June 12th –

It’s official. I am going crazy. I’m still confined to my room. Aside from Fiona, I have no human contact. I tried the bedroom door, only to find that it was locked. There is no TV, no Internet, no phone. Fiona did condescend to bring me a book to read, but I finished that shortly after breakfast.

I stared out the bedroom window at the forest outside. The trees looked like they went on for miles. I wondered how far it would be to the next town or even the highway. Maybe if I was lucky, I could hitchhike back to Miller’s Cove and my house. A knot formed in my stomach as I looked at my bad. They knew where I lived. If I went to my house, why couldn’t they find me and take me back?

Despite how nice my prison cell was, I didn’t know how long I’d have to stay here. What if “The Master” was really the one who kidnapped me? Hmm? I could just be waiting for him to come back and force me to be a sister wife in a weird cult. I will admit that I don’t know much about cults, but why else would they insist on keeping me here?

When Fiona came to deliver lunch, I asked for snacks: cheese sticks, jerky, pretzels. Fiona, again, looked at me like I was insane.

“Why on earth would you want snack foods?” she asked, obviously tired of my antics. “The Master requested that your meals be brought to you.”

“Well,” I replied, hanging my head off the side of the bed. “I am having feelings and I have nothing to do. So, I figure what the heck? I might as well eat my feelings.”

“Very well miss.” A few minutes later, she came back with a handful of string cheese sticks, a couple of granola bars, an orange, and a baggie of pretzels. It wasn’t much, but I shouldn’t starve. I filled up a juice bottle I had saved with water from the bathroom sink and tucked it into my bag. It was now or never.

I should preface this next part with the fact that I am not an athlete. I chose academia for a reason.

After a bit of struggle, I was able to open the heavy bedroom window. We were about sixty feet up in the air. I had to be careful since I didn’t have the insurance to take care of a broken leg if I fell wrong. I shimmied out of the window onto the pitched roof. After thirty minutes of awkward tiptoe/shuffling down the assortment of angled roofs to the trellis, I made it to the ground. Saints be praised! Once I made it to the forest, I ran for all that I was worth.

It was twilight when I heard the first wolf howl. I had seen Beauty and the Beast enough times as a kid to know that this was not going work out well for me. Belle had a tender-hearted beast who would fit to defend her. I, on the other hand, had a course and a half of women’s self-defense to rely on. I was in a pickle.

Inevitably, I tripped over a half-buried root and twisted my ankle. I’m fairly certain it was karma for my escape out the bedroom window. I would gladly take Fiona’s snobbery right about now. I could see three wolves hidden in the shadows.

My pictures? I remember taking pictures of Sam and his friends turn into gigantic wolves. I thought I had gone crazy when I went back later to check, and the pictures weren’t on my SIM card. They had been deleted.

“What are you doing out here, Katie?” Sam asked gruffly, scooping me up into his strong arms. If I hadn’t been as scared or as kidnapped, I would have been overjoyed to be in Sam’s arms. “It’s not safe.”

“Let me go!” I demand, swatting at him. He didn’t even flinch. “Sam!”

“What are you doing out here?” He repeated evenly. He didn’t sound angry with me, but he didn’t sound pleased either.

“Escaping!” I declare, wiggling in his arms enough for him to set me down. I hissed in pain when I put weight on my ankle. I had done something to it.

“Why?” asked Sam, wrapping his arms around me to take the weight off my ankle. If I wasn’t mistaken, I could hear a touch of humor in his voice.

“Because” I reply, my resolve weakening as my stress level reached the teary-eyed phase of my nervous break-down. “I remember us going on our date and then everything went black. When I woke up, I was kidnapped and locked in some room. And my jailer was some hoity-toity lady that was rejected from Downton Abbey. She said that I couldn’t go home and couldn’t leave my room and…”

I was hysterical at this point. I was hungry and tired and just wanted my bed. Sam held me tenderly in his arms.

“You weren’t kidnapped, darling,” he said softly, kissing my forehead.

“I w-wasn’t?” I didn’t believe him, despite how calming his voice was or how safe I felt in his arms.

“No, you weren’t.” He cradled me back into his arms. “I’ll explain everything once we’re back at home.”

“Home?” And then I fainted again.