Slain (31 page)

Something in my gut tingles. I have a sense, a fleeting second of awareness that I should run. But I force it away as irrational. Principal Hendricks is there, my parents are across the street; what could happen? The men reach me.

“Emma Grant?” one of them asks. He looks like a white-trash version of The Rock—scraggly goatee hiding a weak chin, and muscles that stretch the arms of his T-shirt to their breaking point.
 

The runners on the track have stopped to watch. The soccer game is on pause. Everyone stares in my direction.

“Yes?” I say. My instincts tell me to deny it, but it would be worthless. I wonder why they even ask. They must already know.

Before I can ask what they want, he grabs me, whips me around, and squeezes my wrists between one of his hands. I scream.

“You’re coming with us,” the man says.

T
HE
OTHER
TWO
MEN
descend and each takes one of my arms away from him. They yank my backpack off my shoulder and toss it onto the track. My pencils and pens spill out on the red rubber surface. My notebooks flap open and flutter their pages in the wind.

My arms are pulled behind me, and something cold clicks into place on my wrists. Handcuffs. But these men aren’t wearing uniforms, so they can’t be police.

Which means they must be, they must—oh God.

“No!” I scream. I should have run. I should have run. I should have run.

I scream and kick at them, flailing my legs while one of them grabs me by the arm and lifts me off the ground. It’s like kicking a concrete wall. The entire force of my blows is absorbed in a meaty thigh, a trunk-like chest. I am nothing against them.
 

“Calm down,” somebody says.

Whoever I kicked grabs both of my legs and secures my ankles under his arm. I fight against it but am reduced to a squiggling worm. One man holds my arms, the other my legs. The third brings out a roll of duct tape and wraps it around my ankles.

“You can do this the easy way or the hard way,” somebody says.

“Either way, it’s gonna happen,” somebody else says.

Principal Hendricks is just standing there. He doesn’t even look concerned. He’s doing nothing as they attack me. Surely they’re not allowed to do this.

I try to speak, but the words won’t come out. Instead I scream. I scream and writhe and flail against them.

My eye catches another girl’s on the field. Erica. She’s holding a soccer ball, frozen, watching me. I beg her with my eyes, with my screams, to help. But I can’t make words, and she couldn’t help even if she tried. Her eyes are the last thing I see.

“Guess it’s gonna be the hard way,” somebody says.
 

A dark hood slides over my head. There’s something cold pressed to my back, under my shirt.
 

A jolt of electricity tears through my body. It is fire in my veins. And ice too. I feel my body go rigid, though every instinct is to run away. But I can’t move. I’m paralyzed by the force of it.
 

My chin dives into my neck as my body shakes violently. I feel bile rise in my throat and burning, burning, burning. My skin crackles. I suck in burlap with a hard breath, and everything goes black.

I
WAKE
TO
JOSTLING
and stifle the urge to scream. I’m lying on my side. My body bounces up and down on something soft. I can’t see anything. There’s country music playing, some twangy something I don’t recognize. It smells like stale French fries and cigarette smoke. I can hear the whirr of pavement beneath me and feel the slick of leather against my hands. I’m being moved somewhere. How long have I been out?
 

My feet and ankles are still bound, and there’s something else around my waist, holding me to the seat. The seatbelt? I wiggle my body toward where I think the buckle will be, but my feet thunk against what must be a door.

“We got a live one,” somebody says.

The hood is yanked off my head, and I scream.

“Keep it down.”

I stare into the face of a red-faced white guy with a shaved head. He’s holding what I can only assume is the Taser they used on me.

“Please,” I say. “I haven’t done anything wrong. You can’t just do this to me. I—“

“Quiet,” the guy says.

“I’m gonna be eighteen soon.“

“Did you like getting buzzed before, kid?”

No. Not again. Please. I shake my head.

“‘Cause that’s exactly what’s going to happen if you say one more word. Just one. Got it?”

I nod, my face sloppy with tears.

“Good girl. Now I’m gonna let you sit up.”

