Read Online A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard - Free Book Online Page B

don’t feel like a teenager. Dinner is corned beef and cabbage. It’s good. Usually they bring me fast food. So it’s nice when I get a home-cooked meal. I tell her I’m so lonely to please stay and chat for a little bit and she says she will. I have asked her in the past to stay, but sometimes she says she can’t because she feels guilty for taking me. She says it’s hard for her to be with me. She tells me she wished and prayed the morning they took me that Phillip would get a migraine and not be able to go through with it. I think to myself, Me, too. As I finish my dinner she tells me about her day at work at the old folks’ home. She says she enjoys her job but doesn’t like all the girls she works with. She says they gossip a lot. She tells me that Phillipis so sweet, how he comes to visit her on her breaks and brings her flowers. Sometimes they go back to the van and smoke weed or she takes a hit of the pipe with crank in it. She says the crank helps her stay thin. She doesn’t want to get fat. I think that’s weird she spends so much time worrying about her weight. I don’t think Phillip helps with her image when he talks about the other girls that look at him. The two of them have such a strange relationship.
    She asks me things like what music I like and I tell her I like Disney songs. I also like Mariah Carey, Wilson Phillips, and Whitney Houston. I just want her to like me. I really hope she likes me. For some reason I get the feeling she doesn’t like me. She says after a while that she needs to go but will be sleeping with me back here tonight. There was a movie she wanted to watch called
The Unborn;
she said she liked scary movies. So I acted like I wanted to see it. I didn’t really want to watch a scary movie, but I wanted her to be happy with me. I expected to see Phillip sometime during the day, but he never came in. I tried to think of the last time I had seen him and decided it had been a few days at least. I wonder where he was. I was relieved for the release from the sex, but I knew the longer he went without it, the longer the next “run” would be. I feared his return.
    That night, Nancy comes in and locks the iron door behind her. I thought it was strange because she usually slept wherever Phillip slept. I asked where he was. She said he went to live on an island with a rich friend for a while. She said he’d be gone for a month. Wow! A WHOLE MONTH WITH NO SEX! I am so excited inside. But she looks sad, so I just say, “Fine.” The movie starts and it’s scary and kind of disgusting with the baby walking around and killing people. Yuck! Then we hear a noise outsideand we both jump. Nancy says she’s scared to go see what it was but thinks she better, so she unlocks the door and goes outside. She’s back in less than a minute and says everything looks okay. That the dogs were not barking, so everything must be okay. She says I can sleep with her in the big bed, and I’m grateful because I didn’t want to sleep alone. By now the pullout couch has been replaced with a real mattress. I like it a lot better because it doesn’t squeak like the other pullout couch did. We go to bed. In the morning she wakes up and leaves. I probably won’t see her until dinnertime. The loneliness sets in again.
    A few weeks later when Phillip returns, he comes “next door” where I am being kept. I actually feel happy to see him. He has been gone awhile. I missed having someone to talk to. Nancy doesn’t say much and she cries a lot. It is hard to know what she wants, and I don’t quite know what to say to her at times. She reminds me of a turtle; you can never quite know what a turtle is thinking. Phillip is easier to relate to; at least I know what he is thinking. Phillip makes me laugh with all his jokes and antics. He says he learned so much while he was away. He has come back with a device on his ankle, which I find strange. He tells me that he was sent back to prison for the month. He