Authors: Mary Twomey
He leaned toward the door. His neck muscles were tensed, and he seemed to be listening for danger. It was then I realized his Spidey sense was tingling, and he had not let down his guard even in the solid bear-proof apartment structure. He spoke in a low whisper, grabbing my arm in a firm manner I did not appreciate. It didn’t hurt, but the I’m-bigger-than-you implication was clear. “Look, I don’t have time to explain the way of the world to you. We have to get out of here. If one Were found you, more are coming. I can handle one, sure, but a whole pack? You’ll have to trust me on this.”
“You?” My voice was shrill. “Who are you? Trust you? That may work in the movies, but I don’t trust on a dime. You can patch yourself up.” I pointed to the door. “Get out.”
Instead of arguing, he said the one thing that stopped my brain. He looked at me to make sure I heard him and said, “Salmon Seesaw.”
Three.
Five Minutes
Salmon Seesaw.
There it was. The secret family password. When our parents couldn’t pick us up from school or practice or whatever and they sent a neighbor, they had to use the secret family password, or Linus and I didn’t budge.
Jens smirked at my dropped-open mouth, which pissed me off. I did my best not to let it show.
“Well, that changes things. How did you know about that?” Not like my parents were sending him to pick me up from school. A dagger of pain shot through my heart, and I swallowed it down like a compartmentalizing champ as I began to bite my nails. My parents would never know about my schooling ever again. I never thought I’d hear the secret password after that. My heart warmed and hardened simultaneously. “Spill it, John.”
“Jens,” he corrected irritably. “And I know it because it’s my job to know it.” He pointed to the bedroom. “Pack.”
“Well, that’s nice and vague,” I grumbled, spinning on my heel away from him. “Tell me to pack. Like I’m not allowed to ask questions of the guy ruining my bathroom rug.” I stomped into the bedroom Tonya and I shared and grabbed a duffel bag. “Pack for a day, or longer?” I inquired, dreading the answer.
Jens turned on the shower to rinse the blood off his shoulder and called out, “Pack everything you don’t want burned to the ground in the next five minutes.” He sniffed the air like a dog. “Or less. I say go, and we run with whatever’s in your green backpack.”
I could feel my pulse banging in my cheeks. My green backpack. Not my school bag or overnight duffel, but the bag our parents made us keep packed and ready that had essentials in it in case whatever it was that made my parents up and move us around the country time and time again caught up with us. I got it out without thinking and shoved more clothing and a few keepsakes into the sack, praying it was not happening all over again.
No. Not this time.
I was the only adult left, so the decision to leave or stay was mine. I wanted a home – was desperate for it. Sure, the tiny apartment wasn’t exactly the white picket fence I was dreaming of, but it was mine. I wasn’t leaving unless I was ready, and a stranger yelling at me didn’t make me antsy to follow him anywhere. The instinct to run away from him was stronger than the secret family password in that moment. “How… how do you know about my green backpack?”
Jens harrumphed, as if I was the one being a problem. “Just do it!”
I marched back out into the hallway and shouted at the bathroom door, “Don’t you think you can tell me what to do without giving me answers! I make the decisions now, and I say I don’t have to leave!”
“Dammit, Lucy! This isn’t the Fourth of July! I won’t fight with you about this. I don’t care if I have to pick you up and take you myself. We’re leaving in four minutes!”
My head whipped around in his direction. Fourth of July? It was my least favorite holiday ever since Linus and I got the grounding of the century from my parents for hotwiring the teacher’s car and moving it to the strip club parking lot. We even called a local news tip hotline to report the car’s whereabouts just for good measure. Like Mr. Morris didn’t have that coming. He was our Chemistry teacher who referred to Linus strictly as “chemo kid” and even chuckled at the nickname. He had wiry gold caps on his browned teeth and cigarette stains on his fingertips that were so filthy, I didn’t like touching the papers he graded. When Linus had to run out of class to throw up during a test, Mr. Morris failed him, even with the doctor’s note. I usually don’t retaliate, but you cross my brother, I go for blood. Our parents demanded to know why we hadn’t involved them, insisting they would have scheduled a conference with the principal.
