Chapter Three:

It is not my fault she's stupid.

I didn't break Karen Sue's nose on purpose, or at least without a good reason. I swear it. I don't know, I mean, we were in the orchestra storeroom, and she just decided to make one of her stupid comments about "the Grit," which is her name for Rob. Which I suppose is reason enough to "contuse her proboscis" . . . I mean, "the Grit". It's just as bad as "the Jerk" or even "that Wilkins person". Why am I cursed by living around people that are so elitist and snobby? I guess they're just jealous. Jealous because I have a boyfriend, who I love very much, and he loves me, too, I think.

I very sternly advised her not to call him that, "Grit", I mean, but she didn't take the advice . . . further proof of her utter stupidity.

"So, your parents know about him . . . how do they take the fact that their daughter is slutting around with a Grit?"

That pissed me off. I don't know what my problem was. Maybe it was her . . .

Then I punched her. Hard. Then, she actually had the audacity to say, "So the rumor I heard last year is true then." You know, if she were smart, she wouldn't do stuff like that to people who have a little bit of an anger management problem. Especially if one of their methods of solving the problem is by beating the snot out of people, you know? Smart people just know not to do that.

"What rumor?"

"The one Hank Wendell was spreading. At first, I didn't believe it. I mean, why trust a Grit's rumor . . . but now, I see he was right."

I remembered then . . . about the rumor, and the fact that I'd forgotten to call Rob. Great, just great. I mean, I get a boyfriend, and I don't even remember to call him, and the rumor that I put out for him isn't even true. My life sucks. And while I am thinking about it, I bet she was just saying all that to get to me. Karen Sue would do anything to get popular—and to humiliate me—why not do both by spreading a rumor, even if it was made up by a Grit and totally false?

Although it probably wasn't right for me to have taken it out on Karen Sue, even if she did deserve to have her face smashed into a tuba case. If "smashed" is even the right word for it . . . I mean, I didn't hit her head too hard against it, or anything.

Fortunately for Karen Sue, Mr. Vine came into the storeroom and broke up the "fight" and sent us both to Mr. Goodhart. It was nice of him to include her in on the fun, even if I was the one who'd suffer all of the consequences. I mean, Karen Sue has everybody, save Ruth and me, and possibly Mark Leskowski (who was hating her—and me—from behind bars), snowed. Even Mr. Goodhart. No adult will ever wake up to the simple fact that she's a two-faced, back-stabbing—

Never mind. You get the point: I hate her.

The speech from Mr. Goodhart wasn't as bad as it normally would have been, except for the whole "Jessica, you were doing so well . . ." thing. I tried really, really hard not to get mad enough at anybody so as to hit him or her this year; I mean it.

But let's face the facts here; when I try to count to ten before deciding to punch Karen Sue Hankey, it so doesn't work. All counting to ten did for me was to make little white puncture marks from my fingernails on the palms of my hands. And, oh, yeah: make me want to hit her even harder than before. I know that violence never solves anything, but the sight of Karen Sue's blood-incrusted nose makes me feel a hell of a lot better. I'm sick, I know, but if you had to put up with her stuff half as much as I do, you'd probably do a lot more than break her nose. Lucky you, is all I have to say on the matter.

Mr. Goodhart, clearly troubled by my sudden decline in progress, only assigned me a week's detention. She got two weeks for purposefully antagonizing some one known to have a volatile temper, and for spreading false rumors, and for name-calling some one. Yeah, the part I forgot to mention? Mr. Vine had walked into the storeroom, just as she called me a bad name.

Ha, ha, ha. Poor Karen Sue, and I hope you sense some sarcasm in that. But even though my "punishment" wasn't as bad as hers was, Mr. G still wasn't very happy with me. He said that what she did was wrong and certainly unacceptable, true, but it did not warrant me smashing her face into a tuba case.

No, in my opinion, it meant she ought to have been beaten into a bloody pulp. I mean, who would just sit and listen to some one calling her boyfriend names and crap like that? Uh, not me.

So, I walked out of the auditorium—where I served my first (and hopefully last) stint of detention in my junior year¾ and into the cold December day—mad fun it was, let me assure you¾ and made my way to the nearest payphone so I could call Rosemary and tell her the location of Peter Gosnell (he was now in some rural town in Oklahoma, with a lady he knew was not his mother), when I noticed a van, similar to Agents Johnson's and Smith's, only not as fancy, parked across the street from the school.

That should have been my first clue. But as usual, I never notice things until it's too late . . . or until I reach the payphone and the dude in the van gets out and grabs me.

Now, don't get me wrong, if I had been expecting him to do this, I totally would have put a bony knee in his groin. But since he grabbed me from behind, what could I do? I'll tell you what I did: I screamed. Oh my God, I screamed like Karen Sue after I slammed her face into the tuba case . . . only I think screaming because some freaking psycho has just grabbed you from behind and won't let you go, despite the elbow you rammed into his side is a better—and more logistical—reason to scream like a three year-old. A lot better.

