Kavya Narayan - 8IG-A - 2018-19

On a hot summer afternoon, around 3:30pm, Jenny was walking back from an extremely tiring day at school. With sweat slowly dripping down her bright red cheeks, Jenny was limping down the street with her shiny Kipling school bag which was bursting open with books. She thought to herself rolling her eyes- “Uggh, why couldn’t daddy send the car to school today? How does he expect me to carry my own books!”

She slowly wiped her forehead with her palm that was showing her beautiful gold bracelet from her father’s jewelry shop. “Trrrr!” she heard a vehicle pull up behind her. She somehow managed to turn around with that heavy bag and saw a red Maruti Suzuki, which looked stolen because it had what looked like torn up pieces of stickers on the front glass.

She ignored the car and started walking towards her house. She couldn’t see who was sitting inside because the car had a one-way glass. “I thought it was illegal to have a one-way glass”, she whispered to herself. Suddenly, she heard someone call her name. It sounded like it came from the Maruti Suzuki. Jenny slowly crept towards the car. She saw someone wearing a mask come out of the car. Before she knew anything, she was hurled inside the car and everything went blank. She was terrified. She didn’t know who she with and there was a stinking bag on top of her head. She started to scream but then someone put a dirty handkerchief over her mouth.

Jenny was restless and tired from trying to tackle the two masked men holding her hand tightly, so she couldn’t fight back. After what seemed like hours of driving down deserted streets, the car finally came to a halt. Jenny was quivering and shaking in fear. She was so afraid. The small hairs on the back of her neck stood up. One of the kidnappers said pushing her out of the car “Do as we say, we wont harm you, if you don’t try to do something smart”. Jenny was someone who did the opposite of what was told to her. She tried to squirm away from the kidnappers, but it only made them grab her wrists tighter and start screaming at her.

They continued walking for quite some time, when suddenly someone threw to the ground. “Oww! That hurt”, she said. Jenny could smell the dust and grime and then the hard ground that she was dumped on. Rubbing her forehead with her bruised hands, jenny rolled on her back and slowly rose to her feet and took the stinking bag off her head.

BOOM! She heard something close behind her as she turned around. She rubbed her eyes as they were blurry from the dust inside the bag and as she flickered open her eyes a harsh light shinned through them. Then she looked around and realized that she was locked in a prison cell.

Jenny tightly grabbed her hair, shut her eyes close and tried to control her emotions and think of a solution, but all in vain. Ears started running her down her cheeks. She clutched onto the metal rods on the cell door and started to hurl them around. But it seemed like she was moving back and forth herself because she didn’t have the energy to move the bars all by herself.

After about half an hour of Jenny trying to bang the walls with her fists and open the cell door, she gave up. She sat down in one corner of the room, curled up like a little baby and started crying her eyes out. Her school shirt was now soaked in tears and she could hear her stomach growling and rumbling because she didn’t have lunch and was starving.

Jenny tried to get one or two words out of her mouth, but her throat was sore from all the screaming. Suddenly, a masked man came out of no where and started speaking with his deep and terrifying voice. “Hello there JENNY BURKHART! You must be wondering why you are here? See your father, the owner of Burkhart Jewels has a lot of money.” “Obviously he does,” Jenny thought to herself. “So we are holding you ransom for all the money that he has” he continued.” Now you must be hungry,” he said opening the cell door with a rusted key and sliding a bent, metal plate towards her which had nothing but half a piece of stale bread. Jenny couldn’t help but gobble it all up in less than 30 seconds.

Suddenly, one of the other masked men shouted something. Jenny was too busy eating to hear anything he said.  Although she did remember the man furiously shutting the door close and running towards the voice.

“What am I going to now?!” she thought to herself walking around the cell. Suddenly, her face lit up when she saw a mirror on the wall. It was high up, but she somehow managed to drop the mirror down to the floor. It shattered into many pieces and she saw a strange looking coin behind the mirror, so she kept it inside the pocket.

She then took the biggest piece of the broken mirror. She ran towards the metal door and started trying to saw it open with the piece of glass. She wrapped one palm around the metal rod, and with the other she kept on sawing. Nothing but her hand got cut. “Oh! I should have known this wasn’t gonna work. What was I thinking?” She whispered to herself dropping the piece of glass out of her hands and resting her head on the metal door, closing her eyes in disappointment.

Jenny had a feeling that her heart was going to jump out of her chest. She was so scared and terrified that her face was flushed red. She had a tingling feeling that moved through her whole body. Her heart sinking deeper and deeper and beating so hard that she could feel it through her fingertips. She felt so petrified and panic-stricken that she would be stuck in there forever.

Jenny slipped her eyelids back and her velvet-black eyes enlarged, and she let out a little shriek out of happiness. “Wow! How foolish, the masked man left the key in the lock.” She thought to herself with a huge smile on her face. She slowly opened the door with a feeling of happiness which shot through her whole body, but with a hint of anticipation.

She slowly and quietly tip-toed down the hallway which led to a room. She rested her back on the wall on the side of the door so that the kidnappers wouldn’t see her. She heard one of the men on the phone “Mr. Burkhart, if you ever want to see your little girls face again then you will have to give me all your jewels and money….” The man continued to talk on the phone, when Jenny started to brainstorm ideas on what to do.

“Idea!!!”, she silently snapped her fingers. At this point in time she couldn’t think of anything better to do, than run. Run to where ever the path takes her. She faster than she ever had. Then she reached the exit door and peeped out of the window next to it. She saw a phonebooth. Her face lit up but as she was turning the door knob, she realized that she didn’t have any money. “Ahhh!” she exclaimed, slamming her hands against her thighs.

She felt something strange, after some time she remembered that she had found a coin behind the mirror. She took the coin and ran out. While running she thought with her spoilt attitude “What has mt life come to? I have to run without anyone cheering me on!” She finally reached the phonebooth.

She was so tired and worn out, she started shaking. She picked up the phone, shaking it with her she put the coin into the slot and dialed her father’s number. She talked to her father and let out a breath of relief. “Everything is going to okay! Its gonna be okay!” She thought as she sunk to her feet in the phonebooth.