Princess (American Princess #1)(30)
Author: Courtney Cole

“I got up to get a drink and I saw someone sneaking around your house from our kitchen window.  I tried to wake up my parents, but they wouldn’t wake up, so I came outside to get a better look so I could call the police.  He saw me, though.”   He sounded guilty, as though he had done something wrong, so Sydney was quick to reassure him.

“Danny, you tried to be a hero.  Thank you.  Most people wouldn’t have bothered. But I wish you wouldn’t have.  Then you would be safely in your own house, instead of here with me.”  He shrugged his bony shoulders at her words.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does,” she insisted. “But we’ve got to figure out a way to get out of here.  Have you heard him outside of the door?”

Danny shook his head.  “Nope. I think we’re in the country somewhere. And there’s a knocking sound on the wall every once in awhile.”

That surprised her.  It hadn’t occurred to her that someone else might be here.

“Can you show me where?”

Danny got up and walked across the room, knocking lightly on a spot on the wall.  Two seconds later, an echoing knock resounded through their little room.

Sydney jumped up, ignoring the overwhelming dizziness that threatened to overtake her, and ran directly to the spot.  She put her ear against the wall and knocked again.  Another knock in response.  Someone was definitely there.

“Hello?” she called as softly as she could, yet still loudly enough to be heard in the next room.

“Thank God, Oh my God.  Please, can you help me?”  A frantic female voice answered, as pounding commenced from the other side of the wall.  

Sydney jumped, as the pounding resonated in her ear and enhanced the pain in her head.  Then she leaned close to the wall again.

“Please stop—he might hear you.  We’re in here, but we can’t help you.  We’re locked in, too.  How long have you been here?”

The pounding ceased and Sydney breathed a sigh of relief.  She instinctively knew that they should try and draw their captor’s attention as little as possible.  The girl didn’t answer her, so she tried again.

“My name is Sydney.  What’s yours?”

The only response was a desolate cry that creshendoed into a wail.  Sydney beat her fists against the wall to try to get the girl’s attention.

“Please calm down.  Let’s not draw his attention, okay?  Calm down.  It’s alright.”

There was sudden silence and then the girl hissed, “Are you crazy?  Nothing is alright.  Not anymore.  You’ll see.”  She began crying again, this time more softly, but Sydney could plainly hear it through the wall.  She turned to Danny and looked at him helplessly.

“You and I have to hold it together, okay?  We can’t figure out a way to get out if we aren’t thinking clearly.”

He nodded wordlessly and visibly began examining the room for anything that could be of use to them.  His search was short-lived.  There was nothing.  They were alone with four walls and a bed.  There was absolutely nothing that they could use to escape. The boards were so tightly screwed into the wall that there was no getting them off with their bare hands.  Danny’s gaze locked with hers again.  Both of their faces reflected what they each knew. They were helpless.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The days ran together in the tiny, isolated room. Time became an abstract concept. It was there, but they couldn’t fully grasp it.  There was nothing to mark it by.  Sydney tried to come up with games to play to keep Danny’s mind off of their current situation, but the entire time she was playing, she kept one section of her brain moving to try and hatch an escape plan.  She kept coming up empty.

On her more hopeless days, she allowed herself to acknowledge that there was no way out of the room.  The only thing she was left with was to think of some way to outsmart their captor.  If he ever returned.

Time and time again, she tried to talk to the girl in the next room, but there was never a response.  Every once in a while, they would hear low moans and crying, so they knew she was still there.  And still breathing.  Her guttural howling attested to that.  Sydney couldn’t help but wonder how long she had been in there.  The girl was clearly emotionally broken.

She and Danny huddled together on the sparse bed to sleep and she lost track of how many night falls had come and gone.  Five, eight, maybe ten.

She only knew when it was night time because the tiny crack under the window went black and the room became entirely shrouded in darkness- an abyss so black that she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face.   As if it could get any worse, they had no water and no food.  Sydney knew that at this rate, they would be completely dehydrated soon and would die that way.

For the first few days, they had used the bathroom in the corner, their bodily waste creating an acrid odor in the room. It was humiliating and degrading, but they had no other option.  Since they didn’t even have a bucket to use, she was pretty sure it had been planned that way.  It distressed her now that neither of them had used it for at least a day.  She knew that it was a bad sign and tried to remember what dying by dehydration was like from what she had learned in Science. Did a person just go to sleep?  No, that was hypothermia.  She just couldn’t remember.  But then, her mind was slowing down as her body dried out.  

She would kill for a drink.  Of anything… water, coke, milk, juice. The memory of a slushie from 7-11 caused her to squeeze her dry eyes painfully shut.  What she wouldn’t give for just one single sip. Just one. It was incredible how she used to take such an important thing for granted.  A one dollar slushie could literally keep her alive right now.  Her life for a dollar.  She shook her head at the irony.

Little Danny was getting weaker by the minute.  He was smaller than she was, so dehydration was going to claim him first.  She felt strangely maternal toward him, and gathered him into her lap, stroking his hair back from his forehead and offering him empty assurances. She knew she was lying even as she spoke, but she couldn’t help it.  This was so unfair.

He lay limply draped over her legs, his small body trembling from time to time.  She had never realized how quickly someone lost their strength without fluids.  But why would she?  She had never been so deprived of anything.  From time to time, Danny curled up into a ball, crying as his legs cramped.  She had also never known that cramps were a side effect of dehydration.