Freefly

by Michele Tallarita

  I emerge from the bathroom to find the hallway empty. Where is Damien? I crane my neck to the left, then to the right. There is nothing but silence.

  I jog down the hallway into one of the intersections, then pull a right. The fluorescent lights blaze. This is the locker hallway, where rows of metal doors stretch down both sides. I sprint to Damien’s and spin in the combination, then pop open the door. His notebooks are still stacked inside, so I don’t think he’s left the school. Would he do that: leave me in the bathroom while he flees? I don’t think so, but after he’s watched me bloody three guys with my bare hands, who’s to say he’s not completely freaked out?

  I shut Damien’s locker and jog back down the hallway, making my way back to where I last saw him, outside the bathroom door. He has left no trace. I continue down the hall until I reach the entrance of the building, the lobby with its row of glass doors. That’s when I see it: a pair of sunglasses on the floor. I snatch them and turn them around in my hands. One lens is broken, cracked like a spiderweb. Did they drop off the face of a student, some kid who got pushed as he was entering the school? Or do they belong to...another set of people known for wearing dark sunglasses, perhaps dragging Damien out the door?

  Something deep inside me, like an itch, tells me that Damien is in trouble. I push through the glass doors and take three running steps, then leap into the sky.

  Damien

  The two men force me into a black car that sits idling by the curb outside my school. I put up a fight the whole way, elbowing the men and buckling my knees to make them drag me, but reality hits me in the form of a cool leather seat. I land on my stomach, smashing against the seat so hard that my breath puffs out of me. Before I can move, one of the men pins me from behind, pressing his weight against my legs. I thrash as he clutches my arm, yanks it behind my back, and jams something into my muscle.

  "Ow!" I cry.

  Nausea sweeps me. My body goes slack, and my face crushes into the leather. I go unconscious.

  "Damien." The voice is muffled, as if it is reaching my ears underwater.

  "Damien!" Something smacks me in the cheek, but it doesn't even hurt. My skin feels thick and numb.

  "Sammie is going to die."

  I force my eyes open. Michael Thorne's face presses close to mine, the skin around his eyes crinkly, his teeth a ghastly yellow.

  "Thought that would get your attention," he says.

  My head slumping forward, I roll my eyeballs around to try to get a look at my surroundings. It is an enclosed space, but not the backseat of a car, the last place I remember. The ceiling is low and seems to be made of metal. The walls are also metal, but punched out with circular windows. Am I on a boat? No, a plane. My body feels like it’s been filled with lead, too heavy to move, but a slight pressure on my wrists indicates that my hands are bound behind me.

  I struggle to get my mouth to form words. "Going…to…die?"

  Thorne presses his face closer, throws his mouth open, and bellows with laughter. His breath is hot and smells vaguely of licorice.

  "Oh, Damien,” he says. “You are quite gullible. I was just seeing if you would respond. And you did."

  He takes a deep breath and blows it out, filling my nose with his licorice breath.

  "Can't exactly hide it anymore, can you?" he says. "You responded to her name. You know who she is. You know where she is."

  I drag my head back and forth.

  Thorne raises his hand and whips it across my face. This time I feel it. I open my mouth and drool blood onto the ground.

  "Don't play games with me," he says, snarling. Then his face softens, and he looks concerned, even parental. "It's okay," he coos. "You don't need to tell me where she is. That's not what I brought you here for."

  He grins and rubs his hands together, then turns his back to me and takes a step toward the door.

  "What did you bring me here for?" I blubber, my tongue large and heavy.

  He swings back around and smiles. "Bait."

  Sammie

  I shoot over Boorsville like a bullet, tucking my head into my chin as I scan the landscape below. The town’s green lawns and orderly streets spread beneath me, looking quiet and perfect. The sun is directly overhead and strikes me in the face. I wish I had my sunglasses, but I left them at Damien’s house, in my backpack. Another genius move on my part, almost as good as letting him out of my sight for one second when Michael Thorne is in town. I know they have him. The itchy feeling that began in the school has bloomed into full-on panic. He is in trouble.

