I don’t do that.
“Then all of a sudden, wham! He brought his hand up and smacked me in the face, really hard.” I hear a catch in his voice. “I thought he’d broken my nose. I started yelling, covering my nose, but he told me I better shut up if I knew what was good for me. So I just sat there and kept as quiet as I could. I guess I was in shock. Like this can’t be happening. ‘If you stay quiet I’ll take you home,’ he said. ‘But I gotta run an errand first, okay?’
“I couldn’t speak. He drove on while I sort of sat in a daze, like I was just a regular passenger getting a ride. My nose was killing me but I tried not to cry. Soon he was on McFarland, and then he pulled onto the interstate. I still thought, okay, maybe there’s a chance he’ll do his errand and then drop me at home. But he drove and drove. I was trying to keep calm and not show him that I was scared. I saw cars driving past us, and I made eye contact with a few people. I thought maybe I should open my window and scream or try to signal for help. Because I knew I was in trouble. We’d gone five miles, maybe more. I even thought of opening the door and jumping out. I may have put my hand on the door, near the lock. But he was watching me like a hawk, with that lazy eye of his—that made him scarier. And that’s when he reached under the seat and pulled out a gun. A pistol. It looked real. ‘Not such a Superman now, are you? You try to yell for help or do anything funny, I’ll blow your brains out.’ He said it so calmly. Like . . . like killing some kid was the same to him as swatting a fly. ‘Go ahead and cry, baby. But I’ll kill you if you try anything.’”
Sam stops speaking then. He still stares straight ahead, like he’s in a trance. I want to say something—but what? What do I say to this?
“He kept on driving. At one point he finally pulled off the interstate. ‘What do you want with me?’ I asked. I wanted to know. I wanted it to be over with, whatever it was. He pulled behind a closed-down gas station. I thought, he’s going to kill me here.”
Attempted murder. Kidnapping. Here it all is. I feel like I might puke.
“‘Please don’t hurt me,’ I said. I don’t even know if he could understand a word I said. I was blubbering and trying to choke words out. . . . It was terror. Total terror.”
Right then we finally look at each other. Sam’s eyes are dry, but he looks deflated. It takes all my willpower not to slide my hand over to his. To touch him. To say, “I’m sorry.” Nothing I could do feels good enough. But maybe he can see how I feel, and maybe that’s enough. I hope it’s enough.
“It was almost a relief when he told me to shut up and get in the back. There was like a little cramped backseat behind the main two seats. No one could sit there comfortably, but he cleared away some stuff. He made me lie down the whole way, with my head near the passenger side so he could keep an eye on me from the driver’s seat. And then he drove off again. He drove and drove. I thought we must be driving hundreds of miles away. It got dark out.”
By then, back in Pine Forest, we were probably being grilled by the police. By then everyone was in a panic. It was hard to believe that all these things were going on at the same time.
“At one point I fell asleep. But then I woke when I felt the truck slow down. I kept my eyes shut. I knew he was watching me. The truck finally stopped. I opened my eyes then. He smiled at me. Not that evil, creepy smile. I can’t describe it. But it was like he was trying to turn into someone different from what he’d been the past few hours. His voice was different, too. I’ll always remember it. He said, ‘Wake up. We’re home.’” Sam pauses, shakes his head. “‘Home.’ Can you believe it?”
Right then I see my mother’s car rounding the bend in the road. Her car lights are on, though it isn’t really that dark yet. “My mom’s here,” I say, but I don’t move. I feel like I’m chained to the ground.
“Yeah,” Sam says, watching as the car approaches.
Even when she parks, we both keep sitting there. I take another sip of water, and then offer one to Sam. He takes it and sips and hands it back to me, and I take another gulp, knowing that I’m drinking in tiny particles of Sam now, the way he was drinking in particles of me. Connected.
“Josh?”
“Yeah?”
“If you don’t want to hang out with me again, I’ll . . . I’ll understand.”
Mom honks her horn. I guess because she’s in a rush, or maybe she thinks we don’t see her. As if on cue, Mrs. Manderson’s car swings into view.
“Why would you think that?” I say.
Sam doesn’t look at me, just shrugs.
I stand up and gather my stuff, and he does, too. We both walk toward the gate. All I can think to say is, “We should play again sometime.”
Sam doesn’t say anything at first. But at the gate he stops and says, “You sure?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m sure.”
===
At home, I get started on my schoolwork. I begin with the algebra problems, but nothing makes sense. It’s like I’m reading a foreign language: Julie rode her bike for 6 1/4 miles on Tuesday. On Thursday, she biked 3 1/10 times as far as on Tuesday. How many miles did Julie bike on Thursday? Who cares. I skip ahead but it doesn’t matter—the questions are all like this.
Sam’s at home by now. He doesn’t have homework. He’s not in school yet. Sam’s not in school because he didn’t ride his bike fast enough. If Sam had ridden his bike faster—no that’s not it. If he hadn’t stopped . . . if he hadn’t gotten a flat. If I’d stayed with him . . . If I’d mentioned the white truck. If we had just stayed home. We should have stayed home.
I try and get back to my work but the problems keep tripping me up. And I can’t stop thinking about Sam’s story. It’s like a person’s life could be turned into a problem set, like the dumb ones in my algebra text. Sam rode his bicycle 2.5 miles that day. He rode in a car for over 120 miles. He was gone from home for 1189 days. X is the life he would have had, if he’d only stayed at home. Solve for X.”
I stand and rip the paper into pieces. I don’t even bother to clean it up. I walk to my bed and I lie down and I close my eyes and I put my pillow over my face because I’m crying now and I have to let it out and I don’t want Mom or Dad to hear me.
When I finally stop, I go the bathroom and wash my face, careful not to look at myself in the mirror.
I sit back down at my desk and close the algebra book. There is other homework to do, luckily.
CHAPTER 7
Adults
Beth