Happy Birthday to Me Again (Birthday Trilogy, Book 2) (25 page)

“Are you all
right?” he asked me.

I rubbed my
belly. “Stomachache,” I lied.

“Here.” He
handed me my sandwich and a large, empty cup. “Go get us a seat.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and made my way over
to a table. I started inhaling the sandwich, feeling more hunger at this moment
than ever before.

My dad sat down across from me, watching
me with suspicion as I barely chewed the food before swallowing. “Some stomachache,”
he said.

We didn’t say much for the next few
minutes. But as soon as I reached the last few bites of my sandwich, I knew it
was time to bring up a sore subject I simply needed to get to the bottom of.

“Dad?”

“What?”

“What’s going on
with you and Mom?”

He took a giant bite of his roast beef
sandwich and started chewing slowly and methodically, like he never wanted to
open his mouth again. Half of a tomato dangled from his mouth as he swallowed
the giant bite.

“Cam, this isn’t
really the time—”

“Dad, I was supposed to be
married
in a few days. While I’m
preparing for one of the most important days of my life, you and mom have been
considering ending your, what,
nineteen-year
marriage?”

“Cam—”

“What were you gonna do, Dad? Just smile
and applaud at the wedding, then call us on our honeymoon to tell us you and
Mom are getting a divorce?”

“We’re not
getting a divorce. I don’t want a divorce. I love your mother.”

“OK…”

“Your mom sat me down a few months ago
and said she missed me, you know? She said that I was spending too much time at
work and not enough time with her. And I told her, as I would tell you and your
sister, I do what I do to support all of you, and to give you guys everything
you need and want. But she didn’t really go for that, and she said if I don’t
start pulling back on my hours, she would consider leaving me…”

“You love your
job, Dad. You’re married to it, way more than you’re married to Mom.”

“That’s not
true.”

“Isn’t it?”

My dad pounded his fist against the
table, startling me, as well as a family of five sitting at the table next to
us. My dad put his hands in his face. “This is
ridiculous
. I’m having this conversation with my nine-year-old
son.”

“Dad!” I put my
hand on his, and he didn’t pull away. “I’m still me.”

He shook his head. “It’s not sad this
time, Cameron. This time it’s just confusing and stupid and inexplicable. This
is killing me inside, don’t you understand?”

“There you go,” I said, “making
everything about you. Again,
I’m
the
one with the disease here.”

“Whatever. Just
finish your breakfast. We have another two hours ahead of us.”

I shook my head.
“Yeah, whatever.”

I ate the rest of my sandwich slowly,
knowing I didn’t want to get in that car again. Now that Mom, Kimber, and
Wesley had info about my whereabouts, I had a strong feeling that my dad wasn’t
going to get me into this clinic without a fight.

Little did I know, though, while I
enjoyed my final bite, that my dad wasn’t even going to get me to the next
town
.
 

---

The drive down the barren 395 freeway was
cumbersome, not so much because we still had a couple of hours ahead of us, but
because there was nothing to see or do on the longwinded drive. My dad and I
didn’t say much to each other for the next half hour; instead, he kept his
smooth jazz music blasting through the car. There wasn’t much to look at
outside, just some mountains, and plenty of dirt.

“Where the hell
are we?”

“We’re close,
Cam,” my dad said. “Really close.”

As we started
ascending a hill, I turned down the loud, annoying music.

“Are you and Mom
gonna be OK?” I asked.

“We’re gonna be
fine. Don’t worry about us.”

“I just never
knew there were any problems…”

“Every marriage has problems. Ours has
had them for years. If you marry Liesel, I know it doesn’t seem like it now,
but you’re gonna have problems, too. You just have to work through them. Your
Mom and I love each other very much. We’re going to get through this.”

“You just have
to promise me, Dad, you know, if anything happens to me…”

“
Nothing
is going to happen to you.”

“But if it
does…”

The car reached the top of the hill, and
then we immediately started descending. I hoped there’d be a paradise of
casinos or water parks at the bottom of this hill, but alas, there was just
more dirt, and lots more boredom.

“Cam… please…”

“…You have to promise me, you and Mom are
going to stay together, for Kimber’s sake. She needs you, the both of you.”

“I can’t promise
something like that.”

“Please, Dad.”

“As I said
before, this was all instigated by your mother…”

“Just cut back on your hours, Dad! How
hard can that be? If you do that, then everything will be fine.”

He took his eyes off the road for a
moment and turned to me. He had a sad look in his eyes, as if he was going to
start crying. “I promise you this, OK? I promise I’ll do everything I can to
keep your mother from leaving me…”

I heard my dad use the word ‘promise,’
but I didn’t hear the rest of what he said. As we reached the bottom of the
hill, I noticed something strange up ahead on the road. It looked like a
person
.

I didn’t say anything at first, because I
figured it was my imagination playing tricks on me. But as the car got closer,
I could see that not only was this person standing in the center of the road,
but that it was the same young woman who I had been catching glimpses of ever
since Liesel’s disappearance.

“Oh my God,” I
said. “It’s
her
.”

“Huh?”

“That girl… It’
s the girl who kidnapped Liesel!”
 

My dad was still
looking at me and not the road. “What the hell are you talking about?”

The car was going straight for her, at
eighty miles an hour. The girl wasn’t budging. She just stood there in the
center of the road, her right arm outstretched, her index finger pointed right
at us.

“Dad!
Look out!”

