Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow

disappeared. He had boxes of sugary cereal on the shelves, and beer and soda in the fridge, and drugs in special locked boxes. He had filthy skin but teeth that gleamed like pearls.
    The men who came to Seed House for the room with the red door, they had hungry eyes, eyes with teeth that moved over you, testing, tasting. That’s why I hid in the attic for so long. Like a mouse, trying not to breathe so no one would notice me.
    I say, “No. No, he didn’t get me.”
    Evan sighs, relieved. “Yeah, okay, that’s good, yeah.”
    “Evan,” I say.
    “Yeah?”
    “But he’s part of
why
I did it. You know? Like, the straw and the camel. Everything. Do you understand?”
    Evan is quiet. Then he says, “Yeah.”
    I wonder where he’s calling from—skinny Evan with his bad lungs and ripped pants, the funny houndstooth sport coat.
    I ask him how he found me.
    He tells me this is the place they send all the nutty girls. He tells me, “Dump and me found a ride to Portland.”
    The night they saved me in the underpass, Dump broke a bottle over the man’s head. It happened lightning quick. I saw a boy’s terrified eyes appear over the man’s shoulder and then the bottle in the air, gleaming against the yellowy lights. I picked slivers of glass out of my hair for days afterward.
    Dump was mesmerized by the glass that glittered in the palms of his hands. He looked at me and his smile was a deep, curling cut. Bloody splinters of glass sparkled on the tips of his black boots.
    The man who messed with me was at the bottom of the underpass, a lump of motionless, dark clothing. Evan wrapped me in his coat.
    Evan tells me, “I just wanted to make sure you were okay and shit, you know?”
    They said,
Holy fucking shit.
They said,
We’ve got to get the fuck out of here.
They said,
You crazy fucking bitch, you can’t be out here by yourself.
    “You were cool and all, for a wacko.” Laughter and coughing.
    They walk-dragged me to a van and hauled me into the back. The seats had been taken out; the flooring was damp and there were patches of dirty carpet thrown over rust holes. Evan and Dump were keyed up, eyes popping, hands shaking.
Did we fucking kill that dude?
    I stayed with them for seven months.
    Evan will die on the street, somewhere, someday. I have seen what he will do for a high. I have seen the sadness on his face when he thinks no one is looking.
    “So, yeah, also, I wanted to tell you, and, like, I’m sorry and all, but I took your drawings.” Evan clears his throat. “You know, that comic book you made. I don’t know, I just like it. It’s cool, you know, like, seeing
me
in there. Like I’m famous or something. I read a little every day.”
    My sketchbook,
he
has my sketchbook. Dump would say,
Make sure you give me a cool superpower, like X-ray vision or something, okay? I wanna see through chicks’ clothes.
    My heartbeat picks up. “Evan, I need that back. Evan, please?”
    He coughs and gets quiet. “I’ll try, you know, see if we can get over there, but I don’t know, we’re leaving kinda soon. It’s like, I just really like that book. I don’t know. Makes me feel like I
exist,
seeing me in there.”
    Evan,
I say, but only in my head.
    “You get out, you come up to Portland, okay? Like, head to the waterfront and ask around for me. We do good together.”
    I say, “Sure thing, Evan.”
    “Later, gator.” The phone goes dead.
    Isis is nibbling at a new tile. I fold my hands in my lap. These are my hands. They have taken food from Dumpsters. They have fought over sleeping spaces and dirty blankets. They have had a whole other life than this one here, playing games in a warm room, as the night keeps moving far from me, outside the window.
    Isis says, “How’s your ma? That musta been weird, huh?”
    She has spelled
ball
. It took her ten minutes to spell
ball
.
    I tuck my hands under my thighs and bear down on them. The pressure against my bones feels good. He has my book, but I have food, and a