“I remembered his name, and I knew that names were real important to grown-ups, so I tried to say, ‘Please, let me out, Ted.’ But I had trouble saying my “d’s, back then. So it came out ‘Teb.’ And when he wouldn’t let me out I thought that was why—I got his name wrong, and that made him mad. It took me a while to figure out that he would never let me go, no matter how I said it.

“At first, for a long time, I lived in the box. He trickled water through the holes and I opened my mouth and drank it. He gave me pieces of candy the same way. Sometimes cookies or a chicken finger. He played the music really loud, all day and all night. The sad woman who sings. I thought that maybe I was in the hell they used to warn us about, at Sunday school. But hell was supposed to be full of fire, and it was very wet and cold, where I was, cold to the bone. After a while I didn’t notice any of it anymore, not even the smell. Time stopped being a line and flattened out.

“I had to learn a new language, for my body and my mind. The language of the box. It meant instead of walking, I just moved my feet an inch or two. That was a journey. Instead of jumping up and down or dancing, which I had once liked to do, I clenched and unclenched my fists. Sometimes I bit my cheek, to taste blood. I pretended it was food.

“If I made noise or kicked at the sides of the box, boiling water came through the holes. I couldn’t see, but I knew the burns were bad, because of the way my skin came off. Kind of like snakeskin. It smelled bad and I wanted to die with how bad it hurt.

“One day the music stopped. Above me, there was an explosion of light. I had to keep my eyes closed, it was too bright, I had been in the dark for too long. I heard him say, ‘Let’s get you clean.’

“He lifted me out of the box. I cried because I thought there would be more boiling water, but it was cool, from the faucet. I think he bathed me standing in the sink. Afterward he put something soothing on my burns and covered them with gauze.

“‘I put boards up over the windows for you,’ he said. ‘It’s dim in here. You can try opening your eyes.’

“I did—just a crack at first, and then a squint. The house was dim and huge. Everything juddered and shook. My eyes had forgotten how to see distances, because I had been in the box for so long.