be a remote
possibility.

I started with drying my hair first as I ran one of Carlin’s thick brushes through it. I felt a million
times better scrubbing Mrs. Anderson’s basement off my body. My ankle suddenly began throbbing as
I realized I had no more pain medication. Lauren had been in charge of that. Oh well, I would have to
do without. Maybe Carlin had some ibuprofen or something lying around.

“Choose anything to wear?”
I heard the hotel door click shut as Carlin had returned. She walked over to me in the bathroom.
“Wow.”
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. You clean up well.”
“Ha, ha.” I glared at her.
She smiled. “No, I mean it, Annie. You look so much better. Let me help you with your makeup.”
“First, I need help with this bandage around my ribs.”

She looked surprised. She hadn’t known that my ribs were injured. “He did a number on you, didn’t
he?”

“Yeah.”
“Lauren Anderson always was a scary beast.”
She helped wrap it tight enough so as to ease the pain.
“You don’t have any pain pills by chance, do you?”

“One sec.” She disappeared around the corner and grabbed her purse. She opened it and dug
around for a moment. “Here,” she said pulling a bottle out. “Better double the dosage by the look of
you.”

“Thanks.”
“Sure.”

Carlin helped me with my makeup and then continued to straighten and smooth out my long brown
hair. She stood back admiringly. “Take a look.”

I peered at myself in the large mirror. She had done a good job. The bruise was barely noticeable,
and I actually looked pretty fantastic. Satisfied, we both walked out into the larger room. There were
two crutches leaning against the side of the bed.

“You found some?”
She nodded as if extremely proud of herself.
“Where on earth did you find them?”

“Oh, I have connections in this town.” She grinned. “Come on, try them out. Ever had to use them
before?”

 

“No.”

 

“No? Of course not.” She rolled her eyes and walked over to retrieve them for me. “You put them
under your arms like this and then walk like this.”

I watched her demonstrate for me. “Yeah, I’ve seen people use them before,” I said in almost a
borderline nasty tone. But Carlin never cared when I was like that. She always looked amused when
she pushed my buttons and I retaliated.

“Okay. Let’s find something for you to wear.” She sorted through her open suitcase, pulling out
outfit after outfit. She held up a purple dress.

 

“I’m not wearing a dress,” I warned her.

 

She quickly tossed it aside. “No, of course not.” She pulled up a pair of white slacks followed by a
light green V-neck. “How about this?”

 

I stared at it. It wasn’t bad. A little fancy for my taste, but everything about Carlin screamed fancy
or rather, wannabe fancy, I should say. “Not bad.”

 

“Try it on. We’re about the same size.”

 

I stood in front of the mirror, the crutches securely under my arms for balance. I still looked pretty
damaged but overall much improved. “So, you were pretty mad that father left me there?”