A Thousand Ways To Run

Chapter 2

I was ready to trace the steps, the surroundings and pace numbers later, so I could make my escape. I wanted them to take me deeper into the building, passed windows and exit signs. Someone must have been replaced on my protection details since the last time I escaped the boarding school in Alabama, because these guys weren't taking second chances. The drugs, padded rooms, and straight-shot hallways all lacked a sense of humanity that had been present before. 

The exit to the mental room put us in a narrow hallway that went on forever. The woman walked in front of me, and the man behind me, as we walked briskly down it. Their eyes never adverted away or gazed at the fifteen wooden panel doors we walked passed. I kept twisting around, taking in everything with my photographic memory, but there was almost nothing to look at. The doors had four-digit numbers, and the walls and ceiling were pristinely white. That was it. 

The hall made an 'L' shape, and it was at that turn that my details stopped and gestured to the door right in front of us. The little gold-finished plaque was inscribed with '7315', and it matched the door handle. I exhaled in frustration. It had a lock on it. The women plucked a small golden key from her black trench coat and unlocked the door. She swung it open and let me step in. 

The carpet underneath my thin, black ballet flats didn't give in for much cushion. The air was stale and held a slight chill. The walls were a light shade of cream, and a twin bed was pushed on the opposite wall of a small wooden desk. A lazy pile of books lay by the lamp on the desktop, close to seventy other books were stacked on a bookshelf on the third wall adjacent of the bed. A closet with accordion doors made up the wall where the door was. Another door was by the bed that I assumed led to my private bathroom. Everything was plain; from the brown bedspread, to the solid carpet. 

The man spoke for the first time, voice deep and interlaced with conceit. "This is where you will be staying. All of your possessions have been transported from your dorm room to the closet." 

He paused to allow me to take it all in. I took cautious steps inside. It sounded too simple; too perfect. Like any infomercial, I knew things weren't as they seemed at first glance. 

"What haven't you told me?" 

I felt him smirk a little to himself. Definitely conceited. 

"There are rules for your stay here, Miss McMullen. You are to stay in your living quarters during the duration of the day and of the night. Meals will be brought to you. Any visits outside of this room must be made accompanied by a member of your detail. If you are caught out of your room alone, there will be severe consequences," he told me, voice morphing into a threat as his speech came to an end. 

Then his eyes rolled, and I knew by the look on his face I was about to get the teenage-girl speech, and the dangerous-threat speech was over. 

"And whatever you do, stay away from the first family. Especially Warren Edley." 

I was really starting to hate this guy. Him and his demeaning attitude was getting on my nerves. 

Shouldn't he know I'm going to break his silly little rules? I break everyone else's. 

Why waste his breath warning me to stay away from some cookie-cut-out politician, spoiled, little, pretty-boy, son of a senator? Like I'm a normal teenage girl? 

I didn't give him the satisfaction in my devastation of his silly rules, and laughed right in his face. 

"Please," I scoffed, crossing my arms. 

The women, sensing my irritability, continued on and cut off the man before he could retort. "The books are for your personal study. You will have plenty of work to do in the next few months before your education is finished. Start wherever you want. When you're done with those books, they can be replaced."