Attempted Kidnapping (Part 1)

One day while walking home from school with Anne Marie, we had an unusual and frightening encounter. We took our regular route home, making a pit stop at my great-grandparents’ house for snacks, and then hung out at the playground that sat conveniently half way between school and home.

After we finished swinging, sliding, and releasing the general stuffiness that accompanies a day trapped in a classroom listening to people talk at you, we picked up our school bags and walked towards the exit. No sooner had we reached the street did a banged up gray car pull up in front of us. Two young men with long dark hair and even darker eyes sat inside of it. The passenger rolled down his window while Anne Marie and I stood cautiously but curiously watching. He held up a little brown puppy for us to see and was asking us if we wanted to pet it.

I could feel and hear my radar (a sound much like an inner alarm) start bleeping in my head. I stood frozen in place, but, when Anne Marie began to walk towards the car, I sprang into action. I leaped from my spot, grabbed her hand, and drug her in the opposite direction the car was facing. As we raced off, I chided to her about the class we just had on talking to strangers in between screams for help.

We ran to the closest house banging on its door frantically, but no one answered. Looking over my shoulder, I realized the car had sped off. We quickly walked the other half block to Anne Marie’s, and then I cut through some back yards and front yards to my house.

Bursting through the front door, dropping my bag on the floor, I breathlessly blurted out, “Me and Anne Marie were almost kidnapped!” to which my mom promptly rolled her eyes. Now, understand, I was the “queen of tall tales” as my Nan would so fondly tell me. I had told whoppers about pretty much everything and, of course, there were true things that no adult could ever bring himself or herself to believe. It was all classified as my “vivid imagination," whether it was or not.

“No, really it’s true this time,” I shouted.

“What’s true?” my Nan asked from the staircase.

“Me and Anne Marie were almost kidnapped by these two werewolves driving in a silver bullet. They were about to eat a puppy, and they wanted us…” The phone interrupted me.

Okay so I exaggerated. Fiction was always much more interesting than the truth. You had to juice it up a bit, and I was good at it. What was the big deal anyway? Adults did it all the time. They made up pretty lies of how much they loved you and then would hurt and betray you in the worst ways possible. Believe me, I knew. I had learned a lot in my 7 years on this earth.

My mom hung up the phone and, speaking more to my grandmother then me, she said, “That was Anne. It seems Anne Marie came home saying the same thing.”

(to be continued)