A Long Way From Home

Chapter 2: In which things turn upside down

Bowden Residence: Buffalo, New York— Monday, 8:00pm


The Bowden family had just sat down to dinner when the phone rang.


“Kathy, you won’t believe what happened!” One of Mrs. Bowden’s coworkers screeched into the phone.


There, on Channel 3, was Layla’s story. A woman with too many teeth smiled into the camera. “A local teen prevents a kidnapping at Hillcrest Elementary. Steve has the whole story. Steve?”


“Thank you, Laura. The police issued a kidnapper alert today, warning parents to be extra careful with their children as a suspicious character had been spotted around the elementary school campus. Further investigation on our part revealed that a local teen had been spotted preventing a tall, black-haired man from getting away with a Jordan Johnson, a second grader at the school.” The screen showed a school portrait of the little boy from before.


Layla was glad the news report hadn’t mentioned her name, but she still couldn’t keep quiet once everyone began to guess who the “teen savior” was.


“It was me, Mom. I saw this creeper trying to talk to this kid who looked scared, so I walked up and asked if I could help him. He got scared and let the kid go” Mrs. Bowden smiled as she reached for more potatoes.


“That’s nice, Honey. You’re really developing quite the imagination.”


Layla turned to her dad.


“I’m telling the truth!”


“Of course, dear,” he said with a smile. “Next time you prevent a kidnapping, be sure to stick around for the press coverage. We might get free Ben & Jerry’s.” Layla rolled her eyes.


Hours later, the phone rang again: but this time for Layla.


“Trina! It’s 2 in the morning. Again! Can’t you just hold it in for the next 4 hours?”


“How could you?!” Trina nearly shrieked into the phone. “How could you DO that to my Viktor? What has he ever done to you, huh?!!!”


“SHHHH!” Layla responded almost instinctively. “Just chill, Trina. You’ll wake your parents up. What’s going on?” There were sniffles on the other end, and when Trina finally spoke, it was in a voice of disappointment and betrayal.


“Why did you cut it off? He’s going to need it.” Layla paused, unwilling to even warrant a guess as to what that could mean.


“Cut…cut what off?”


Trina began to sob softly into the phone.


“I had this horrible, horrible nightmare. You were standing there in front of Viktor and you cut his finger off! You said a promise was a promise, and you had to do it.” She tried to choke back her tears. “It was so real!”


“Trina, it’s okay. It was just a dream.”


“No it’s not! It’s never ‘just a dream’ and you know it! Layla, you can’t cut his finger off, okay? Please! I’m begging you, I’ll give you anything you want. I’ll—”


“Trina. Stop. This is insane. It’s two in the morning and you’re not thinking straight. There’s no way I’ll end up meeting Viktor. It was just a dream, okay? Your dreams don’t really come true anyway. Remember the other day? When you warned me about glass? You didn’t want me to sit near the window and I did anyway. And what happened?”


“Nothing,” said Trina in a small voice.


“Exactly. So calm down. It’s just a nightmare, okay? Just hug your little Viktor pillow or something and go to sleep.”


Trina sighed. “Thanks, Layla. I don’t know what I’d do without you. I guess you’re right: it’s just a dream.”


“Exactly,” thought Layla as she hung up. It was just a dream. But then why did she have this feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach?


Hillcrest High: Buffalo, New York— Wednesday, 1:30pm


Layla was in Home Ec when disaster struck. Everyone else was chopping potatoes for their homemade French fries, but Sabrina was not. For starters, she said, French fries were high in trans-fats. Secondly, oily foods are terrible gifts for boyfriends. No, she said. She was going to make banana bread.


Normally, this wouldn’t have bothered anyone. Sabrina tended to do this several times a week. One time, she rattled off all the unhealthy aspects of pork chops and opted instead for devil’s food cake. But when Sabrina’s attempt at “uber-fluffy banana bread for my baby” caused the whole concoction to explode in the oven, it was a problem. Not to mention the fact that Sabrina didn’t tell anyone it had exploded, but instead tried to clean out the oven herself—while it was still on. Her apron caught fire, and the next thing anyone knew, and alarm went off the ceiling began to rain. Outside the room, so did Sabrina.


“I was trying so hard,” she said, wiping her eyes with a neatly manicured hand. “I think I need a tissue.” These few words and the accompanied pout had some guys prepared to burn to death for the tissue. Unfortunately, the fire was extinguished and the bell rang for the assembly.


