Drawn Into Darkness by Nancy Springer Read Free Book Online

silent, primal scream at the ceiling, then tried to think. I knew I would get nowhere unless I figured out Justin’s point of view. Which wasn’t easy. Why was he still living with the man who had abducted him?
    Justin came back with a coffee mug with the Gators logo on it, and before giving me the water, he cautioned, “Just sip a little. If you wet the bed, Uncle Steve will beat . . . well, that’s what he did to me if I couldn’t hold it—he beat me. And sometimes he made me stand against the wall while he threw the knife at me like in the circus. But I don’t know what he might do to you.”
    Justin’s tone was so matter-of-fact that it rendered me speechless. He sat on the bed, lifted my head with one hand, and held the cup to my lips with the other. Heeding his advice, I drank only a little, then nodded, and he laid my head back on the mattress again.
    Trying to keep my tone as no-drama as his had been, like, hey, I just want information, I asked, “Did he ever get you with the knife?”
    â€œNo. He has a real good aim. I know he meant to miss me, to scare me.”
    â€œAnd how did he beat you, with a belt?”
    â€œNo. He just beat me up, slammed me around, broke my ribs, knocked me out sometimes. I thought he would kill me.”
    Again, I enforced a no-fuss, conversational tone. “Why didn’t he?”
    â€œHe planned to. He almost did.” Justin set the cup on the bedside table, his face turned away from me, and for a moment I thought he was going to leave. But he didn’t. I don’t flatter myself for any cleverness; I think he just really needed to tell his story. Two years, and who had he been able to tell? Nobody.
    Still without looking at me, he said, “He kept me and messed with me until his boss got tired of him and his sick dog. No more taking off in the middle of the day, his boss said, or he’d lose his job. Kill the damn dog. So that night he got out the gun and told me to get in the truck. He took me way out in the swamps someplace and—and maybe I should have just let him kill me.”
    â€œIt’s not that simple, is it?” I said, remembering how it had felt after the divorce, the suicidal thoughts, some petty vengeful part of me wanting to die but no match for Schopenhauer’s “irrational will to live,” aka Darwin’s “survival instinct.” Whatever you call it, that invisible and unmeasurable phenomenon is amazingly strong.
    â€œYou got that right. Even though I knew all the things he’d keep on doing to me, I still begged him to let me live. I promised I’d never call the cops or contact my parents or run away. I promised I would take his name and be his family, and I told him he could—he could do whatever and I’d never tell. He took a big risk, believing me and letting me live. I’m grateful for that.”
    But the words sounded flat, and Justin still didn’t face me.
    â€œI can understand,” I said, and at the moment it was true. I knew how grateful I was going to be if I got out of this mess alive. “But what about your parents?”
    He shifted his gaze downward, plucking invisible bits of lint from the edge of the mattress. “They don’t want me.”
    â€œYou could have fooled me.” I kept my voice as neutral as I possibly could; I mustn’t argue with him. “It costs big money to advertise on TV—”
    He interrupted with some force. “They want their sweet little boy back. They don’t want
me
.”
    â€œI think you’re sweet,” I responded impulsively and quite truthfully. This was the boy who had risked a beating to come feed me Frosted Flakes in the middle of the night.
    â€œYou’re crazy!” Deep and sudden anger blasted him up off the bed and out of the room, leaving me blinking.
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    Part of the reason I make stupid blunders in my