Heartstopper Read Free

of a neighbor’s untended front lawn. The bushes beckon her, their leaves rustling, as if in welcome.
    And then nothing.
    The girl’s shoulders slump in defeat. She has no memory of what happened next. The bushes block her vision, refuse her entry. She must have lost consciousness. Perhaps she was drugged; maybe she was hit on the head. What difference does it make? What matters isn’t what happened before, but what happens next. It’s not important how she got here, I feel her decide. What’s important is how she’s going to get out.
    I try not to laugh. Let her entertain the illusion, however fragile, however unfounded, that she has a chance at escape. Let her plot and plan and strategize and resolve. After all, that’s part of the fun.
    I’m getting hungry. Probably she is also, although she’s too scared to realize it at the moment. In another hour or two, it’ll hit her. The human appetite is an amazing thing. It’s pretty insistent, no matter what the circumstances. I remember when my uncle Al died. It happened a long time ago, and my memory, like the girl’s, is kind of hazy. I’m not even sure what killed him, to be honest. Cancer or a heart attack. Pretty run-of-the-mill stuff, whatever it was. We were never really all that close, so I can’t say I was terribly affected by his death. But I do remember my aunt crying and carrying on, and her friends offering their condolences, telling her in one breath what a great man my uncle was,how sorry they were at his passing, and in the next breath, complimenting her on the wonderful pastries she’d prepared, saying “Could we please have the recipe?” and “You have to eat something. It’s important to keep up your strength. Al would want that.” And soon she was eating, and soon after that, laughing. Such is the power of pastry.
    I don’t have any pastry for this girl, although in a couple of hours, after I’ve grabbed something to eat myself, I may bring her back a sandwich. I haven’t decided yet. Certainly a good host would provide for guests. But then, no one ever said I was a good host. No five stars for me.
    Still, the accommodations aren’t all that bad, considering. I haven’t buried her in an underground coffin or thrown her into some snake-and-rat-infested hole. She hasn’t been stuffed into some airless closet or chained to a stake atop a nest of fire ants. Her arms haven’t been bound behind her back; there’s no gag in her mouth; her legs are free to traverse the room. If it’s a little warmer than she might like, she can take comfort in that it’s April and not July, that it’s unseasonably cool for this time of year, and that it’s evening and not the middle of the afternoon. Given my druthers, I too would opt for air-conditioning, as would any sane individual, but one takes what one can get, and in this case, what I could get was this: a dilapidated old house at the edge of a long-neglected field in the middle of Alligator Alley, in the middle of south-central Florida.
    The middle of nowhere.
    Sometimes being stuck in the middle of nowhere can be a blessing in disguise, although I know at least two girls who would disagree.
    I discovered this house about five years ago. The people who built it had long since abandoned it, and termites, mold, and dry rot had pretty much taken over. Far as I can tell, no one’s made any attempt to claim the land or tear this old place down. It costs money to demolishthings, after all, even more to erect something in its place, and I seriously doubt that anything worth growing would grow here, so what would be the point? Anyway, I stumbled upon it by accident one morning when I was out, walking around, trying to clear my head. I’d been having some problems on the home front, and it seemed like everything was closing in on me, so I decided the best thing to do was just remove myself from the situation altogether. I’ve always been like that—a bit of a loner. Don’t like confrontations;