Chapter 3

A Chapter by Brooklyn

Well, this has taken a weird turn. I am in a cage with another human that can turn into an animal that was looking for me. To top it of, he is tall, had tan skin, black hair and eyes so dark you could barely see his pupils. You understand my surprise when I woke up in a cage with a black tiger with light grey stripes (or was it the other way around?). I didn’t even know those existed.

Cole, who had just sat there calmly while I swore, decides that this would be a good time to continue his story. ”So I looked you up on the Internet and found that you went to an all girl’s boarding school in New York. You have quite a record.”

“You found my record on the internet? “

He shrugs, ”I’m good with computers”

“So you basically hacked into my schools server and read every file on me.” I say casually, as if a hot guy hacked into my personal record everyday.

He smiles for the first time since we met�"which was like five minutes ago�"and my heart skips a little. Stupid heart. I don’t even know the guy! Your not supposed to skip like that (yes, I am reprimanding my heart). Did I mention he’s hot?

I think about the impossibility of the situation. I thought normal teenagers had issues. We happened to be able to change into wild animals and�"oh yah!�"we were trapped in a cage. We had to get out of here. But, how? ”They had to open the cage somehow to get us in here,” I say. He just nods. Not very encouraging.

Then, I hear footsteps. We look at each other and he nods, showing he hears them too. Simultaneously, we change. Flopping onto our sides, we squinted our eyes so we could still see but it looked like we were still passed out.

A man pulled the tarp off the cage and, hello, fumbled with the latch that opens it. This latch apparently is not visible in the pitch dark even with super-feline-see-in-the-dark-eyesight. I mean seriously, they should make the latches more visible. That would make it a lot simpler for anyone trapped in there to escape. Dear cage manufacturers, if you’re reading this, MAKE THE STUPID LATCHES GLOW-IN-THE-DARK OR SOMETHING!!! Sincerely, someone who has had to escape many cages.

I try watching him fiddle with the latch but I can’t keep up. Then, he is inside the cage. Leaning back out he grabs a deer carcass and pulls it inside. Then another. It is seriously disgusting. I wonder for a moment why he would bring dead deer into our cage. Is this where they stored the dead bodies from their hunting trip? Were we supposed to be dead? Then it hit me. They thought we were wild cats. We were supposed to eat the deer. Raw.

We get up as soon as he left. ”There is no way I’m eating that thing” I state what felt like the obvious.

You have no idea how disgusting the idea of eating anything raw is. Plus, the smell of decaying flesh doesn’t help the appetizing level.

Anyway, I focus on the latch. It was really complex. It also happened to be too dark to see it properly ‘cause of the tarp. Still it only took me about five minutes to figure it out and open it. Oh yeah, another thing, I’m really smart. I’m not bragging, that’s just how it is. That’s the whole reason that stupid boarding school didn’t kick me out. My scores were so impressive it made to whole school look better. And that’s all they really cared about, wasn’t it.

“I got it!” I whisper excitedly as the door clicks open.

So, we were free. The first order of business (after getting far enough that they couldn’t find us and morphing into humans, of course) was getting something to eat. By this point I am starving. My hunger is about to swallow me up. About ten big macs would be the only thing that could fill me up right now. Next stop: McDonalds.

Except there wasn’t a McD’s in miles. There wasn’t a town for miles. I had forgotten the little inconvenience of being in rural New York. I mean when you think of New York you think of the city. Tons of lights, shops, music blaring, weirdoes running around everywhere. But we often forget that in New York there is a middle of nowhere. And that’s where we were. The middle of nowhere of New York.

The closest food we could find was a roadside diner. They would probably wonder why two teenagers would order a boatload of food at what I judge to be six o’clock in the morning. Most kids wouldn’t even be up at this time. I didn’t wake till seven at the prison/school. We can’t order as much food as we wanted but something is better then nothing. And the only something around is the diner.

We walk in and are met immediately by the aroma of pancakes and bacon. My mouth begins to water as a waitress in a blue polo seats us at a booth and hands us our menus. What to choose?

It’s a cute little dinner. It has checker board tiles with bright red booths and curtains. The tables are a black wood and the menus had “Anne’s” written typed in a black, curly font. The Norman Rockwell moment is completed my a middle-aged waitress stopping to chat with the customers as she took orders, saying thing like “Has she had her baby yet?” and “How’s your granddaughter?”

When the food finally came, I have to remind myself that utensils are necessary. The waitress gives us strange looks as we wolf down our food like there’s no tomorrow. Who knows, there might not be.

“ Okay,” I say around a huge bite of pancakes, “How much cash do you have?” I ask. Running out of that dinner without paying was something I just wouldn’t do. I’m not used to braking the law but something told me I will have to get used to it, and soon.

“Don’t worry. I’ve got money.”

“And how did you gets this money?” I am seriously starting to worry that I had escaped with a convict.

He must have seen the panicked-trying-to-seem-calm look on my face because he looks me dead in the eyes and says, ”I didn’t steal it.” I believe him, but I also notice that he didn’t say where got it.

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