When my stepfather threw away my nightlight on my ninth birthday, his tough-love idea of a birthday gift, I found a way around my fear of the dark. In the dead of night, I searched for any light I could find. The glimmer of a streetlamp visible through gaps in the blinds. The headlights of a car cruising down our quiet suburban streets. The yellow glow under my bedroom door because Mom couldn't be bothered to turn things off when Sam wasn't home to clean up after her.
I stopped being afraid of monsters under my bed around the time puberty hit, but I've grown so used to these minor reassurances that their absence tonight is the first sign that something is wrong.
The second is my bed.
I've owned it since ninth grade, a wood platform bed that Sam bought when he was in one of his more giving moods. But the noise it makes now when I turn onto my back isn't the creak of worn wood. It's sharp and foreign, more . . . metallic. Threatening.
Panic creeps into my chest. You're dreaming, I try to reassure myself. Soon I'll wake up to the sound of the TV blasting a morning talk show and my mom's blender grinding out whatever vegetable concoction she chooses to call breakfast, and this will become a fuzzy memory.
I manage to hold on to that futile hope until I hear a sob in the dark. Another metal bed squeaks from the other side of the room. It's quiet for two seconds, then:
"Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"
I've kept my heartbeat steady up until that moment, but the girl's terror threatens to undo me. Time to get moving. I throw my legs over the side of the bed and put my hands out in front of me, feeling for something solid in the dark. My right hand finds a concrete wall, and I scrape skin off the backs of my fingers. Ignoring the sting, I keep patting along the wall, seeking out a light switch.
The wall ends three feet later. A doorway. That means there's a way out of here, but this is no time to try to explore the shadows beyond this room. It's pointless to pretend to be asleep—my roommate, whoever she is, has made sure of that—but if I'm going to face our captors, I need the advantage of light. I keep moving along until I touch the solid wall again.
My toes bump into something that makes a hollow noise. I flinch and suck in a breath at the stab of pain. The girl's whimpers break off.
"Who's there?" she calls, her voice shaky. "Why are you doing this?"
I stop moving but continue to search with one hand. There. I flip the switch, momentarily squeezing my eyes shut against the blinding light before I squint around. I'm inside a medium-sized bedroom, bare and so sterile it feels like a prison cell. Grainy white walls. Twin fluorescent strip lights glare over a stone floor. The large metal dresser I bumped into is next to me.
There are two beds on either side of the room. On one of them is a girl about my age, huddled against the wall with her legs drawn in to her chest. Locks of blond hair curl protectively around her pretty face. I see a bracelet on her wrist and look down at the identical one on mine. Slim but solid, and silver. Not decorative.
Both of us are dressed in gray sweatpants and white t-shirts. Someone changed us out of our clothes while we slept. It's incredible that out of everything our captors have done, this could make me feel the most violated.
"Who are you?" my fellow captive whispers.
I hold up my wrist, hoping she'll get the message.
She lifts her chin slightly. "What are we doing in here?"
"I—"
I spot movement out of the corner of my eye. A newcomer stands in the doorway of the room opposite ours, his tall frame filling the space. I can't see his face. My roommate doesn't see him at all and she's still talking, asking questions I can't answer.
"Who the hell are you?" the dark-haired boy shouts, startling me.
His hand fumbles along the wall next to him. Light floods the bedroom behind him, illuminating an identical dresser, a corner of a bed, and white walls. I size him up, his fisted hands, the heat of rage in his gaze. His white t-shirt stretches over hard shoulders and a muscled chest. He has on gray sweatpants and is barefooted like I am. And he wears a silver bracelet snug around his wrist. Another prisoner.
He's a tower of enviable strength, but he's also young and upset, maybe even frightened. So it's no surprise when he crosses the space between us and pins me against a wall. A puff of air escapes my lungs at the jarring jolt. "Answer the question," he growls at me. "Who are you?"
I clench my teeth. Being brave is sending the wrong message. I should have stayed in bed like my roommate. "I'll tell you who I am when you let me go."
"Wrong answer. If you don't start talking, I'll—"
"You'll what?" I erupt, shoving him away. He lets me go and takes a step back. My chest is rising and falling hard. Too hard. "What part of me says kidnapper to you?"
Hold yourself together, April.
"I don't know why we're in here anymore than you do. I went to sleep in my own bed and the next thing I know, I'm in here dealing with your attitude." I point a threatening finger at him, trying to keep it steady. "Don't ever touch me again."
He gives me a onceover that's as insulting as his demeanor. I hate guys like him. Always have. Big-muscled and mean, using everyone else as stepping stones to get to wherever they want to be. I hate his type even more because I'm never brave enough to do anything about it.
As Caveman looks around my bedroom with glowering dark eyes, another teenage boy walks up behind him. I'm guessing this is his roommate. He's just as tall as the first guy but leaner. He looks like he belongs in a fashion magazine, modeling hair gel or whatever it is he uses to get his silky sandy-blond hair to stay in place like that.
"I'm going to take a wild guess and say neither of you knows what this is about," the new guy says in a smooth voice. "So until we do, maybe we should try to get along, yeah?"
