Somewhere

Chapter Seven

I never gave much thought to if I was in love with Cooper Blackwood.

My heart bumped on its own. I breathed. I blinked. I loved Cooper. It was the one thing in this world that I didn't have to question. Who knows when we really met? Our mothers both gave birth to us at the same hospital on the same day, maybe a few rooms apart. Cooper was born an hour before me.

We shared the same nursery.

Maybe we saw each other there first.

Who can remember now?

Until five years ago, I never had a birthday by myself. My best birthday was my 12th birthday when Cooper and I compiled all our friends and threw a big space party together, mostly because Cooper and I wanted to sword fight with light sabers and eat moon shaped cookies because who doesn't want to eat the moon?

Then I lost Cooper in the crowd. There were other friends at the party I could've talked to, but they didn't compare. I eventually found him outside in the yard with a stare a million miles away that shook me to my core. It looked like I was losing him. I sat beside him. I liked sitting on his right side, the side where his mouth perked if he was going to smirk.

I asked him why he left the party.

He said he didn't really like parties.

I asked him if that was true, why did we throw a party?

He said that I liked parties.

I asked him what he'd like to do at this space party?

He said he just wanted to look at the stars.

We sat there for as long as we could, talking about nothing. We avoided the subject of high school, about the pamphlets he found in his mother's desk about private schools in the city. Of course, his parents were going to expect him to go to some fancy school and he should have gone. He was so smart and the classes he took in Somewhere bored him to tears. He had an answer for everything, but that still didn't have the guts to ask the most important question.

#

Stirring, I crawled out of my unconsciousness like I was running through mud. I pulled and my exhaustion pulled back. Blinking back into existence, I wasn't sure if my eyes were open or not. The world was losing light, dying in a dark orange sky. Far off, a blue light glowed and flickered every few seconds.

My head rested against my raised arms and when I shifted, I couldn't move. I pulled my hands, but something around them pulled back. Sobering up, I realized my mouth was taped shut and I choked on nothing, forgetting to breathe through my nose. I shut my eyes. I refused to suffocate. That new guy deserved a swift kick to the head. He wouldn't win. I shut my eyes tight and focused only on my breathing, in and out until my chest wasn't threatening to explode anymore. Eventually, I calmed down.

With my arms still hanging above me, I noticed they were duct-taped to a door handle in a car. I twisted my wrist, using all my adrenaline fueled strength to pull my hands out of the binds, but it was too tight, and the glue just ripped up my hair and skin. I couldn't move my legs that were tapped at the ankles. I could only rub my knees together like a useless bag of bones.

Still struggling, I searched into the darkness. I had to focus. Figure out the facts. I peered outside. There were more piles of abandoned scraps. More cars. Broken cars were set up in lines. The smell of gas and oil burned my nose hairs, filling my lungs and making them ache. Okay, I was in a junk yard and I was sitting in a car. I was trapped and tied up in a car with a raging headache. All I could hear was the sound of my own quivering breath. Tears pricked the side of my eyes as the thought dawned on me that maybe no one would find me here. I didn't know why this was happening. I didn't know who took me.