Review
"The prolific Haddix gives young teens another suspensful tale...Themes of friendship, self-centeredness, and the ties that bond are common issues for young adults as they struggle to find themselves and thier place in the world....Haddix addresses these themes without preaching."--VOYA
"Haddix's characters are, as usual, superbly drawn, and Lindsay's struggle to shape her identity independent of what others think of her will surely resonate with many young readers."--The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
"An intriguing and often exciting diversion."--Kirkus Reviews
Book Description
When the tabloids print a "where are they now" story about her, claiming that Lindsay's maniacal father has kept her imprisoned in her house for the past five years, a couple of well-meaning teens attempt to "rescue" Lindsay. For the first time in five years, Lindsay is outside the protective quiet of her house. And that's when she hears the one voice she never expected to hear: her mother's.
When she discovers that perhaps her mother didn't leave voluntarily, she has a choice to make: will she risk everything to find the truth about her past--and the source of her ability?
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
I was supposed to be doing my algebra homework that night. Nobody ever tells you, "do your algebra and it will keep you safe. It will protect you from being kidnapped." nobody ever says that. But in my case, that night, it might have been true.
I didn't do my algebra homework. I should have -- I'd made a promise to my dad, after all. But it was such a soft spring night, the first evening since October that had had any warmth to it. It was one of those nights when you can almost feel the seasons changing, when you can begin to hope that you're done with bitter cold and dead earth and harsh winter winds. It'd just be wrong to use a night like that for algebra homework.
So instead of picking up my pencil and solving for x, I climbed out my bedroom window and sat on my balcony, my arms wrapped around my legs, my back against the wall, my chin perched on my knees.
When I say "balcony," you're probably picturing something out of Romeo and Juliet, maybe with lacy wrought-iron fleur-de-lis on the railing, a place where I could lean out and sigh longingly as my boyfriend called up to me from below. In reality I didn't have a boyfriend, and it was actually a bit of a stretch to say that I had a balcony. My house -- ours, I mean, where I lived with my father -- was a rickety one-and-a-half-story wood-framed box. Springdale's a college town, and the houses here were built for penny-pinching college students and only-slightly-less-impoverished professors whose minds would be so filled with deep thoughts that they might not notice cracks in the foundation and walls that met at skewed angles. So my "balcony" was just a flat section of roof, unevenly shingled, with a wobbly wood railing barely more than ankle high, and an equally wobbly wooden staircase trailing down the side of the house to the ground. My father used to theorize that the staircase dated back to the early 1900s, when our house was a rooming house for college girls, and the housemother might have been too deaf to hear the girls sneaking out at night.
I'm pretty sure that's not the kind of musing an ordinary father would share with his daughter. Fathers generally don't tell daughters about ways to escape. But the way I'd lived for the past five years, even my absentminded father must have seen that it would take much more than a rickety staircase to draw me away.
So there I was on the balcony, staring out at the beginnings of buds on the limbs of our maple tree. Occasionally clusters of college students would pass by on the sidewalk down below, coming back from the library or the bars or meetings where they were planning to save the endangered American burying beetle or planning to aid the refugees of some war nobody else had ever even heard of. (Springdale College was founded by reformers attempting to bring their utopian ideals to the Midwest -- its students had a long tradition of working for obscure lost causes.) I wasn't really listening to the bursts of excited chatter drifting up to me through the maple boughs; I wasn't really thinking about how deceptive it was that those college students seemed so nearby when really we were living in completely different worlds. They would have heard me, easily, if I'd called out to them. But either they or I might as well have been American burying beetles, for all the connection we actually shared.
Then it happened.
One minute I was just sitting there, staring blankly out at our tree's empty branches and the empty sidewalk, in the gap between students passing by. In the next moment strong arms were scooping me up, and a voice was hissing, "Shh! Shh! Don't make a sound!"
I could have screamed. I had time, before the hand clamped over my mouth, before I was hustled down the stairs, before my mind clouded over with panic and other voices. But I dare you: You try, if you're ever kidnapped, to do the exact right thing at the exact right time. You try it in regular life, when you might have all the time in the world to think and plan. Sometimes you just make mistakes.
I didn't scream. I let my body go limp, which probably made it much easier to stuff me into the car waiting in the alley.
"Put her in the back. I'll drive -- yes, there -- hurry..." I couldn't be sure I really heard them conversing. Or conspiring. Whatever. There was so much else echoing in my head, so many other conversations distracting me:
That poor girl. Do you think she's going to be all right?
...anything else we could do to help?
...I thought this essay...
And those bangs! Can you believe that hair?...
You know, the youngest...
