The door swung shut behind Parker, separating him from the confusion and din of the toy store, separating him from his friends. Through the little round window in the door, he met the eyes of Sunny and Bubba. They stared at him, their mouths open. They obviously felt the same way he did: What in the world was going on?
“What’s going on?” Parker asked. I must be in shock, he thought to himself. Was this what shock felt like? He pushed on the man’s back to try and sit up, to see the man’s face. It didn’t work. The man walked quickly, bouncing, and Parker felt the man’s shoulder dig into his gut with each step. Parker suddenly remembered when he was five years old and his dad took him to the circus. Parker had insisted upon riding the camel. After one trip around the tiny oval, he’d slid off the camel’s back, falling to the dust and straw floor of the warm, smelly tent. Who knew riding a camel was so uncomfortable?
Am I being kidnapped?
A complete stranger had grabbed him and carried him away.
That’s it, he realized, I’m being kidnapped.
What kind of birthday was this?
An entire store full of snot-nosed brats and they grabbed ME?
What should I do?
He tried to think. What had the school nurse said to do in this situation? Stop, drop, and roll? No, that was to be employed in the event you found yourself on fire. What had she sad about kidnapping? He couldn’t remember! He never paid any attention to that stuff. He remembered the nurse digging through his hair with a wooden tongue-depressor in search of lice, then something about how to poke a hole in the front of someone’s neck with a pen if they were choking and that Heinie-lick Maneuver-thing hadn’t worked. But he couldn’t recall ever hearing anything about what to do when a bunch of men in dark suits stole you out the back door of a toy store. Why hadn’t he paid more attention in school?!
“Help!” he shouted. The bouncing-man’s shoulder made it difficult to draw air and his shout came out weak and pathetic.
“Shut-up,” said the man.
Parker could see only the cement floor of the warehouse and the alternating shiny black heels of the man’s shoes as he walked. His mind raced. He tried to think of something, anything.
He had another idea.
He waited long enough to draw several shallow breaths and with all his might screamed, “FIRE!”
He’d seen an ad on SuperVision about how people on the street never respond to cries for help because they don’t want to get involved, but everybody comes running when someone yells Fire! The host of the show wasn’t sure why onlookers responded this way, though he speculated it had something to do with the innate arsonist in all of us. Parker figured people were just curious about fires because they saw them so rarely. Or perhaps it had something to do with destruction of property or loss of life or with catching on fire themselves. Stop, drop, and roll.
Parker drew breath between steps so he could shout ‘fire’ again. He opened his mouth to scream. Another man grabbed his cheeks and stuffed something into his mouth. It felt like one of his mom’s silk scarves his dad still kept folded neatly in their bureau drawer, beside their bed he still kept as well. Then a wide strip of silver tape was stuck over Parker’s mouth.
“He said to shut-up,” said the man with the tape. The man then took out a long white plastic zip-tie and cinched it tightly around Parker’s wrists, binding them together behind his back. Parker felt another strap his legs together at the ankles.
“Sorry, kid, but this is for your own good.”
Parker lifted his head to see what could possibly be for his own good. He tried to turn away as the man slid a black hood over his head. He could no longer see the shiny black heels of the man carrying him. He couldn’t see anything. There weren’t even any tiny holes in the hood’s fabric through which at least some light shone.
Parker wondered if he should be scared, and only then did he realize that he was. In fact, he was terrified.
In that moment, Parker wished more than he had ever wished for anything in his entire life that his dad had come home from the war that morning. Never before had he realized how much he loved and missed and wanted his father. He was almost glad he had a stupid black hood on his head because the kidnappers couldn’t see the tears rolling down his cheeks as he quietly began to cry.
*** ***
And now, here’s a sneak peek at the next installment: