9
Sage
With every second that went by, the inside of the gray van felt more like an oven. I tried not to imagine all of us being cooked alive, but I couldn’t help it.
The bare floor was uneven and bumpy, with some metal parts poking out, like maybe there used to be seats back here.
A couple of the kids had started screaming once the man slammed the back doors and the hot, sticky van went dark.
Bonnie was one of them.
“ Shh, ” I told her, hearing the man ’ s footsteps run around to the driver ’ s side. “ He ’ ll get mad and come back.”
A little window between the driver ’ s seat and the back of the van cracked open a few inches.
I just knew the guy was going to yell at us. Tell us again how he was going to shoot Ms. Jessa—who sat hunched in the very back part of the van, her hands and her arms fastened together behind her back.
Instead, Ms. Jessa was the one who yelled.
“ Be quiet , now, ” she barked.
Her voice was so harsh, Bonnie didn’t even finish her wail.
The other kids went dead silent, too.
The driver slammed the window shut without another word.
I scooted closer to Bonnie, afraid to say anything else and suddenly hating Ms. Jessa a little bit. Not as much as I hated the men with the pantyhose over their faces, but enough to make me glare at her. When kids cried, you were supposed to tell them everything would be okay. You didn’t yell.
I wanted to tell her that. I wasn’t afraid of talking back to grownups—that ’ s what the note in my report card from Ms. Butler said last year—but then the van lurched forward, nearly toppling me over onto Bonnie.
Where were the men taking us? What were they going to do? One time, a babysitter let me and Bonnie watch a Dateline episode about a girl who got kidnapped on her way home from school. Her face was all over giant billboards and posters in the city where she lived, even though she ’ d been missing for ten years.
“ That ’ s so sad. Her poor family. They can ’ t even have a funeral,” the babysitter—who was three years older than me but two inches shorter—had said.
Because she ’ s for sure dead, I knew.
Would me and Bonnie be on a billboard like that, too? The men said they wouldn’t hurt us if we did what they told us, but I bet the person who kidnapped that other girl told her the same thing.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
The van made an abrupt left turn, pitching all of us to the side. I planted my feet against something metal sticking up from the floor and braced so I wouldn’t fall over.
Bonnie pressed her body tighter against me and whimpered but didn’t scream again.
Thud, thud, thud. Other kids gasped as they lost their balance and hit the sides of the van.
Ked ’ s voice, tiny and scared, announced, “ I get carsick.”
Someone else, maybe Ava or Mindy, whispered, “ I do too.”
I didn’t get carsick too easily. I read my book the whole way to McCall last summer, when we went to the lake with Mom and Grandpa. But even my stomach had started churning in the hot, dark van that kept making tight left turns. Almost like we were circling.
A single, dull pinprick of light came through one of the painted-black windows behind my head, but it didn’t make any difference. It looked like a dead star in the darkness.
“ I have to go to the bathroom,” Rose said in a tear-thick voice. “ I held it after school, so I wouldn’t miss the bus.”
“ Me too,” Bonnie choked.
Me too, I thought, but kept it to myself.
Ms. Jessa didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Why wasn’t she helping? Instead, she just sat there like a lump on a log.
“ Just hold on. We’ll be there soon,” I said in my loudest, strongest voice. Somebody needed to say it. Somebody needed to comfort these kids.
Blechhh.
Before I even realized what had happened, the rotten-sweet smell of vomit hit my nose.
“ I ’ m sorry,” Ked whispered. He was crying now, too.
* * *
For a while, I tried to keep track of the ways the bus turned.
Left, left.
Right, right, right, hard left.
Left, left, left, hard right. The turns kept coming quick and fast, and I had the thought again that we were going in circles. Were they trying to mix us up? Make it impossible to tell where we were going or how far away?
At least it was something to think about besides the smell of hot throw up and how my own bladder felt like a balloon ready to burst.
Before long, I gave up keeping track of the turns and just started praying that we ’ d stop soon. There wasn’t any way to tell how much time had gone by, but it felt both shorter and longer than the drive to McCall.
My throat was full of cotton and my body felt like it had the day Bonnie and I stayed in the rec center hot tub too long. Hot and itchy and a little bit woozy at the same time.
After Ked, I heard two more kids throw up. Rose and Charlotte. I knew because they both said sorry afterward.
The smell made me want to do the same, but I held it in. The road had finally straightened out, which helped my stomach feel better. But it didn ’ t do anything to help with how bad I had to pee. I braced so tight my teeth hurt from clenching.
Bonnie ’ s sticky body felt like a half-baked cookie melted against me. She ’ d gone quiet for a little while. But I could feel her shaking now, long shudders that lasted longer every time.
“ Sage, I can ’ t hold it,” she said so quietly I almost missed what she said. I could hear the horror and shame hot in her whisper.
“ It ’ s okay, Bonnie,” I whispered back.
“ No it ’ s not,” she rasped, voice hitching as her body started to shake again. “ I ’ m not a baby .”
I swallowed the hard lump in my throat and screwed my eyes shut again. Then I leaned over and whispered, “ I know you ’ re not. I have to pee, too. It ’ s not a big deal.”
And before I could think about it too hard, I stopped clenching and let go of my bladder.
It felt awful and relieving at the same time. The hot liquid soaked through my jeans and made my cheeks burn harder. I ’ d never peed my pants before. Bonnie had done it last year though, in kindergarten. The teacher sent her home with a note that she ’ d have to wear pull-ups to class if it happened again. Bonnie was so embarrassed to go back that she made herself sick and got to stay home from school the next day.
Bonnie went silent and let out a little “ Oh.”
I could still hear her snuffling, but then she stopped shaking and whispered, “ Thanks, Sage.” Then she did the same as me.