We didn’t want a conference. Linus deserved Mr. Morris’s career on a silver platter. Maybe that’s overboard to some people. Really, we just did what a principal with a smackhole teacher on tenure couldn’t. Linus’s stellar defense to our parents’ tirade was that we wouldn’t have had to hotwire Mr. Morris’s car if his keys had just been in his jacket when I’d tried to pickpocket him earlier that morning. Linus had never been great at feigning contrition.
My cheeks reddened that Jens somehow knew about the third biggest fight our family ever had. “How do you know about that?”
“Ah!” His outburst of pain stayed my next argument. I rushed into the bathroom, knocking him in the rear with the door by accident.
I swear it was by accident.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, compassion tempering my rage. He held his head, rubbing the bloody spot on his left cheekbone. His fingers came away doused in red, so I sat him down on the edge of the tub and prodded his face with my fingertips to judge the depth of the two-inch-long cut. He flinched and batted at me like a child. Taking advantage of his seated position, I kept my fingers poised over the painful spot just in case I needed to convince him to behave. “This needs stitches. Like, needs them bad.”
“It’ll be fine.”
I looked at him, hoping to convey how idiotic I deemed his judgment. “No, it won’t. You need stitches now. Let me at least take you to the hospital.” Under his nose, my eye caught on a shimmer of purple glitter. It was nowhere else on his body, just a few pinpricks to distract me.
“No hospitals. Just give me a Band-Aid or something and let’s run.”
I shook my head and reached for the first aid kit under the sink.
Thanks for this at-home lesson, Dad. We’ll see how well I was paying attention.
I ran to the kitchen and heated the needle at the stove, ignoring Jens calling from the bathroom that we were down to three minutes. “Would you shut up?” I yelled back. When I reentered the bathroom, his cheek was all bloody again, despite him having rinsed it twice. His aggravation at me was not as adamant, which was the first time I saw blood loss as a positive thing. “Close your eyes,” I ordered, wishing someone would let me close mine. When he jerked his chin away petulantly, I yanked it back, aiming the diluted rubbing alcohol over his head. “Close your eyes or go blind.”
Okay, I’m not sure he would actually go blind from rubbing alcohol, but it accomplished my goal. He closed his eyes as I dribbled a bit of the clear liquid over his angular cheekbone. “It looks like the bear did you a solid and missed your face tattoo. Now, hold still.” I threaded the needle and exhaled what I hoped was the last of my nerves. With a shakier hand than I would’ve liked, I swallowed the girlish scream in my throat and gently wove the needle through his tanned skin.
Jens huffed. “Could you not make that face, doc? You’re scaring me.”
It was then I realized I had my horror movie expression on. I tucked that away, too, along with my revulsion. I was going to be a doctor someday, so I’d have to get used to this. I had no idea what I was doing, so I completed the task as fast as possible, with Jens hemming and hawing the entire time, commenting that we needed to leave.
“Really? Really? We need to leave? Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place?” I snapped. “I’m not exactly a pro at this! I’m doing the best I can!”
His badgering grew less insistent, which was a relief, until I saw his eyelids drooping.
“Hey!” I barked, tying off the knot and snipping the thread. His hands pushed through the air like weighted paws, finally landing on my hips. I brought his head to rest on my chest and held it steady, permitting him a few balancing breaths. “It’s okay. You’re all done.”
Instead of a bratty quip, he held tighter to my waist. This was how I found myself participating in the bizarre, yet still tender, hug with the half-naked stranger. When my irritability finally broke, I held him tighter around the neck, not sure how to make sense of a bear attack that was almost fatal.
Jens smelled like sugar cookies. I couldn’t tell if it was coming from a girly body spray or from his actual skin, but it made my mouth water, despite the situation.
When it dawned on both of us that we were of the opposite sex, Jens loosened his grip on me. I lowered myself slightly and tapped him under the chin so I could look him directly in the eye. “Look, thanks for the save. I don’t know why there was a bear or how you escaped, but thanks.” When he nodded once, I continued. “But I’m not leaving. This is my home, and I decide when I leave it. And I’m not going back out into the night with a stranger when I know for sure there’s a wild animal out there. I don’t care how much you yell. I’m not going.”
I ran my thumb across the space above his upper lip, brushing away the lavender shimmer I couldn’t make sense of. His intake of breath and wide eyes told me he had no idea he’d had glitter on his face.
I showed him the remnants. “Rave much?” I asked.
