A Stolen Life (3 page)

Tahoe house in winter

I make my way out the front door, down the long walkway to the stairs. Our house in Tahoe reminds me of a ski cabin. It is located at the bottom of a hill. We have lived here since September
of last year. We used to live in Orange County. We had a break-in at the apartment we were living in and my mom and Carl thought it would be safer if we moved to Tahoe. We live in a much smaller town now.

I grew up in Anaheim, California. I’ve always thought that when we moved in with Carl, he convinced my mom that it was time that I started walking to school by myself because I had never done it before. I don’t think my mom liked the idea very much, but she couldn’t be there to drive me in the morning because she had to go to work early, so that left Carl to take me and sometimes he would and sometimes he wouldn’t be there, so I had to walk. They gave me a key to the apartment we lived in at the time, and that was the first year I walked home from school by myself.

One time as I was walking home from Lampson Elementary where I went to fourth grade, a car with a group of guys in it started shouting at me and gesturing for me to come over. I started running and hid in a bush until the car passed, then I ran home as fast as I could and locked the door behind me. I was scared to walk home after that and did it as fast as I could. Sometimes my mom or Carl would pick me up from school. I liked those days. Tahoe feels nothing like Anaheim. I can ride my bike anywhere and I don’t feel afraid here.

There is a neighborhood dog named Ninja that comes over and walks up the hill with me some mornings. I want a dog of my own so badly, one that would walk up that hill with me every morning and then be there to greet me when I come home from school. Ninja the dog really prefers Carl over me, though, and usually only waits for him and goes on walks with him on the weekends.

This morning I was so hoping that Ninja would come and walk with me, but as I head out, there is no sign of her anywhere. As I leave the house for school, I yell to Carl that I am on my way up the hill. I don’t see him or hear him answer, but see that he has his van out of the garage, so he must be working on it. I start out on the right side of the hill and then when it starts to curve, I switch to the other side. I have one more week of school left, then summer vacation starts. I have made plans with my friend Shawnee from school to work at a dude ranch. She loves horses and sometimes she draws them for me. I love the way she draws horses. She has taken me on a trail ride before and I loved it. She is a great rider. She used to live with her mother on a ranch, but now she lives a mile away from me in an apartment with her grandma Millie. I am so excited about our plans. I want to be as good a rider as she is one day. I still have to work up to asking Carl and my mom if I can do it. But I’m hoping it’s something they will let me try. Carl is always saying I need to have more chores and that I need to learn more responsibility, so what better way for me to learn than to get a summer job? Well, at least that’s how I’m going to present it to him and see what he says. Carl’s sister, my new aunt M, has two horses. One is a girl and the other one is her baby foal. I love to go visit her. She is so nice to me compared to Carl and his mother W. M acts like she really likes me. She lets me sit with her on her horse and we walk around the arena. It’s so much fun. She also has a really cute cocker spaniel, which loves to wrestle. I like visiting her; she seems to really like me.

When I lived in Orange County I was in a jazz class. I really didn’t enjoy going that much. I really wanted to take ballet, but when my mom went to sign me up, the class for ballet was full
and so we went for jazz. I’m really shy, and performing in front of people is not a strong suit with me. We moved to Tahoe right before my final recital. Thank goodness. I think I would have messed up if I had to perform in front of an audience. And wearing a leotard was not my cup of tea either.

When we moved to Tahoe after school started I joined a Girl Scout troop. Again, not my idea. It’s hard to make friends, but some of the girls are also in my class, so that makes it easier. I just wish I wasn’t so shy sometimes. I usually hang out with Shawnee, although she is not in my troop. But the girls are all nice and I like when we make things and sell cookies together. I am not good at going up to strangers’ doors and asking them if they want to buy some Girl Scout cookies, but I am very good at eating Girl Scout cookies. My favorites are Samoas and Thin Mints. When it’s my turn to go up to the door and sell, I knock on the door and let my partner do the talking. Will I ever get over my shyness? We have a class field trip to a water park coming up the last week of school. I want to go and have fun, but my body is changing and I’m self-conscious. I tried the other night to talk to my mom about shaving my armpits and my legs. I am embarrassed to be seen with all that hair. But I didn’t know how to start that conversation. Need to think of something soon; the trip is only a few days away.

As I am walking up the hill to the school bus this chilly day in June, I am thinking how sometimes it feels like my life is dictated by something or someone else. For instance, when I play with my Barbies, I can plan out their lives and make them do all the things I want them to do. I feel sometimes that this is being done to me. I feel like my life is planned out for me, in what way
I do not know, but on this day I feel like a puppet on a string, and I have no idea who’s on the other end.