  I reach the edge of Boorsville and swoop back around, flying directly above one of the perfect streets. I know the men who took Damien are still here, somewhere. He was snatched just a few minutes ago. Plus, I have a feeling they will stay close to Damien’s house. They want me to be able to find them.

  This is a trap. They knew if I returned to Boorsville to find Damien missing, I would go looking for him. I would fly right into their hands. My heartbeat quickens at the thought of going back to the white place, but I have no choice: I love him. There it is. It’s ruined his life and soon mine too, but it’s true.

  Something whizzes past my face, slicing open my cheek. I yelp and swerve. Was it an arrow? Another one shoots past my hip. I pull myself to a stop and stand straight up in the air, to make myself a smaller target, and scan the ground. In the middle of a green field just outside Boorsville’s edge, a small, white jet sits. An arrow whips from that direction and, before I can swerve out of the way, plunges into my right shoulder. I scream and falter in the air, dropping ten feet, as sharp pain swells in my entire right side. I manage to stop myself from falling and clutch at the arrow. Like last time, I can’t pull it out myself. My fingers won’t close all the way, and my head swims. I feel like I could fall asleep.

  I point myself toward the jet and plunge, shutting my eyes against the rushing air. I can’t help but think about how easy it would be to just smash into the ground. They’d let Damien go, wouldn’t they? If there was no more me to lure back into their clutches, what would be the point of keeping him? But a jolt of panic goes through me at the thought of never seeing him again, and I pull up and drop to my feet in the tall, green grass.

  The jet sits quietly before me, seeming to waver before my eyes. I stagger toward it. Is Damien inside? Is it possible that no one is with him, and I can grab him and somehow escape?

  Michael Thorne appears in the doorway and leaps outside. “Sammie! I didn’t expect you so soon!”

  He pulls Damien out by the wrist and throws him to the ground. Damien lands on his side, moaning, and struggles to get to his hands and knees. Thorne grabs him by the collar and pulls up his upper half, but leaves him kneeling in the grass in front of him.

  I freeze, mostly because Michael Thorne is standing right here, leering at me with his signature grin. This is the man who tortured me, for years on end. My fists clench without my telling them to. I rush forward, feeling, for the first time, like I could take a human life.

  There’s a clicking sound, and Thorne pulls a gun from his side and points it at my chest. I freeze. Damien’s eyes grow wide, though his entire body looks droopy, his lips moving but not forming words. He has definitely been drugged.

  “How dare you,” I snarl, hurling myself at Thorne.

  He points the gun at Damien’s head, and I stop dead in my tracks. This is my dream exactly: Damien with a gun to his head, the bullet shooting into his skull and making his expression go blank.

  I drop to my knees and put my hands behind my head. Thorne laughs heartily, then sidles me, keeping the gun trained on Damien. The grass scratches at my knees. The sun shines overhead. In a second, Thorne is behind me. He grasps my wrist roughly and closes something metal around it, so tightly it cuts into my skin.

  “Ow!” I say.

  He clutches my other wrist and closes another cuff around it, this one even tighter. He wrenches the cuffs upward and I’m forced to my feet. Still dizzy from the arrow, I teeter and lean
on Thorne. He puts his arm around my waist to steady me and leans even closer, so that I can feel his scratchy stubble against my face.

  “I’m so glad you found a boyfriend,” he hisses. “It’s made it so much easier to find you.”

  His laughter explodes in my ear. He shoves me in the back, and I stagger forward, the grass crushing beneath my feet.

  Damien

  I lie facedown in the field, feeling like there’s a thousand-pound weight pressing on top of me. She’s gone. Michael Thorne got her. She’s going back to that place she described, where she was basically a test subject for years on end. My chest heaves as I remember the look on her face when she surrendered herself to Thorne. She looked...ruthless: the coldness in her eyes, the hardness of her mouth. It was like she knew all along that coming for me meant giving herself up, and she was determined to do it. I cannot imagine why.

  This is all my fault.

