“Sounds like I’m squared away. I can take on the world,” Peter announced proudly up toward his sister above. He pressed his hands into the dense folds of her crossed jean leg. “Is that all?”
“No, duh, it’s not,” Erica snarked back. She patted her shins, flicking her brother’s tiny hands away again. “Even if you do all that stuff. Fight back if you have a chance to be seen, keep calm if you don’t, stop planning, and stay in the same place. You do all of that, and it still might go completely shitty.”
“Well, gee, thanks for the confidence boost.”
“It’s not about you, twerp. You might do it all right, or at least okay. It still might not matter if the right person gets you.”
“You mean the WRONG person, right?”
“Stop it,” Erica commanded softly, and as it was once in a blue moon, the seventeen-year-old was utterly serious without a single drop of sarcasm. “Just listen.”
“Okay, okay, sorry. What is it?”
“If all of that goes wrong…”
“What?”
“…don’t give up.” Erica’s eyes held unblinkingly above. Her fingers curled down in the grass for Peter to embark. The palm rose like an elevator toward her face, where she held his stare for several seconds in the misty peace which surrounded them. “Don’t you fucking dare give up.”
The spokes of Mandy’s bike tires were in dire need of a good oiling. Every few seconds they’d creak as though the grim reaper was trying to manually open a garage door. Indeed, not much in Mandy’s possession was well-maintained, meager as it was.
That much was clear to Peter at this moment as he found himself once again bundled into the girl’s hoodie pocket and awkwardly caged by one hand he had stowed with him inside the fabric prison. It felt good to be able to focus on things he did know as Mandy fled from her house once again with him hidden “safely” in her fingers. Because, at this particular moment, he didn’t know anything else: Where he and his kidnapper were going. If anyone he loved had any clue where he might’ve disappeared. What kind of mad fireworks display was taking place in Mandy’s skull.
If he would be alive by the time the sun rose again.
That last one felt hollow in his mind, not quite real, which he supposed was a positive. It was good not to have the realization of impending death clouding his judgment. Though, of course, his judgment had been plenty clouded anyway, even with Mandy at her sweetest, when he’d made the attempt at the emergency phone call. What good was he either way in the cause of freedom?
More and more, it seemed that whatever was going to happen to him, was just going to happen to him. Which, when he really got down to it, wasn’t so much different from his regular day-to-day life anyway.
Peter listened, as he had on the initial ride to Mandy’s house from the school, to the textures of the biking terrain, coupled with the level of rattling that rose up through the girl’s person. He was able to recognize smoother, newly laid cement or other clear ground. Passage over rocky gravel sent Mandy’s body into near-convulsions as she tried to stay steady on the bike, her fingers closing ever-tighter around Peter to keep him from sliding out the opposite opening of the pocket. Riding across grass was still bumpy, but less violently so than the sea of dusty pebbles.
Even with these observations made, though, Peter could feel the seeds of apathy in his gut. Before he’d gathered information with rigid attention to detail, as if it could come in handy to the police, or the even sillier idea that if he somehow escaped out into the night, he could retrace all their steps back to the school and be rescued. He wasn’t a damn detective or a wilderness explorer.
He was Peter Clark. He was a five-inch-tall high school freshman who had no idea what was going to happen to him or if he could do a single thing now to prevent it.
How long had he been with Mandy? An hour, at most. It had to be. But then again, he’d been stowed in near sensory deprivation as they rode toward unknown destiny. Next he’d been tossed around a hamster ball until his brain was oatmeal, squeezed nearly to the point of snapping a rib, and pocketed once again for a ride which seemed to last even longer this time. For all he could be sure, this wasn’t even the same day.
At regular intervals, the girl’s palms clamped closed over Peter again, her fingers curling demonstratively around his arms and neck. On each repetition, he mentally braced for another squeeze like the one he’d endured in her basement after the initial rage of his betrayal became apparent. The next clench of her digits could be the one that slipped a disc. Luckily, she had yet to repeat the trick. The idea of losing her new pet even sooner than Sparky had, hopefully, occurred to her, and she’d chosen to only hurt him in less permanent ways.
Of course, that still left an awful lot of options open.
Peter felt an incline in the earth below. His body was rolled against the wall of the pocket, into Mandy’s flat stomach. Her palm came over him again, warmer now from all the effort of pedaling, her clammy fingers pinching him into the fabric to keep him secure. Through the grinding of the tire spokes, with his head pressed to the surface, Peter could hear gentle gurgling emanating from Mandy’s stomach.