I am coming to the part of the hill at which I have been taught to cross to the other side. Carl and my mom taught me this when we moved up here and it was decided that I would walk up to the bus stop to catch the bus for school. Carl said I should cross here so that oncoming traffic could see me and I could see what’s coming at me, too. As I cross the road at the bend, I lose my train of thought and start to daydream about the summer. I walk in the gravelly part of the shoulder of the road. I haven’t seen any cars go by at all this morning. There are bushes to my left. As I am walking, I hear a car behind me. I look back expecting the car to pass on the other side of the road going up, but to my surprise the car pulls up beside me. I was so lost in thought that the unusual behavior of the driver didn’t register with me. I stop walking as the driver rolls down his window. He leans slightly out of his car and starts to ask me for directions. His hand shoots out of the window so fast I barely register that he has something black in his hand. I hear a crackling sound and I feel paralyzed. I take staggering steps back; fear erasing everything but the need to get away. As the car door opens, I fall to the ground and start to push back on my hands and butt toward the safety of the bushes. Scooting as fast as I can is my only goal—to make it to the bushes away from the man that is coming to grab me. My hand connects with something hard and sticky. What is it? It doesn’t matter—I must hold on to it. Someone is dragging me and now I am being lifted. My limbs feel like they weigh a ton. I try to resist and try to push farther into the bushes. The paralyzing feeling returns accompanied by a strange
electrical current zapping sound. I am helpless to resist for some reason. I don’t understand why my body is not working. I realize I have peed my pants. Strangely I do not feel embarrassed. “No, no, no,” I cry. My voice sounds harsh to my ears. The strange man hauls me up and shoves me into the backseat and down onto the floorboards of his car. My brain feels fuzzy. I don’t understand what’s happening. I want to go home. I want to crawl back into my bed. I want to play with my sister. I want my mommy. I want time to reverse itself and give me a do-over. A blanket is thrown on top of me and I feel a lot of weight on my back. I feel as if I can’t breathe. I hear voices, but they are muffled. The car is moving. I want to get out of the car. I twist and turn, but something is pinning me down. I start to feel embarrassed about losing control of my bladder and want to get up and go home. I feel like I can’t think right. I know what is happening to me is not right, but I don’t know what to do. I feel scared and helpless. The car is moving and I feel sick. I need to throw up, but I’m afraid if I do I will choke to death, so I resist the feeling. Something tells me they wouldn’t help me if I did. I am so hot. I feel as if my skin is burning. Please, please remove this hot blanket—I can’t breathe! I feel like yelling, but my voice feels dry and nothing comes out. I lose consciousness. When I wake up, I hear voices. The car has stopped. Where are we? I hear two voices. One is male and the other is muffled and low, but it doesn’t sound like a man’s voice. The blanket is still covering me, but the weight has been taken off. I hear a car door open and slam shut very quickly. The blanket is finally pulled from my face and I can see the person that was in the backseat is now in the front, but I can’t see a face; it’s not someone big, so it could be a woman. I am offered a drink by
the male that pulled me into the car. I am so hot and my mouth is so dry. He says he got an extra straw for me, so I don’t need to worry about his germs. I am so grateful for that drink—my mouth feels so dry like I’ve been screaming for a long time, but I can’t remember screaming at all. All of a sudden I hear him laugh. He is saying something about how he can’t believe he got away with it. I want to tell him I want to go home. But I am so scared I am afraid to make the man angry. What should I do? I just don’t know what to do. I wish I did. I’m so scared. I want to go to sleep and pretend this is not happening. Why is this happening? Who are these people and what do they want with me?

Since my return back into the world, I find myself collecting pinecones. I ask the people I know now when they go on trips to bring me back a pinecone. I have pinecones from Lake Placid, Maine, and Oregon. My therapist and I finally solved my obsession. A pinecone was the last thing I touched before I was taken away by Phillip. A hard and sticky pinecone was my last grip on freedom before eighteen years in captivity.

M
y head feels like it’s spinning. I think I must have fallen asleep. When I come awake, we have stopped again. It is still daytime. The man tells the other passenger that we are home and then whispers something else that I can’t hear. I still can’t see the other passenger but can hear someone exit the car. The man that grabbed me tells me to be quiet and I won’t be hurt. He says I need to be very quiet or I will upset his very aggressive dogs. I do not want to do anything to anger him or the dogs. He seems big to me. He says he is going to take me in the house and for me to be quiet and not say a word. He throws a blanket over my head and leads me somewhere. I want to go home. My brain feels less foggy than it did before. I tell myself I am having a dream and any minute I will wake up and my mom will be there to hold me and tell me it was all just a bad dream. But of course this is
reality I must survive. I don’t ever remember having a nightmare quite this vivid. I was afraid of ET for a while when I first saw the movie. I used to think that ET would come to my house and be all dressed up like when the little girl in the movie dressed him; in my dream, he was mad at me for that for some reason. That was a crazy dream but nothing as scary as this.

When we are inside the strange house, he takes off the blanket and instructs me to sit on the wicker sofa. He is a very tall man. He has very light blue eyes and brown hair that is thinning on the top a bit. His nose is kind of long and his skin is a bronze color. It looks like he spent too much time in the sun. He does not look like a bad guy. He looks like a normal guy. Like any ordinary guy you would see in everyday life. But he is not! He couldn’t be … could he? He shows me a black thing with metal ends that look sharp. He calls it a “stun gun” and he says he will use it again if I try to get away. He turns it on and I hear the strange zapping sound I heard before when my body would not work. The sofa I’m sitting on has a lot of cat hair. I look up and I see a cat sitting on a washing machine. The cat looks like a Himalayan Persian tortoiseshell and there is another one that looks like a very fat, tabby torty. I ask if I can pet them. He says if they come to me, then I can. One comes over and I give it a pet. Its hair feels silky and real. I think this cat is the only thing that feels real right now; everything else feels like a nightmare but this is too real to be a dream. The man says to follow him.