April Henry - Girl, Stolen

Her dad! Cheyenne’s chest ached so bad. She didn’t know if it was from the pneumonia or because she needed to cry. She wished she could hear her dad’s voice. To hear one good thing on this awful day.

Roy stepped closer. He smelled gross. She sniffed again. Peppermint chewing tobacco, like one of the kids on the football team chewed, the sharp smell of mint not masking the earthy, stomach-turning smell of tobacco. “So how sick are you?”

Cheyenne was strangely torn. She wanted to act like everything was okay, to not show any weakness. But then she remembered what she had thought earlier when she was alone with Griffin. It was probably better to let them know that she was sick. Because maybe they would watch her less closely, leave her alone more. They would think she was too weak to pose any danger.

“I’ve got pneumonia. That’s why we were at the pharmacy — to get my antibiotic prescription filled.”

“And your mom left you in the car,” Griffin said.

Cheyenne shook her head. Suddenly, the distinction seemed important. “Danielle’s my stepmom. My real mom’s dead. Danielle left the keys in the car in case I got cold.” She remembered how she had begged Danielle to leave the keys and pushed the thought away.

“Well, now we need her number and everyone else’s,” Roy demanded. “Mobile numbers for your dad and stepmom, home number, work numbers. And we also need to know how much you think your daddy might part with.” He paused to let that sink in. “Here’s a tip. It had better be a lot.”

Cheyenne had thought that Griffin had only been stealing a car. But now it looked like he had been stealing a girl, too.

Cheyenne looked frightened. “Most of my phone numbers are programmed into my mobile.” Her voice was ragged. “It’s voice activated. I just say who I want to call, and it dials it for me.”

“So it’s in the car?” Roy turned toward the door.

“I threw it out the window.” Griffin hoped Roy wasn’t going to get mad. It wasn’t always easy to know what would set his dad off. “It started ringing, and I was worried they could trace it. So I threw it in some bushes in a vacant lot near the shopping center.”

“Good point,” Roy said, nodding. Then he turned to Cheyenne. “Just tell me all the numbers you remember.”

“My home number is five oh three—”

“Hold on, hold on,” Roy said. Griffin saw that his dad didn’t have a piece of paper or anything to write with. Roy went out and began scrabbling in the junk drawer in the kitchen, leaving Griffin alone with Cheyenne.

She didn’t look good, in Griffin’s opinion. Her cheeks were red, but the rest of her face was blue-white, like skim milk. And then she started coughing again. Thick, wet coughs that sounded like something was tearing in her chest. The cords stood out in her neck. Griffin turned to get her some more water, but the glass wasn’t on the dresser where he thought he had left it. He went into the kitchen to get another one, leaving the room just as Roy came in with a pencil stub and a piece of torn paper.

The kitchen looked the way it always did, but imagining what Cheyenne would think if she could see it made Griffin look at it differently. Dirty dishes were piled in the sink. On the stove, every burner held a pan with the remains of some kind of food stuck to the bottom. The counter was crowded with empty cans, open cereal boxes, tipped-over beer bottles, and overflowing ashtrays. The only time anything got washed was if Griffin grew too disgusted to let it go on any longer. The problem with him being the one who occasionally cleaned up was that Roy expected it.

There weren’t any clean glasses in the cupboard, so Griffin picked up one that didn’t look too dirty and rinsed it out before filling it with cold water. When he carried it back, Cheyenne was managing to choke out numbers that his dad was writing down. He waited for them to finish. After he had written the last number down, Roy walked out of the room and motioned for Griffin to follow.

In the hall, Roy said in a low voice, “You’ll need to stay here and watch her. I’m going to go make a deal for a mobile that can’t be traced. And then I’ll make some calls.”

“Can’t I go with you?”

“Somebody needs to stay with her.” Roy jerked his chin in Cheyenne’s direction. She seemed to be staring at them. Griffin wondered how much she could hear. Weren’t your other senses supposed to get better when you were blind?

Roy walked back down the hall, and Griffin returned to his room. “I brought you more water.”

She didn’t answer him for a second. He heard the front door close and realized she had been waiting until they were alone.

“You’re going to have to untie my hands so I can drink it myself.” It was eerie how her dark eyes seemed to be staring at him. “Last time I almost drowned.”

He wondered if it was a trick. But her ankle was tied to the bed. And she wouldn’t be able to move more than a few feet in an unfamiliar house before he could tackle her. Then he remembered how she had fought him in the car.

“All right. But remember, I still have a gun. If you try anything, I’ll shoot you.” The words were such a cliché that he worried he would laugh when he said them out loud. But instead, he sounded tough. He sounded real. He sounded scary.

He kind of liked it.

Griffin got out his penknife — his fingers brushing the knob of the cigarette lighter — and cut the shoelace around Cheyenne’s wrists. She must have been twisting her hands, because it felt frayed. She spent a few moments rubbing her wrists. At first he thought she was exaggerating but then he saw the red lines braceleting them.

Griffin put the glass in her hands. She drank without stopping and held it back out. “Can I have some more, please?”

He thought about saying no, then changed his mind. Instead, when he went out to the kitchen, he left the water running in the sink. Then he darted back on tiptoe to watch her. He had thought he would probably find her trying to untie her ankle, but instead she was still rubbing her wrists. Her expression looked beaten down, and unexpectedly he found himself disappointed. Griffin went back into the kitchen and finished refilling the glass.

While she was drinking it, his stomach growled loud enough that she turned her head in his direction. He looked at the clock by the bed. It was nearly one o’clock. “I’m going to make some lunch. Are you hungry?” The oddness of the question struck him. What was the etiquette for how to treat someone you had kidnapped?

Cheyenne shrugged. “I guess.”

Back in the kitchen, he looked through the fridge. There was a package of hot dogs that hadn’t been opened. No rolls in the cupboard, but they had bread.

Every few minutes he tiptoed back to look at Cheyenne, but each time she hadn’t moved.

Cheyenne put the can of Coke between her knees so she would know where it was. It was better than having to find it by running her hand over the table until she bumped it with the back of her fingers. After Griffin had untied her ankle, he had led her here, to what she assumed was the dining room, and then retied her ankle to a rung of the chair she now sat in. Given enough time, Cheyenne was sure she could untie herself. But when would she be given enough time?

Before they had been able to sit down at the table, Griffin had had to shove a lot of stuff aside, confirming what Cheyenne had already begun to believe about the house. People might live here, but this was a house, not a home. Nobody cared about it. Except for the room where Griffin had first taken her, everything seemed messy. Whenever he led her around, he had to jerk her to one side or the other, or he kicked things out of the way, swearing under his breath.