Escape Under the Forever Sky (5 page)

Finally Teddy returned, triumphant. “Sixty-five birr! And you can tell it is a real Harari basket.” I was impressed. Teddy had bargained them down from twenty dollars to about eight.

Teddy started to unwrap the package to show us, but he was interrupted by shouts several stalls away.

“What's going on?” I asked, standing on my toes to
try to see over the crowd. People swarmed toward us, jostling us, clearly trying to get away from whatever was happening. Someone slammed into me, and I jerked back when he yanked hard on my messenger bag. Before I could grab it, the bag was gone and whoever had taken it had disappeared into the crowd.

“Hey!” I yelled.

But my mind must have been playing tricks on me because I thought I heard someone calling my name.

“Lucy, over there! They are calling you.” Tana pointed straight ahead, and sure enough, there were half a dozen U.S. marines shouting, “Lucy Hoffman! Lucy Hoffman!”

Completely mortified, I looked at my friends' shocked faces.
My mother
.

“W
HAT YOU DID
was incredibly dangerous! I don't know what you were thinking!” We were back at the residence, and I was awaiting sentencing.

“Everything would have been fine if you hadn't sent in the SWAT team!”

“Lucy—” my mother started, and then changed her mind. “Iskinder, help me out here.”

Iskinder wore the concerned and serious expression of a mortician. “I would not let my own mother go to the
mercato
alone.”

Traitor
.

“There, do you understand now?”

“Yes, I understand! I understand that you never let
me do anything. Maybe if you let me actually go out once in a while, I wouldn't have to sneak around!”

“For God's sake, Lucy, someone cut the bag from your body. With a knife!”

“Which they never would have been able to do if I hadn't been so distracted by the marines. It's
your
fault I lost my bag!”

“Really?” Her voice was calm and quiet all of a sudden. A bad sign. “Well, it's your fault you won't be leaving this house except to go to school for the next month. You think you're so responsible? Then you can take responsibility for lying and for putting yourself and your friends in a dangerous situation.”

Grounded for an entire month? No game drives, no Tana or Teddy?
What am I going to do all day, every day, completely alone?

“You don't care what you do to me. You don't care how I feel. You're cruel and selfish,” I spat out at her. My words hit home. I saw the pain in my mother's eyes, and even though I was angry, I felt bad about hurting her. But I stalked past her and up the stairs to my bedroom anyway, slamming the door behind me.

It hurt to look back on what I'd done that day. Like I said, I should have known better. But I couldn't dwell on my regrets, because suddenly I heard men talking on the other side of the wall! My heart pounded so hard I thought my chest would burst. Their voices were low and intense. I sat up and pressed my ear against the rough wall so I could hear better. I guessed there were two of them, but it was hard to tell, especially since they weren't speaking English. It sounded like Amharic, but what do I know? It could have been any one of the seventy languages people speak in Ethiopia. But if they were speaking Amharic, it meant they were Ethiopian. Was it Dawit and Nasty Teeth, two new monsters, or (
please, please, please
) someone to rescue me? I couldn't tell. Hypothesis: I had been kidnapped by greater than or equal to two Ethiopian men. The door swung open, and I held my breath.

It was a woman. A white woman.
They're here!
Relief washed over me; I could hardly believe it. The whole horrible nightmare was over; my parents were on their way. I leaped off the mat. I wanted to hug her, but my wrists were still bound together. Plus, she was holding a plate in one hand and a pitcher in the other.

“How did you find me? Where's my mother? When can we go?” The questions came tumbling out—I was just so incredibly, ecstatically relieved.

“Find you?” Her accent sounded British.

“Yes, how did you know where I was? Do you know who did this? Where are they?”

“Sorry to disappoint, Lucy, but I didn't
find
you, I
brought
you.”

I didn't get it. What was she saying? She couldn't mean . . . “Wha—why . . . ?” I stammered. “I don't understand.”

“You are here because we brought you here. And if everyone cooperates and you behave yourself, you'll go home. That's all you need to understand.”

My knees buckled, and I crashed back down onto the mat. I couldn't believe it. She was one of them. Just because she was white, I had assumed she was on my side.
Great, now I'm an idiot AND a racist
.

She was silent, letting the news sink in. I stared at the dirt floor so she wouldn't see me fighting back the tears.

“Stand up,” she said at last.

I cringed, shrinking back to the corner of my mat.
She was holding a huge hunting knife with a thick blade at least six inches long.

“Give me your hands.”

I couldn't move.

“Go on, give them to me. I see you've managed to take off the blindfold. Would you prefer to keep the rope?”

