hurry.”
She decides she’s just being a silly girl, something Mom always said was not allowed in her house. She’s in the middle of a big crowd at the park after a soccer game. The bad feeling can’t get her here. She is safe. She smiles and waves at Dad. He waves back with the cell phone. The goose bumps are gone.
They arrive at the concession stand. Holding hands, they weave their way through the crowd of kids and grownups. Sally gets her snow cone first then Brenda orders hers.
“Panty check!”
Gracie whirls around to the snot standing five feet away and taunting her with no adult supervision. Way stupid. The snot realizes her mistake. Her eyes drop to Gracie’s hands, now Ms. Fist and her twin sister. The sneer leaves her face and is replaced by fear. The snot starts to back away, then she runs, but Gracie has her by the hair before they’re behind the concession stand, alone, no big-mouthed butthead jerk football dad to save her now. Ms. Fist, meet the snot’s nose. The snot collapses to the ground like a bunch of pixie sticks.
What a wimp! And she’s eleven!
The snot cups her nose and starts crying like a baby. She looks up at Gracie; her eyes are wide with fear. But her eyes aren’t on Gracie, her fear not of Gracie, but of The goose bumps are back. The bad feeling is back. It’s all over Gracie now, smothering her like a thick blanket on a hot day. It’s behind her. It’s breathing on her. She turns to face it.
Something wet covers her face. She tries to fight it off, but she smells something funny. Every nerve in her body starts tingling and now she’s dizzy; her arms lose all strength, her legs go limp, her eyes want to close. She’s floating now, a gentle bounce. No, she’s not floating; she’s being carried. She hears crunching below her, like someone stepping on dried leaves.
The bad feeling is taking her through the woods.
Gracie’s mind is fading to black; she fights hard to think of something to save herself. She thinks of Ben. She calls out to him, but no words come out of her mouth.
Ben.
With her last ounce of strength and willpower, Gracie reaches up, grabs her necklace, and yanks hard. Her arm drops. Her hand releases the necklace. Ben’s Silver Star.
Save me, Ben…
… A hard bounce startles her awake, but she can barely force her eyes open, just enough to see that wherever she is, it is dark. She hears the drone of a car engine and feels the rumbling of tires against the road beneath her.
The bad feeling is taking her far, far away.
Her eyelids outweigh her will. She can no longer hold them open. She drifts off into that murky world again…
… And coming alive now. But she is groggy, like she can’t wake up all the way. She hears voices. She smells cigarette smoke and fast food and body odor. Her stomach feels really queasy, like she might barf. Her mouth is dry, but she does not lick her lips. She does not move any part of her body. Instead, she opens her eyes to slits.
It’s morning. She’s in a car, wrapped in a scratchy green blanket and lying across the back seat. Up front are two men. The driver has blond hair under a black cap; he’s wearing a plaid shirt. The other man is bigger with a flattop, like Ms. Blake, the P.E. instructor, except his hair is gray. His left arm is slung over the seat back. It’s a very big arm. With something on it she has seen before.
The big man’s big head swivels toward the blond man, and he says, “That geek’s gonna be a billionaire.” A cigarette hangs on his lip. “Maybe we oughta ransom this little cherry. Bet he’d pay a million bucks to get her back.”
“I wouldn’t take no amount of money for her,” the blond man says. “We was meant to be together.”
The big man shakes his head and exhales a cloud of smoke. “Just ’cause you wanna be with her don’t mean she wants to be with you. You think about that?”
“Yeah, I thought about that,” the blond man says. “She’ll learn to love me.”
“And what gal wouldn’t? Funny thing about women, though, sometimes they’re real stubborn about learning to love a man what kidnaps ’em.”
The blond man gives the big man a look. “It happened before.”
The big man nods. “So it has. All I’m saying is you ain’t had no experience with women-whores at Rusty’s don’t count. And I’m telling you, boy, an unhappy woman… damn. Only two things you can do with an unhappy woman: make her happy or kill her. Take it from me, it’s a helluva lot easier to kill her.”
That tickles him.
The engine is making strange noises. And it smells awful. She sees the tops of other cars and eighteen- wheelers passing them. They’re on the highway. The sun is shining in the right side of the car. Which means they’re heading north. Which must be why she now catches a slight chill, particularly when Without moving her head, Gracie checks herself over. Her white soccer shoe is on her left foot, but her right shoe is missing; she’s still wearing the blue knee socks and shin guards. She feels around inside the blanket and-her uniform is gone! Her jersey, her shorts-all she’s wearing is her Under Armour! Why did they take her uniform? And the answer comes to her: Oh my God, they raped me! She bites her tongue to silence her feelings and squeezes her eyes tightly to hold back the tears. But one tear escapes and rolls down her cheek, lands on the seat, and disappears into a crease in the cracked vinyl.
Gracie wasn’t entirely sure of everything that being raped included, but she knew it meant some male person sticking his penis into a girl down between her legs without permission (although she could not imagine ever giving a boy permission to do that). Mother never talked to her about sex or any of that stuff yet; she learned what she knew from Ms. Boyd in health class. Ms. Boyd told the girls that when a boy makes unwelcome physical advances, they should point their finger at him and firmly say, “No! And no means no!” The girls and boys attended separate sex ed classes; the girls giggled at the drawings of penises in the book. The only real live penises she had seen were Sam’s, which was really little and couldn’t hurt a girl her age, and Dad’s, one time when she walked in on him in his bathroom. He got totally embarrassed and covered up real fast, but she got a good look at it. Dad’s penis was big enough to hurt a girl her age.
But she doesn’t hurt down there. She doesn’t feel different at all. Maybe the two men have little penises like Sam’s and that’s why she doesn’t hurt. Or maybe they didn’t rape her.
Or maybe… she closes her eyes and sleeps again…
… Until she is awakened by a door slamming.
She cracks her eyelids. The blond man is gone. The big man turns toward her; she quickly shuts her eyes tight. She feels his gross hand over the blanket, shaking her leg not so gently.
“Wake up,” he says.
She pretends to be asleep, but she hears his heavy breath as he exhales, and she knows cigarette smoke is coming her way. She holds her breath, but the toxic fumes find their way into her nose. She coughs. She can’t pretend to be asleep now. She opens her eyes. The big man is looking at her and not like he wants to be friends.
He is way past ugly.
His nose is broad and flat, like he had run face first into a brick wall. A long scar zigzags down the left side of his face. One eye doesn’t look right. His whiskers look like Coach Wally’s hair when his burr cut starts to grow back in. The skin on his face is blotchy and leathery and filled with little pockmarks like that guy at BriceWare. (Dad said the guy had bad acne as a child.) A cigarette is clamped between his teeth and smoke comes out with each breath. He’s the biggest human being she has ever seen, and he looks really mean. Gracie realizes she is trembling, she is so afraid. But her mother’s advice plays in her ears like a song on her iPod: Men are like dogs. They can smell fear on a woman. Never let them smell your fear. Never let them see you cry. Always act tough even when you don’t feel tough. So Gracie acts tough.
“You wanna put that thing out?” she says. “Passive smoke is dangerous to a child’s health.”
The big man snorts like a bull and a stream of smoke comes out both nostrils. “Not as dangerous as me, pissed off as I get when I don’t smoke.”
He has a point, Gracie figures.
He flips a Twinkie back to her; it lands on the green blanket. Yuk, it isn’t even individually wrapped! It’s probably covered with cooties.
