by Ryan P. Ruiz
The car moved ever so slowly as Cody watched from the corner of his eye. Slightly frightened, Cody stopped walking and froze then looked at the car. It was shiny and black, with windows as dark as night. The vehicle had chrome scattered on the front and the back of it. Cody had no clue what the car was doing.
“Is this person lost and needs directions?” he thought to himself.
The passenger window of the vehicle lowered to a little over halfway down, and a friendly but unfamiliar voice asked, “Hey, kid, do you want a ride to school? It’s pretty cold out there.”
Cody looked into the dark vehicle and into the person’s eyes that were locked on him. It was an older man that had a smile on his face.
“No thanks!” Cody yelled with a puzzled look on his face.
His legs started working, and he walked fast toward the end of the street. The driver didn’t say anything more. The dark window rolled up easily, and the sinister-looking vehicle slowly drove off into the distance.
As Cody turned the corner onto Franklin Street, where his school was only a few blocks away, he thought to himself, “I can’t believe that just happened.”
With butterflies in his stomach, he had flashbacks of things he had learned a while ago about strangers. He remembered safety classes he took only a few years back that local police officers gave at his school. The first thing he was taught when he was younger was to just say no and run as fast as he could if a stranger offered something.
Then his mind replayed what had just happened to him just moments ago. Crazy questions and thoughts filtered through his head like, What would have happened to me if I decided to get in that sharp-looking car? Would I ever get to see my mom or sister again? Aren’t I a little too old for a person to try and kidnap me? What if the man was just trying to be nice? An unexpected tear slowly dripped down his cheek and fell to the now snow-covered sidewalk. An uneasy feeling took over the boy’s body.
Passing Watergate Avenue, the final street before his school, Cody ran the rest of the way to school. He needed to tell someone right away what had happened.
CHAPTER III
School
Not really knowing what to do, Cody hurried straight to the main office and asked for the assistant principal. Seeing how excited and distraught Cody was, the secretary said, “My goodness, kid, what’s wrong?”
Trying to catch his breath, Cody explained everything that had happened and that a stranger had tried to pick him up on his way to school. Cody could tell that the secretary didn’t really believe his story and wasn’t really paying attention to him.
The secretary replied, “The assistant principal is not in yet. At least, you’re okay and nothing happened. This really isn’t too big of a deal, but we will tell the assistant principal your story anyways.”
Not wanting to hear that, Cody stormed out of the office. He was utterly annoyed with the lady and went to the side of his school where his friend Zach was eagerly waiting.
His friend was wearing a gray-and-red winter jacket, a ski hat, and gloves. Zach was Cody’s best friend for many years. The two were only a month apart in age.
“Where were you, dude? I have been waiting for you,” Zach blurted out.
Still with a butterfly feeling in his stomach, Cody replied, “Someone tried to pick me up on the way to school!”
Zach looked at Cody with a lost expression on his face.
Not really knowing how to respond to that, Zach said, chuckling, “What? What do you mean someone tried to pick you up? Like kidnap you? You’re in seventh grade, dude. You’re almost a teenager.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Cody angrily replied even though he thought the same thing when he was walking to school.
Zach straightened up and appeared more serious. Trying to read the confusion on his friend’s face, Cody proceeded to tell him the details, including what the assistant principal’s stupid secretary said. He tried to describe the car to Zach the way he remembered.
“The car was black and had chrome on it. I don’t know what kind of car it was, though,” explained Cody.
Afterward, Zach said, “We should go to the police and tell them everything.”
“No, not right now. School is about to start. Let me think over the day, and then I’ll decide what to do,” said Cody.
It made Cody relieved that his best friend actually believed him and wanted to do something about it. The first bell rang, and both of them walked to class anxiously.
As they walked, Cody asked Zach one very important thing, “As my best friend, can you please keep this quiet and not tell anyone? I don’t need everyone making fun of me about this. Please promise?” Hearing how serious his tone was, Zach replied, “I promise, dude.”
They both entered the classroom and went in different directions. When Cody sat down, he realized that he had forgotten to take off his layers of clothes and saw his classmates all staring at him with a few giggles filling the room. His face started turning red, and he slowly removed his layers of warm items as the teacher just stared at him impatiently.
Cody glanced at Zach across the room and saw his friend just put his head down. The teacher began calling out attendance.
First period was just homeroom for the students, and it was only a half-hour long. Zach and Cody had been separated and assigned different seating because they would always disrupt class by talking to each other during attendance. It didn’t help that Zach was also the class clown either.
Minutes seemed to pass quickly, and the bell rang. It was on to second period.
The day dragged on. Class after class, crazy thoughts ran through Cody’s imaginative mind. Thoughts like wishing he had written down the license plate number of the black car and wishing he had gotten a better look at the man’s face.
The boy would find himself doodling on his spiral notebook throughout the morning. The black car itself kept repeating in his mind down to every detail that he could think of. Why was the man offering Cody a ride to school? He remembered the beady eyes glaring at him just above the dark window. Cody never got a real good look at the man.