He pulls at my shoulders until I’m upright. I’m in the back seat of a large SUV. There are two single seats between me and the driver’s row. The one on the left is empty. That’s where baldy must have been sitting. Now he sits beside me on the long back seat. Goatee man from before sits in the seat on the right. Up front the third guy, big with a mop of thick black hair, drives. There’s the shoulder of someone else in the passenger seat. It’s smaller, maybe a woman’s, but I can’t make out anything else from where I sit.

The windows are tinted dark, but I can see the shape of things through them. The mountains are to my left, which means we’re headed north. We’re not in the city, we’re out on the prairie somewhere. It reminds me of the landscape on the way to the Limon Correctional Facility, and I feel a lump rise in my throat. Everything from Denver to Montana looks like this. Where are we?

The landscape makes me almost long for the prison, for a chance to try my case, to at least know where I’m going. Am I even still in Colorado? I was never formally charged by the police. Is it illegal to go out of state when you’re a suspect? Would they look for me if I disappeared? Or do they already know where I’m going? I could be headed anywhere.

“Here’s how this is gonna work, Emma. You’re going to do everything we tell you to do. You’re going to do it right away. And you’re going to do it without questions.”

I nod. I shift in my seat, trying to slip my sore wrists out of the handcuffs, but they’re too tight.
 

Baldy continues. “We told you before that things can happen the easy way or the hard way, remember?”

I nod.

“You chose the hard way before. It’s up to you whether you choose it again,” he says. “So which do you think you’d like to choose? You may answer.”

“The easy way,” I choke out.

“The easy way what?” he asks. At first I don’t know what he means, then I realize.

“The easy way, sir,” I say.

“Good girl. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

I shake my head.

“Sit tight. Won’t be long now.” He settles in next to me. I try not to think about what “Won’t be long now” means.

We drive for what feels like forever. Eventually, my hands go numb. I try to move them but I can’t tell if my fingers are wiggling or not. I peer out the window and try to recognize anything on the landscape. There’s nothing. No mile markers, no signs for towns, no businesses. We are on some back highway somewhere. The speed limit is sixty-five, and I haven’t seen another car. It wouldn’t matter if I did.

“Lean your head toward me.”

Baldy’s holding the hood again. We must be close to our destination.

I don’t want to, but I do it. It’s sick how quickly I’ve gone from fighting to total, complete obedience. What will they do to me if I don’t do it? What will they do to me if I do?

The hood slides over my face, and it’s dark again. I suck in a breath, and my mouth fills with canvas. I try not to cry.

A few more minutes of driving. The car turns right, the road gets bumpy. There’s a jolt as the car stops. Someone grabs my shoulder.

“Time to move.”

Outside the car, there’s dirt under my feet. I want to ask where I am, but I don’t dare. They wouldn’t tell me anyway. I have a pretty good idea, and I’ll know the specifics soon enough.

I hear a squeak and flinch. A door? The body next to me moves behind me and pushes me through. The darkness inside the hood grows darker. The surface under my feet changes too. Concrete? Tile? I hear a muffled gasp. I hear a whisper, but can’t make out the words.

I’m shoved into a seat. It feels like a metal folding chair. Someone grabs both of my wrists. There’s a click, and the handcuffs release. I want to rub my wrists, but I can’t. In the moment it takes to wish for it, my hands are separated and cuffed to the poles that make up the chair’s back. At least I can rest my back against it now. I do.

I hear something that sounds like whimpering. Who else is here? For a moment I imagine opening my eyes and seeing June, alive, kidnapped and being held here too. But I saw the bullet hole with my own eyes.

The hood is torn off my head. A couple hairs get ripped out with it, and I flinch with the sting. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. I’m in a dimly lit room. There are others here with me. Beyond the lights that shine directly above my head, I spot a familiar face that solidifies all my fears.

My mother.

T
HERE
ARE
OTHER
FACES
too. My dad. Pastor Pete. Mike. Paige. Paige and Mike’s parents. They are in a semicircle, and I am at the center. It should make me feel safe to see them, but it doesn’t. It just confirms every suspicion I’ve had since those men grabbed me at school. I’m at some reform school, some wilderness camp or something like it. There were rumors at church about different places like this, bad kids who left and never came back, but we never found out the details. I’m just as scared, if not more, than I was before.

