Hide Your Eyes Read Online Free PDF Page B

of nothing . It sometimes helped if you said the words aloud, so that’s what I did, over and over and over . . .

    ‘ Relax, princess,’ says the man in the Pinto. ‘Stop moving.’ But I can’t. There’s no crown in the car. Not in the front, not in the back. The vinyl seat is hot, sticky on my bare legen n my bas.

    ‘Where is my crown?’ I say.

    ‘Where is my crown?’ he repeats, his voice a squeaky imitation of mine. ‘Princess needs a crown . . .’

    His hand clamps the back of my neck. It’s big and rough and feels like it’s made of sandpaper. He starts to laugh, and his laugh is big and rough too. ‘Princess needs a crown,’ he says, still laughing. ‘That’s funny, princess.’

    Stop, I want to say. But I can’t. My mouth opens and closes. He squeezes tighter. Pinches my skin between the stubby tips of his fingers. He jerks my head back, then down, like you’d do with a big doll .

    I’m looking at the floor beneath the dashboard. ‘No crown for prin-cess,’ he sings.

    On the floor I see a coiled rope. Next to it I see a roll of thick gray tape. They remind me of two snakes - a mother and her baby.

    ‘I have something else, though. Something else princess can wear . . .’

    I try to scream, but still nothing comes out. I am a doll. Can’t move. Going to get broken.

    ‘You can wear this on your neck.’ He holds something up to my eyes. It’s silver mostly, but he’s holding it so close that I have to blink to see what it is.

    It’s a long, sharp knife with a black leather handle.

    I’m wondering why I can’t cry, can’t yell, can’t move when his hand isn’t over my mouth and he’s only holding my neck. I’m thinking maybe he’s magic. Maybe I’m under a spell. He whispers, ‘Little bitch.’

    His breath smells of beer, which reminds me of Dad. I wish he was Dad, because Dad wouldn’t say that, wouldn’t hate me like this . Dad wouldn’t, I think, as he presses the cool side of the blade to my throat, then shoves my head down farther . . .

    I opened my eyes, breathing fast and shallow. Some meditation exercise .

    I understood now why I’d blocked the memory for so long. It had nothing to do with the knife or the rope. It was the dry calm of the voice in my ear. And it was how I couldn’t move.

    Here’s how I escaped: A pigeon wiped out on the Pinto’s windshield. The stranger loosened his grip and dropped the knife and said, ‘What the fuck?’

    Saved by a kamikaze pigeon . Finally, I’d managed to open the car door and run home.

    No, I don’t open the door. I stare at the flattened feathers. At the bright smear of blood. I don’t move. I can’t.

    ‘maysize="3What the fuck?’ He leans across me, opens the door, pushes me out. My knees hit the concrete. ‘My car, my fucking car, fucking bird.’

    ‘Fucking bird,’ I whisper as I run and run and run. ‘Fucking bird, fucking bird . . . ’

     
    With the memory echoing in my brain, I didn’t quite notice the sound at first. But then it became clearer, more defined. It was a scraping. The scraping of a heavy object across a floor. After a few seconds, I realized it was coming from the trailer.

    Rats, I decided. But rats didn’t scrape, they scurried. Besides, this sound was much too heavy for rats, even big rats. The scraping got louder and culminated in a thud on the concrete between the bin and the trailer. It’s not rats . Instinctively, I jumped to my feet, tightened my grip on my bag and backed up. Soon, I’d made my way behind the bin and had almost reached the fence. I stopped for a moment. From where I was standing, I couldn’t see the whole space between the bin and the trailer. But there was no more sound. Maybe I imagined it .

    I used to imagine things a lot when I was a kid - monsters under the bed, snakes in the kitchen cupboard, Dad’s car outside our apartment. Grandma said I was special and intuitive; Sydney said I was making things up to get attention.

    When I tried to tell