Taken (7 page)

Sierra believed her. She demanded to know what they said.

Patience leaned forward. “I’m not sure. I don’t know a lot of vocabulary. They either said you were
miedosa
or
mierda.
”

“What do those mean?”

“One means ‘scared’ the other means ‘excrement.’”

As Sierra stood and contemplated that, Patience and I turned and hurried into the crowd, laughing uncontrollably.

I was still chuckling about Sierra when I got pulled back to my ambulance prison by a loud sound, the sound of the dark boy’s seat snapping shut.

I said, “Hey! Are you going to the bathroom?”

He ignored me, so I added, “Because I need to go to the bathroom. That’s your job, right? Helping me go to the bathroom?”

He answered angrily, “No. That is not my job. I’ll get Dr. Reyes.”

“No! No, please. Do me a favor, one small favor. All you have to do is take me there and bring me back.”

His face twisted in disbelief. “What? Do you think I’m stupid?”

“No. Not at all. You’ll be right with me, right outside the door. Come on, where am I going to go? You have me surrounded.”

“No. I have to get the doctor.”

“Please. Please.”

He opened the ambulance door, but I called after him, “Come on! This is a better way. I know it is.”

He jumped down. But then he turned around and said, “I’ll talk to the doctor. Wait here for his answer.”

When the door opened a minute later, I found out the answer, and it was no. Dr. Reyes himself climbed in, placed the bedpan on the stretcher, and left. All in silence.

Then he returned two minutes later to fetch it.

It was humiliating and disgusting, once again. But there was one small consolation—the dark boy had at least talked to Dr. Reyes for me.

He had done me a small favor.

Once the dark boy was back inside and seated, I asked, “How are things going?” I quickly answered myself: “They’re going smoothly, I hope. Ten hours left to go. Is the ransom plan moving forward?”

I waited for a full minute for him to respond. It frightened me that he wouldn’t even make eye contact. I hoped it wasn’t because the plan had hit a snag. I finally looked over at my vidscreen. The red light was on. Who was watching? Was it my father? Were they in contact with my father? Were they showing him that I was still alive? For now?

Good, I thought. Let him see that I was holding up my end of the deal and that I was waiting for him to hold up his. Let him see that I was using my training. With a last look at the red light, I composed myself, closed my eyes, and concentrated…

The Mangrove kids and the Highlands kids returned to their respective sides of the stage as Mickie appeared again with a microphone. She leaned over and held the mike out to some brown-skinned kids. “Tell me about the
tornada
dolls. What is the story behind those?”

A tall girl—preselected, I’m sure—volunteered to answer. “You give it to someone you hope you will see again someday.”

Mickie said, “That’s nice.” She pointed to another girl. “Wait a minute. You still have yours! Can I take a look at it?”

The girl looked away, frightened. She clearly did not want to give her doll up, but after some wrangling in Spanish with the other kids, she handed it over.

“Now, what’s this carved on here? Is it the letter
L
?”

The tall girl answered for her: “It’s usually the letter of a person’s name. But they told us to do ours with the letter
H.
”

“To stand for The Highlands?”

“That’s right.”

Mickie handed the doll back to the frightened girl. “Thank you, honey.”

I could see on the big screen that the girl had a thin carved line across her top lip. I whispered to Patience, “Look at her mouth.”

Patience knew what I meant right away. She explained, “That line is a surgical scar. She must have had a cleft palate. That’s when your teeth show all the time.”

“Your top lip is deformed, right?”

“Something like that. It’s a birth defect. But it looks like she had hers operated on.”

The segment wrapped quickly, after which the girl with the scar walked right over to us and stopped in front of Albert. Albert looked at her, then swiftly turned on his heels and slipped away. The girl seemed confused. But then she turned to Patience and me and smiled. The surgical line disappeared entirely, leaving only white teeth and brown derma. She pointed to where Albert had been standing. “Please.
La tornada,
for him.”

I took it from her. “Okay. Why for him?
Por qué?
”

The girl smiled even wider.
“Por gracias.”

“
Gracias?
That’s it?”

She threw up her hands. “That’s it.”

“Okay. I’ll give it to him.”