My dad looked back at the road, and I was
happy, for a split second, to see that he noticed her, too. His mouth opened
wide, and he veered the car to the left.

“Ohhhh
shit!”
 

“Dad!”

“Cameron,
hold—”

My dad swerved to the left, barely
missing the girl, and the car started flipping into the air. We tumbled over an
embankment beside the road, twice, maybe three times, before coming to a halt
upside-down and in front of a giant cactus.

I tried to breathe but couldn’t for a
moment. I was in such a panic that all I could think about at first was my
father. I turned to my left to see my dad unconscious, blood trickling down the
top of his forehead.

“Dad… Dad!”

I pushed against his shoulder with all my
might, but there was no waking him. I pushed harder, and then I slapped him
once in the face. He still wouldn’t wake up.

“Dad! Answer me!” I started crying as I
set my hands against his cheeks. “Please! Dad! I love y—”

I tried not to scream when my passenger
side window shattered into a million pieces by nothing more than a powerful
kick. I didn’t have time to escape. I didn’t have time to make a move. A hand
with black-painted fingernails undid my buckle and gripped the bottom of my
chin. The figure pulled me out of the car and hoisted me up to her face. She
smiled at me, and I noticed, for the first time, to my horror, who was standing
in front of me.

“Hello Cameron,”
she said. “Nice to see you again.”

I was in so much
shock I couldn’t think for a moment. “Oh my God…
Hannah
?”

She laughed.
“You never called me back. Shame on you.”

“What… Look… I
don’t know what I did, but—”

“That’s the thing, Cameron,” she said,
bringing my face closer to her mouth. I couldn’t believe at one time I had
found this girl attractive. “You’ve done more than enough.”

“What do
you—”

She took a step back and threw me up into
the air, but, much to my astonishment, I didn’t come down. I looked at Hannah
to see her right arm outstretched, again, this time with all her focus strained
against my body. She had an evil, foreboding smile on her face.

“Please, Hannah…” I looked down to see
the car upturned on the side of the road, still no sign of movement from my
dad. “Whatever you’re thinking about doing… please… please don’t it.”

“Night, night,”
she said. “I’ll see you soon.”

With a flick of her hand, she tossed me
straight at the street pavement. I watched, as my life flashed before my eyes,
as the top of my head went straight for the cement.

This
is it,
I thought.
This is how it all ends. Out here on a
desert road, my dad potentially dead in a car, me dying by the hands of some
wicked witch I made a pass at.

I waited a few seconds before I opened my
eyes. I didn’t feel any pain.
Am I dead?
I looked forward to see the street pavement six inches from my face—I was
still floating in the air. Hannah roped me back in toward her body at the side
of the road.

“Only kidding,” she said. “It’s not like
I want to kill you.” She grabbed my feet and hoisted my little body up high in
the air. Then she laughed. “Not yet anyway.”

She flung my body down toward the car,
and I smashed my head against the passenger side window.

All I saw after
that was blackness.

11.
Seven

The blackness remained. The strong smell
came first. My first thought was that I was smelling a Thanksgiving dinner that
had rotted in the oven for a few long weeks. When I finally started blinking, a
dark, depressing dungeon of a room slowly came into focus, and I realized that
what was sitting in front of me was far worse.

Liesel was in a cage, one barely big
enough to house a large dog let alone a human being. Her hands and ankles were
both fastened by strong, sturdy chains to the ground. Her hair was in shambles,
and her skin was a dirty mess from head to toe. She looked like death. She
didn’t look like the girl who I had come to love over this past year.

“Oh my God…
Liesel
?”

It didn’t occur to me until I leaned my
body forward that my arms and legs were chained down as well. But instead of a
cage, I was stuck inside an over-sized
crib
.
I looked down to see that I was dressed in striped pajamas, and my lips were
wrapped around a pacifier.

I’m not a baby already, am I?

No, I couldn’t be. I was still tall
enough to be at least six years old, seven even. This revelation led me to the
following question:
Then what the hell am
I doing in these baby clothes?

Of course what I should have been
concentrating on was why I was chained down, and why Liesel was stuck in a cage
across the darkly lit room. But my wardrobe was just… inexplicable.

“Cameron…”
Liesel finally said, so low it was barely audible.

“Leese! Oh God, it’s so good to see you!”
I noticed how much higher my voice was. It sounded like Mickey Mouse, or maybe
even Minnie. I cleared my throat and tried to make it deeper. “Leese, where
have you been?”

She looked at me with the kind of rage
she showed me at the French restaurant the other night, except this time there
was a more tangible sadness in her face. “Cam, you have to go… you have to get
out of here…”

“Not without
you,” I said. “Not without—”

I heard a door
slam behind me. It was so loud it instantly shut me up, and I was afraid to
turn my head around. I looked down to see the metal clamps against my hands and
feet. I wasn’t going anywhere.

Not
without some magic
, I
thought. Then a question occurred to me:
Why
can’t Liesel lift the cage and undo her chains? She can do anything!

I heard footsteps come toward the crib,
and then I heard a cackle of laughter, so over-the-top maniacal that I thought
I had stepped foot along with Mickey and Minnie inside an old Disney movie,
coming face-to-face with the wicked queen herself. “Good morning,
sleepyhead
! You’ve been out for
thirty-six hours!”

I jerked my head around—I had to.
Hannah stood before me, in a dark red dress, her lips stained with even redder
lipstick. Her black hair was long and straightened, and she had a sinister
smile plastered on her crazed face.

“Hannah…
What—”