Damselfly by Jennie Bates Bozic

she would stoop to such ridiculous blackmail.
    Dr. Christiansen grabs the cart, aims the projector at the wall, and hits the power button. Footage of a dilapidated shop materializes on the wall. A young Native American man leans against the porch post, looking nervously from side to side. My heart quickens at the sight of him, but it isn’t Jack—just a guy that could be his doppelganger. He stuffs his hand into his coat pocket and grips something inside.
    It’s a gun.
    “Do you understand what you are seeing?” Dr. Christiansen asks. “Or do I have to break it down into small words for you?”
    I pry open my dry lips. “You’re going to frame him.”
    “Very good. The civil war was hard on the Americas. So many impoverished and desperate people willing to work for whatever the pay. All I need to do is send him one simple text and our friend will walk into that store in broad daylight and rob it. Then he will disappear, and the police will look for a young man who looks just like Jack. Unless, of course, you agree to cooperate.”
    The feeling has drained out of me onto the floor. All I can do is nod.
    “Perfect.” She holds up her phone and hits send.
    The young man on the screen jumps and fishes his own phone out of his pocket. With trembling hands, he reads the message, and his shoulders droop in relief. He lets out a cracked laugh and, with a smile, stands up straighter and walks away.
    The projector flicks off, and the assistant backs out of the room.
    I stare at Dr. Christiansen. I’ve always thought of her as a cold-hearted woman, but I’ve never seen her this ruthless. A spear of terror pierces my heart as she smoothes her coat, smiling.
    “I’m so glad we’ve been able to work this out,” she says. Then she’s gone.
    ***
    Later, Jane brings food, a bowl of hot water, and all of my clothes in a squashed bundle. If it didn’t take all of my energy to eat and get myself clean, I would be upset over the mess of wrinkles she’s made of my clothing. I’ve always taken good care of those things, and now there they are in a heap. I tug on my pajamas and curl up on the pillow.
    When I was a little girl, about five or six years old, Mr. Coxworth gave me several pop-up children’s books. He propped them up on the kitchen counter in his house, and I would play in the paper castles and oceans. I’d never heard the stories my “forts” belonged to, so I made up my own instead.
    Cinderella’s castle became the home of my “real parents,” who would come and rescue me someday and break the curse keeping me so tiny. We would ride away in a gilded carriage, and I would never have to return to Lilliput ever again.
    Hansel and Gretel became my brother and sister. Together we would bury the evil witch in candy and then live in her gingerbread house forever. In my reimagining, Hansel was my protective older brother and Gretel much younger, the baby of the family. And I was smack in the middle. Normal. And I didn’t have to go to school or have tutors or learn old, dead languages.
    The Snow Queen looked so very much like Dr. Christiansen in the illustrations that I imagined they were one and the same. Hansel and Gretel would come and spring me from her icy castle, and we would escape to our gingerbread house on the next page.
    As I grew out of the pop-up books, I began to write my own stories in a little notebook. I called them my “True Tales,” and they were my dreams for what my life would have been if I’d been born under different circumstances. Tales of my first day at school, getting a poor grade in English, first crush, first kiss…
    When I met Jack, I stopped writing them.
    Today I write a new one. Not on paper. Not for anyone to find. I write it on my soul.
     
    The heat of the morning sun and the man lying next to me draw me from slumber. Light wraps around his bare arm, setting the tiny hairs aglow, then comes to rest on the sheet as a perfect triangle of white.
    The man is Jack, but he’s a few