Finding Forever (7 page)

Straps squeezing . . .

Black.

Hands pressing down on arms and legs . . .

Black.

Prick of the left arm with a needle . . .

Black.

Sharp pain on the right ankle . . .

Black.

Buzzing.

Black.

Spitting strands of hair from a cotton-dry mouth . . .

Black.

A scream . . .

Black.

“Go back to sleep, Taylor. You need your rest.”

Black.

“Double it. Take her deeper!”

Black.

Brush teeth. Wash face and hands. Brush hair. Organize bathroom counter.

Make that
reorganize
every single item in the bathroom.

Brooklyn placed the plastic hairbrush on the far right side of the second drawer down (facing forward). Then she put her toothbrush, the pink one, on the right side of the sink about four inches from the wall, perfectly perpendicular to the mirror. (One time—just once—she had used a protractor to measure that the brush indeed was set at a 90-degree angle.) She folded the pink hand towel exactly in half and hung it over the silver rack on the wall. She opened and closed the drain of the sink four times, making sure it wasn't clogged, and turned both the hot and cold handles all the way to the right, mumbling “right is tight” with each fitful twist. Then came the toilet paper roll, which she spun into proper position: four squares dangling free.

Her mom once came home from Costco with a generic roll—not the usual Cottonelle two-ply—that had individual sheets just 3.8 inches long, rather than the standard 4.5 inches, which Brooklyn considered unacceptable. Her mom rolled her eyes, but she complied, returning later that day with rolls that had more suitable dimensions.

Brooklyn checked her watch. Exactly four minutes later, with everything in proper placement—including but not limited to the faucet handles of the shower turned to the same tightness and the shower stall door fully closed and the pink rug placed in the room's geometric center—Brooklyn could now leave home and head to her meeting at the school track.

A clear Southern California morning. Brooklyn leaned back on the bleachers, interlocking her hands behind her neck,
sunning her freckled cheeks, counting any objects in her sight that she could group into fours. Four fence poles. Four white lines circling the track. Four rows of seats. Four cars passing by on El Camino Boulevard. Then she counted her breaths in fours.

Then she waited. And waited. And waited some more.

Brooklyn reasoned the Vitamin D production from the sun would be good for her. Even better,
D
was the fourth letter of the alphabet.

But now it was 11:04 a.m. and “Simone” was more than half an hour late.

Brooklyn set her phone's timer for four minutes. Her just-friend Holden sat in a patch of grass across the field. As she had instructed, his hand was ready to dial 911 the second “Simone” turned into a creepy kidnapper with ropes, knives, and a sack perfectly sized for a five-foot-four-inch blogger.

Holden didn't know about Simone, only that she was just the latest kind of anonymous tipster he had grown used to hearing Brooklyn talk about. After being snapped at countless times for even inquiring, Holden had learned not to ask anything about her confidential sources. Sources are to a news-breaking blogger what water is to a plant: Everything but the sun.

Just when the timer was about to go off, a lanky blonde in cutoff jeans and a tank top appeared across the stadium parking lot. She looked far older than a high school kid. And by the time the girl reached the bleachers, Brooklyn could see that she did, in fact, look exactly like the Simone Witten in paparazzi pictures.

Brooklyn slipped her cap back on, hopped down the four rows to the bottom, and feigned nonchalance with a laconic wave.

“Sorry, I'm so late,” Simone said as she extended her right hand. “It's been a crazy couple days.”

“It's okay.” Brooklyn wiped the sweat off her palm before reciprocating. “Thanks for coming up. I know it's kind of far.”

“No worries, but, yeah, I hardly ever get this far north of L.A. The 101 was a total parking lot. It took me almost two hours.”

Brooklyn stopped herself from reminding Simone that a scene in Taylor Prince's movie
Girl on the Verge
was shot just two miles away, lest Simone think she was too much of a celeb stalker. “Twin Oaks is so far out of L.A. it might as well be Utah.”