Kidnapping of Jennifer
Freeland's night air burned Jennifer Pierce's nostrils because of the fire at Downing Chemical, a dangerous cancer-causing company located in the center of the city. She had on her nice, white shirt with a black skirt and nice shoes. She wore her hair in a ponytail and looked somewhat innocent. Her large brown eyes gave her a teenage look, a look that caught a lot of guy's attention. She had a pack of menthol cigarettes in her left shirt pocket that she smoked throughout the night. The stench of the cigarettes stained her clothes, but she didn't mind because most of the people in her class smoked.
A high amount of cancer outbreaks happened within the housing complex located near the plant, but since the company brought the city millions of dollars in taxes a year, nobody desired to tell them to clean up their waste. At least twenty-five percent of the employees of Downing Chemical had some form of cancer. She walked home from Kirby's Skating Rink, a little get-away on Seventh Street near Little Donuts. She only lived two miles from Kirby's, and with the advent of the new Black Lightning, she didn't worry about somebody attacking her. For the first time, as far back as she could remember, Freeland felt like a welcoming home, and the One Hundred moved about the city calmly and discreetly.
The synthetic stench that permeated through the air drove her insane because it gave her a whopping headache. She hated dealing with the discarded, big business waste that infused diseases within the community. She planned on marching through the city with a group of activists over the waste, but she knew it wouldn't do any good. The world didn't care what happened to Freeland, and as long as the people considered undesirables occupied the town, the government would always be free to dispose of their waste on top of the citizens.
Unfortunately, when she arrived within a block of her house, she saw a blue van speeding around the corner. It came at her so fast that she barely had a chance to leap out of the way. The van was one of those old, seventy vans with the sliding door on the side of it. It was an old-fashioned Grand Van. She dove into a patch of grass for safety, and then when she climbed to her feet, two goons grabbed her, put a hood over her head, and threw her in the back of the vehicle. She could feel the carpeted floor and it smelled like cinnamon.
"What's going on?" She asked frantically.
"You're Principal's Pierce's daughter," one of the men said, "He'll pay dearly for your narrow ass."
At first, she struggled to break free of her captor's grip, but when he implied that her father had money to pay, she burst out into laughter. "Listen, idiots. Principles don't have money." Nobody said anything at first. The van raced down the street, and she didn't have a clue where the kidnappers were taking her. "Are you going to say anything?"
"Your father has something," one of the men said as if he knew about the Principal's finances personally. "He's not poor."
"If my father had money, we wouldn't be living in Freeland, idiot."
"How about your mama? I'm sure she has something. Ain't she a doctor or something?"
Quickly, Jennifer pulled off her hood and saw the kidnappers were Reese Johnson and Bay Nelson. She looked at the young men for a moment with their braided hair, and calmly said, "Just let me go before somebody realizes I'm missing."
"Nah, girl. We ain't going to let you go," Reese said with a grimace. He had on a purple buttoned up shirt. His narrow eyes, big teeth, and a gold crown on one of his top front teeth made him look somewhat crazy. Reese had a large forehead with thick, dark black eyebrows.
"You two are plain silly," she said, "I'm not worth anything. You aren't going to get a dime for me."
When the van came to a halt, the kidnappers pushed her into an old, dilapidated building near Downing Chemical. She could smell the stench of the chemicals up close, and she hated it. The men sat her in the middle of the floor, tied up her hands, and then stuffed a towel in her mouth because she kept talking. "You need to know when to shut up sometimes." She continued to struggle with the towel in her mouth, and then she started to hyperventilate. Bay pulled the towel out of her mouth.
"My uncle is a cop," she said with a grimace. "When he finds out you kidnapped me."