Every Two Years (Completed)

4

Two months later

"Alright BoonNam. That's the end of the interview for you." The man takes the shock hat from Nam's head and Nam obediently walks back to his bed.

"Here." The man throws an ice pack into her lap. "It's been two months already and to celebrate that, you try to escape. Why can't you be like everyone else and behave?" He leaves the room, taking along his wicked contraption.

Once he's gone, Ty sits beside Nat and holds the ice to her cheek as he wipes the blood off of her chin. "This is going to bruise," he says, looking at her swollen eye.

Whitney walks up to her bed. "Nat, you've got to stop this, or he will kill you sooner than he planned. You've only been here two months, forget lasting two years."

"Nonsense," Nat says, staying still as Ty pokes at the bruises on her shoulder. "He's strict about his timeline, and he won't let someone like me mess that up."

"Only because he thinks it's how you're developing. Didn't you hear him earlier? 'This is not what I expected. You are trying to escape on your own instead of helping everyone get out of here.' He's excited that you're deviating from what he thinks. If he finds out that you really are trying to find a way out and then comes back for us—for Ty, we're all done for."

"Enough," she says, pushing Ty's hand away from her hurt body. "All that matters is that the windows up there are not okay for an escape."

"All that matters?!"

Whitney, her hair long enough to now swing in a ponytail, marches away. Nat is used to her temper now, and she just ignores it, catching the shine grease building up in Whitney's hair even though she's determined to run water through it at least once a week.

"Last time you tried, you couldn't even get him on the ground and he didn't feed us for two days! Who knows what he'll do this time? You act out and we all suffer," Whitney shouts.

"Is two days of only water so bad that you'd rather sit here quiet and pretty until he kills you? Don't you want to get out of here?"

Whitney ignores her and just sulks back to her bed.

This time was her third attempt at escaping. She had been doing as much exercise as possible and had a bit more meat on her bones.

She knocked him down and could go into the door that was closest to them in the hall. But it was just an empty room with white paint covering all the windows. She couldn't see out or open them up.

He caught her before she had the chance to go through the door at the turn of the hall.

"At least you waited till after dinner," Ty mumbles, pushing her bright blue-green curls out of her face to see the blood coming from her temple. Her roots had grown out to her eyebrows, so her black hair met a sharp line of dyed hair.

She looks at him as he looks over all her wounds and bruises from where that man beat her. Ty is still small, shorter than her by a head, and still lanky, but she can tell that puberty was taking hold. His voice cracks when he talks, and he is getting taller. She can tell he will grow into his broad shoulders when he's done. And there was no way she'd let him die before that happened.

"It was still cool how you punched him like that."

Nat looks to a bed in the corner to look at the new kid that came a week ago, Stacey. They were tall, but willowy, just like Jerome. Born male but in the middle of transitioning when they were kidnaped. They were in a lot of pain from top surgery, but thanks to the kidnapper supplying pain meds and making sure they didn't get an infection; they were complacent, just like most of the kidnapees.

Ty pokes at her wound, and she hissed.

"I'm all right, kid," she says, pushing his hand away. "Some of this blood isn't even mine. You should see the other guy."

"I'm not a kid," Ty says, taking a wet rag and wiping the fight off of her skin. "I'm sixteen now."

"You're still a kid to me."

The lights go out and the night lights go on. Ty gets up to put her rag on the sink to dry and she climbs into bed, holding the covers open for him.

For the past few months, they'd been sharing a bed, always cuddling tight to each other, using her bed as a potential weapon. The others, almost a full house, are used to it.

Ty climbs in, and she wraps her arms around him. Only this boy, this small delicate boy, can lie in her bed, in her arms, and it not be about sex, but protecting something that she cares about. She vows to make sure he gets back to his family, and she gets back to Mikey. Come hell or high water.