by Sofia Daniel
I shook my head and walked to our tent. When a sane teacher arrived, I would tell them what had happened. Miss Oakley had clearly lost her last marble. I unzipped the opening of our tent to find the entire left side empty. They’d taken all my stuff, too. Typical.
Nothing of Rita’s would fit me, so I walked to the shower block and stared at the mirror. The words, WHORE, TROLLOP, and YANK were scrawled on my face with permanent blue marker. My shoulders drooped with defeat. Now I understood why Miss Oakley had taken my complaint lightly. She’d thought I’d left because of the writing on my face. The bastards had taken my things and made it look like I’d run away. No wonder she had been unimpressed.
I rubbed at the insults with my fingers but couldn’t even get the ink to fade. Instead, I combed through my hair, dislodging grass, twigs, and the occasional sheep pellet. Did Rudolph know how bad these boarding schools could get? I doubted he would let me suffer this much torment if it meant risking my life.
Miss Oakley entered with a steaming cup of tea, a towel, and some shower gel. “I found you some spares, but we’ll have to invoice your parents for the supplies you left behind on your travels.”
“T-thanks.” My voice cracked. By now, I’d learned to pick my battles and wouldn’t dispute the invoice. At least I could have a shower.
After undressing, I stepped into the only working cubicle and let the warm water wash away my aches, sweat, and all the other things I’d accumulated in the past twelve hours. Dipping my head, I let out a long breath and stared at the water swirling at my feet.
It was red.
A sob escaped my throat. The bastards had put red dye into the shower head, and I’d been too incautious to let the water run beforehand. I’d already cried myself dry on the long walk through the countryside, and only an empty well of despair filled my chest. Their cruelty was relentless, and it wouldn’t stop until I’d left Mercia Academy. Forget Rudolph, forget the internship, his college money, and the promised job in journalism. I was going home, but not before I’d avenged myself with something vindictive.
I shut off the water and dried my artificially reddened skin, praying that they hadn’t stolen my clothes while I’d showered. They hadn’t. After dressing, and after choking down a shitty meal of tomato soup and miniature frankfurters, one of the instructors started up a barbecue, and the rest of the house returned through the woods, hooting at me as if my red skin and hair was the funniest thing they’d ever seen.
My hands tightened into fists. Right now, I wished I was Carrie, so I could drop some trees on their heads.
Blake broke through the crowd of idiots, his handsome face split into the biggest, shit-eating grin. “What happened to you?”
The mirth in his eyes made me want to spit. How could I have ever found him attractive? Right now, I wanted to slam my metal bowl into his face and enjoy seeing him grin through broken teeth and a bent nose.
Edward appeared at his side. “This won’t end until you leave Mercia Academy. If you think last night was bad, things are about to get worse.”
Behind them, Henry looked to the side, not able to meet my eyes. He’d been the one to negotiate the truce, but I’d been stupid enough to believe he was representing Edward. Who knew? He might have made up the apology and gone over to my room to say anything he needed to get those photos deleted.
The triumvirate strolled away to cheers and whistles, leaving me sitting alone like a discarded rag doll that had been washed in the hot cycle with a red sock. Every ounce of fight had left my body, and I was ready to give up. I looked around for my only friend, but she wasn’t standing among the crowd. Maybe they’d done something to her, too.
Mr. Jenkins pulled up a chair.
“Miss Hobson, may I ask why you saw fit to leave us last night?”
When I explained what had happened, he shook his head, sighed, and patted me on the wrist.
“Sir?” I asked.
“Perhaps you should leave.” He leaned forward and furrowed his brows. “The staff can’t protect you, and the level of attacks against your person are escalating to unreasonable proportions. Think about your future. The last time, you came to me with eyes as red as tomatoes, and today, you were left to the elements.”
My mouth dropped open. What kind of teacherly advice was this?
Mr. Jenkins shook his head. “I fear you may not be able to endure whatever they do next.”
A boulder of dread made my entire body slump. Mr. Jenkins might have been an ineffective housemaster, but he had a point. Edward had promised to make things worse.
