You laugh and skip and run like all the other five year olds. You like to test your limits. You are curious and daring. What is this? What happens when you do that? How does this work?
Mommy gets mad a lot. She hates when you go on adventures, or when you explore. She doesn’t understand your need to discover. But why would she? She only likes boring things, like talking to old people and getting shots and eating vegetables. She’s alright sometimes. But mostly you have to be sneaky and have adventures when she isn’t looking.
It’s the Fourth of July and it’s really hot outside. Mommy takes you to a parade, and people keep bumping into you, and the people on the floats aren’t even throwing candy, and Mommy won’t let go of your hand, and hers is big and sweaty. You pout, but she doesn’t notice because she’s talking to old people again. You wiggle your hand out of hers, and she finally looks down at you with mean eyes.
“I’m a big boy,” you say and cross your arms. “I don’t need to hold anybody’s hand.”
She laughs with the old people and they smile like you’re the cutest thing they’ve ever seen. You glare, and wait until they start their chatter up again. As soon as no one is paying attention, you slip away through the crowd. You go to the back, where there aren’t a kagillion people and where it’s a lot cooler.
A man with shiny sunglasses and a fat mustache walks up to you with two melting ice cream cones. He smiles, and asks if you want one. You nod and hold out your hands.
It’s chocolate.
He’s nice, and says, “Where are your parents?”
“I don’t know. I’m on an adventure.”
He smiles. “Adventures are fun, huh?”
“Yep.” you lick your ice cream, and are happy you found him. He likes fun things that your mommy doesn’t.
“Want to go see something cool? It’ll be another adventure.”
You want to say yes, but then you remember that your mommy says not to go anywhere with strangers. She says they’re bad. You can still see her through the crowd. She hasn’t noticed you’ve gone missing yet. You are angry.
The man with shiny glasses is nice, and gives you ice cream, so you realize your mommy is wrong about strangers. You just nod.
He is tall, and easy to follow because he walks slowly. He doesn’t try to hold your hand, and you like that because you are still eating your ice cream. Now you are in the parking lot of a Red Lobster, and there aren’t many people around except for a few here and there.
You realize you don’t know where your mommy is anymore, and you start to feel a little nervous.
The man stops in front of a blue minivan, and smiles down at you with a sneering grin. Suddenly you don’t like him anymore. The shine in his glasses becomes sinister, and his mustache becomes ugly. His teeth are yellow and he won’t stop smiling. You drop your ice cream with a splat on the tar.
He stands over you, his shadow engulfs you like a shark catching a guppy in one bite. You want to run, but your legs won’t budge, and you try to scream, but your throat is scratchy. You begin to cry.
A woman walks by, and says something about controlling your children in public. The man apologizes for my behavior, and writes it off to the dropped ice cream. You want to yell that he’s not your daddy, but you’re crying so hard it’s choking you.
He picks you up with strong hands that hurt your sides, and opens the car door. You start to wiggle and slap his face and kick his side. Anything to make him drop you. Finally, he swears and drops you to the ground.
You run. He is faster.
He grabs your leg and you fall to the ground, scraping your knees and arms. You kick and scream, and you can’t see anything through the panic.
“MOMMY!” you yell. “MOMMY!”
No one is around, and you can feel darkness closing in on you. You stop struggling because it is useless, and you just cry and cry. He picks you up even more roughly than before, quietly swearing at you. His voice is rougher than his hands. You flinch at every word. Then he throws you into the back seat where you land on trash and it hurts your scrapes.
He locks the doors, and peers in at you through the window. He is grinning with his ugly yellow teeth. You want to throw up.
He swears at you again, saying things you don’t really understand. Then you try to unlock the door, but it won’t work. He laughs at you.
The man leaves for a while, and you lay on the seat, crying. You don’t know how long he is gone, but eventually the tears stop, and you just lay there, so tired and afraid that you can’t move a muscle. Your face is crusty with dried tears and old ice cream that is starting to make you feel nauseous.
Finally, you hear a voice on a phone getting closer, so you look up, and you see the man walking back to the car.
Looking past him, you see a little boy walking with his mommy towards the parade. You realize you have to escape some other way.
The man opens the door to get in. He sits down, looks back at you with a smug face, and turns the car on. You remember the time your broke your mommy’s window with your baseball bat, and quietly look around the car for something you could use. There is a lot of food wrappers, and then you notice a crowbar. It’s heavy, and you can barely lift it.
While the man starts to pull out of the parking space, you throw it with shaking arms as hard as you can at the window. SMASH!
The breaks slam on, and you are thrown into the back of the seat in front of you. The window is broken but you can’t climb out of it because you are afraid of the glass. The man jumps out of the car. He forgets to turn it off. And he forgets to close the door behind him. He is swearing, and running over to the window.
You jump to the front seat, and out his door, running faster than you ever ran in your life towards the people. It's getting dark now, and the fireworks will probably start soon. You are still crying, and you can’t find your mommy through all the people in the crowd.
A fat sweaty police man finds you crying and asks where your parents are. You hiccup through your tears, trying to answer.
He helps you up, and holds your hand, bringing you to a little stand with other police in it. He asks your name, and you tell him. He says over a loud speaker that your parents should come to the police booth to get you. After a couple minutes of the police trying to make jokes and cheer you up with silly faces, your mommy finally arrives. You dive into her open arms and cry and cry and cry.
You don’t realize until a while later that she is crying even harder than you are.
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