Hopefully those Hot Head candies had tided her over for now. A hungry Mandy wasn’t likely to be an agreeable Mandy. And he’d already pushed her well past the point of reason, or what little she might’ve once possessed.
There was another hill, followed by a descent, whereupon the bike lurched into relatively high gear. Mandy’s fingers collected him again, this time keeping him contained by his ankles. However, just when Peter was feeling comfortable with the safety of his position, he noticed movement in the pads of skin clamped around his shins. She was pulling him. Pulling him out of the pocket.
“Wait… wait… n-” Peter took one last gulp of air before staring down at the abyss of the stony descent down the hill.
The bike was rolling fast. Far faster than she could’ve pedaled; the girl’s legs stretched to the sides, letting the series of gears and spokes whiz out of control. Mandy’s fist brandished him, keeping him pinned to the center of her palm only by a very firm thumb squeezed into his waist. High as he was above the ground already as the girl’s arm lofted him above the level of her head for the ride, it was little compared to looking down the careening distance below as the bike barreled along by gravity. Peter felt his stomach turn completely over, though maybe that also had something to do with Mandy’s finger prying harder against his abdomen again. All that kept them rooted to the machine was the girl’s opposite hand, loosely gripped by the ends of her fingers.
Mandy cried out with unbridled delight. The bike sped down the slope and finally leveled off again on even ground. Satisfied, she cast a triumphant glance at her prize once again before shoving him back into her pocket, with far more force than was warranted. Peter found himself squeezed upside-down against her stomach again, where he was treated to ever more songs from her rumbling stomach while her fingers wedged themselves over his tired limbs.
A little longer on the pavement, then a quick few seconds of gravel, then nothing but grass for several minutes. Peter began to wonder, with what limited cognitive function he could muster in this position, if she was taking them home again. As much as his relationship with her had deteriorated over the course of this evening, it was still a plus to be within range of Mandy’s home.
But of course, that’s not where they were.
When Peter was finally given a new gulp of fresh air and a chance to let the blood rush back to his other extremities, he was gripped around his sides by Mandy’s fingers and drawn out into the open air of unfamiliar territory. Decades-old trees, weathered with age and knots, stretched like Olympian pillars into the distance. Loping hills ran past where mist clouded over the dark ground, and well beyond where Peter’s squinted vision could make out. Crickets and cicadas fought for musical supremacy.
“All right, Peter-Rabbit. I guess this is it,” Mandy said. Swinging her leg over the bike seat, Mandy nudged her shoe at the kick stand, which refused to inch. Shrugging again, she simply let go, allowing the entire vehicle to clatter into the grass.
“What?”
“If you want to leave me so badly, then I guess I should be the bigger person and let you do it,” she shrugged.
Peter felt his heart flutter, if ever so briefly, but quickly reality checked himself. It would be unwise to experience joy just yet. He rested his arms down against the firmly wrapped fingers stretched over his chest.
“You… you really…”
“Stop asking stupid questions. I said I’m going to let you out there, and I’m going to do it. See, not everyone is a big fat liar like you.”
“Okay,” Peter breathed. He chanced a glance over the edge of Mandy’s fist, down toward her shoes below. This, like so many other moments this evening, was not a good time to try the wrestling moves he’d practiced with Erica. The jump would definitely snap something important in his legs at the very least, and that was only if he was lucky.
Peter clenched every muscle in his body, preparing. It occurred to him that she could simply drop him and leave him, crippled, this far out in the grass, possibly to die, either as a snack for the coyotes or simply from exposure to the elements. Barely into November, but the air was insistently, almost stingingly cold. If he was made to stay out here without a source of warmth, it would only get worse.
But she didn’t. Another surprise, and this time, just a little less sick.
Mandy’s hand lowered toward the ground and she released Peter less than a foot from the earth. He tumbled, nearly tripping, but managed to stay standing and avoid a twisted ankle. Not a comfortable landing, compared to his usual disembarking, but surely the best he could possibly hope for from this mentally and morally askew teenage girl who he’d foolishly made the mistake of antagonizing this evening when, if he’d simply stayed still, he might’ve been just watching a cheesy horror movie with instead, awaiting the cavalry of police and his family.
There were several decisions made this evening he wished he could do over. In fact, there were several from over the past few months he might’ve changed as well.
“Go,” Mandy ordered, her voice as uneven as the road they’d taken here. The rubber toe of her converse nudged forward, prodding Peter in the butt and almost knocking him over again. “Get out of here. Run toward the trees.”