Mind Prey

to try her sometime.
    But Davenport and this computer operation…something should be done.
     
    A NDI AND G RACE had lost their grip on passing time: Andi tried to keep them alert but found that more and more they were sleeping between Mail’s visits, huddled on the mattress, curled like discarded fetuses.
    Andi had lost count of the assaults. Mail was becoming increasingly violent and increasingly angry. After the episode with the witch-woman, Mail had beaten her with her arms overhead, and she’d been unable to protect herself; that night, she’d found blood in her urine.
    She was disappointing him, now, but she didn’t know what he expected and so couldn’t do anything about it. He had begun talking to Grace—a word or two, a sentence—when he took Andi out and put her back in. Andi could feel his interest shifting.
    So could Grace, who hid from it, in sleep. And sometimes, in nightmares, she’d groan or whimper. Andi first held her, then tried to cover her own ears, then got angry at the girl for her fear, then was washed at guilt because of her anger, and held the girl, and then she got angry again…
    When they talked, Andi had little to suggest. “If he takes you, wet yourself. Just…pee. That’s supposed to turn off a lot of people like this.”
    “God, mom…” Grace’s eyes pleaded with her to do something: a nightmare of Andi’s own, but she couldn’t wake from it.
     
    T HE NAIL IN the overhead beam was perhaps half-exposed, and was as unmovable as before. They’d given up working on it, but when Andi rolled onto her back, she could see the nail head glowing faintly in the dark wood. A reproach…
    She and Grace hadn’t spoken for two hours when Grace, exhausted but unable to sleep, rolled from her left side to her right, and a spring-tensioner broke in the mattress. The spring pushed up into the pad that covered it, and thrust a small, uncomfortable bump into Grace’s cheek.
    “God,” was all Grace said.
    Andi: “What?” She rolled onto her back and looked up at the light bulb. Sooner or later, it’d burn out, she thought, and they’d be in the dark. Would that be better? She tried to think.
    “Something broke in the mattress,” Grace said. She pushed herself up with one hand and punched the bump with the other hand. “It makes a bump.”
    Andi turned her head to look: the bump looked like somebody were gently trying to push a thumb through the pad. “Just move over…” Then, suddenly, she sat up. “Grace—there’s a spring in there.”
    Grace said, “So?”
    “So a spring is as good as a nail.”
    Grace looked at her, then at the mattress, and some of the dullness seemed to lift from her face. “Can we get one out?”
    “I’m sure.”
    They crawled off the mattress, flipped it over, and tried to scratch through the fabric. The fabric was as tough as leather; Andi broke a nail without even damaging it.
    “We’re trying to go too fast,” Grace said. “We’ve got to go slow, like with the nail. Let me chew on it.”
    Grace chewed on it forever—for five minutes—then Andi chewed on it for another two, and finally cut through. The hole was small, but with a little worrying, they opened it enough that Grace could get a finger through. Tugging on the hole, she started to split the fabric, and then Andi could get fingers from both hands through at once, and she ripped a two-foot hole in the bottom of the mattress.
    The springs were coiled steel, both tied and sewn in. They took another twenty minutes working one free, using their teeth.
    “Got it,” Andi said, lifting it out of the hole. Grace took it, turned it in her hands. The spring had a sharp, nipped-off tip. She used it to pick at the stitching around another spring, and in a minute had the second one free.
    “I bet we could get the nail out with these,” Grace said, looking up at the overhead. Her face was grimy, with dirt grimed into wrinkles around her eyes.
    “We could try—but let’s see what happens when we stretch these things out. Maybe we won’t need it.” Andi rubbed the end of the spring on an exposed granite rock in the wall, the concrete floor: after a moment she looked at it, and then at Grace. “It works,” she said. “We can sharpen them.”
    A moment later, they heard the feet on the floor above. “Back in the mattress,” Andi snapped. They put the springs back in the hole, flipped the mattress over, shoved it against the wall, curled up on it.
    Grace’s back was to Andi, so