As quickly as she could, Katrina limped past the neighbors, the highway, the cars, the police helicopter overhead. She reached up, slid the window closed, and looked at her phone. Mercifully, adrenaline overrode her pain. Then Katrina crawled atop her desk, and dropped to the ground. Yet, Katrina moved steadily, almost gracefully, as she gathered what she needed.

There was noise from the highway, from nice cars leaving and less-nice cars coming home. Outside, there was noise from a police helicopter, noise from some family next door. In a day or two, her mother would call Tía Claudia across the Bay to find their stupid son and send him home.īy that time, though, she’d be almost four hundred miles away. Her father would punch the wall, throw something heavy and breakable her mother would cross herself and utter a prayer. There’d be no reason to doubt her of course she would go there. That part was true.īut then she wrote that she was going San Francisco.

In it, she had written that she was sorry, that she wished she’d never been born, that she didn’t want to make them angry, and that she’d never bother them again. It would be better not to face the world with visible bruises. She could do this.īy the light of her phone, Katrina applied concealer around her eye and to her cheek. She was in her room, behind a locked door. Katrina clutched her ribs, then propped herself up. Through the dark, she heard her mother’s one last cough. Breathe, be quiet, and listen.Īnd so, Katrina listened … for footsteps, for breathing, for sleep.

Say it’s all your fault-say you’re sorry, say you’ll promise to change.īut another, stronger, part of Katrina was calm, even cold. Why had she let it come to this? Why couldn’t she be what her parents wanted? Katrina had made an escape bag the first time her father threatened to kill her.Īt first, the bag seemed an “in case of emergency,” a glass that one would never break. Her throat was raw from screaming.Ĭautiously, Katrina Nguyen felt under her bed.

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