In third period, Cody’s English teacher, Mrs. Woodberry, caught him in a dead, preoccupied moment. “Mr. Roberts, can you please tell the class what Charlotte and Captain Jaggery’s important conversation was about in chapter 3 in this past weekend’s assigned reading?” said Mrs. Woodberry.
The seventh-grade reading assignment for that quarter was the book The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. Caught off guard, Cody stuttered, “I’m sorry, could you please repeat the question?”
Some kids in the class laughed and called him an idiot under their breaths. The teacher yelled at the students that were being annoying and focused back on Cody.
“Please pay attention more, and then I won’t put you on the spot, Cody,” the teacher explained.
“Sorry, Mrs. Woodberry, it won’t happen again,” Cody tried to say with sincerity.
Trying to stay focused for the rest of the class was too difficult for Cody, though. He ended up thinking even more about the event that happened to him that morning on his walk to school.
Two more classes went by, and a much-needed break was in sight. Cody’s head was spinning in a million different directions, and a headache started to form. Cody prayed that it didn’t turn into one terrible huge headache. The boy had a bad history of headaches, and the heavy ones were excruciatingly painful.
In sixth grade, when he was on a traveling baseball team, Cody was hit on his helmet with a baseball on a wild throw while running to first base. He suffered a concussion that day. It was after that the headaches started randomly.
At lunch, Cody sat with his buddies Frankie, Seth, and of course, his best friend Zach. Cody knew that Zach had kept his word and not told anyone. He had a way of reading his friend.
While Frankie and Seth argued who the greatest home run hitter of all time was, Cody just quietly ate his packed lunch and didn’t say anything. Zach joined in on the conversation but knew deep down that his friend was very distraught. Zach stared at Cody, trying to get him to say anything. Cody didn’t say a word.
As the boys had come to the conclusion that Ken Griffey Jr. was the best pure hitter in baseball today, Cody took one last bite of his barely eaten peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich that had been smashed in the bottom of his lunch. A little after, the bell rang for seventh period. The headache was fading.
By the time 3:00 p.m. rolled around, Cody was more than ready to get home. He quickly hurried out of his last class and down the main hallway to beat the rush that was pouring out of each classroom. He met up with Zach and decided to take a different way home. It was a much longer way home, but at least, he would be able to walk with his friend.
Cody worried that the black car would be waiting for him at the moment he turned onto his street. There was no way he was going back home the same way he came to school.
Zach lived just a block from school on the other side of Jefferson Street. It didn’t take them long to get to Zach’s house. The walk was short, and Cody finally began to speak just as they arrived at Zach’s house.
“I’m not going to the police with this, Zach,” said Cody.
“Why not?” questioned Zach.
“I just don’t want to. They probably won’t believe me and won’t do anything anyways,” replied Cody.
“I don’t know man, do you really think that’s the smartest idea?” asked Zach.
“For right now, yes. What good are the police anyways? They couldn’t solve the missing girl case from five years ago. I’m not going to the police with this, Zach,” said Cody.
“You’re probably right, buddy. Besides, you don’t have a license plate or any details of the car or the person either, right?” asked Zach.
“No, not really. It all happened so fast,” said Cody even though he thought about the details all day long.
“That’s your decision, dude. Let me know if I can help you at all, okay?”
“I will. Thanks, Zach. Thanks for supporting me on this and not telling anyone,” replied Cody.
“You’re welcome, buddy,” replied Zach.
Zach walked up to the mailbox, grabbed the mail, and hollered to Cody, “I’ll call you later on tonight after I finish my homework. We will talk more about this.”
After dropping Zach off, Cody walked up his friend’s street, needing to make a right at Thomas Avenue and walk seven blocks to his street, Bunting Road. The walk would probably take a total time of twenty-five minutes. With counting his walk in the morning, Cody had made a complete rectangle by the end of the day. The rest of the walk was on Thomas Avenue, which was a busy street and had multiple kids walking home from school. It made Cody feel safer that he was on a busy street.
Finally arriving home, he found the babysitter waiting at the screen door.
“You’re late! What took you so long to get home?” the babysitter screamed.
She was an overweight woman in her sixties named Phyllis. Cody and his sister nicknamed her Fil for short and didn’t like her very much. She was just flat-out miserable with life in general and had fake teeth that she would pop in and out of her mouth. She was somewhat disgusting.
Phyllis never liked the boyish nickname or the two kids very much. She seemed to care only about watching her stupid afternoon soap opera shows and eating junk food. As far as actually watching the two kids, that was rare to see. She was the best sitter his single mother could find at the time. Cody and his sister would blow right through babysitters left and right. Things were hard, not having a dad around for the two of them. Both kids were a handful of work in the past.
Racing upstairs to his bedroom, Cody shut his door, plopped his book bag on his desk, and launched himself into his still-messy but comfortable bed. Just as he was drifting off to sleep, there was a knock on the door shortly after. He knew right away who it was. It was his younger sister, Olive. Every day after school, she would knock on his door to hang out with her big brother. The two of them had a typical sibling relationship.