I scan the room. It’s simple. Mint green and baby pink tiles from the ’50s checker the floor. The faded chintz curtains on the windows appear to be hand sewn. There’s a neat stack of metal folding chairs against one wall, and a large bulletin board that takes up most of the space on the other. The bulletin board is like something out of a kindergarten classroom, with girl’s names and hand-cut, fist-sized yellow stars next to them: Tabitha—eight stars, Brittany—two stars, Felicia—twelve stars, Amber—one star. There are at least a hundred names.
 

The three men who abducted me stand at the edges of the room, arms behind them like soldiers at the ready. There’s also a woman sitting inside the semicircle. She looks familiar, but I can’t tell why. I don’t recognize her. Her dirty-blonde hair is tucked into a prim ponytail. She’s wearing a floor-length khaki skirt, tennis shoes, and a loose plaid button-down that looks big enough to fit a man twice her size. Inside of it she is both trim and shapeless. She looks older than my mother, but something about her makes me realize she’s not. Maybe it’s her lack of makeup doing the aging. Without blush and lipstick her face looks flat and plain, not contoured and striking as it could be. Then I notice her perfect hands. They look baby smooth, almost childlike, and are perfectly manicured with a blush-pink polish. No one near my mother’s age could have such perfect hands. This woman can’t be more than thirty.

The woman stands and speaks.

“Emma, I am Mrs. Hemple.” Her voice is sweet and light. She folds her hands in her lap and crosses her ankles. “Your family, friends, and I have gathered here to have a serious discussion about your behavior.”

My mother lets out a sniffle from my dad’s shoulder. Mrs. Hemple gives her a sympathetic smile.

“Mom?” The word croaks out of my throat. “What is this?”

My mother wipes away tears and shakes her head.

“It’s not your turn to speak, Emma. It’s ours,” Mrs. Hemple says. “It sounds like you’ve been saying plenty through your actions lately. Today it’s time to listen.”

“Mom, please don’t let them do this to me,” I say, motioning to my restraints. “I can’t feel my hands.”

“Can she at least be out of the cuffs?” my mom asks.

“Stop lying, Emma,” Mrs. Hemple says, and casts a warning look to my mom. “No one is hurting you. You’re in no danger whatsoever. Your restraints are merely a precaution against you trying to hurt yourself.” It sounds like the repetition of something she’s said many times before, to other kids, or their parents, or mine.

“Why would I want to hurt myself?” I ask, bewildered.

My dad coughs. “Perhaps for a little while,” he says.

Mrs. Hemple sighs, displeased. “Derek?”

Baldy steps forward. Does he still have the Taser? I can’t tell so I cower away from him. My mom looks confused, worried. But as soon as he reaches me, Derek kneels down and unlocks the cuffs.
 

“There. Is that better?” Mrs. Hemple asks. “This is how cooperation works. But when you ask something of me, I expect something in return. Do you understand?”

I nod and rub my wrists. Feeling rushes back in the form of pins and needles.

“Good. As long as you remain calm and stay in your seat, you may have the privilege of having your arms free.”

“I don’t need this, whatever this is,” I say.

“I think you do,” says Mrs. Hemple. “And so does your family. That’s why they had me bring you here. They asked me to kidnap you from your self-destructive life the same way the devil has kidnapped your mind. Each person in this room has traveled here to tell you something to aid you in your treatment. I expect you to listen.” Her eyes are as black-brown and serious as a spider. “Miss Kent, why don’t you begin?”

“I told her already. This morning. No one told me this was going to happen.”

“Why don’t you read the letter your parents had you write on the way here?” Mrs. Hemple says.

Paige turns and stares at me with watery eyes. She pulls a piece of paper out of her pocket and unfolds it. Then she folds it back up again, quick and decisive. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this,” she says.
 

She stands up to leave, but her father puts a hand on her arm and she sits down again, crying softly. Then Paige’s mother takes the letter from her grip, clears her throat, and begins to read.

“Emma, you were my best friend, but you haven’t been a friend to me in a long time. There are so many ways you’ve hurt me with your actions.”