Page 56 of Art of Sin

It’s depressing as hell.

“So anyway, whenever the cartel people showed up, my dad would knock on my door. He called it Mouse Music, a series of light taps and scratches. He made it a game, and for a while it was exciting.”

Crouching, I notch a finger into a tiny hole in the floor and pull upward. The section of flooring comes up with surprising ease, like it was last lifted yesterday instead of decades ago.

“Whoa,” murmurs Gideon. “I was not expecting that.”

Standing, I peer into the cavity. Light slants through the tiny grates around the base of the trailer, crisscrossing the dirt below. The hole dug into the earth just beneath where I stand is starkly shadowed, half caved in. There’s just enough light to see something white in the bottom. My old, ruched comforter.

Gideon moves up beside me, his gaze veering from the dugout to my face.

“You hid in a hole.” His voice is neutral, carefully without horror or pity.

I nod. My lips feel stiff and pinched, like I’m in dire need of water. I have no idea what else to say.

I blurt, “It’s fucked up, huh? But what’s even more fucked is that I liked it. I used to imagine it was a little nest in the bottom of a giant tree. I called it my root cave, and toward the end, I slept in it most nights.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Gideon clench his fingers into fists. A glance at his face confirms that he’s struggling with something.

“Just say it,” I sigh out.

Wild eyes find mine. “It’s not okay. How they treated you. You know that, right?”

I shrug. “Am I aware that we weren’t a normal family? Yes. That there was physical and emotional abuse? Yes. But I’ve met people who had it a lot worse.”

“Is that how you rationalize it?” he asks in that careful, muted tone.

I shake my head. “I don’t rationalize anything. Besides, if not for my cave, I probably wouldn’t be here today.”

The rest of the story isn’t mine—how the last time all three of us were together in the trailer, horrible things happened above me. Horrible, horrible things.

The next day, my daddy was gone.

Three months after that, my mama.

And seventy-eight days later, I packed my faded, secondhand backpack with a change of clothes, a toothbrush, and a hairbrush, and made my way in the damp dawn to the truck stop outside town, where I would find someone to give me the money I needed to get the fuck out of here.

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