He raised his head. “Ah, there she is.”
Rita trudged out from behind the trees, her entire front covered in mud. Someone had obviously pushed her into a puddle. A lump formed in my throat. I’d been so concerned about myself and hadn’t even raised the alarm about my friend. Mrs. Jenkins rushed over, handed her a steaming mug, and guided her to the washroom. It was as if they knew their jobs were to clean up the triumvirate’s messes with cups of tea and gentle words.
“Will you excuse me?” Mr. Jenkins rose and trailed after his wife.
I clenched the arms of my chair and glowered across the campsite at the students crowding around the barbecue. Something had to be done about Charlotte and the triumvirate. They couldn’t be allowed to continue tormenting people. Before I left Mercia Academy, I would show them the pain of being vilified for no reason except that someone found their existence offensive.
Henry broke away from the crowd and strolled through the trees in the exact direction Rita had emerged. I shot out of my seat and followed after him, ready to demand answers. After passing through a small grove of oaks, I entered a clearing covered in leaf litter and acorns. Henry disappeared behind a clump of hazel and I quickened my pace, hoping to catch him with this pants down so he would be easier to intimidate.
When I rounded the coppice, it was to find two men in black had grabbed Henry’s arms and were marching him away.
I raised my arm and called out. “Hey—”
Something hard cracked against the back of my head, and everything went black.
Chapter 11
My entire skull throbbed so hard, the vibrations traveled down my brainstem. Forcing myself out of unconsciousness was like swimming through jello wearing lead boots. A boulder of grogginess and pain kept forcing me back down. I don’t know how long it continued, this cycle of struggling to wake then passing out again, or why, but every so often, I felt the surface beneath me rumble, as though I’d been laid out on a conveyor belt.
When I finally fought my way to the waking world and opened my eyes, Henry’s were glaring back at me from a distance of about a foot. I drew back, wrists duct taped together, and kicked out with bound legs. We were in some kind of confined space. The trunk of a large vehicle with the smallest of light bulbs providing scant illumination.
“What are you doing?” he hissed.
A wave of fatigue wrapped around my mind, slowing it to halt. “Trying to… get free.”
“You’ve gotten yourself kidnapped. Why?”
“What?” I blinked.
“Why did you have to follow me?” I’d never heard him speak so harshly.
“Kidnapped? What do you mean?” The words came out slow as molasses. My heavy eyelids pulled themselves shut, and I breathed hard to gather my strength. Being hit in the back of the head was brutal. This was probably a concussion.
If Henry explained what he meant, I didn’t hear it. Another bout of head throbbing took over and dragged me back to sleep.
“Hobson,” Henry hissed.
“Huh?” I yawned.
“Are you awake?”
“No.”
I don’t know how long this cycle of waking and immediately falling to sleep continued, but at some time, realization hit like a branch to the back of the head. Someone had abducted Henry, and because I’d witnessed it, they had taken me along. My heart jolted into action, pumping blood to my trembling limbs. The vehicle no longer rumble
d beneath us. It was the smooth kind of vibration from driving along a trafficless road, like the freeway. The kidnappers were probably moving us to another location far out of reach of local search parties. Sweat broke out across my skin, and my breaths became shallow. Nobody would ever find us!
My eyes snapped open. “B-Bourneville?”
Henry sniffed. The dim light in the trunk darkened his blond hair and created harsh shadows across his face. “Now you’re awake. What the hell did you think you were doing last night, Hobson? You could have gotten yourself killed!”
A rush of anger pushed my fear aside, flexing the muscles in my jaw and neck. I would never have ended up into this shitty predicament if he hadn’t negotiated a fake ceasefire. I jerked in my bonds, and bumped my ass on the wall of the trunk. “That’s rich, coming from the man who left me duct taped in a sleeping bag to be eaten alive by sheep!”
“I had nothing to do with that,” he hissed.
“You could have stopped them, but you did nothing!” I hissed back.
Henry didn’t reply because it was true. Even though he hardly participated in the bullying, he was always there with the others, observing me as though everything I’d suffered was some big TV social experiment. Not laughing along with his friends didn’t make him innocent. At any time, he could have expressed his disapproval but he was probably too concerned with fitting into the triumvirate or didn’t care enough to speak up. Either way, he was guilty by association.
He cleared his throat. “That prank would—”
“You call leaving someone to the elements a prank?” I shook my bound fists into his face. “Some pervert cornered me in a hedgerow and wanted to take me back to his shed for whiskey!”
He flinched. What did he think was going to happen to a young woman on her own? “I’m… are you alright?”
“No thanks to you! And now I’m kidnapped with a head that won’t stop throbbing.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t have broadcasted Underhill’s—”
“That wasn’t me.” I thrashed about and accidentally kicked him in the shins.
“Shhh! It’s best that they think you’re unconscious, or they’ll drug you again.”
All the blood and anger drained from my face, leaving me with a mouth and throat as dry as sand. “D-drug?”
“Just after they taped you up, one of them injected you with something. They said it was to keep you calm for the journey.”
I swallowed hard and stared at the dark walls of the trunk. No wonder it had taken so long to awaken. I’d thought it was a combination of pain and the mother of all concussions, but drugs? I shuddered. What if it was heroin or some other kind of addictive substance? What if they gave me an overdose?
Twisting around in the darkened space, I rasped, “W-we have to get out of here.”
“This boot is secure. I tried kicking it open earlier. It wouldn’t budge, and the kidnappers stopped at the roadside and said they’d kill you if I tried again.”
A bone-deep shudder rocked my entire body. Drugs, murder, and a large getaway vehicle? These kidnappers were the real deal. “T-they did?”
He gave me a grim nod. “So, I’d keep quiet and cooperate, in case they work out you’re more trouble than you’re worth as a hostage.”
“Is that what they want?” I asked. “Ransom?”
“Most likely. I can’t see them abducting me and taking me this far for my body.”
My gaze swept down his muscled chest. I couldn’t see much of it in the dark, but if I was the kidnapping type and wanted to keep someone chained to a hideout for a little guilty pleasure, it would probably be a guy with a physique like Henry’s. I pushed away the stray thought. Obviously, the drugs they’d injected into me were trying to derail my plans of escape.
The only way I could survive this ordeal was to become a hostage in my own right, not the hostage’s whipping girl. “Did you tell them I was Rudolph Trommel’s stepdaughter?”
“I kept quiet about that,” he replied.
“Why?” It was a struggle to keep the screech out of my voice.
“If Trommel valued you enough as a daughter, you’d be in an American school, close to your family. Obviously, he shipped you to England because he didn’t want you getting in the way of his beautiful, new wife.”
His words hit harder than Charlotte’s boot to the stomach, and I flinched. That was exactly why Rudolph sent me here. He’d just added the crap about studying overseas being character-building so he could impress Mom. Had Henry gleaned all this from his careful observations, or did the whole school know I’d been thrown away like trash? My throat thickened, and a tingling heat crept up my cheeks, settled around my eyes, and made them well with tears. Even if we’d been abducted by violent, drug-wielding kidnappers, I wouldn’t let him see me cry. I rolled onto my other side and blinked the tears away.
“Hobson?”
I closed my eyes. As far as I was concerned, his trunk-time entertainment was over.
“Hobson.”
I ignored his nudge.
“Hobson?”
It was insane. Here I was, duct taped for the second time in twenty-four hours, still suffering from being injected with a mystery drug, but it felt good to be the one doing the snubbing for once. The more Henry called out, the more I ignored him. He and the triumvirate were used to being the center of Mercia Academy. Let him see what it felt like to be the one clamoring for attention. I’d bet he didn’t feel quite so kingly now. Eventually, whatever drugs still remained in my system kicked in again, and I fell back to sleep.
The next time I woke, a large someone was carrying me over his shoulder. I cracked my eyes open. It was sunrise, but the streetlights still shone. We seemed to be in a residential area of terraced houses fronted by ridiculously tiny front gardens with brick walls. This wasn’t Mercia village. The distant traffic sounds and the lack of fresh air made me think we were in a large city.
