Chapter 1 - The Door Between Us
“...you’re going to regret ever looking at me, you little rat.”
Garrett’s voice was barely a whisper, but it sliced through the hollow wood of my bedroom door like a blade.
Under the bed, I pressed my back against the cold baseboard, pulling my knees tight against my chest. The dust under the frame tickled my nose, but I didn't dare breathe. My knuckles were white around my phone. On the screen, the green recording light was still flickering. I had set my phone to auto-sync with my mother’s cloud account and my friend Hailey’s email. Whatever happened to me in the next five minutes, the truth was already flying through the digital air, beyond his reach.
THUMP.
The door buckled against its brass latch. Garrett wasn't kicking it with his boot; he was throwing his shoulder against it in steady, deliberate lunges. He knew that breaking the frame would look bad if the neighbors heard, but he was getting desperate. He knew the clock was ticking.
“Maya,” he said, his tone shifting into that terrifyingly soft, fake-fatherly pitch he used whenever Mom was in the room. “Come on, sweetie. I’m just trying to help your sister. If you give me your phone, we can figure this out together. You don’t want your mom to lose her job, do you? You don't want Chloe in juvenile hall, do you?”
“I sent the video to the police, Garrett!” I yelled, my voice cracking, but carrying every ounce of defiance a terrified thirteen-year-old could muster. “And to Mom! They know what you did!”
The thumping stopped abruptly.
For three long seconds, the house went completely silent. The only sound was the distant hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen and the fast, shallow thrum of my own heart against my ribs.
Then came a sharp, metallic sound. Garrett was inserting a flathead screwdriver—the one he kept in his hallway belt pouch—into the cheap privacy lock on my doorknob.
Click.
The lock gave way.
The door swung open with a slow, agonizing creak.
Through the narrow gap between the dusty floorboards and the edge of my floral bedsheet, I saw his heavy leather boots step into my room. He stopped in the center of the rug. His breathing was heavy, ragged with fury.
He didn't see me right away. He walked over to my closet, throwing open the sliding doors, knocking over my plastic storage bins. Shoes and backpacks spilled across the carpet.
“Where are you, you little liar?” he growled, dropping the sweet facade completely.
He turned toward the bed. I squeezed my eyes shut, holding my breath so hard my chest burned.
Slowly, his leather boots approached. He stopped right beside my mattress. I saw his shadow cast long across the floor as he began to bend down, his gloved fingers reaching for the edge of the dust ruffle.
Suddenly, the shrill wail of police sirens shattered the quiet afternoon.
Red and blue light strobed through my bedroom blinds, painting the walls in frantic flashes of color. Tires screeched against the gravel in our driveway, followed by the heavy thud of multiple car doors slamming shut.
Garrett froze. His hand hovered an inch from my dust ruffle.
“Austin Police! Open the door!” a booming voice echoed from the front porch.
Garrett cursed under his breath, stepping backward toward my window. But before he could even unlatch the glass, the front door of our apartment was kicked open with a thunderous bang.
“Clear the hallway! Go left!”
Heavy tactical boots flooded the living room.
“Maya!” my mother’s voice shrieked from the front door, raw and hysterical. “Maya, where are you?!”
“Mom! I’m under the bed!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
Garrett bolted out of my bedroom toward the back fire escape, but he didn't make it three steps. Two uniformed Austin police officers rounded the corner, guns drawn and trained squarely on his chest.
“Down on the ground! Do it now!”
Garrett immediately dropped to his knees, throwing his hands in the air, his face instantly twisting into a picture of innocent confusion. “Officers! Thank God you’re here! My stepdaughter is having a psychotic episode—she locked herself in her room, and I was just trying to check on her!”
I scrambled out from under the bed, covered in dust, holding my phone high above my head like a shield. My mother burst into the room a second later, dropping to her knees and gathering me into her arms so tight I could barely breathe.
May you like
“I have it, Officer,” I sobbed into my mother’s shoulder, pointing my phone at Garrett as the police forced his hands behind his back and clicked heavy steel handcuffs around his wrists. “I recorded everything. He put the pills in Chloe’s bag at 10:35 this morning.”
Garrett sneered over his shoulder as he was pulled to his feet, his eyes burning into mine with pure hatred. “You think a stupid video proves anything, kid? My lawyer will have me out before dinner. And when I get back, you won't have a roof over your head.”