Jens touched his neck, tugging at the pouch that rested against his bare chest. “Wash your hands!” he demanded, trying to bolt upright, but not having the space to do so without knocking me over. He pointed to the sink. “Right now. I’m serious.”
“Sheesh! I was just going to.” I turned on the hottest water I could stand and scrubbed until the glitter and the blood smears were gone. I displayed my clean hands to him, and watched him deflate by a degree.
Slowly, without breaking eye contact, Jens raised himself up so that he once again towered over me. I’m a solid 5’7”, so I didn’t often feel dwarfed, but Jens was nearly a foot taller than me. I would have shuddered at his intimidating form, were he not clinging to me like a child seconds before.
Without a word, Jens slapped a bandage over the cut on his shoulder and exited the bathroom. I exhaled, relieved at my tiny victory. Now he would leave, and I could be alone to try to make sense of the night. I could ponder it all while I cleaned the macabre bathroom that had blood on the floor, the sink and streaking down the bathtub. I needed to find a way to quadruple-bolt the door shut, too.
Before I could make a solid plan for that, Jens pushed one of Danny’s old black shirts over his head and jerked me out of the bathroom. “That’s six minutes. You’re done.” He hefted me up over his good shoulder and marched out of my apartment with my green backpack and my messenger bag in his free hand. Though I screamed and flailed, he and the closed doors we passed paid me no mind.
Four.
Fleeing the Scene
“Isn’t it common courtesy for the kidnapper to tell the kidnappee where he’s taking her?” I groused, trying to keep my fear hidden so he didn’t snatch that up too, and throw it over his shoulder like a caveman and then shove it into the backseat of a car. I kept a tight hold on my body with my left arm, leaving my right hand free so I could bite my fingernails.
“Shouldn’t the kidnappee be afraid I might slit her throat and dump her body in a river?” He looked in the rearview mirror to make sure I was behaving. I inched further into the corner of the stolen vehicle’s backseat. He shook his head in a somewhat contrite manner. “I was only kidding. I’m not going to kill you.”
“Love your sense of humor. I’m sure I’m the first to tell you that.”
“Second,” he corrected me, though I can’t imagine why. “Quit biting your nails. It makes me anxious.”
I banded both arms around my ribs. The beige leather of the Buick smelled like old people and too many pine-scented air fresheners, which did nothing to relax me. “You want to talk to me about what happened back there? Why we’re in a stolen Buick instead of calling the cops or animal control? Why there was a bear you conveniently happened to stumble across tonight?”
“Is this you thanking me for saving your tail?”
“I’ll thank you to keep your hands off my tail. I don’t appreciate being thrown around like a rag doll.” That was one of my pet peeves. After I passed the age of crawling, I did not relish being carried. By family, friends or bear-slaying strangers with face tattoos. “And I already said thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Man, you’re arrogant. When can I go home?”
“First off, we’re in a Buick because it’s an older person’s car. Less of a chance we’ll get pulled over.” He adjusted the mirror so he could look at me while he spoke. I let childish defiance take over and turned my head to stare out the window. “Would her majesty prefer something newer?”
“Shut your mouth. You don’t know the first thing about me.”
Jens chuckled, and the sound sent shivers down my spine. “I bet you’re asking yourself right now how I knew the family password, or about the green backpack. Maybe how I knew where you lived. I know you a lot better than you’d guess, Loos.”
I did my best to keep my tone clipped and not let him know I was shaking inside. If this would be my last night on earth, I wouldn’t spend it breaking down like a child. “Let’s start with that. How do you know my name?”
“I check in on your family from time to time.”
“How long have you been doing that?” I swallowed with great difficulty, not really wanting the answer.
“About five years.”
I gulped and debated jumping out of the car, even at the highway speed we were traveling. I took a few deep breaths and tried to come up with a better, less maiming plan. “Check in on us? What’s that supposed to mean?”
This was it. This is where he drops the bomb Linus and I always feared. Mob boss. Witness Protection. Government conspiracy.
Jens tapped his thumb on the steering wheel as if we were going for a midnight drive to an ice cream parlor. “Nothing shady. Your parents requested me specifically. I keep you safe.”
“Bang-up job you’re doing,” I grumbled before I could stop myself.
A moment of respect for my pain was permitted before he spoke. “Sorry for your loss.”
