Taken Read Free

hand over my mouth and nose was cutting off my air supply. My head started to spin. I had to get free before I passed out.
    Suddenly the hand let go. I opened my mouth to scream, but the arm around my throat squeezed tighter. I reached behind me to claw at my assailant, desperate to get his arm off me. I tried to scratch his face or his neck or anything else I could reach. Then I felt a jab in my arm. The pain was short and sharp, like a bee sting. I felt numb all over.

TWO
    M y mom always said that some people wake up fast and some people wake up slowly. She said my dad’s eyes used to pop open at the first sound of the alarm every morning, and he would immediately leap out of bed, ready to tackle the day. Not me. I always took my time. My mom said I was like that even when I was a baby. She said I would lie in my crib with my eyes closed, but she knew I was awake. She said I was gathering myself. She said she did the same thing. She liked to lie quietly in bed and gradually let the day seep into her bones.
    That’s what I did when I woke up. I lay in my bed with my eyes closed and let the day seep into my bones.
    I thought about my dream. It had been so crazy. Allison was going to have a good laugh when I told her about it. She would probably say something like, “You make fun of everyone for overreacting, but if you ask me, your subconscious is as worried as everyone else is.” Allison was very big on the subconscious.
    I took a deep breath and started to stretch.
    That’s when I realized something was wrong.
    Very wrong.
    I couldn’t move my arms or legs.
    I opened my eyes and peered blearily around. Instantly I felt sick to my stomach. No, I thought. No, no , NO !
    I wasn’t on my nice soft mattress between the crisp sheets on my bed. Instead, I was on the floor, and the carpet was missing. I tugged on my arms, but they still wouldn’t move. At first I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. My brain wasn’t working properly. It felt heavy and wooly. My head ached. I had trouble focusing, and once I did, I couldn’t think straight enough to absorb my surroundings. It took a few moments for it to sink in that not only was I not in my room, I wasn’t even in my house. My heart started to race. All of a sudden I was gasping in air so fast that I felt faint. I was sure I was going to pass out. I squeezed my eyes shut—maybe I was in the middle of one of those dreams, you know, the ones where you dream that you wake up but really you’re still asleep. I drew in a few breaths and lay quietly until I was sure I was wide awake.
    I opened my eyes again, blinked and looked around. An icy feeling spread through my body, just like it had when Clark Adderly, the chief of police, came to our house and spoke to my mom in a soft voice while she sobbed on the sofa. I hadn’t wanted to believe what had happened then, just like I didn’t want to believe what I was seeing now. That same iciness that I had felt the night before crept into every part of my body, freezing me solid so that I could barely breathe.
    I was in some kind of a cabin. It was small and grimy. The wood floor was bare and cold. So were the walls. They hadn’t been painted. The only thing on them was a calendar hanging on a nail. It was from a hardware store. The edges were curled. It was ten years out of date.
    Whose cabin was this? Where was it? What was I doing here?
    And why couldn’t I move?
    Because I was tied up.
    My wrists were bound tightly behind my back. My ankles were tied too and had been pulled back behind me. When I tried to move my legs, the rope around my wrists tightened. I realized that my wrists and ankles had been tied with the same rope, the way you’d tie up an animal so that it wouldn’t be able to move. I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t even sit up.
    Thought after thought exploded in my brain, bang, bang, bang , like a series of gunshots.
    Thought: My mom had been