I couldn't have said what was real and immediate and right there, before my very ears, and what was dim and distant and not exactly relevant at the moment. Then the hand came off my mouth and someone was pushing my face toward the cracked vinyl seat -- pushing rather gently, actually, for a kidnapper.
"Sorry," a voice said. "You're going to have to keep your head down until we're out of town."
The hand slipped back over my mouth. The car lurched forward, but slowly, like it was barely creeping through the gravel alley. I could tell when we reached pavement -- at the corner of Vine Street -- because the car whipped dramatically to the right and sped up with a screech of the tires.
"Careful!" the voice beside me called out. "Remember, Springdale's a speed trap!"
This struck me as funny -- kidnappers worrying about a speeding ticket? -- but the car slowed slightly.
"Nobody's following us, are they?" the driver asked.
From my position with my face smashed against the vinyl, I could tell that the boy holding my mouth shut had turned around to look out the rear window.
Boy, I thought dazedly. It's two boys who are kidnapping me. I felt strangely proud, that I could think my own thoughts, despite all the other noise in my head. Despite being kidnapped.
The car slowed -- because of the traffic light at the corner of Vine and Liberty, I guessed -- and then veered left.
"No! That's the way they'd expect us to go!" the boy beside me exploded.
"Okay, okay. Let me think -- "
"Go out 643!"
The car made a U-turn, with more screeching tires and a little wobble that made me wonder if the whole thing might just flip over. I hadn't been in a car in a while, but I did remember seat belts. I wanted a seat belt. Maybe if I asked nicely, if I promised to keep crouching down, the kidnappers would let me wear one?
Just then the boy holding on to me let go.
"Yee-ha!" he yelled. "We did it!" I turned my head slightly and opened one eyelid a crack -- I had just then realized I'd had both eyes squeezed tightly shut. The boy was pumping his fists in the air, cheering, like someone in the pep section at the Springdale College football games. Except this boy looked too young to be in college. He was thin, the way a lot of teenagers are when they've grown so quickly they can't eat enough to keep up. He had chin-length brown hair that was a little bit straggly -- his ears stuck out on the sides. And he had a kind face. I say that even though he'd just kidnapped me: You could just look at him and know he'd never kicked a dog, probably never even killed a fly.
"Are you all right?" the boy said. "You can sit up now -- it's safe. We're out of Springdale. You're free. We rescued you!" He beamed at me, a beatific smile, like an angel's in an art book.
"Where would you like us to take you?" the boy in the driver's seat asked from the front. "I've got my cell phone. Is there someone you want to call?"
Granted, I'd never been kidnapped before, but it struck me that those probably weren't typical kidnapper questions. I would have answered, except that one of the voices in my head said just then, Oh, I hate this one! That little girl is such a brat.
"Here," the boy beside me said, lifting my head from the seat. He did it too quickly, given that my face had been plastered there for so long. I moaned with the pain of my skin peeling away from the vinyl.
"Oh, no!" the boy said. "Are you all right? I'm sorry, I'm sorry.... Really, there's no reason to be scared. Do you want something to drink? We've got some cans of Pepsi somewhere in here...." He was lifting my shoulders, propping me up, even as he scanned the floor for the promised Pepsis. "Darnell, I think she's in shock or something. She's just..."
The car eased over onto the side of the road, rolling onto gravel. We were out in the country now. Springdale's small enough that you're in the country after about ten minutes in any direction. The driver had very responsibly switched on his flashing emergency lights so that anyone driving past could avoid hitting him. Some small, overly analytical part of my brain thought, Look, guys, if you're going to make a go at being kidnappers, you really shouldn't draw attention to yourselves like that.
But no one was driving by. No headlights swept into the car, not even from far down the road.
"Oh, no. We did scare you, didn't we?" the driver said, turning around to face me. In the scant reflected glow of the emergency lights, I could see only that his hair was as shaggy as his friend's, but blonder. "Look, we're on your side. We just wanted to save you from your father."
"My...father?" I choked out. The word stuck in my throat. It was difficult to say.
"Well, yeah," the boy beside me said. "We know who you are. We know all about you."
I let that pass, even though it couldn't be true.
"Look," the driver said, picking up something from the seat beside him. He passed back a newspaper clipping -- no, not exactly a newspaper clipping. A tabloid clipping. He obligingly turned on the car's overhead light (making us more conspicuous, I'm sure) and shook out the wrinkles in the paper. Then he handed it to me.
I looked down at it, forcing my eyes to focus, to read. The headline said:
FORMER CHILD STAR HELD HOSTAGE DOWN BELOW, THERE WAS SMALLER TYPE: BY FANATIC DAD
Down below there w...
