“Okay, that makes sense,” Peter said as he stood in the low forest of grass by his sister’s ankle. “If somebody just grabs me, get them to open their hand first so I can get out. But… I mean, I can’t do that anywhere.”
“Duh,” Erica said, rolling her eyes. “Like when they’re standing up.”
“I could try and land on something soft.”
Erica extended her index finger, nudging her tiny sibling in the forehead in lieu of a sporting smack. She snorted. “C’mon, be serious, twerp. If I’m gonna be able to help you, you can’t be thinking like you’re Superman. You’d break half your bones.”
“So what am I supposed to do, then?” he asked.
“Use your head. Limit the panic. If somebody’s holding you and you’re way above the ground, you’re probably gonna freak out a little bit. It’s kind of inevitable, and it’s not cuz you’re not brave enough or whatever, it’s just cuz of what’s happening and it’s a long way down. So the first thing to do is just get calm. As calm as you can get.”
“Right,” Peter said, intaking a deep breath as he awaited his sister’s fingers closing around him again for another practice session. “Just get calm.”
Peter clung firmly to the dense folds of Mandy’s hoodie pocket. His body was surprisingly loose otherwise, considering he was hidden like a kangaroo joey on the person of someone who was riding one-handed on a bicycle down the side of a gravelly road. The clothen tunnel of her pocket was dark, as the girl had one hand cupped around his body inside her oversized attire. What little creeping light managed to make it in between her fingers was only offered by the passing street lamps, as the sun had set nearly two hours earlier. The November chill certainly made itself in, though, and in that way, Peter was in fact fitfully grateful for the warmth offered by his captor’s clammy palm.
His heart was hammering, as he’d imagined it would on those rare but nauseating experiences throughout his life when he’d conceived of this scenario. Not this exact scenario, obviously; when he was seven years old, having nightmares about being grabbed when his mother wasn’t looking, it was always a vampire or demon from one of those cable horror movies he’d accidentally seen when Erica left the channel on.
Not an emotionally unbalanced fifteen-year-old with anger issues and a squeaky bike wheel.
Incredibly, Peter realized he probably would’ve preferred a vampire or demon right now. At least with those, you could most likely predict what was going to happen. Blood suck or soul theft. Straightforward stuff.
With Mandy, there was never any knowing for sure, and that was when he was in the relative safety of the high school with witnesses surrounding him on all sides. Right now, what was more frightening was the prospect that whatever thinly mustered social manners the girl displayed in public had finally been abandoned.
Erica’s words rang in Peter’s ears, louder even than the zing of the bike spokes and the spitting of pebbles out from under the spinning tires.
Calm. Calm. Calm. Panic wouldn’t do him any favors. And in this moment, when didn’t have control over his own body, keeping a stable grip on his mental state was of paramount importance. That much made sense. Peter exhaled, resting his back muscles as he sunk against Mandy’s waiting palm still cozied rigidly around him up against her stomach. A low gurgle sounded from within as he pressed his ear to the fabric.
Get calm.
Subconsciously, Peter had busied himself with trying to keep track of how long they’d been riding, and in what direction. Initially, he’d done so for his own muscle memory benefit, in case Mandy stopped nearby and, by some lottery odds, accidentally offered an escape opportunity. In that instance, he’d want to know which direction to run and roughly for how long. After they’d been riding for almost ten minutes, though, Peter had to abandon that idea, and instead take mental notes, in case another chance arose that didn’t involve him being forced to run for probably the equivalent of a week straight without stopping. If he couldn’t beat her hand into submission for fear of gravity, it would be helpful to gather all the data he could for alternate use.
The gravel crunching beneath the tires gave way finally to quieter earth, probably concrete. Frequent bumps still dotted the ride. On these punctuation points, Peter was thrust upward in the pocket, but kept restrained by Mandy’s fingers, which tensed whenever she felt the next one coming. The boy resolved to keep still and let her do her thing on these occasions. He had more pressing matters to worry about (left turn, right turn, right, left, right), and if he knew one thing about Mandy, he knew she wasn’t going to waste this alone time by allowing him to tumble out of her pocket at fourteen miles per hour.
