Chapter 1: Books can set you freeChapter title taken from this comic.You have to understand that Andy was all I had. I don't remember anything but my name from the life I had before him. He was always there, always took care of me, always protected me. He was like an older brother, for all I know he really could have been, I never asked him how we came to be together, we just...were. But he was the one who kept me safe from the older, meaner kids in our area, the one who decided which kids were okay and could join our little family (which was how Eli, Tim, Tara, and Otto came along), the one who stole cold medicine for me when I got sick, the one who found a place for us to stay, the one who always explained to me things I didn't understand, the one who gave me his share of the food when there wasn't enough to go around. I was completely devoted to him and I could no more imagine life without him than I could imagine life without my arms and legs.
So when he told me that the things he was doing were okay, that it was how a good older brother showed his little sister how much he loved her, I believed him.
Even if it scared me at first.
The first time he touched me I chopped all my hair off. I was ten. I got back early, I was with Tim and Eli but they sent me home ahead of them while they went to find Otto and Tara. Andy was back early too, and he was drinking from some bottle he had wrapped in a brown paper bag. He offered me a sip and it burned all the way down my throat. I didn't want any more but he pushed it into my hands, paper crinkling around the neck of the bottle as I gripped it tensely.
“You don't want to be a baby, do ya Nat?” he asked roughly, so I drank more, trying not to choke on it. I used to be called Natalie, because that was the name I gave Andy when we first met, or so he told me. He came closer to me as I drank, a dizzy swagger in his step, the smell of the burning drink heavy on his breath. One of his hands clumsily stroked my hair. “So soft,” he crooned, and he shoved his other hand down the front of my shorts.
“Andy!” I protested and tried to push him away from me, but the hand still in my hair tightened, yanking painfully, keeping me in place.
“It's okay, Nat,” he kept saying, “Don't be a baby,” and he kept pressing his wet lips against my neck and my face, the new stubble on his chin scratchy and uncomfortable against my skin.
After a few seconds that dragged on for hours, he heard the noises from the others returning. The second he let go of me I bolted, pushing between Eli and Tim to haul myself up out through our access window. I hid in an alley a few blocks away, ducked down behind a garbage bin.
Eli found me. He was always the one who did. I don't know how much he knew of what was going on, at least not at the beginning. I guess he just didn't know what to do any more than I did. I would never leave Andy, and Eli would never defy Andy because then he would be kicked out on his own. That's what it all came down to, really. We were all younger, smaller, weaker, more afraid. We all needed Andy.
When Eli found me I was holding my old pocket knife in one hand. It had never even occurred to me to use the knife to defend myself against Andy. Because...well, it was
Andy. With the knife gripped in my right hand I held the last clump of my long hair in my left, sawed through it, the soft black strands drifting down to land on top of the piles of hair already surrounding me. My hair had been nearly down to my waist.
“Natalie?” Eli asked, moving cautiously closer to me. “What's going on, Boo?” He had called me Boo ever since we saw that movie Monsters, Inc. playing on the screens outside a television store. I folded my knife closed with my thumb and shoved it back in my pocket.
“My hair was too long,” I said dully. “I cut it.”
“I can see that. You didn't do much of a job on it, Boo. How about we head back home and I'll see if I can neaten it up a bit for you?” I ran both hands through my shorn hair, feeling the uneven edges.
“I don't mind.” My long hair had been my pride, but I didn't want to feel pretty anymore. At that moment my stomach growled, reminding me that I hadn't had dinner yet. “I'm hungry,” I stated, surprised that things such as hunger still existed at moments like this when I was struggling to rearrange my view of Andy and of myself and of the two of us. At that time I wasn't anywhere close to wrapping my mind around the idea that Andy could be wrong about something. It was
me who was wrong,
me who was confused,
I was the one who had to grow up and not freak out and act like I was supposed to, how Andy wanted me to.
“We've got food at home,” Eli said. “Otto hit a jackpot.” He held out his hand to me. “Come on, Boo. Let's go home.”
I took his hand.
“Here's our Nat,” Andy crowed as Eli and I scrambled through the window into our home. I shook my head. I wasn't Natalie anymore. If Andy was going to change things, change us, I couldn't be the same person anymore, I just couldn't. Because Natalie wasn't okay with it. So I couldn't be Natalie.
“I'm not Natalie,” I said, my voice unnaturally loud. Andy laughed, spraying crumbs.
“No? Who are you then?”
“Celia.” It was the first name that came to mind. Another character from Monsters, Inc. Yes. I'll be Celia now.
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Over the next six months, more and more things kept changing, my name being the least of those. It was a vicious pattern, a never-ending cycle of fear and self-loathing that I kept trying to mold myself into accordance with so Andy would be happy with me.
Andy would somehow scrape together some extra cash. He'd spend it on alcohol. He'd get drunk, and orchestrate some excuse for the two of us to be alone together. He'd force my unwilling hands and lips to please him, force my body to allow his fingers to explore.
When he finished, sometimes I'd run, sometimes I wouldn't. When I did I never went that far, I was still afraid of being cast out and alone. Eli would always find me before nightfall and we'd return home together. I'd crawl through the window with a new name, a new self, and hope that next time I wouldn't be such a baby. Celia turned to Erin turned to Jessie turned to Wendy turned to Ashlyn turned to Zoe turned to Laura and still I never got used to his hands on me. Andy thought the way I changed names like clothing hilarious. The others were confused by it, but played along, remembering to call me by the new name more often than not. Andy only played along when he felt like it. Mostly he still called me Nat.
