“Hush,” Mom said-but she laughed a little as she said it. She put a plate of eggs and toast in front of me and hurried off to deal with Amy before the poor child got so full of girlish anxiety that she exploded in a cloud of pink dust.
“So,” murmured my dad’s voice from somewhere behind his newspaper. “What’ve you got going on today?”
Even when he was in one of his oblivious phases, Dad seemed to feel it was his dadlike duty to ask me questions about my life from time to time. I’m not sure it was part of his duty to actually listen to the answers. Come to think of it, I’m not really sure he was actually behind the newspaper at all. I sometimes thought I could’ve ripped it away suddenly and found a mannequin sitting there with an MP3 player periodically spouting questions like “So-how’s your schoolwork going?” and “So-how’s the high school social scene shaping up?” The real Dad would have already been at his office.
Anyway, this time it was “So-what’ve you got going on today?” And I’m pretty sure I could’ve answered, “Today I unleash the first devastating attack in my long-planned war for world domination,” and not gotten more than a “Hmm-that sounds interesting” from behind the paper.
I was about to try it when my jaw dropped open and my eyes went wide. I suddenly remembered something. I’d been so busy checking out my Word of the Day that I hadn’t actually looked to see what day it was.
“Oh no,” I said. “Is this Wednesday?”
“Hmm-that sounds interesting,” said the Dad mannequin behind the paper.
I looked at the top of the newspaper. Yep, it was Wednesday, all right. Wednesday, September 15.
“Today’s the day I give my karate demonstration!” I said. I had completely forgotten about it. The trouble was, I’d agreed to give the demonstration last June before school let out for the summer. The principal, Mr. Woodman, had asked if I’d do it, and I said sure, and he said save the date and I said okay-but I never wrote it down. I remembered it sometimes, and sometimes I forgot. Lately, I’d forgotten. I hadn’t even been practicing for it.
I felt the first breath of airy nervousness in my chest, and my little heart went pitty-pat. It wasn’t that I was unprepared. I practiced karate almost every day, and I was always ready to strut my stuff. And I knew I had a freshly washed gi and all the other materials I needed in my closet upstairs.
No, what made me nervous was that the demonstration was going to be given in first assembly. The entire eleventh grade would be watching. And the class officers- president, vice president, and treasurer-would be sitting, as always, in their official seats in the front row.
And the class vice president was Beth Summers. Who was so beautiful and so nice I can’t even talk about it.
CHAPTER FIVE
My Right Leg Karate. My karate demonstration. That’s what flashed into my mind as I strained against the straps that held me to the chair. So the last day I remembered wasn’t a completely ordinary day after all, was it? There was my karate demonstration with Beth Summers watching from the front row. Not that that explained anything. Not that it explained how I woke up scarred and burned and strapped to a chair with two men with orders to kill me about to walk through the door. But it did remind me of something. It forced a solid thought into my racing, panicking brain.
Karate. I was a black belt. I was a martial artist, a good one. I was trained to fight.
Now, okay, maybe you think that sounds funny. Maybe you think: how exactly was I going to fight when I was strapped to a chair that was bolted to the floor? How was I going to fight when all four of my weapons-both legs and both arms-were immobilized? How was I going to fight when the men ordered to kill me were right outside, were going to come through that door any second?
And I’ll admit: it didn’t look good. But as the thought of my martial arts training forced itself into my mind, another thought forced its way in as well. The Churchill Card.
My karate teacher-Sensei Mike-gave me the Churchill Card. He told me to fold it up and keep it in my wallet, and I always did and I always looked at it before I had to compete in a tournament or take an important test in school or do anything else where it came in handy. All it was was a 3 x 5 index card. Sensei Mike had written some words on it with a ballpoint pen. They were the words of Winston Churchill. Churchill was the prime minister of Great Britain during World
War II. When the Nazis had taken over most of Europe, when Hitler was trying to spread his evil, hateful, murderous philosophy all over the world, Churchill inspired the British to defend their little island. Hitler bombed them and bombed them, but, led by Churchill, the people endured and fought back and somehow held on until the United States came into the war to help them win.
This is what Churchill told them-this is what Sensei Mike had written on my card: Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never -in nothing, great or small, large or petty- never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
I didn’t know how I’d gotten here. I didn’t know how I had lain down one night in bed with a life full of school and homework and parents and friends and girls-and then awoken in this horrible room, in this searing pain, in this deadly danger. But I didn’t have time to figure it out now. Somehow it had happened. Somehow I was here. For some reason, they were coming to kill me. And with me strapped down like this, there was no question that my enemies-whoever they were-had overwhelming might on their side.
If ever there was a moment to remember the words on the Churchill Card, this was it.
Never give in. Which, in this case, meant I had to look for a way out. I had to still the panic flaming through me, and think. Think. It did no good to pull and yank against the straps. They’d never break. It did no good to try to slip free of them. They were tight. It did no good to scream. If there were anyone around to help me, they’d’ve come by now.
I had to think-and look around-look for another way.
I looked. It wasn’t easy. In my terror, I found it hard to get my eyes to keep still, to train them on things and take them in. I had to force myself to do it. I looked at my left wrist first. At the chair arm it was strapped to. Nothing. The strap was strong and secure. The metal of the chair was smooth. Same with my right wrist. My hand extended over the arm of the chair. I could open and close it into a fist. But there was nothing within reach, nothing I could get hold of.
What about my ankles? I had to lean forward in the chair as far as I could to get a look at the front of them, then lean over to the side to get another angle. On the left, it was the same as with my wrists. Nothing to see, nothing to use. A strap, a metal chair leg, a bolt holding the chair securely to the floor. Leaning forward to look at my right ankle, I saw more of the same. There was no way out.
My chest was getting tight. My stomach was turning sour. Tears of despair were blurring my vision.
Never give in, never, never, never, never.
I leaned over to the right to get the other angle on my strapped leg. And that’s when I saw it.
It wasn’t much. Just a rough spot in the chair leg. A little patch where the metal had maybe bumped into something, had somehow gotten scraped and damaged. The thing was, though, the rough spot was right above the strap on my ankle. And whatever had caused the damage had left a little ledge of metal sticking out above the scrape.
And it was sharp.
By lifting my foot, I could move the canvas strap on my right ankle against the sharp edge of the metal. I didn’t have a lot of leeway, a lot of room to move. I couldn’t actually cut through the canvas, but I might be able to wear a way through it if I had enough time.
I didn’t. My time was up. Just then, the door opened, and the two men came into the room.
My heart would’ve sunk when I saw them, except my heart had already sunk so low there was nowhere left for it to go. But these two-these men-you could see it in their eyes: they were the worst kind of enemies to have. Not even evil-just obedient to evil, just dead in their hearts and minds and following blindly whatever orders they were given. Right now, their orders were “Kill him”- that meant me. One look at them, and I knew no matter what I said, they would follow those orders to the end.