“Just run along,” said Ms. Philburn. “I’ll lock the room and you can come back and get your stuff.”


“Ms. Philburn, we still have our aprons and stuff on,” said one student. Layla looked down. She was still carrying her knife.


“Yeah, I don’t think I can come to the assembly with this,” she said. Besides,she thought, Trina will freak.


Ms. Philburn rolled her eyes. “Fine, fine.” She said, unlocking the door.





In retrospect, Layla should’ve just kept the knife.


It was Wednesday, and Wednesdays meant guitar practice. There was a little guitar shop in one of the older, quieter places in town, and the minute Layla had seen it, she’d fallen in love. Though the outside was the same brick as the other old high-rises, the inside was a medley of woods: from the guitars hanging from the ceiling to the old mahogany work-desk she’d seen old Mr. McGregor string guitars on.


Mr. McGregor was an aging man of 75, and though he was about as wrinkled as a day-old tissue, his hands had a dexterity so many of his generation had lost. This shop had been his baby since he came here at the age of 20, fresh off the Irish boat. It was small and old-fashioned, but that was what made it special.


“Layla,” he said with a smile as Layla walked in. “Go right in, Jay’s ready for you.”


Layla had been an avid guitarist for a while now. She always had an “emergency pick” in her back pocket, and at least one notebook full of various song compositions. Lessons that had began as simple scales eventually turned into composition critiques, with a heaping side of practice. If she wanted to be a good musician, Jay would always tell her, practice was key.


As she stepped out the door, guitar in hand, Layla was feeling refreshed. Her songs were getting better, and so were her lyrics. But just as she passed the empty café next door, she felt an arm around her neck, dragging her around the corner of the building. It was four on weekday afternoon in an old part of town: no one was around to notice.


Layla tried to scream, but the arm crushed against her wind-pipe. Even breathing was difficult. She pushed against it, but to no avail. She tried to turn around, to scream, to kick the guy in the balls—but it was futile. She felt the cold sting of metal up against her back, and a raspy voice whispered by her ear: “Shut up or you die.” One thing was for certain: the kidnapper was not a poet.





The next thing she knew, Layla was covered in a burlap sack and shoved into the back-seat of a car. Twisting around slightly in her seat, she tried to think calmly as to what she should do next. The first thing any sensible kidnapper would do, she realized, was take away her phone. Pulling the device out of her jeans pocket, Layla turned her cell phone off and shoved it unceremoniously down her bra. Now, if the opportunity arose, she could call the police.





Her movements caught the attention of her kidnapper.





“Shut it or lose it,” he growled, prodding her thigh with his gun.





Now all she needed was some weapon. She patted the pockets of her denim jacket and thought sadly to the knife in Home Ec. If only she had brought it with her. As it was she didn’t have any sharp objects on her body. Not even a pointy necklace or a pair of earrings. She felt around the car through her burlap prison. As expected, nothing. Her only choice was to wait.


Abandoned Storage Facility: Buffalo, New York— Wednesday, 4:35


Frank shifted the gear to park and waited. The chick hadn’t spoken, or even moved since he’d dumped her into the car. A gun tended to do that to people. He looked in silence at the storage unit he called home. It was shabby, to say the least. A small grill sat by the door in the unofficial “kitchen.” There were no cabinets, just a pile of plates and bowls on the floor next to the grill, and a plastic bowl of kitchen knives, forks, and spoons perched precariously on top. Further off, there was a gated corner with a mat on the floor and a pile of clothes in a laundry hamper. This is where he’d keep the girl.


He hauled the now meek sack from the car and set it on its feet. “Move,” he whispered hoarsely, steering the brown bag into the storage unit. He licked his lips, anxious. The plan had been great on paper, but putting it into action was enough to make his acid reflux work up. He reached into his pocket for his medication, looking down to ease it out of his tight jean pockets, and—CRASH!


He had unthinkingly pushed the burlap sack right into the grill. With an enormous clank, the grill tipped over, the contents of the plastic bowl spewed all over. The legs of the grill had fortunately spared the plates and bowls, but the burlap sack did not. It too, with a tremendous thud and a deafening crack, fell over.


There was a shriek of pain, silenced as Frank threw the gun in its direction. The roar soon turned to silent sobs as Frank grabbed the sack by the hair and dragged it to the gated area. Throwing it up against the wall, he pulled the burlap off the cowering figure. Slightly worse for wear, the merchandise had a few scrapes from the fall, with a particularly nasty cut under the eye.