Right after that, Maureen Dugan saw a Mangrove girl holding up a pair of jeans. She shouted out angrily, “Those are mine! I still wear those!” She stalked toward the bewildered girl and snatched them back. Then she spotted another pair in another girl’s hand. “Those, too! Give them back!”

Pauline heard this and scanned the crowd, coming to a halt at a young girl’s feet. “Who gave my flip-flops away? Those are my favorite flip-flops. I wear them every day.” She rounded on her maid, a dark-haired, sharp-featured woman from Romania. “Colette! Who gave those away? Was it you?”

“No, Miss Pauline. It was your mother.”

“My mother? What is she, stupid?”

Colette didn’t answer, so Pauline prodded her. “Well?”

“I…I don’t know, Miss.”

Other Mangrove kids gathered quickly behind the young girl. Two groups were now facing off.

Another Mangrove girl stepped forward and flung a white shirt at Maureen Dugan’s face. “Here. Keep this. It’s got pit stains anyway.”

Maureen pulled the shirt away from her face and shook her head back and forth, totally flustered. But Pauline was not flustered. She stepped up and flung her wooden doll at the girl, catching her right on the cheek. “Here! You can keep this! It was going in the garbage anyway.”

I looked over at the group of adults posing in front of Kurt the cameraman. Mickie was speaking to the mayor while Mr. Patterson, Mrs. Veck, and a group of people from the town looked on. They were completely unaware that the whole “kid-to-kid” scene, just ten meters away from them, was unraveling in a very ugly way.

A boy started yelling at Sterling Johnston, “Get away from my sister, you sick freak!” Sterling backed away slowly, which only drew more attention to him.

Another group of boys started in on Hopewell, haranguing him in Spanish and making little slapping motions at his face. Hopewell tried to backpedal, but he lost his balance and fell on the asphalt, skinning his elbow.

Patience and I hurried over to help him up, but Albert and James got there first. The Mangrove boys backed away as soon as the men intervened. Albert shouted at me, “Miss Charity! All of you! Get in the security van. Right now!”

Patience and I made a quick about-face and hurried toward the van. I watched one Highlands guard jump into the driver’s seat while the other pulled the machine gun out of its rack. I turned and saw that James had pulled Hopewell to his feet and was fast-walking him toward us.

Suddenly all of the butlers were involved. Albert, William, and Edward formed a line behind Hopewell. Each had a can of biorepellent out and was brandishing it at the Mangrove kids. This just seemed to make the kids angrier.

Patience and I hurried up the van steps, followed by Sierra, the Dugans, the four maids, and Sterling Johnston. Hopewell and the four butlers climbed on right after. The guards closed the steel doors and glared at the mob through the tinted windows.

The Mangrove kids retreated behind a tree. They started talking among themselves in an animated way and making violent gestures.

About one minute later, Mickie Meyers wrapped up her shoot and returned to the van with Mrs. Veck, Mr. Patterson, Lena, and Kurt, walking right past the roiling mob.

They had no idea what had just happened. They had no idea, that is, until the van pulled away and we all heard the thuds. Objects started crashing against the windows. I pressed my face against a tinted window and saw what the objects were—Ramiro Fortunato novels, dozens and dozens of them—all hurled at us angrily by the children of Mangrove.

Mickie finally looked up and inquired, of no one in particular, “Why are they doing that?” No one volunteered an answer, so she let the matter drop.

The van roared away as fast as the driver could go, not stopping until we reached a turnpike rest area. The driver swerved into it and pulled to a halt in front of the food court. Both guards then stepped outside. One held the machine gun at a downward angle while the other circumnavigated the van, looking for damage.

Albert took a seat next to Hopewell and examined his bleeding elbow. He pulled out a small first-aid kit and started to clean the wound.

As she watched Albert in action, Patience said, “Remember the girl with the cleft palate?”

“Yeah.”

“She looked really good. Better than Hopewell, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“I wonder who did the surgery.”

“A clinic doctor?”

“No way. She’d look mangled.”

“Then a real doctor, I guess.”

Albert finished bandaging Hopewell’s elbow and was coming back up the aisle. Patience told him, “You’re really good at medical stuff, Albert. You should be a clinic doctor.”

Albert smiled. “Thank you, Miss Patience.”