Cody sprang out of his bed, opened the door, and let Olive in.
She was a very cute little girl with long brown hair down to her shoulders. She wore round glasses and was already wearing her pajamas and holding a dolly that dangled from her little fingers. Olive was in second grade and was always home way before Cody.
“Whatcha doing?” she asked in her tiny voice.
“Not much. How was school?” replied Cody.
Cody was always very fond of his sister and felt that it was his duty to protect her from everything. She was young and innocent.
“You didn’t even come and say hi to me?” she cried, ignoring her brother’s question.
Since their dad had left them when Olive was only a year old, it was always just the three of them. The kids never saw their dad, and once in a while, a card would come in the mail for them. Their mom did remarry, but she eventually divorced the kids’ only stepfather.
Cody and Olive had a tight bond since the day she was born. Cody had a picture in his room of him holding Olive as a baby in the hospital when he was just four years old.
“I’m sorry, Olive. I just had a rough day at school and wanted to take a short nap,” he said.
“It’s okay. Maybe we could play a game after dinner tonight?” she asked excitedly.
“Sure, Olive,” he replied and shut the bedroom door as she pranced out of the room. Olive had no way of knowing what Cody had been through today.
Cody started walking back toward the bed, but he suddenly looked over at his wall with drawings pinned up all over on a bulletin board. He loved to draw and was very talented. He wanted to draw cartoons for Walt Disney when he grew up. Cody glanced at each drawing, stepping closer and closer to each sketch on the wall. He started thinking about things while he gazed at his artwork. He was no longer tired and was suddenly motivated to do something.
Quickly he walked over to his desk and pulled out his sketch pad. At first, his pencil stood lifelessly on the top page of the pad. He knew what he wanted to do, but the signal from his brain to his hand was not functioning. His pencil started moving. Cody started writing thoughts down of everything he could remember from the past ten hours ago. The answers to questions like What did the headlights look like? Was it an Ohio license plate? What hair color did the man have?
These answers came flowing onto the page. Soon, the whole page was filled with thoughts and answers to every question he could conjure. He had turned his sketch pad into one big page of notes about the car and the man. Cody didn’t realize it, but almost two hours went by as he was thinking and writing.
Finishing one last thought, he heard the squeak of the front door opening. His mom was home, and a sudden sense of security overtook him. He dropped his pencil on the sketch pad and marched downstairs.
It was a little past six thirty in the evening, and his mother looked exhausted more than usual. Olive rushed up to her and hugged her.
“I missed you, Mommy!” the little girl said.
“I missed both of you!” Georgiana said back.
Seeing how tired his mom looked, Cody offered to help make dinner. It was rare that Cody offered to help her out, but he could see that his mother was wiped out.
“I’ll help make Olive and I some fish sticks. I’ll make you a nice salad if you want, Mama?” he said.
“Oh, sweetie, that’s very thoughtful of you, but I’m just going to make a pot of tea, relax, and put my feet up,” his mother explained.
“No problem, Mom. I’ll start the hot water for you,” said Cody.
His mother reached in the jar on the kitchen counter for a tea bag and took a mug o
ut of the cupboard. She set both down and headed upstairs to her bedroom. She looked completely beat, and it was easy to tell that she had a long day at work. Her company really made her work and relied on her for all the bookkeeping. Cody filled the teakettle with water and turned on the stove.
Cody took the box of fish sticks out of the freezer and set them on the counter.
“I’ll get our dinner, Olive, you grab a couple of plates for us,” Cody exclaimed.
“Okay,” Olive replied.
When their mother came down from changing out of her work clothes, Cody and Olive were just starting their dinner. The cup of tea Cody had made for his mom was still steaming.
“How were both of your days?” she asked.
“Good,” both of her children simultaneously said, even though Cody was lying through his teeth.
The boy thought about telling his mom about what happened to him that morning, but he couldn’t do it. He also didn’t want his sister to know.
“You know it’s bath night, Olive,” she said.
Cody looked at his mom’s exhausted face. There were bags and lines under her eyes. Before Olive could reply, Cody quickly blurted out, “Mom, I’ll help take care of Olive tonight. You can go to bed early and get some rest.”
Surprised, she said, “Wow, Cody, has something taken over you? I will take you up on that, thank you.”
After dinner, they all cleaned up and headed upstairs.
Cody ran back down and made sure the front door was dead bolted, like he had always done. He had started doing this a few years ago. One time, a drunken man had actually come into their home. He was so drunk, he forgot where he lived and ended up in their home on the living room floor completely passed out. Cody’s mother had found him and called the police. Though it was unintentional, it was very scary for all three of them. Every once in a while, Cody would have a dream about the night that it happened.
While his mom went into her room, Cody went to the bathroom to start the water for Olive’s bath. He added bubble bath to the lukewarm water. Olive went into her mother’s room to say good-night. She was lying on her bed with a novel in her hand. Their mother loved reading books.