“Don’t touch me,” it growled, determination and pain competing in its eyes. Frank let out a gruff laugh.


“Listen, kid,” he told it. “If you’d just kept your mouth shut, I woulda let you off with a warning. Wazzup with the police, huh?” He got closer, stroking a cheek with a crooked finger. “Hehe. Not bad to look at, really. Fear really does something for ya, ya know?” The comment got him a kick in the shin. The figure looked up, fear and anger swirling through its eyes. It held up a slightly bloody knife.


“What touches me gets cut off.”


Mansion: Toronto, Canada—Monday, 10:00pm


It was only after he’d emptied half the mug that Viktor realized he’d forgotten the milk and sugar. It didn’t matter though. The bitterness that filled his heart and burned his tongue wasn’t coffee. He beat his pounding head with his fist again. Every word, every syllable that had brought him to where he was now beat against his skull.


She looked up in shock.”Marry you?” Viktor lowered his eyes, a bead of sweat dropping into the champagne. Clarice paused, shutting her eyes for a long second, and then spoke: her voice breaking.


“Y-you’re asking me for commitment? You don’t even have the guts to admit to the world that we’re going out.” Viktor looked up, then down again. A nervous laugh escaped his lips.


“It-it’s just that—you know how hard it is to be in the spotlight. Being known as my girlfriend will be tough enough, but…as my fiancee? You won’t be able to go anywhere.”


“How many times have I told you that I don’t care? That I’m willing to go through with it?” Her voice rose in anger. “It can’t be as bad as you say, and even if it is, I told you I’d do it. If it ended up being a problem, we could have broken up. The gossip mags would have forgotten me in a week.”


She shut her eyes and breathed deeply, but couldn’t control her anger.”All you’re doing is asking me for a commitment. It’s not my commitment I’m worried about: it’s yours. What’ll happen if I say yes? Will you still keep me hidden for my “protection”? For how long, Viktor: until we’re married? Until I’m pregnant?”


She leaned over and snapped the box shut, her voice shaking. “Let me ask you, Viktor. Are you ready to commit to this? Until you are, don’t bring out any rings.”


Office Building: Toronto, Canada— Tuesday, 9:00am


“…and so a light bulb went off in my head, ‘cause I knew you could do it! You’d be a major hit! Plus, you don’t have any other commitments, so traveling around the world would be no problem for you! Right, Viktor? Viktor?”


“Hm?” Viktor snapped out of his reverie. His manager, Alex, was looked down at him from where he was standing, his back to the large window overlooking the city. Viktor shifted uneasily in his office chair, trying to think about what they'd been discussing for the past 15 minutes.


“Are you dosing off? Stand up, why don’t you? Geez, I haven’t seen you this depressed since Victoria left. You haven’t been seeing someone again, have you?” Viktor stood up quickly.


“Sorry, rough time last night. You were saying?”


Alex grinned broadly. “They want you to go international!”


Viktor sat down suddenly. “Who’s they?”


“The recording company! Josh was telling me how they were looking to bring people from their American sector onto the world stage. They don’t want the hyped Hollywood type of international either: that’s just making English songs popular with non-English speakers. They’re looking for someone who can become a household name because they sing in the national language. Think Enrique Iglesias: English and Spanish. Only BIGGER!! Viktor: you could be the next Celine Dion!”


The comparison made Viktor cringe, but Alex didn’t notice.


“So I told him that, you know, you’re pretty good with languages and he wants you to come in a give it a try! I’ve penciled you in for Tuesday, so make sure to be on your best behavior. We want to impress. Understand?”


Viktor nodded, his head still in the clouds. Somewhere in the back of his mind a voice said he was lucky Clarice had refused his proposal. Had she not, this whole “international” thing would have split them up for sure. Going world-wide meant travelling. A lot. Skipping across continents in the span of a week, getting back jet-lagged and unable to do anything except sleep—only to leave again the next day for a concert or autograph signing for fans who couldn’t even say your name properly. And during all that time, it was only natural to develop an attraction the only people you see often. Viktor shook his head quickly before Victoria and Phillip could cross his mind.


“Coffee?” Alex stood above him, offering a bright yellow mug. Viktor absent-mindedly took it, only to gag on the first sip.


“What is this?” He spluttered. Alex rolled his eyes.


“What is it about you and your coffee? Hm? Is there anyone in the whole world who knows how to make it just the way you like?” Viktor smiled as Clarice’s face popped into mind.


“Meh,” he shrugged, “a few.”