Oh my God, I'd been kidnapped! Kidnapped! I mean, the guy grabbed me and stuck me in the van, like I was a dog on the way to the vet's office and I just wouldn't stay in the van. Only, I'm not a dog, and I think I had every right to try to get out of that van. I mean, if I got kidnapped, who'd feed Chigger? Who would Rob go out with on Friday night? Most importantly, how would his baby sister turning up missing affect Douglas? Granted, he's more sane than people give him credit for being . . . but who knew what would cause an episode? That's the thing with his voices: a twister could rip through town. No big deal. But God forbid we run out of Cheerios . . .

"Please, why are you doing this? I think I've had a bad enough day," I said stupidly. You dope, I thought, he doesn't give a damn if you had a bad day. He just threw you into a van, for heaven's sake. And against your will, no less.

"Because you wouldn't listen to me the other night on the phone," he said, apparently expecting me to know who he was, which I did, only after he said what he did about talking to me on the phone.

"Well, what did you expect? For me to listen?"

He didn't answer. I swear, he was even more annoying in person. Ugh, and he was ugly, too. I mean ugly with a capital U. I don't mean to be rude, but I'm telling the truth. He had mousy-brown hair that looked like it hadn't been washed in a week, for starters, zits covered his face, he had a huge nose, and his eyes were beady and bloodshot. Maybe after a shower, a good night's sleep, and some super-strong acne medication, he could be considered Do-able. But never, ever a Hottie. I mean, he looked like somebody who sits behind a computer screen all day, for crying out loud.

Oh yeah, I was screwed, big time. Okay, yes, there is a guy that I wouldn't mind if he suddenly decided to kidnap me (oh, take a wild guess at that one), but he certainly wasn't this guy. Oh no.

That guy was Rob Wilkins. This guy, well, at the moment, I didn't know who he was. And frankly, as long as he'd be willing to let me out of that stupid tin can of a van he was driving, I didn't care.

"Hey, buddy, now that I'm held hostage by you, I would at least like to know your name." He didn't answer me. "Who the hell are you, anyway?"

"Lightning Girl's Number One Fan."

Oh. My. God. That might explain why he was kidnapping me.

"Hello, loser, what's your name? You know, the one your parents gave you."

"You don't need to know that. Just hear me out, and I'll take you home," he said.

"Okay."

"I'm Jac. And you're Jessica Mastriani."

I know my own name, bozo.

"I know a lot about you, Jessica. For starters, you have a boyfriend."

Uh-oh. I didn't like the sound of that. Not the boyfriend part, just the fact that Jac, the Psycho, knew.

"And you are thinking about working for Dr. Krantz."

Yeah. True.

"But don't, because you don't know what you're getting into. Please, I'm begging you, don't do it."

What? Am I committing suicide? Am I about to jump off a building? Stab myself?

"And why shouldn't I?" I said. I mean, I wanted to know, okay? It's not every day that psychos come up to you and tell you things about yourself that only you're supposed to know, you know?

He said nothing, just cranked up the van, which was not, apparently, an easy task. I mean, it must have busted spark plugs or something, because it took him, like, ten minutes to get the thing running.

And we rode off in silence, and that's when I realized he wasn't taking me to my home. Wherever it was that he lived was where we were going.

We drove for what seemed like hours. I couldn't tell where we were because I was in the back, where had it been Special Agents Johnson and Smith's van, there would have been surveillance equipment, only in Jac's van, it was all empty space. And no windows.

We finally stopped, and then I realized that we were in Chicago.

Jac led me to an apartment building that looked, to put it mildly, like a dump. There was graffiti and litter everywhere I looked.

"You said you were taking me home," I growled at him. Can you blame me for being kind of bitchy to him? I mean, he'd just kidnapped me for heaven's sake.

"I did. Welcome home," he said as we entered the apartment.

The apartment. How do I describe the apartment? Oh, let's see, it was a little on the shabby side, definitely a bachelor pad, oh yeah, and—like I expected—it was covered with computer equipment, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons paraphernalia.

Only what I didn't expect to see was an entire wall emblazoned with pictures of me. Me. Lightning Girl Fever. I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd tried to get struck by lightning so he could communicate with me telepathically or whatever.

"Um, where is your bathroom?" I asked, hoping he had one somewhere in that rat hole.

"Down the hall, to the right."

I was not prepared for what I saw in the bathroom . . .

I vaguely remember Mike saying it was only a matter of time until somebody had superimposed my face onto a Playboy bunny's naked body. Well, it had happened.

Oh my God, my kidnapper was not only a psycho, but a porn addict as well. Worse, the porn had my face on it. But, thank God, not my body. I think that would have sent me over the edge.

Okay, that's it. I would kill him, and then use his computer to e-mail Mike to tell him where I was, because by tomorrow morning, I was sure, somebody would be looking for me. I hoped.

Ladies and gentleman, Lightning Girl has been kidnapped.

How ironic.