I held out my hands but kept my face turned away so I wouldn't have to watch her work that terrifying thing through the rope. When it finally came off, there were deep red welts on my skin. I massaged my wrists to get some of the circulation back.

“I brought you some food.” She put the pitcher on the crate and handed me a plate of
injera
, a fermented Ethiopian bread. I couldn't even look at it; there was a baseball where my stomach should have been.

“Now listen to me carefully, Lucy, because if you follow the rules, you will be fine. And if you don't follow the rules, you will be dead.”

That got my attention. My head snapped up to look at her pale, angular face. She was grown up but young. Not tall, not short. Her brown hair was in a neat ponytail, and she was wearing khaki pants and a
white polo shirt. She looked like a tennis instructor with bad skin, which I realize is an oxymoron.
Who is this person, and why is she doing this to me?

“You are going to be here for a few days, until your mother does what she needs to do. During that time you will stay in this room. You will be brought food and water. Don't bother yelling for help because there's no one around to hear you. Don't even think of trying to escape because if our dogs don't get you, the hyenas will. If you make any kind of trouble at all, we will hurt you. If you make trouble a second time, we will kill you.” She paused. “Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“Good.”

I heard her lock the door behind her.

I stuffed my shirt into my mouth so no one would hear me, and I cried for a long time, swallowing air in huge, choking gulps. Her voice echoed in my head over and over:
If you don't follow the rules, you will be dead
.

A thousand questions raced around my brain, like lab rats on a wheel. Where was I? How was I going to get out of here? Who were these monsters who had done this to me? But I had no answers because, as
usual, no one would tell me anything.
I am so sick of being used and ignored!

I was starting to lose it, hyperventilating so badly I was getting dizzy.
Get it together, Lucy
.

I hung my head between my knees and took slow, deep breaths until finally I felt a little calmer—and seriously thirsty. I stared at the pitcher on the crate.
Please don't let it be water
.

But of course it was water. My mother had drilled this into my head about a thousand times: “Lucy, when you're in Africa, never, ever drink any water that isn't bottled. And even then, drink it only if you open the bottle yourself.”

“Why do I have to open the bottle myself?”

“Because restaurants refill the bottles with tap water and sell them as bottled. It happens all the time. And speaking of restaurants—no salads. They wash the vegetables with tap water—if they wash them at all—and you don't want to know what they use for fertilizer.”

“Don't you think you're being a little paranoid?”

“Paranoid?” my mother repeated. “Not when ninety percent of all sewage in Africa is emptied into
rivers and lakes without any kind of treatment. Do you really want to drink that? I'm talking about nasty things like cholera and intestinal worms. Think about it, Lucy. How would you like to pull a six-foot worm out of your intestines?”

So it was me against the parasites. Well, I was probably going to end up dead anyway, and I bet the parasites would hurt a whole lot less than whatever these people had planned for me. I raised the pitcher to my lips and paused.

Bottoms up
.

Now for food. I looked down at the plate next to me. The
injera
was gray and spongy. Repulsive. I've never liked
injera
. Usually people eat it with saucy meat or vegetables on top to give it some flavor, but this was plain, with nothing to disguise the fact that
injera
feels and tastes like sour gym socks. I poked it, and my finger left a dent.
I can't eat this
. But there was nothing else.

Okay, do it fast, like pulling off a Band-Aid
. I tore off a piece, and it stuck to my fingers like those steamed pork buns you get in Chinese restaurants. Except those buns are delicious. Plugging my nose with one
hand, I stuffed the
injera
into my mouth with the other.
Chew, chew, chew, chew, swallow
. I gagged. Half of it was still in my throat. I swallowed again, hard, and it went down.

Eating food I hated and doing things I didn't want to do.
I really should be used to it by now. It's the story of my life
.

I
T WAS YET
another of about a thousand official dinners, and I
really
hadn't wanted to go. This one was just plain weird. China had made a gift of a sports stadium to Ethiopia. The construction was almost done, and the Chinese ambassador had invited my mother and me to see the new building.

I was leaning against the doorjamb of my mother's bedroom, watching her put on makeup.
Why couldn't I have inherited any of the beautiful genes?

“Do I really have to go to this thing? You know I'm going to be the only kid there. Besides, don't you think the Chinese could have found a better way to help Ethiopia than by building a
sports stadium
?”

She capped her lipstick. “Yes, you have to go. You know how much Ambassador Li likes you. He would be very disappointed if you weren't there. Look, Lucy, don't worry about politics. Just try to have some fun.”

“Well, what am I supposed to say? ‘My, what lovely seats you have!' Or ‘How many stalls did you say there were in the men's room?' ”