  If only I’d been smarter, if I’d thought up a better plan, if I’d been more alert and not let myself get snatched...Sammie might not have been thrown into a jet. I wish I could take back the last few hours and do them differently, be better, keep the girl I love from getting caught. But there’s no reversing what has happened. And there’s no changing the fact that I never had the power to protect her, just like Thorne said. I am nobody. The thought of somehow jailbreaking her from wherever she’s been taken is almost humorous. How am I supposed to take on a secretive science lab with jets, cars, and scary men like Michael Thorne?

  I remain in the field for several hours, tortured by visions of Sammie being pushed across the grass. It’s weird, but I actually think I could strangle Thorne. Who is he to take ownership of another person? Especially a person I happen to love?

  When I feel like all of the drugs have seeped out of my system, I climb to my feet, causing my head to spin. I wobble back and forth until I get steady, then look around. Judging by the sun’s low position in the sky, it’s about four. The jet has left a large triangle of flat grass, along with a long strip where it sped up and rumbled into the sky. The field stretches on for several acres all around me, but a road snakes in the distance. I walk toward it.

  It takes me over an hour to reach it, and it turns out to be made of gravel, winding through green countryside for as far as I can see. My head hurts, a dull ache in the back of my skull, left over from whatever Thorne drugged me with. Fortunately, I know where I am: just outside Boorsville, in the rural district slightly west of us. Unfortunately, I am ten miles from my school, at least. My house is a bit closer, but it will still take me hours to reach it, and I’ll have to find a way to get my car from the school parking lot. I limp forward, my sneakers crackling against the gravel.

  Several hours later, long after the sun has dropped below the horizon, I stagger up my driveway. The ache in my head has ballooned into a full-on migraine. It feels as if a giant hand is clutching my skull and squeezing every few seconds. Not to mention, my feet kill, my legs feel like jelly, and my side hurts from being thrown on the ground. None of this compares with the agony I feel over Sammie, my inability to stop her from being taken.

  I clutch the doorknob and swing open the door, then turn around and close it softly. When I turn back, my parents are rushing toward me from the kitchen.

  “Damien!” Mom throws her arms around me. Over her shoulder, I see Dad hovering near, looking decidedly angry.

  Mom releases me and steps back, then runs her eyes up and down me, assessing for damages. “Where have you been? We’ve been so worried.”

  “The school called,” Dad says, his voice stern. “They said you skipped your classes. That’s not like you, Damien. When we said we wanted you to diversify your schedule, we didn’t mean we wanted you to start cutting school.”

  “Wait a minute, dear,” Mom says, putting her hand on Dad’s shoulder. “Let’s make sure Damien’s okay before we start disciplining him. We talked about this.”

  Dad nods and looks at her lovingly. “You’re right, dear. Stick to the plan. Damien, are you okay?”

  “Do you want a cup of tea?” Mom says.

  I take a deep breath and stare at the both of them, wanting, more than anything, to be left alone. “Can I just go upstairs for a while?”

  Mom and Dad look at each other, their expressions troubled.

  Dad eyes me carefully. “Alright. But we’re going to talk about this.”

  I trudge up to my room, then collapse onto my bed. My skull throbs. How long will these aftereffects last? I roll onto my back and stare into the darkness. I didn’t bother flicking on the lights, and the blinds are still drawn, so I can just barely make out the jut of my desk next to the window. For no reason I can fathom, I have a deep desire to open the blind, as if I expect that Sammie will somehow come hovering up to the glass. I slide off the bed. My foot catches on something, and I go tumbling to the carpet. Cursing, I pull myself onto my hands and knees and grasp at whatever just tripped me. My hand closes around what feels like a strap. I sit down on the floor and pull the item onto my lap. It’s a backpack. Sammie’s backpack.

  Cradling the object, I rise to my feet and switch on the lights. The backpack is black and made of canvas, the sort of thing any normal kid might carry to school. I’ve never actually handled the thing, but now that I’m holding it, the urge to see what’s inside overwhelms me. I grasp the strap and lift the backpack into the air, feeling its heft. It’s definitely not empty. What could be inside?

  Though I’m certain Sammie would disapprove of my going through her things, I walk to my bed and sit down. Holding the backpack on my lap, I tug at the zipper, feeling a little like I’m handling a treasured artifact. This is all I have left of Sammie, the last time I will ever discover something new about her.