I rolled my eyes. If I had a dollar for every time I heard that asinine phrase, I would’ve been able to bury my family in gold caskets. “You don’t know anything about loss.” Yes, I was being bratty, but to be fair, I had just been kidnapped, and it was somewhere around one in the morning.
“You done sulking?” he asked. When I scoffed, he shifted in his seat and turned his attention back to the road. “I guess not. Take your time. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us.”
Through clenched teeth, I muttered, “I hate you so much.”
Jens laughed. It was a loud, bitter sound, which only made me more furious. “Aw! That’s cute, you thinking your big, bad feelings matter. Say it again.”
I bit my lip to keep from screaming at him, drawing in several long breaths. “Where are you taking me against my will?”
“To someone you’ll listen to. If I explain the way of the world to you, you’ll argue the whole time. If he does, there’s a chance you’ll hear it.”
“Where?”
Jens cracked his neck. The sound was horrible, like he’d been through about seven too many bear fights. “A few states south. The Werebears have been migrating closer to your area for a while, but none ever got this close. Now that one’s dead so near you, it’ll send the other Weres swarming for a nice juicy piece of Lucy Kincaid.”
“Don’t be gross,” I scolded him. “Werebears? Like werewolves but bears?”
“Sort of. Pesta’s bears. They’re really just vessels for…” He scratched at the cut on his shoulder, and then waved his hand to brush me off. “I’ll let him explain it all to you. Like I said, you’ll take it better from him.”
I bit at my thumbnail. “Wait, you said one’s dead. You killed that bear?”
Jens scoffed, as if any other outcome was a joke. “Of course. Do you think I’d really just leave the job undone?”
“Being that I don’t know what the job is? Sure. And I think you can probably guess how high my opinion is of you.”
He snorted, as if I was joking. “You know, I always knew you were funny, but I wondered if you’d be like that around me. You do that quiet blending in thing whenever you’re the new kid. Always going from moxie to mouse inside a minute.”
“Glad I could amuse you, Jack.”
“Jens.”
I threw my arms out in exasperation. “How about Jackass?” I snapped my fingers as brilliance came to me. “No, Jens the Lumberjackass!”
I rock so hard at nicknames. Being dubbed “Lucy Goosy” until the second grade brings about a desperation that tends to make a girl get creative.
He let out a full-bodied laugh that would have been endearing, were it not directed at me. “Sure. You can call me your Lumberjackass. I’m decent with an axe. Already got the boots for the job.” He stomped his heavy black boot to the floor of the car. “Plus, I like pancakes.”
“Huh?”
He glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Don’t lumberjacks eat pancakes?”
“That’s not a thing. Lumberjacks eat whatever they feel like.”
“Does the same rule apply for the jackass variety? That’s my main concern. I’m not switching vocations unless I get pancakes.” His green eyes danced with the joy of a good tease in the dimly lit rearview mirror.
Despite myself, I cracked a smile at the pleasure he took in my insult. “Maybe you could have flapjackasses.”
Jens pumped his fist in the air that the joke had come full-circle. “That was awesome.”
“If you like that so much, I got a million more.”
“Let it rip. We’ve got hours ahead of us.”
“Who’s got two thumbs and likes to…” Then my eye caught on the stitches I’d given him across his cheekbone when I saw bits of him reflected in the rearview mirror. My brain skipped a beat and I lost my momentum, frowning. “Forget it. I’m not playing with you. Don’t want to get Stockholm syndrome.”
He peered at me with skepticism. “Whatever. You’ve got nothing.”
“Nothing but a headache from your mouth.”
“That was weak. You can do better. I saw you tear that boy from Jersey a new one when he messed up your science project.”
I blushed, embarrassed that the little-known debasement had been witnessed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Poor Kenny. He had a little thing for you, you know.”
“He did not. It doesn’t matter. I’m not engaging.” I looked out the window and tried to guess how long we had been driving. Probably somewhere between twenty minutes and a billion hours.
He took one hand off the steering wheel to gesture about the car with it. “I personally don’t see it, but to each his own. You two would’ve been so cute together, safety glasses bumping as you reach for the microscope. The scent of formaldehyde in the air while something geeky plays in the background.”
“When do I get to go home?” I asked, switching tracks. I didn’t want to spend my time talking about a tenth grade science project.
Jens sobered, sitting up straighter. “You can’t go back there, Loos.”