"You mean until the psycho with the chainsaw shows up," Caveman retorts.
There's a groan at the doorway. "Can we not talk about psycho killers?" a third boy says in a heavy southern accent as he peeks into the room, assessing the situation before he slips inside. He's slender and round-faced, with big ears that poke out from his messy, reddish-brown hair. Next to the jerk, he looks young and innocent. "This is freaky enough as it is. Maybe we're being pranked or something."
"I doubt it," the model-looking guy says. He looks at me. "What do you think?"
I shrug.
He gives me a charming smile that seems more reflexive than genuine interest. "What's your name, anyway? I can't keep calling you pretty brown-haired girl in my head."
"April Parker," I say after a moment's hesitation.
"It's nice to meet you, April." He holds out a hand. "Alec Blaine. You might've heard about my father's company. Blaine Industries? We have the market cornered on washing machines and toaster ovens in the south."
Caveman laughs. "You must be so proud."
I expect Alec to get upset at that, but he smiles like Caveman complimented him. "What about you?" He looks him over. "You look like you've got an Italian-mobster name that makes people piss themselves when they hear it. Like Alfonso or Tony Bananas."
"I'm Hispanic," Caveman says curtly.
"My bad. I still say you look like a Tony."
Caveman is visibly grinding his teeth. "Marcus. Fargo."
Alec's innocent expression is ruined by the gleam in his eyes. "Oh, I see it now. You're definitely a Marcus. Like a conquering Roman emperor riding on the back of his golden chariot."
"Do you think they're holding you for ransom?" I ask Alec before this gets more out of hand. I've never heard of Blaine Industries. Might be because I'm not from the south.
The gleam is replaced by something thoughtful. "It's possible."
"Our kidnappers are outta luck if they think my pops' going to pay a dime," the kid with the southern accent muses. "He's lucky getting enough jobs fixing houses to feed me, Ma, and the boys." He pauses. "Well, I guess it's just Ma and the boys now."
I'm not worth anything to anyone, even if they had money to give. Saying it out loud feels like I'd be admitting to some big failure, so I keep it to myself.
"Now that we've got all these fascinating introductions out of the way," Marcus says, "how about we focus on what's important?"
He's out of the room by the time he's done talking. The rest of us follow. The corridor is dark except for light from the bedrooms, which illuminates the varying emotions on everyone's faces. Anxiety, fear, anger, hope. I can't tell if my expression is a mixture of everything or if it shows nothing at all.
Marcus stops about twenty feet down the corridor. He curses and slams his fist into the thick metal door blocking our escape. The southerner slips past me and crouches next to him, feeling along the bottom of the door. "I can slip my fingers in just barely. Must be one of them fancy doors that slides up to open."
"Good job, Billy Bob," Marcus says. He shoves his way past us, heading back the way we came. "Let's try the other way."
As we pass the southern boy's bedroom, another teenager emerges from it, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He's skinny kid who looks like he hasn't quite grown into his body, all arms and legs, and has a bony face deep-set with dark eyes. He watches with confusion as we barrel past him, Alec and Marcus taking petty shots at each other.
I feel around for a switch on the wall and turn on more fixtures. This must be some sort of lounge room. A couple of sofas, sleek and black, against two walls. Across from one of them is a flat screen TV mounted on the wall. Below that are metal shelves piled with books. I spot a video game console on the top shelf, above a stack of board games.
"Last thing I remember is falling asleep in my own bed," my roommate says. She wraps her arms around her middle and looks around. "And now I'm locked in here with you people. This is a mistake. It has to be."
I doubt that. No one would take a bunch of teenagers from their beds without knowing what they were doing. But that's not the part that bothers me. It's the mystery of it, the layers of ambiguity that keep us spinning in circles. Our captors have gone to great lengths to mask their identity and hide their motives from us. What terrible things necessitate this charade?
"Hey, Knobby," Marcus says to the southerner's roommate. "Any idea what this is about?"
The skinny guy's dazed expression suggests he thinks he's still dreaming. "My name is Baxter, not Knobby."
"Who cares? Answer the question."
Baxter's shoulders become concave like he wants to make himself smaller. He avoids Marcus's fearsome gaze. "No idea."
"They're watching us," I whisper, pointing to a corner of the room where a tiny video camera stares back at us like an omniscient eye.
"Scared to come out?" Marcus shouts at the camera. "Keep hiding, cowards."
"Maybe we shouldn't taunt them," the southerner says nervously.
"What are they going to do? Lock us up?"
"They could do a lot worse," Alec says.
I nod in agreement. This place reeks of something sinister and unforgiving. I don't know what we're doing inside it, but we shouldn't make any moves until we know what we're getting ourselves into. Of course, someone like Marcus has no patience for playing it smart. He sticks his middle finger up at the camera. "I'd like to see them try."
Five seconds later, a faint mechanical whirring comes from the other side of the corridor. Marcus lowers his hand, satisfied. "That's more like it."
He disappears back down the corridor. The rest of us hang back at first, not enthusiastic about confronting what's waiting for us out there, but we go after him anyway. His bravado is our only source of courage, and we gather to it like moths to a light.
We're halfway down the corridor when our bracelets start beeping.