Somehow, though, I was able to pull myself to my feet. I had a vague notion that I needed to try to fight this sadistic stranger off my sister. I pulled up my jeans to unbind my legs, and as I grasped at my belt loops I remembered what was in my hand.
I was still clutching the cigarette box that contained his severed finger.
The guy looked at the box in my hand.
"Give that back," he stammered.
At this, I knew he believed my sister's lie.
He thought Shanna was me. He thought he really had groped her on the subway. And now he thought that he'd performed that nauseating ritual of severing his finger for the wrong girl.
He lunged for the box.
My sister screamed again. "Celeste, just run!"
Instinctively, I pulled away from him as he reached for the box. Unsteady on my feet, I fell back against the hole in the wall.
But I held onto the box tightly. I had the foggy idea that as long as I was the one who had his finger, he would go after me first and stay away from Shanna.
He took a furious, deep breath and glared at me. With his one whole hand, he swiped again for the box.
I pulled away as quickly as I could, falling backward and part way into the hole, knocking my head against the bricks. For a moment I wavered at the edge of the broken wall, then I lost my balance and fell back. I tumbled outside.
"Run!" I heard my sister scream. "Now! Run!"
What I did next, and why, is hard to explain.
I don't know if I did what I did because the ketamine's effect on my consciousness made me so compliant that I would have obeyed almost any order. Or, maybe my sister's frantic shouts to run simply gave me an excuse to do the most selfish and disloyal thing imaginable. It's true that I was drugged and, realistically, totally incapable of fighting anyone off my sister. But I honestly don't know whether that means what I did next was the natural, logical thing for anyone to have done in that terrible situation, or whether what I did proves that at heart I'm simply a bad person, weak and irredeemable.
But whatever the reason, as soon as I found myself back outside in that empty lot, I got onto my feet and ran as fast as I could away from 779 Sterling Place.
