10/6/20XX Tuesday

I was about to show Dad some plastic surgeons I'd researched last night, but he wasn't in the mood. He hadn't been in the mood since Mom was taken. He's only 40, but his hair's starting to gray. I even caught him looking up performance enhancing pills on our family laptop, since he's getting tired.

Dad sighed at me when I told him I wasn't feeling well enough to go to school. He knows that me and Rodrick hate it, but told us that truancy would cause CPS and police to investigate us. Fortunately, he wasn't in the mood to scream at me, so he just said to not do anything stupid.

I'm not lying, by the way. I woke up with a cold sweat and threw up last night after dreaming about a rat with Mr. Brinesworth's wrinkly face chasing me through a maze. This guy's laughing at me from Heaven, I swear. More importantly, the thought of school's making me nauseous. I'm gonna get burnt alive if I stepped foot in the cafeteria for the rest of my life.

I got two worksheets and an English test to study for, but I don't feel like doing it. I'm just gonna play Fortnight and eat some chips until Dad kicks me off.


10/7/20XX Wednesday

It's Wednesday. That's when we get to talk with Mom.

Dad wasn't an idiot when he got a call from the cartel. He wasn't gonna work with the drug guys unless they had proof that Mom was alive. So they came to a deal - Dad would send over shipments of pills to the guys while we'd get to video chat with Mom for an hour every Wednesday. If he did well, they said, they'd release her.

I used to think that the people in movies were idiots. The bad guys would always kill off the hostages, no matter what the main characters did. Looking back, I'm the idiot to think I'd test the group with guns pointed at Mom. Still, I always get this feeling that they're gonna kill her anyway once Dad's fired and imprisoned.

Dad knows it too. Every time the screen pops up with Mom's face, he's been spending more time face-to-face with her than ever. Once, he hogged the chat for 45 minutes. He started bawling and apologizing to her, while I got secondhand embarrassed.

Today, he broke. Dad began telling her the usual - that she'd come home soon and the kidnappers would rot in jail. He also told her about how Rodrick's been studying super hard, Manny learned his A's and how I got sick after touching a rat. She smiled after hearing about us (after laughing about me), then told us this:

"I know that you're going to do anything to bring me back, Frank. That's why I married you. But please, don't don't drag the kids into this. And don't hurt anyone for my sake, either."

Too late. Mom would freak if she learned about Mr. Brinesworth. And how I murdered him. And how Rodrick spiked the wine with benadryl. Only Manny's hands were clean.

Dad excused himself and locked himself in his room. Mom understood why. She was devastated. The line cut off, and me and Rodrick went up to our rooms.

I'm scared how the rest of this is gonna play out. Mom's been telling Manny that she had an important job to do, since he would've snitched on us the moment he learned what was actually going on. But with Dad's reaction to Mom's request, I think Mom's gonna think a good helping of dropped soap's gonna straighten us up.