“When do I get to go home?” I repeated. He did not answer this time, and my heart began to sink. “Jens? Why can’t I go home?”
“I told you. We burned it to the ground. Same as every time you and your family had to move. I was assigned to watch you. Tucker’s in charge of cleanup.”
I mouthed something, but I don’t know what. Were there words for this? My childhood. My adolescence. The pink stuffed bunny my parents got me that one Christmas had been left behind at one of the houses in the chaos of a fly-by-night move. I stupidly thought it might magically reappear someday. All of it. Gone.
The air became unbearably thick, impossible to breathe in. The stale scent of old people soaked into my skin and threatened to take me under. I was being chauffeured by an arsonist with a superhero complex who apparently stalked me.
I would not die in this car.
My brain went into planning mode to keep a panic attack at bay. I flipped through my mental Rolodex, trying to recall all the rental cars and clunkers we’d gone through, cataloging where exactly the buttons near my headrest were. I looked out the window and stretched my arms behind my head, fumbling around for the right spot. I used the window’s reflection as my spyglass, making sure Jens saw nothing suspicious. There wouldn’t be much time once I found the button, and even after that, there was no telling it would actually work. Either way, I was done dealing with the fire-happy lumberjack kidnapper.
I found the lever, but it was old and would not budge without coercion. “Could you turn on the radio, Lumberjackass?” I requested as politely as I could. Really, really didn’t want him to hear the click and put it together.
“There’s that moxie again,” he grinned, turning on an earful of static. “You went all quiet for a minute. I was worried you ran out of ways to make this car ride even longer.” Jens fished around until he found a hard rock station.
I clicked the button, but held the seat in place, scooting over to give myself room for the final move. I waited until the singer with issues he could only scream about hit a particularly high note. Then I slammed the right side backseat forward and scrambled into the trunk, wrestling my way past a tarp, a bunch of plastic grocery bags, and who knows what else. I rolled myself into position as the car swerved and began to slow. I tried to find the latch to pop the trunk, but I couldn’t locate it. My heart pounded, and I kicked as hard as I could at the taillight, praying it would actually work. Linus had taught me this trick when he went through his I-want-to-be-a-mechanic phase. If he was getting his information from the Dukes of Hazard or something equally unrealistic, I was going to be in a tough spot as soon as Jens stopped the car.
Three more kicks, and the light pushed out onto the road, shattering as the car slowed on the shoulder. Turns out the Dukes were right. I scrambled away from the damage, knowing I could not fight my way past him, but hoping he might keep driving and not notice the hole in the back carriage once he yelled at me. In my sparking and fizzing imagination, a cop would pull him over for having a taillight out. Then I could escape for real.
This would work. TV would never lie to me.
The trunk flew open, and Jens grabbed at me, dragging my flailing body out and dumping me on the pavement. “What’s the plan, Loos? Huh? Give me a heart attack? Cause a car wreck that’d kill us both? Brilliant idea!” He glanced at the car and saw the missing taillight. He threw his head back in frustration. “Great! Now I’ve gotta steal another car. Do you think I like screwing unsuspecting people over?” He looked around toward the road. “We don’t have time to switch cars. You’d better cross your fingers we don’t get pulled over for this. You have no idea the kind of danger you’re in.”
Sweat began to bead on my forehead, and for the life of me, I couldn’t swallow. My chest started to feel tight, and I knew I wouldn’t last long in the land of sanity. “I… can’t! Let me go!”
His tone calmed, but it did nothing to soothe me. “Breathe, Lucy. It won’t do for me to save your life, and then you do something stupid like this.” He leaned over and patted me awkwardly on the back, which was so patronizing; I wished I’d taken weightlifting more seriously so I could’ve made my opinion on his close proximity perfectly clear.
“Get away from me!” I wheezed, clambering to my feet and stumbling for the road like a drunken sorority girl. I waved my hands in the air to catch the attention of anyone on the freeway, but at this late hour, we were the only ones on the road. “Help! Somebody! Anybody?”
He stood next to me, arms crossed over his chest, his expression a mixture of irritation and amusement. Finally he joined in, adding to my shouts for the abandoned freeway to enjoy. “Help!” Then he turned to me, speaking as if I was an idiot. “Humans don’t stop to help each other. Give me a break.”