to be seriously injured. What a miracle.
I started to laugh. Remember that weird nervous laugh I have when I’m scared or excited? I couldn’t help it. It just struck me as funny. What the heck was I doing?Oh yeah, escaping. For a moment I stopped to look at the night sky. It was cloudless and there was a full moon. It was beautiful. If I hadn’t felt like I had just been run over by a truck, I would have enjoyed it.
Slowly I started to stand up. Whoa. Big mistake. Woozy. I lay back down and waited for the spinning to stop. When it did, I sat up. Better. I was kind of numb all over. My arms and legs seemed to work, but my right wrist was sore, like I’d sprained it. I must have stuck it out to try to stop my fall. I’d have to take it easy.
I stood up and tried to get my bearings. That’s when I noticed that there was a door in front of me that led back into the school. I hadn’t been able to see it from the window above. It was probably locked anyway. I peered in the window at the frame of the door, and I didn’t see any alarm boxes or wires, so it didn’t look like a fire door. But I decided not to chance opening it anyway. All I needed was to set off the alarms at this point.
I was now on the side of Blackthorn Academy facing out from the mountain. No one should be able to see me from the front. All of the athletic fields lay beyond me for several hundred yards. There was a track, a football field, and a couple of baseball or softball diamonds. They wereall deserted with not a soul in sight. Beyond them lay probably the thickest woods I’d ever seen in my life.
I figured I’d go over the chain-link fence and into the woods. Then I’d head back toward the road, keeping the school in sight so I didn’t get lost, until I hit the freeway. Then I could hitch a ride. Of course, I’d never hitched a ride before, but I’d read about it. You stick out your thumb, somebody stops (hopefully not a crazed psycho traveling serial killer), and you’ve got your ride. What could go wrong?
I walked all the way across the fields until I came to the fence, which was about eight feet high. I had no idea how I was going to get over it. I kept thinking about Pilar’s crack about me not being in good enough shape to get out. But I’d show her . In police shows on TV you see people climb these fences all the time when they are being chased. They just run at it and scamper over like monkeys. So it couldn’t be too hard. I shifted my duffel bag around so it was on my back, then backed up a few feet, ran at the fence, and jumped. I bounced off the fence and landed on my butt, digging my sore wrist into the ground. Yow!
Not to be deterred, I tried it again. I didn’t fall downimmediately this time, but I couldn’t get a grip on the fence with my sore wrist and I couldn’t get my feet to dig in and push me up. Eventually I slipped and fell again, this time landing against the fence. This wasn’t going to work.
The fence wound all the way around the complex until it hooked back up with the school on both ends. I didn’t see any gates nearby, but they would all be locked anyway.
What to do? Giving up was not an option. I tried to run through some other escape scenarios in my head:(1) Hide in a laundry cart and get loaded on a truck and sneak out the back door when the truck stops. Okay, could work. Except I had the feeling that Mr. Kim probably made everybody at Blackthorn wash their own clothes on the rocks in a nearby stream, so there probably wouldn’t be a laundry truck. (2) I could steal a spoon from the cafeteria and tunnel my way to freedom. (3) I could pretend to be sick and get taken to a hospital and escape from there, but what if they had some kind of medical ward in the school where they stuck me? Besides, those plans would keep me here for at least another day, and I wanted out now. There had to be a way.
Just then I noticed that the baseball field had some wooden benches along the baselines where the
I started to laugh. Remember that weird nervous laugh I have when I’m scared or excited? I couldn’t help it. It just struck me as funny. What the heck was I doing?Oh yeah, escaping. For a moment I stopped to look at the night sky. It was cloudless and there was a full moon. It was beautiful. If I hadn’t felt like I had just been run over by a truck, I would have enjoyed it.
Slowly I started to stand up. Whoa. Big mistake. Woozy. I lay back down and waited for the spinning to stop. When it did, I sat up. Better. I was kind of numb all over. My arms and legs seemed to work, but my right wrist was sore, like I’d sprained it. I must have stuck it out to try to stop my fall. I’d have to take it easy.
I stood up and tried to get my bearings. That’s when I noticed that there was a door in front of me that led back into the school. I hadn’t been able to see it from the window above. It was probably locked anyway. I peered in the window at the frame of the door, and I didn’t see any alarm boxes or wires, so it didn’t look like a fire door. But I decided not to chance opening it anyway. All I needed was to set off the alarms at this point.
I was now on the side of Blackthorn Academy facing out from the mountain. No one should be able to see me from the front. All of the athletic fields lay beyond me for several hundred yards. There was a track, a football field, and a couple of baseball or softball diamonds. They wereall deserted with not a soul in sight. Beyond them lay probably the thickest woods I’d ever seen in my life.
I figured I’d go over the chain-link fence and into the woods. Then I’d head back toward the road, keeping the school in sight so I didn’t get lost, until I hit the freeway. Then I could hitch a ride. Of course, I’d never hitched a ride before, but I’d read about it. You stick out your thumb, somebody stops (hopefully not a crazed psycho traveling serial killer), and you’ve got your ride. What could go wrong?
I walked all the way across the fields until I came to the fence, which was about eight feet high. I had no idea how I was going to get over it. I kept thinking about Pilar’s crack about me not being in good enough shape to get out. But I’d show her . In police shows on TV you see people climb these fences all the time when they are being chased. They just run at it and scamper over like monkeys. So it couldn’t be too hard. I shifted my duffel bag around so it was on my back, then backed up a few feet, ran at the fence, and jumped. I bounced off the fence and landed on my butt, digging my sore wrist into the ground. Yow!
Not to be deterred, I tried it again. I didn’t fall downimmediately this time, but I couldn’t get a grip on the fence with my sore wrist and I couldn’t get my feet to dig in and push me up. Eventually I slipped and fell again, this time landing against the fence. This wasn’t going to work.
The fence wound all the way around the complex until it hooked back up with the school on both ends. I didn’t see any gates nearby, but they would all be locked anyway.
What to do? Giving up was not an option. I tried to run through some other escape scenarios in my head:(1) Hide in a laundry cart and get loaded on a truck and sneak out the back door when the truck stops. Okay, could work. Except I had the feeling that Mr. Kim probably made everybody at Blackthorn wash their own clothes on the rocks in a nearby stream, so there probably wouldn’t be a laundry truck. (2) I could steal a spoon from the cafeteria and tunnel my way to freedom. (3) I could pretend to be sick and get taken to a hospital and escape from there, but what if they had some kind of medical ward in the school where they stuck me? Besides, those plans would keep me here for at least another day, and I wanted out now. There had to be a way.
Just then I noticed that the baseball field had some wooden benches along the baselines where the
Similar Books
