Hailey
I woke up to the world in watercolor—a concrete city canvas, bleeding together under a 90-degree sun.
Everything within thirty feet of me was still black or too blurry to recognize. I blinked again—my eyes still hazy and thick from the side effects of whatever I’d been slipped in the station. My arms and legs were discombobulated clusters of pins and needles, and I was warm, not from the heat, but from someone else’s body against mine. When the curve of Caleb’s neck came into focus, I wagered I had enough energy to bite him at the very least.
“Jesus, Hailey!”
For a second, I think I understood the gratification vampires got out of eating people from time to time. Caleb lost his balance for a second or two, but managed to continue walking towards what looked like a run down bus station about a block from where we were. If I had anything to do with it, he’d be a nineteen-year-old Van Gogh before he could whisk me out of Washington.
I bit him again, hard enough for his skin to spit new blood red all over his white collar. Before I could blink, he reached over his shoulder sent the width of his palm crashing into my face. I’ve never been attacked like that. Never.
Most sane people know you’re not supposed to hit a girl. Ever. Especially yours truly. But this idiot wasn’t like most people, and obviously wasn’t too strong in the intelligence department. He took advantage of how shocked I was, shook me off of his shoulders, and sat me down against a metal fence next to the sidewalk. I felt like a sunburned rag doll.
“Fuck you.”
I couldn’t have been more excited to be able to form words again. Given my restored talents, plenty of curse words directed at Caleb rolled right off of my tongue and it felt beautiful. His stonewall stare wavered a little when he heard me.
I’d bet my trust fund on the fact that this guy was a softy. If I wore him down enough, I could probably talk him out of a kidnapping as easy as picking a lock. Getting into people’s heads isn’t all that different.
“Screaming at me isn’t going to fix anything, Hailey.”
I gave him a five star for that. Slapped him right across the face. He looked horrified at having been a two-time victim of my newfound violence. Watching Fight Club on repeat all those years hadn’t gone to waste after all. I tried my luck a third time, and he stopped me.
“You finished?”
His teeth were clamped so tightly even his spit couldn’t get through. I didn’t have the energy to keep up my charade.
“For the time being.”
I would’ve been more resistant if I’d had the energy but I was so tired my head flopped backwards against the gate.
“Chill out for a minute. I'll knock you out myself if you do anything like that again.”
"So you're the wife-beating type? You don't look it."
I thought that was funny. He didn’t seem to share my sense of humor.
“I really don’t have time for this. We’ve gotta be in Manassas in an hour, and if you keep talking like this I’m—“
“Aren’t you supposed to keep your master plan a secret from the kidnapee?”
“Hailey—”
“Where’s your getaway car? Your goons? Weapons? Ransom note?”
The best part about this situation was how much I was enjoying myself. He looked like he wanted to strangle me.
"I asked you to stop—”
I had no plans to. I was on a roll.
“Isn't Manassas an easy car ride from here? What’s wrong, gas prices too steep?”
All of a sudden, his eyes got dull. Deadpan dull, and it scared the shit out of me. I’d clearly struck a nerve, and if it was possible for a victim of a semi-violent crime to regret insulting their kidnapper, I did, however briefly.
“Get up.”
Caleb was getting testy but I didn’t budge. Instead, I was thinking of a few ways I could try to knock his teeth out, and run for the hills. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a twelve-inch zip tie, put our wrists next to one another, and pulled it tight. There goes my great escape idea.
“Nice, bootleg handcuffs, very Texas Chainsaw.”
He wrenched me off the ground and headed towards the bus again, acting like our entire conversation hadn’t happened. I dug my heels into the ground, hoping he’d stop but each time I started lagging, Caleb jerked his hand forward to keep me in step. We struggled down another three blocks to the bus station ticket booth and right before we approached the window, he snatched my hand. His palms felt like oysters. I hate oysters.
“We’re a couple as far as the people on this bus are concerned, so sell it.”
I spat in his face for talking to me that way. Watching him try to blink my saliva out of his eyelashes was extremely satisfying.
“I don’t have to do anything—“
Without thinking twice about it, Caleb pulled a knife on me. He stepped in close enough for me to feel his blade push gently into my shirt. I didn’t even think he had weapon. He was right; I was too trusting for my own good.
“Pay for two tickets and keep your mouth shut. Do it in cash, not with your black card.”
Caleb was getting his claws in with the insults, but I didn’t have many other options other than doing what he asked or ending up like a stuck pig.
At the booth I asked the salt and pepper haired bookie for two tickets. He didn’t notice my hands shaking. I wished he had. He only smiled at Caleb and I like nothing was wrong, like the two of us we were eloping. I wanted to vomit. I slid him the cash, and bought myself a one-way ticket to a breaking news story.
We boarded the bus with the Valley View Senior Citizens’ Home for the Hard of Hearing, and I came to the depressing realization that even if I tried to subtly ask for help, not a single person on the bus could do much of anything.
Caleb greeted every single one of the elderly women as we walked down the center isle and none of them had enough commonsense to notice what he was up to. All the while, he edged me to the back of the bus, and I was getting good and tired of being muscled around.
“You get the window seat,” he said, borderline jovial.
“I’ll sit alone, thanks. You can tie me to the bus if you want but I’d need some space.”
“Sit down, Hailey.”
Caleb backed me into the window seat and slumped down next to me, suddenly looking more morose than he could afford to let on.
From the way the day had gone so far, Caleb seemed pretty green when it came to being a criminal. The holes in his process gave him away, and as inconvenient as my circumstances were, his seemed heavy and hot on his heels.
I didn’t know where he’d come from, but the kid sported hand-me-downs with untouchable dignity. There wasn’t a pocket in his jeans that didn’t have a purpose, and he’d worn his converses down to the rubber; loving them like a working class hero.
I couldn’t get my head around why he’d do something as badly planned and careless as this. I glanced over at Caleb and he was off somewhere else entirely.
“What's in Manassas?“
Someone needed to say something. If I hadn’t I would’ve started thinking about how far we were getting from Washington. I needed to keep my head on straight. At this point, I knew better than to stop paying attention.
"Don't worry about it. You’ll be in Charlottesville in a couple days.”
"Bullshit."
“Not entirely. We're only keeping you as long as it takes for your dad to agree to what we ask. If he's smart, he'll be quick about it.”
"Who’s we Caleb?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“My dad isn’t going to work with terrorists."
"Isn’t that what he does at his day job? This isn't any different."
The guy was out of his mind.
“I’m not the way to get to my dad.”
I stopped breathing for a minute ‘cause he turned and looked at me dead on.
"Sure you are, you're our game changer, Hailey."
Caleb’s, “rebel with a psychotic cause” nonsense was making me nervous again, and this wasn’t the kind of nervousness I could swallow.
"My dad does what he wants, whether I’m around or not. Don’t think I can't make you any promises—especially for him. "
Caleb smirked at me like an imp.
"You're an Anderson, I didn't expect that to be a strong point."
I would’ve hit him for saying that to me, but he had my hands tied. I hoped he only saw how angry I was. Sometimes when you’re angry, you can fool people into thinking that you’re brave, so they don’t know you’re afraid of them. I was afraid of him. I didn’t want to be, but I was. So, pretending I wasn’t was all I had and I’d be dammed before I cracked.
“If there’s anything you should get through that head of yours, it’s that I'm not responsible for what my Dad does or doesn't do, Caleb."
He'd pushed me to the point of pleading for the kind of logical understanding he'd happily forgone a long time ago.
"You're gunna be."