Between parked cars, I caught glimpses of pot-holes in the road, indicating that this was a run-down part of town. Then we passed a street sign that said MULBERRY TERRACE. Whoever was carrying me stopped at a house with lots of broken furniture and black, plastic bags piled into its front garden. My nose twitched at the stench of trash.
The door opened, wafting out the warm, sickly-sweet smell of marijuana. The chatter of young people filled the air along with the strains of Bob Marley playing on a smartphone. My abductor’s heavy tread made every floorboard creak underfoot. I counted three flights of what felt like woodworm-infested stairs.
“Caz!” shouted a slurred voice.
“Chat later,” one of the kidnappers snapped.
“Oi, Stokes?” the voice said. “What are you two doing?”
I bit down hard on my lip and memorized those names. From the party atmosphere and lack of DJ, this place appeared to be some sort of commune for hippy criminals. At the end of the third floor hallway, someone up ahead opened a creaking door, and we entered a musty room filled with broken furniture. The man whose shoulder I’d been lounging on placed me onto a bed topped with a bare, urine-scented mattress.
“Keep her quiet, or we’ll do it for you,” said a rough voice.
I drew in a sharp breath through my teeth. More drugs?
“Don’t worry about Hobson,” Henry replied, resignation in his voice. “She’s stronger than she looks.”
When the door clicked shut and a key turned in the lock, Henry rushed to my side.
“Hobson? Are you alright?”
I tried to sit up, but the pain swirling inside my skull shoved me back down. “Headache.” I squeezed my eyes shut, reciting a list of everything I’d seen: large city, pot-holes, Mulberry Terrace, broken furniture in the front garden, a three-story house occupied by hippies, the scent of marijuana, woodworm, Caz and Stokes. “But I’m fine.”
Henry lowered himself onto the mattress, making its springs groan. “Hopefully, they’ll let us out once the ransom is paid.” He glanced around the room. “Although I think
the squalor may kill us first.”
Chapter 12
I must have fallen asleep again because the next thing I knew, I was propped up on the mattress with my back against the wall while someone took photos of me with a flash camera. My entire skull felt like it was made of iron, and each flare of the camera flash sent searing pain through its contents. They must have injected me again while I’d dozed off.
Cold despair filled my heart, seeped out into my chest and settled in my stomach, adding to its thickening dread. If the kidnappers kept me drugged like this, I’d probably be an addict by the time they’d convinced Rudolph to pay my ransom. Then I’d have to drop out of school and go to rehab, then spend the rest of my life relapsing like Dad. Then Mom would abandon me, and I’d end up a burden to Dad’s new family, and he’d probably also start taking drugs again. Tears stung the back of my eyes. Why had I chased after Henry last night? It wasn’t like the liar would have been willing to straighten things out.
The grimy photo shoot came to an end, and I cracked my eyes open. A pale blonde woman in her mid-thirties leaned against the far wall holding an SLR camera with a large flash. Thick, unkempt dreadlocks framed her scrawny face, and dark circles ringed her eyes. She wore a black sweater over a miniskirt that did nothing to flatter her thin, blotchy legs.
The photographer showed the screen of her digital camera to a clean-shaven man in his early twenties wearing a beanie. Thin wisps of fluff covered his jawline, and I re-evaluated his age. He was probably just a couple of years older than me. The pair discussed the images in hushed voices, working out which ones to send with their demand for ransom.
I closed my eyes again, not wanting them to know I’d seen their faces.
There was no sign of Henry in the room. Perhaps they’d taken him somewhere to make a ransom video.
Eventually, they shuffled out into the hallway. When the door clicked shut, and the key turned in the lock, I snapped my eyes open and surveyed my surroundings. Broken furniture lined the wall, piled to the ceiling in front of the windows. They were boarded up, but chinks of sunlight shone through a gap in the wood. At the side of the bed stood an oak chair, where they’d left two bottles of water and a pack of paracetamol. I ignored the tablets and checked the seal on the bottle. It was still intact, so I cracked it open and took several gulps of warm liquid.