Drawn Into Darkness by Nancy Springer

response except silence and averted eyes. Just the same, something about the stillness of his face told me he wasn’t angry, not really. He just didn’t want to talk to me anymore. Didn’t want to get to know me as a friend. Didn’t want to care about anything that happened to me.
    Which meant he did care.
    It also meant I had to shatter his silence so he would care more.
    â€œJustin,” I began, “did your parents beat you?”
    â€œNo!” Shocked, he not only yelled, but he faced me. “Hell, no, my parents are good people! They would never beat us. They—” His voice cracked.
    Blandly, as if I hadn’t noticed the emotion he didn’t want to feel, I went on. “Us? You have brothers and sisters?”
    â€œYeah. Younger than me. Twins. Kyle and Kayla.” I think he didn’t want to say their names, but they forced their way out and made his face wince, his lips tremble. He was not used to thinking about his family.
    I intuited that he had survived the past two years by not thinking about his life before being abducted, not thinking about his family, and not thinking about his own future either. No goals or dreams or plans. Numbing his mind and emotions just to survive day to day. What had once been normal wasn’t anymore, not for him; he had to survive in a new normal, and he did so by functioning like a robot.
    My only chance—and
his
only chance—depended on coaxing or jolting him out of robot mode.
    What should I say now? My mind raced. This wasn’t any ordinary conversation, not with me lying shackled in a spread-eagle position and him hovering over me, poking a junk food sandwich into my face. Instead of saying something conventional, maybe asking whether his twin brother and sister looked alike or what color their hair and eyes were, I said, “I bet Kyle and Kayla are supersmart.”
    His hand about to offer more sandwich stopped in midair, his other hand lifted to his nose as if I had punched him, and he stared at me. “How’d you know that?”
    â€œBecause you’re very intelligent.”
    â€œWhat makes you think that?”
    â€œYou’re alive, aren’t you?”
    His hands slowly lowered. “I figure that’s because I’m a wuss.”
    Kind of grinning, I shook my head. “I can be the biggest wuss in the world and Stoat’s still going to kill me, isn’t he?”
    Justin’s jaw dropped, I guess because I was willing to say it.
    â€œWhich will make you his accomplice,” I added as an afterthought, “so then he’ll have even more power over you.”
    â€œShut up,” Justin whispered.
    â€œWhy am I still alive? What’s he waiting for?”
    â€œShut
up
.”
    â€œTell me, Justin—what would you do if Stoat got his hands on your brother or your sister?”
    His face reddened and contorted with such fury—accumulated fury he’d swallowed during the past two years, maybe—that he threw down the sandwich, lunged up from the bed, and for a heartbeat, as he loomed over me with his fists clenched, I thought he might hurt me, sparing Stoat the trouble.
    Instead he rammed out of the room, slamming the door behind him. He had forgotten to put the gag back in my mouth, but I didn’t yell anything after him. I stayed quiet all afternoon. I was still hungry, I was thirsty, I needed the bathroom but had hours to go before any hope of that; my body ached more each minute from its forced immobility; fear of death weighed stony on my chest and tried to make me weep; I could barely keep from sobbing. But I managed to stay as still as a windless day because I hoped that, somewhere in that peacock blue shack of a prison, Justin was thinking.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    Extracting a dog hair from a crack in one of his ridged, splitting fingernails, Ned Bradley thought:
I’m getting old.
He used to be able to pat his dog, for