Small Decisions
Three pale blue eggs. That’s all it took for my world to come tumbling down around me. If the stupid, stupid robin’s eggs weren’t there in the first place, I wouldn’t have thrown up. If they hadn’t been there, Mike wouldn’t have dared me to eat them, and I wouldn’t have been so idiotic to accept the challenge. Why did I do this to myself? Mom always says to never give into peer pressure, but of course I wouldn’t listen. I never listen, and that’s how I ended up having to choose between my life and the stranger in the bathroom’s.
No one was expecting this to happen. Heck, it was just a normal day at the start. Waking up, staring at the back of someone's head for seven hours, then going to the park with my “friends” till dinner time. Surely the someone would have noticed I had been for way too long now. Couldn’t my friends hear the noise coming from the bathroom? No, they wouldn’t have. They probably left me after I ran to the bathroom, trying not to puke everywhere. I heard that missing persons cases only stay open for the first 48 hours, but I'm not sure how this one will end up.
We had just got to the park when we saw the eggs. A bunch of kids were standing around it trying to see if it would hatch right away while their parents were yelling at them to get away from it, worried it might have a disease. That wasn't the case for teenagers though. Like the fools we are, we went up to the eggs to check them out once the kids were cleared out.
“I bet you wouldn't eat that if I dared you,” Mike taunted, looking around at the rest of the group for a response,”You’re too chicken for that.” There were stereotypes in every group of friends. Mike was the leader and I happen to be the loyal meathead that didn't think things through. This is one of the times that I didn't think things through. Without a second thought I picked up the egg and started to eat it whole. The rancid smell was the first thing I noticed about the egg. Small pieces of broken shell and unborn, underdeveloped bird squished I'm my mouth. Oh God. Why did I do this?
“Eww,” Rickey screeched in a girly voice. I realized what I had done and sprinted for the bathroom. I didn’t realize I wasn’t alone in the bathroom until I was done throwing up. Something cold and metal touch my back.
“Don’t scream and I won’t kill you.” A voice whispered. I could tell we weren’t alone. There was another set of footsteps coming from the back corner of the bathroom. Why God? Oh why God did this have to be me? I had started to say something when someone else came into the bathroom. I had hoped that it was one of my friends coming to check on me, but I was wrong. It was one of the dads I had seen trying to get his child away from the bird’s egg. He froze at the sight of us. Not him too.
“Grab them,” the man with the gun to my back demanded. When the sidekick went to grab the man, the man started to fight back and yell for help. That didn’t do much good. As soon as he opened his mouth, the sidekick knocked the man out with a single punch to the face.
“That’s what’ll happen if you try to do anything we don’t tell you,” the sidekick warned. I took the advice with caution. We started to walk out of the bathroom, the dad being dragged by the sidekick and me and the leader of the two walking side by side trying to look normal while walking through the back entrance of the park. I was right. My friends did leave me. We were led to a black pick-up truck. I was forced into the bed of the truck after the dad was harshly thrown in. This wouldn’t have been too bad if the cover wasn’t on the bed. I was forced to stare at the face of an unconscious father, whose family was probably worried about.
It felt like hours before we finally stopped. I don’t know what I was expecting to see when we got out, but this was definitely wasn’t it. We arrived at a barn. I could tell it wasn’t abandoned by the smell of fresh horse poop. We were led into the barn and tied to a pole in the middle of it. I guess they were tired after the long day of kidnapping, because once they tied us, they left. It was a little while before the man woke up.
“Where am I?” The groggy man spoke, starting to panic.
“I don’t know. Those guys brought us here after the one knocked you out.” I explained.
“We have to get out of here. My-my family th-they’re still at the park,” the man murmured. He was losing it. I guess I’m still in shock because I haven’t started panicking yet. It’ll hit me soon enough.
“Well unless you have a knife or something, we can’t get out of these ropes.” I replied.
“Oh thank God,” was all I heard from him before I felt him squirming in the ropes. “And I’m free. Here, I’ll get yours.” The ropes were off my hands finally. I had bruises around my wrists from how tight they were tied. “Come on, let’s get out of here.” We looked around to see if anyone was around, but saw no one. There was a small house behind the barn, probably where the men had gone, and a dirt road that had hopefully led back to the park. We started running when the men noticed the sudden movement coming from outside.
“Stop you two!” One of them screamed. We kept running only to be stopped by the sound of gunshots. I was the lucky one out of the two of us. The father had been hit by one of the shot and fell to the ground.
“Help me! You have to help me! I have children! A wife!” The father yelled in desperation. I was torn. Help the father and get caught, possibly killed, or save myself and hope for the best for the father. I didn’t have time to think about my options as my body had taken over for my brain. I realize, looking back on it now, how heartless I must have seemed to him. Leaving the man with the kidnappers, I ran for the upcoming town I saw as I ran down the dirt road and to my hopeful freedom from the people that had taken me from the park that day.