At last the bumping of the road fell away, replaced with a consistently uneven path that rattled Peter’s innards, vibrating his entire body in teeth-chattering pace. The massive palm surrounding him tightened in response, keeping in the center for safety, or maybe just for restraint. If he had to guess, they were riding on grass. Mandy’s bike came to a stop less than a minute later.
Peter felt the rocking of Mandy’s shoes hitting the dirt on either side of the vehicle. The thrust of her hips as she punted the bike’s kick stand into place. Her palm cupped beneath his body now, bundling him into a fuller grasp. Her broad thumb plied against the underside of his neck, keeping his head held high. No new words had been exchanged since she snatched him from the table twenty minutes ago with a simple, slimy greeting and one of her trademark bone-curdling smiles.
Which Peter didn’t necessarily object to, but in the stillness and relative solitude of this night, he was beginning to wish for some communication. Even if it was with the girl who, forty hours before, dropped him in a toilet and threatened to flush him to Kingdom Come.
They were walking now. Mandy was in no hurry, it seemed. A fence tittered as its wooden spokes were dragged along overgrown crabgrass. The girl’s footsteps landed unevenly in the earth as she meandered at a steady stroll through what Peter assumed was the yard of her house, but of course, there was no way to be sure of that yet when he was still in the dark, literally and figuratively.
Peter thought of Lisa. He had to imagine she was looking for him now for their planned movie night date. Not in a panic. Not yet, anyway.
Which was good; he wished that preliminary time would last as long as possible, to avoid straining her heart and mind. Probably, Lisa assumed either Jessica or his mother had gone into the dressing room and collected him. Probably she was looking for him right now, mere minutes away from going from curious hesitation to distraught horror at realizing he wasn’t in approved hands while she took the call in the office.
The call.
It certainly was conveniently timed, Peter decided. Sure, Lisa didn’t have a cell phone, which explained why her parents would’ve needed to reach her at the school’s front office in a necessary situation, but it didn’t explain something else. Mrs. Carol was supposed to pick the pair of them up and carpool them back to Lisa’s house. She knew when the show ended; in fact, Lisa had confirmed the exact time on three separate occasions during the day. Why could she have reason to call, when she was probably mere minutes from pulling up to the curb of the school?
Peter shook his head, rapping a knuckle at his cranium. That had to just be the latent panic building. Paranoia. He was likely to experience a rush of conflicting emotions in a situation like this; that was what Erica had told him, and he believed it. Best not to think of those things too much in this moment. They weren’t important in the immediate future. Right now, his only job was to collect information and keep Mandy from becoming upset.
Easier thought than done, of course.
Light trickled into the pocket now. A screen door slammed hard against its frame. The air was considerably warmer, stuffy almost, and Peter knew they were indoors now. Mandy’s fingers shifted to and fro along his back, scrunching the fabric of his costume which he had unfortunately been unable to change out of before being kidnapped. Her thumb ruffled his hair, then ran down to his shoulders, rubbing the itchy fabric hard into his skin. Peter heard the popping of the delicate threading coming undone thanks to Mandy’s pulling.
In one swoop, the dim lighting between the cracks of Mandy’s fingers was traded for bright, blooming kitchen bulbs. Peter braced himself as the girl’s hand drew her prize fully from her hoodie pocket. He focused on draining away the fringes of the terror, displaying a face of cool collectedness.
She could make him afraid, but she couldn’t make him show it.
Mandy remained silent for another minute or so as she held him with surprisingly gentleness in upturned palms, at least compared to the prior times Peter had spent in her grasp. She wasn’t exactly cradling him as she rested her arms on the table of the narrow kitchen and sunk into a chair. Her fingers were working him over still, toying with the sleeves and hems of his Tom Thumb costume, simultaneously keeping him pinned to her hand; still, it wasn’t painful, and he could breathe.
Data. Data. Data.
Peter tried not to be too obvious as he centered himself in the space. A quick glance around the cramped room, countertops piled high with miscellaneous junk, and Peter realized the dining space of Mandy’s house was smaller even than his own bedroom. The aging light bulb overhead cast a macabre halo around the crown of his captor, but morphed a darkness beneath her eyes. Her index finger pressed to his cheek, forcing him to refocus his gaze squarely on her.
“Okay, my little Peter Rabbit,” Mandy intoned softly. “What should we do together?”