Free Unaccompanied Minor by Hollis Gillespie Page B

must have had feet like Frankenstein, because it took one single kick and that was it.
Bang!
It was way louder than I expected.
    I thought I’d have more time to make it to the sliding glass doors and out the side patio, but no. He moved fast for a big fossil, and my backpack didn’t help me, either. He grabbed it like it was a convenient handle and pulled me back. I ineffectively kicked and scratched. Suddenly it occurred to me to be terrified, and the fear gripped me like a giant squid. I began to scream.
    “Shut up, you lousy little brat!” he growled at me.
    I did not shut up. I screamed so loud my face felt on fire. I was surprised no one came to my rescue. I think if I were screaming like this in Atlanta someone would have at least meandered over out of curiosity. I managed to wriggle free from the backpack, but then he caught me by the arm, grabbed my hair, and dragged me back to the foyer with his hand over my mouth. I could smell the nicotine on his fingers, and he didn’t even seem to flinch when I bit his leathery hand so hard I was surprised I didn’t draw blood.
    I’d like to take a second here to clarify something. Even after all my supposed preparation, it’s a lot harder than you think to fight off a man who’s built like a big cinderblock with hands like anvils. I even kicked him square in the crotch, and it didn’t seem to break his stride. He flipped me on my stomach like a rodeo calf, and tried to zip-tie my hands. My extreme objection to this was making itself evident. I wasn’t nicknamed after the Tasmanian Devil for nothing. I was even beginning to think I was wearing him down, when suddenly I felt a wet cloth over my nose and mouth. It smelled exactly like nail-polish remover, only ten times the potency.
    I wondered how Old Cinderblock got nail-polish remover, because he didn’t have it when he kicked down the door. Then I felt an immediate weakness take over my body, reducing my fighting to a few anemic kicks and twists. Thick fuzz quickly closed in on the periphery of my vision, and amid the sound of Old Cinderblock calling me every profanity in the book—the real profanities, not the ones Officer Ned uses—I heard another voice, deep and drawn out, like it was carried across caverns on the echoes of the wind.
    “The same key fit both locks, you idiot,” Kathy said, and then I blacked out.



CHAPTER 4
    I awoke when my head bumped against the back fender of Cinderblock’s car. Whatever he used to knock me out didn’t have much of a lasting effect, but I kept myself limp like a sack of birdseed so he’d think I was still unconscious. My hands and ankles were bound together by zip ties, and it felt like he’d wrapped that silver electrical tape over my mouth and around the back of my head at least three times.
    He was not
at all
gentle flipping me around while unlocking his trunk. And I seriously cannot even believe no one intervened or called 911 or anything. Granted, Ash’s driveway was secluded by high hedges, but still, in Atlanta we would have had at least four people filming this on their cell phones by now.
    Old Cinderblock plunked me in his trunk, threw my backpack in on top of me, and slammed the hood down. He was cussing up a flood of filth, too. I heard him and Kathy take their places in the front seats, and soon I felt the car backing out of Ash’s driveway. I thought it would be best to lie still for a few minutes until I was certain the car was in a populated area. It was early March, so dusk was setting in early as well. The trunk was not airtight, but it was light tight, and I could not see a thing.
    I especially could not see any glow-in-the-dark escape handle. These kinds of emergency trunk releases have been required on all non-hatchback vehicles since the 2002 model year. So this was either a sedan built before then—which would not have surprised me, because the trunk alone was practically bigger than the laundry room Ash expected me to sleep in—or the