  I peer inside. The first thing I see is a bright orange bag of Cheetos, which I pull out and set on the comforter beside me, laughing to myself. Underneath that, the contents are strange. I pull out a leather pouch and tug it open, only to discover a thick wad of cash inside. I slip the cash out and flip through the bills, bewildered to see several hundred dollars. Do the criminals pay her? I slide the money back into the pouch and set it aside.

  Next, I pull out a pair of black sunglasses, which I recognize: Sammie almost always wore them when she came swooping through my window. Then I pull out a pair of black cotton gloves, a metal key that looks like it would fit the front door of a house, a napkin from a place called Taylor’s Coffeehouse, and the jeans and T-shirt Sammie flew in with yesterday, when she was soaking wet. I set all of these things down carefully on the comforter beside me. Sighing, I realize that’s everything there is. I go to set the empty backpack when something glints from the bottom of it.

  I grasp the object and draw it to my eyes. It’s...a cell phone, tiny, black, and glossy. I turn it around in my fingers. Sammie has never mentioned having a phone. Too curious not to, I flip it open and punch the power button. The screen swirls with graphics as the phone boots up.

  When the home screen finally appears, I flip up the menu and see if Sammie has any text messages in her inbox. There are none. I open the call log, but there is nothing there, either. Does she even use this phone? I open the contact list, and there is only one: Jiminy. I say the name aloud, feeling silly. It makes me think of the little cricket in Pinocchio, though if Sammie works for criminals, I doubt this person is a cute talking animal. I suddenly have an idea: What if...I called the number?

  The fact of the matter is I’m a no-nothing high-schooler, powerless to do anything to get Sammie away from Michael Thorne. But Sammie described the people she worked for as very rich and very powerful. They could rescue her. They did once already, the first time they kidnapped her from the science lab. Maybe they could do it again.

  I click on the contact, press my ear to the phone, and listen to the number dial.

  CHAPTER 8

  Sammie

  As the jet soars, I keep my eyes on the windows, soaking up my last bit of sunlight before being returned
to the science lab. The arrow has worked its magic: drowsiness trickles through me, but I’m determined to stay awake for as long as I can, before I’m seriously drugged up...and, well, dead. That’s what this is going to come to. I wonder what Thorne would do if he knew.

  Now that the jet is stable, Thorne unstraps himself from his seat and stands. He walks toward me, whistling, his eyes on the arrow jutting from my shoulder.

  “Guess we should take care of that, shouldn’t we?” he says.

  I’m belted into a leather seat, my hands still cuffed behind me, bulging into my back. Thorne crouches beside me and adjusts my chair so that I’m completely horizontal. My hands begin to go numb beneath me.

  He stands up and smiles into my face. “You look tired.”

  I snarl.

  “Woah!” he says, in mock awe. “That’s not the Sammie I remember.”

  I roll my eyes toward the window. He yanks the arrow out of my shoulder, and I shriek.

  “Now, now,” Thorne says.

  He grasps the neckline of Damien’s sweatshirt and, in one swift movement, tears the collar wide enough to see the wound. Pain jolts through me at the sudden movement, as well as anger at Thorne for ripping the sweatshirt: it was the last little piece of Damien I had. Thorne lifts a black bag off the floor and removes a clear bottle of liquid from it, then pours some of the liquid onto my bare shoulder. I grit my teeth and try to keep from screaming. It feels as if he’s lit me on fire.

  “Don’t want it to get infected,” Thorne practically sings, dabbing happily at the wound with a piece of white bandage. I loathe the way he’s eyeing me, like I’m his property or something. I can’t help but remember the time Damien pulled the arrow from my leg, how opposite it was from this.

  As if Thorne is reading my mind, he holds the arrow in front of my eyes and says, “We found one of these little puppies in the boy’s room. That’s how we found you, you know.” He tosses it aside. “We knew you went down a year ago in Boorsville, so we searched every house. One little talk with Damien and we knew he’d been in contact with you. I guessed right away that he loved you.” His face warps with cruelty. “The question was, and this is what we were really banking on when we kidnapped him, did you love him?” He lets out a chuckle, this one long and hearty.