“Would you like to do that?”

“No. I’m happy doing what I do.” He kept walking up to his seat.

Patience asked Daphne, “What do you have to do to be a clinic doctor?”

“I don’t think you have to do anything,” Daphne answered. “You rent a house or a storefront, put up a sign, and start calling yourself a doctor.”

Patience wrinkled her nose. “That’s it? Anyone who wants to call himself, or herself, a doctor can set up a clinic?”

“Pretty much.”

“You don’t need to go to medical school?”

“No. I suppose you could, but there’s nobody to check if you did or did not. You can print yourself a phony diploma, buy a pack of tongue depressors, and start telling people to say
Ahh.
”

Just then, Mickie and Kurt came down the aisle and set up in front of Mrs. Veck. Mickie explained, “We were looking at the tapes from before. I want to hear a little more about something that you said.”

The red light on Kurt’s camera came on. Mickie smiled into it. “Mrs. Veck, you used a phrase before that I had never heard, so I wrote it down: ‘rituals of social inversion.’ Can you tell me a little more about those?”

Mrs. Veck smiled. “Certainly. What would you like to know?”

“Well, you gave a very interesting example about the Three Kings bowing down to the baby Jesus. You’re saying that’s an ‘inversion’ because you’d expect the opposite to happen, right?”

“Right.”

“What are some more examples of inversions?”

“Shall we see if the students can think of any?”

Mickie shook her head. “No. Just give me a few yourself.”

“All right. Well, I remember one that had to do with boy chimney sweeps in London, back in Victorian times.”

“Excellent.”

“They worked at a dirty, dangerous job, and their faces were always black from it. But on one day of the year, they would paint their faces white and have a grand parade. The people would honor them on that one day; then the boys would go back to their black faces for the other three hundred sixty-four days.”

“Interesting. Any others?”

“Yes. There’s a very famous one that has survived over the years—April Fools’ Day. On that day, the most dishonored person in society, the fool, was honored by everyone else. Then he went back to being the fool.”

“That was a real inversion.”

“It was.”

“Now, why did the Victorians have these rituals?”

“I believe it was part of the social contract in Victorian times. The poor people had to be part of society; otherwise society wouldn’t work. The poor might decide to rise up and attack the rich! Through these rituals, the poor agreed to an exchange. They would be on top of society for one day, and then they would be on the bottom for the other three hundred sixty-four.”

Patience muttered to me the exact word that I was thinking: “Fools.”

Back at The Highlands, the security van dropped us all off at our respective houses. Patience got off with me, though, along with Victoria, Albert, Mickie, Lena, and Kurt.

My father was waiting there in the front yard, holding a controller in both hands. He was playing with the helicopter drone, making it rise and land by remote control. Without actually looking at me, he called out, “What are you up to?”

“We had a school field trip.”

“Oh? Where’d you go?”

“Mangrove. For Kid-to-Kid Day.”

“Uh-huh. Listen, honey, I have to talk to Albert for a minute. Okay?”

“Sure.”

He winked conspiratorially. “I’ve got the college bowl season coming up. Gotta get him to check out the weather alerts for me.”

“Okay.”

“Gotta get my flight plans squared away this time, too, or the FAA will get mad.”

I just shrugged and continued inside, but I muttered to Patience, “Gee, Dad, I did have a thing or two more to say. We did have some trouble down there, but we managed to escape with our lives. Thank you for asking.”

Patience and I then sat in my room for two hours. We spent most of that time analyzing the boys from the Amsterdam Academy satschool. We criticized some, assigning them names like Mr. I’m Too Cool to Look at the Camera and Mr. My Mother Dresses Me Funny. We drooled over others, and plotted how we might meet them in person. Or “in the flesh,” as Patience put it, which I told her was “a very hor-ish thing to say.”

At 17:00, Herbert, the Pattersons’ butler, arrived to drive Patience home for dinner. I walked her as far as the wrought-iron gate. Then I walked back inside and sat in the dining room. Victoria had prepared beef Wellington with Yorkshire pudding, a favorite dish of mine from
The Manor House Book of Festive Recipes.
My father, my ex-stepmother, and I consumed the food as unfestively as possible, just sitting there and chewing silently, like three strangers.