I held it and I realized I could only remember one phone number by heart in all the world, the number I’d had memorized since I was a child, and I dialed it, and my mother picked up on the fifth ring.

“Hello?” “Mom,” I said, and my voice broke on the single word.

“Mom, it’s Maren.” I heard her start to cry, and it hurt worse than my leg, because I understood in that moment what had been done to her too.

My parents had not heard from me in six months.

Six months.

Garrett, it would come out later, had been sending messages from my own accounts, in my own voice, telling my mother and father that I was busy, that I was fine, that I did not want to talk.

He had not only caged me.