After a while he started coming to me in the middle of the night. He didn't even care if the others were around or not, and if it was after dark they almost always were. I had a sheet hung up as a curtain separating my sleeping area from the rest of the room, that was enough 'privacy' for him. He never stayed for the night. After he'd leave for his own bed, I'd lie awake shaking and sleepless, afraid to run, unwilling to go out into the darkness by myself.
I hated being startled awake by his rough hands, so I took to sitting up each night reading by the light of an increasingly dim flashlight, waiting until I heard his snores from the other side of the room before setting down my book, relieved to be left alone for one more night. I always loved reading, but I was never very good at it. Eli had been the one to teach me my letters when he joined us two years ago. I'd sit hunched over one of the three dog-eared paperbacks I'd collected, my index finger pressed against the page, slowly and silently sounding out the words one at a time, and lose myself for an hour or two in the world of Martin, or Daine, or Tally.
One night I fell asleep in the middle of the page, reading for the umpteenth time about Daine rescuing Numair from the Stormhawks. It had been a long day, I was tired, I couldn't hear Andy's snores yet but if he hadn't come by this point he probably wasn't going to...
Next thing I knew, I was jolted awake by Andy's breath hot on my face. Instinctively, I shrieked and lashed out at him with the closest weapon I had – the book I'd fallen asleep still holding tightly in my hand. I hit him across the face with it – it was almost laughable, as if a flimsy paperback was going to accomplish anything!
Anything other than annoying him.
“You bitch,” he said.
“What the fuck.” He pulled the book easily from my grasp, threw it away, on the other side of my curtain.
Don't you ever try to stop me,” he told me.
“I know you want this.”One hand pinned both my wrists up over my head while the other reached under the over-sized shirt I slept in to pull down my underwear. I cried, even though I knew I shouldn't.
“Don't, Andy, please.” I knew what he wanted from me but I couldn't, I just couldn't. I could change my name a thousand times but I couldn't make myself into the girl who wanted this.
The next thing I knew Andy's weight was gone from my body and he shouted
“What the fuck” again but not at me that time. I heard Eli's voice as I struggled to put my clothes back in order.
“For fuck's sake, Andy, she's just a child.”“You want to take her place?” Andy growled.
“Don't you dare fucking tell me what I can and can't do. I give her shelter. She hardly brings in anything. She fucking owes me.” I covered my ears with my hands but still couldn't muffle the sounds of Eli's cries, the sounds of Andy's fists striking flesh. I shoved the collar of my t-shirt into my mouth to stifle my sobs and curled up in a ball, waiting for it to be morning.
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The next day it was like nothing had ever happened. We all talked, laughed, acted like normal, the only difference being Eli's black eye and the stiffness with which he moved. When we all left to go about our business for the day, whether it be stealing, begging, performing, whatever, Eli went with me.
“I'm leaving, Boo,” he said when we were a safe distance from home. I stopped walking, confused.
“What do you mean?”
“I'm leaving. Leaving the city. Leaving Andy. It's only a matter of time before he kicks me out anyway.” A moment of hesitation. “I want you to come with me.”
“Why?”
“Because I can't just sit by and watch him do that shit to you. And I can't leave you here knowing it's going to keep happening. You know it's wrong, don't you?” I wrapped my arms awkwardly around myself.
“Andy cares about me,” I said uncomfortably, unable to meet Eli's eyes.
“Bullshit. If he cared about you he wouldn't be putting you through this. Come with me. I'll get us away from here and you'll never have to worry about him again.”
“Don't you get it?” I cried. “Andy's all I've got! I can't leave him!” Eli growled, frustrated.
“Don't
you get it?” he shot back. “You've got
me, Boo! You've got me!”
I shook my head slowly. “I can't,” I whispered. Eli slumped, defeated. With a sigh he pulled a scrap of paper and a stub of pencil out of his pocket, and scrawled something down. He handed it to me.
“What's this?” I asked.
“It's where I'm going.” he pointed to one of the words on the paper. “Mabtown. I've got some friends there. The address is where they live. If...” he hesitated. “If you ever...change your mind. If you ever need me, you come find me. Okay? Any time. Any day. I'll always be there for you.”
I nodded and stuck the scrap of paper in my pocket, deciding not to tell him that I'd never need it. Whatever got him off my case about leaving Andy. It was never going to happen.
“How are you getting there?” I asked.
“Bus. I've got money saved up, enough for a ticket. You...you should do that too, Boo.”
“How?” I asked again, incredulously. “We're supposed to give everything we get to Andy.” Eli looked at me like I was being real thick, which I guess I was.
“
Don't give everything to Andy,” he explained slowly. “Save a dollar, two, a few coins, whatever. Keep it hidden. Keep it secret. You should always have your own stash of money, just in case. You know as well as I do Andy doesn't always spend our money on what everyone needs.”
I nodded, the idea of keeping something like that hidden from Andy made me feel weird, but it did make sense to me, a little.
Eli stared silently at me for a moment. “I've got to go Boo,” he said finally. “You sure you won't come?”
I nodded. He shook his head. He put both hands on my shoulders, his eyes boring into mine. “If you ever need me, you come find me,” he said the words slowly, harshly, as if he was trying to drive them into my brain. He hugged me once, fiercely, and then he was gone.
When I got home that day, I did two things. First, when I handed over to Andy the small amount I'd managed to beg off some tourists, I didn't tell him about the two quarters I had hidden in my right shoe. And second, when I went to bed that night, I retrieved the book Andy had thrown the night before, smoothed out the crumpled piece of paper from my pocket, and tucked it in between the pages. Because as much as I wanted to just throw it out, pretend that everything was fine and I would be okay, Eli's words still echoed in my mind.
“You know it's wrong, don't you?”
