The Prisoner of Cell 25
Read The Prisoner of Cell 25 Online
Authors: Richard Paul Evans
ADVANCE READER’S COPY
SIMON & SCHUSTER CHILDREN’S PUBLISHING
MICHAEL VEY, THE PRISONER OF CELL 25
RICHARD PAUL EVANS
MERCURY INK/SIMON PULSE
NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY
COPYRIGHT
ISBN:
978-1-4516-5650-3
FORMAT:
Hardcover
AGES:
12 up
PAGES:
336
TITLE:
Michael Vey: The Prisoner of Cell 25
AUTHOR:
Richard Paul Evans
IMPRINT:
Simon Pulse/Mercury Ink
To Michael
Contents
1. Chopsticks and Spiders
2. The Beginning
3. The Armpit
4. The Cheerleader
5. Hiding the Evidence
6. The Morning After
7. The Cheerleader’s Story
8. The Multimeter
9. A New Crowd
10. A Suspicious Coincidence
11. Birthday Wishes
12. The First Meeting
13. Spiders
14. A Change of Plans
15. The Man Who Wore Sunglasses at Night
16. Gone
17. Lieutenant Lloyd
18. Kidnapped
19. Taylor’s Arrival
20. A Surprise Visit
21. Dr. Hatch and the Twin
22. The Revelation
23. Clyde
24. Jack
25. Tara
26. Harry Winston
27. Hitching a Ride
28. Road trip
29. According to Plan
30. Chickens and Eagles
31. The Road
32. Another Simple Request
33. The Lesson
34. Purgatory
35. Breaking into Prison
36. A New Glow
37. Discovery
38. Michael’s Induction
39. Initial Findings
40. A Talk
41. Ostin’s Plan
42. The Attempt
43. Relocation
44. The Contract and a “Simple”
45. Cell 25
46. Lack of Trust
47. The Escape
48. Overload the Circuit
PART ONE
1. Chopsticks and Spiders
“Have you found the last two?” The voice on the phone was angry and coarse, like the sound of car tires over broken glass.
“Not yet,” the well-dressed man on the other end of the phone replied. “Not yet.” He put on his dark glasses even though it was close to midnight. “But we believe we’re close—and they still don’t know that we’re hunting them.”
“You
believe
you’re close?”
“They’re two children among a billion—finding them is like finding a lost chopstick in China.”
“Is that what you want me to tell the board?”
The well-dressed man’s voice rose. “
Remind
the Board that I’ve already found fifteen of the seventeen children. I’ve put out a million-dollar bounty on the last two, we’ve got spiders crawling the Web,
and we have a whole team of investigators scanning global records for their whereabouts. It’s just a matter of time before we find them—or they step into one of our traps.”
“
Time
isn’t on our side,” the voice returned sharply. “Those kids are already too old. You know how difficult they are to
turn
at this age.”
“I know better than anyone,” the man said, tapping his ruby-capped pen on his desk. “But I have my ways. And if they don’t turn, there’s always Cell Twenty-Five.”
There was a long pause, then the voice on the phone replied darkly, “Yes. There’s always Cell Twenty-Five.”
2. The Beginning
It’s not like I was looking for trouble. I didn’t have to. At my height it just always found me.
My name is Michael Vey, and the story I’m about to tell you is strange. Very strange. It’s my story.
If you passed me walking home from school you probably wouldn’t even notice me. That’s because I’m just a kid like you. I go to school like you. I get bullied like you. Unlike you, I live in Idaho. Don’t ask me what state Idaho is in—news flash—Idaho
is
a state.
The fact that most people don’t know where Idaho is, is exactly why my mother and I moved here—so people wouldn’t find us. But that’s part of my story.
Besides living in Idaho, I’m different from you in other ways. For one, I have Tourette’s syndrome. You probably know less about Tourette’s syndrome than you do Idaho. Usually when you see someone on TV pretending to have Tourette’s syndrome, they’re shouting swear words or barking like a dog. Most of us with Tourette’s don’t do that. I mostly just shrug and blink my eyes a lot. If I’m really anxious, I’ll also clear my throat or make a gulping noise. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes kids make fun of me. It’s no picnic having Tourette’s, but there are worse things that can happen to you—like having your dad die of a heart attack when you’re eight. Believe me, that’s much worse. I’m still not over that. Maybe I never will be.
There’s something else you don’t know about me. It’s my secret.
Something that scares people more than you would believe. That secret is the reason we moved to Idaho in the first place. But, again, that’s part of my story. So I might as well tell it to you.
3. The Armpit
Mr. Dallstrom’s office is as good a place to begin as any. Or as bad a place. Mr. Dallstrom is the principal of Meridian High School, where I go to school. If you ask me, ninth grade is the armpit of life. And there I was in the very stinkiest part of that armpit—the principal’s office. I was sitting in Mr. Dallstrom’s office, blinking like crazy.
You could guess that I’m not fond of Mr. Dallstrom, which would be stating the obvious like saying, “breathing is important” or “Rice Krispies squares are the greatest food ever invented.” No one at Meridian was fond of Mr. Dallstrom except Ms. Duncan, who directed the Glee Club. She had a picture of Dallstrom on her desk, which she sometimes stared at with soft, googly eyes. Every time Dallstrom came over the PA system, she would furiously whack her baton on a music stand to quiet us. Then, after he’d said his piece, she would get all red-faced and sweaty, and remind us of how lucky we were to be led through the treacherous wilderness of high school by such a manly and steadfast defender of public education.
Mr. Dallstrom is a bald, thin scarecrow of a man with a poochy stomach. Think of a pregnant Abraham Lincoln with no beard and a yellow toupee instead of a top hat and you get the picture. He also looks like he’s a hundred years old. At least.
When I was in fifth grade our teacher told us ‘the easiest way to remember the difference between PRINCI
PLE
, (an underlying law or ethic) and PRINCI
PAL
, (the chief administrator of a school) is that the Principal is your PAL.’ Believe me, Mr. Dallstrom did not put the PAL in Principal.
This was the second time that month I’d been called to his office for something someone else did to me. Mr. Dallstrom was big on punishing the victim.
“I believe this is the second time you’ve been in my office this month,” Mr. Dallstrom said to me, his eyes half closed. “. . . Is that right, Mr. Vey?”
That was the other thing about Mr. Dallstrom—he liked to ask questions that he already knew the answer to. I was never sure if I was supposed to answer him or not. I mean, he knew the answer, and I knew the answer, so what was the point? Bottom line, it was the second time I’d been locked in my locker by Jack Vranes and his friends that month. This time they put me in upside down and I nearly passed out before the custodian unlocked my locker and dragged me down to Mr. Dallstrom’s office.
Jack was like seventeen and still in ninth grade. He’d been held back so many times he had a driver’s license, a car, a mustache, and a tattoo. He sometimes called himself Jackal, which is a pretty accurate description, since both he and the animal prey on smaller mammals.
Jack had biceps the size of ripe Florida oranges and wasn’t afraid to use them. Actually, he loved to use them. He and his gang, Mitchell and Wade, watched ultimate fighting, and Jack took Brazilian jujitsu lessons at a gym not far from the school. His dream in life was to someday fight in the Octagon, where he could pound people and get paid for it.