Page 4 of However You Want Me

I tried to shout it as we passed their bedroom door, but there was too much to say.

“Mom, please,” I screamed instead. “Mom, they’re taking me. Mom! Dad!”

But the door didn’t open.

It stayed closed like they couldn’t hear. I screamed until my throat was raw.

I stared at that door as they took me away, hoping, praying.Open. Open. Open.

It didn’t open.

My stomach clenched with new terror. The men took me down the stairs and I couldn’t see my parents’ bedroom door anymore.

The fight went out of me when I got to the back of the car with the door slammed shut. That was like a nightmare, too. I knew they wouldn’t let go, and that closed bedroom door broke something in me.

It’s all I can think as the early morning sun starts to show and the car takes me away. It’s silent. There’s no way to fight anymore. I’m trapped.

Even if I got free, where would I run?

Outside, the neighborhood was silent. Curtains twitched in the window of the house next door.

I pulled against the men as hard as I could praying she would see and help me. The lady next door, Kathy, was always in everyone’s business. She’d spotted me in my own backyard more than once and asked what I was up to.

Of all people, Kathy wasn’t going to let kidnapping happen on our street.

Kathy’s porch light stayed off.

Her front door stayed closed, just like my parents’.

I tried to call for her. She was my last hope. I knew she didn’t like me, probably for the same reasons my parents had been sodisappointed, but I still thought I meant something to them.

A hand clamped down over my mouth before I could scream her name.

“Don’t make this worse,” one of the men told me roughly. He sounded bored. Annoyed that I wasn’t going along with this kidnapping. I couldn’t remember what they’d said when they put the cuffs on. What charges? How could they take me to jail?Why?

The vehicle in my parents’ driveway wasn’t a police car. It was a white van with a door that creaked as the second man pulled it open.

The first shoved me inside and onto a worn seat with practically no cushion in it. A metal frame under the cloth dug into my ass.

There were more handcuffs, chaining me to the inside of the van.

“Where are you taking me?”

They climbed in the front seats, and the man who had told me not to make it worse started the engine.

“Which jail are you taking me to?” I don’t even know how I’m able to speak with my heart rampaging as it does. I’m still fucking terrified.

They didn’t answer.

If my parents wouldn’t save me, and Kathy wouldn’t, then maybe the police would listen.

I was naive enough to think they were taking me to jail.

We drove right past it and I thought I would cry but apparently the tears have all dried up.

Instead, we drive away from all the lights and onto back roads and highways. I can’t keep track of where we’re going. I don’t know if they’re making extra turns to confuse me, or if I’m just too shocked and tired and sick to remember them.

When the van rumbles to stop, it’s still night. It might be very early in the morning. The sun isn’t up yet. A single bare lightbulb shines down on a sign.

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