Chapter 4D

“Any siblings?”
“No.”
“How tall are you?”
“5’6.”
“Weight?”
I frowned.
“120.”
“What do you look for in a guy?” Still confused as to where these questions were going, I thought about it.
“Someone who understands me. Who isn’t afraid of who they are. Someone honest, and brave. Someone who can make me laugh and make me cry if they’re away. Someone who has manners, who loves uncontrollably, who will open my eyes to life. Someone who really cares about themselves, and about other people. Not just some conceited jock with no brains, basically.
Someone who can save me from desperate situations, but knows that I‘m strong, too. Someone who respects me, who loves to smile…” I took a deep breath after that speech.
“Wow, someone’s got high expectations.” Roy bit his lip to stifle laughter at his own stupid comment and wrote out my response. He had dark circles under his eyes, I noticed, as he turned to write. And there was stubble on his cheeks as if he hadn’t bothered to shave.
“Well, you were brought up like that,” He remarked casually. “Everything you could ever want, pampered and spoiled and now you’re…that.”
“Do you really think that?” I asked seriously. Why did he have to do that? Tear me down, make me feel awful about myself. There was more to me than that rich, spoiled, popular stereotype. I was going to die anyway, it didn’t matter.
He looked straight into my eyes, startled that I had responded in that manner.
“That’s what I see.” He stood up with his clipboard and papers.
I looked into my lap in a melancholy trance as he walked towards the door.
“People are more than they look like.” He swallowed.
“The door’s wide open for you to show everyone that you’re not like that,” He said quietly.
“You just have to walk through.”
 He stood there for a minute, gazing at me, and then left, and locked the door.
And how did Roy know so much about me? He was a darned kidnapper, a mean, hard, cold man who wanted nothing but money and hated the world. And me. So why would it matter to him who I really was? And why did it matter to me that he thought these things? Frustrated and confused, I lay back on the sofa and readied myself for tomorrow. What if I died tomorrow? I asked myself. I’d tried to push that question away, but it kept nagging. What if I died tomorrow, and I never got to spend more time with Daddy, or stand up to Mackenzie, or even be nicer to Charlotte, since she didn’t deserve what we said to her. No one deserved it. No one deserved to be kidnapped either. Or maybe not. I deserve this, I thought sorrowfully. I deserve it because I don’t deserve my dad or my friends or my popularity or my clothes or my makeup. I don’t deserve any of it because I suck as a person. And resolute that I was going to get what was coming to me, I cried myself to sleep.