Chapter 1--Liv

I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of the telephone ringing. I groaned. Of all the ways to wake up, the telephone is the worst, because it invariably means that bad news is coming. I rolled over and stuck the pillow over my head, but still the ringing went on and on. Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore. I groped around on the floor by my bed for my cell and picked it up. "Hello?"

"Liv!" caroled a cheerful voice, much too loudly for the hour. "How are you?"

"I was asleep, El," I croaked. "Why did you call me in the middle of the night?"

"Liv, it's nine thirty already," said my best friend, Elsbet Milton, patiently as usual.

"Your point would be?"

El just ignored me. "I'm sorry for waking you up, but Matt just called and asked if I wanted to go to lunch and a movie with him, and I was wondering if you wanted to come along."

I sighed exasperatedly. "El, you've been 'going out' with him, if you can even call it that, for two months. Don't you thing that you should do something alone together? I mean, something other than dancing the slow dances together at school dances and blushing exclusively."

"Well." for a moment El sounded a little guilty, but only for a moment. "I already told him to call Nate. C'mon, Liv! I don't want to have to go to a movie alone with two guys. I'll even pay for your lunch. Please?"

"El, why can't you go on dates on your own and leave me alone so early in the morning? All right, all right, I'll come. Meet you at half past by the theater?"

"Great! See you then!" And she hung up.

I really, really wanted to just throw the covers over my head--hey, I had forty-five minutes, right?--but I knew I'd never wake up again, so I heaved myself out of my bed and dragged my protesting body into the bathroom. The sunlight was way too bright as it came streaming in the window, but then, it always is.

I blinked at myself in the mirror, running my fingers through my platinum hair. It was currently sticking up at all angles in short, scruffy bunches. I patted at it rather uselessly. I can never tell how El can stand to have such long hair. It comes nearly down to her waist, and it's really thick. If I had hair like that it would tangle up in about ten minutes, but El is always able to keep her hair looking like she just washed it.

Other than the current scruffiness of my hair, though, I quite liked my appearance. My face was high-cheekbones and a little pointy, and I was able to keep it--through liberal applications of skincare products--fairly pimple-free. I'm a cross-country skiing nut, as anyone who talks to me for more than five minutes will find out, so I managed to keep my build less than flabby. El always looks at me strangely when I obsess about rollerskiing--a king of cross between rollerblades and skis--but then, she's one of those people who can do two yoga poses a second while reciting their Sanskrit names backwards, so she's not really one to talk.

I stopped staring at my reflection and went to brush my teeth, single- handedly save the skincare industry, and do all of the normal things sixteen-year-old girls do when getting ready to leave the house. It took some time, let me tell you. Being a sixteen-year-old girl isn't easy. But I won't start on that. I finished eventually and dressed quite respectably in jeans and a t-shirt that said "Polar Bear 5K, January 3rd 2003". I had done quite well in that race, as I remembered.

Downstairs, there was a note on the kitchen table from my mom, telling me that there were leftover noodles in the 'fridge for my lunch, if I wanted them. I was going out for lunch, of course, but I heated them up for breakfast instead. No sense in wasting perfectly good noodles. I often ate alone, since per, my older brother, had moved away for college, and both my mom and dad got up for work early.

I ate my noodles with grated cheese and soy sauce (yet another reason that El thinks me strange, my addiction to soy sauce), grabbed my purse, and went out the door. The sun was still to bright at first, and I went walking down my street still blinking and half-blinded. Fortunately, there weren't any major streets to cross before I regained my sight.

I live just a few blocks away from the movie theater, but even so, El was already waiting there for me. Her hair was done up in a demure bun, as usual, but her tanktop was bright pink, and her shorts very high-cut. From the way she acted you would have thought that she would be more comfortable in an ankle-length, long-sleeved gown--or maybe plate armor--but I don't believe I've ever seen her in something that doesn't let her bellybutton show.

El bounded up to me, as indecently cheerful in the mornings as always. "Hey, Liv! How are you?" I mumbled something that might have neared 'fine'. "Great! The guys aren't here yet, but they should be along soon. I think that Matt was going to pick Nate up."

I took this opening. "El, don't you think that you should give Matt the chance to do things alone with you once in a while? Or don't you like him anymore? In that case, you should dump him, so he can find some new girl. You're not exactly being very nice to him. "

El blushed a deep red. Good. I was making her feel ashamed of herself. "Of course I like Matt. I'd love to do stuff with him, I would. It's just that.."

"Hey, girls!" came a cheery voice from behind us. We turned, El with much relief and me with no little disappointment, to greet the new arrival. He was a tall, dark-haired boy, sitting in the passenger's seat of a very beat-up blue car, wearing sunglasses and a very self-satisfied expression. Beside him, concentrating on pulling into the parking space, was a shorter, brown-haired boy, rather good-looking in a quiet sort of way. They got out of the car--well, Matt got out of the car, while Nate managed to swagger out, adjusting those infuriating sunglasses of his--and we said hi. El managed to make eye contact with Matt (a good thing, too, as it had taken me a full two weeks to bully her into doing it the first time), but her cheeks were tinged with pink.

Matt took one look at El, sighed, and kept a respectful (if somewhat overstated) distance away from her. I guess he didn't want to scare her off. Nate, of course, had no such restrictions. He gave us both big claps on the back and chortled at my t-shirt. "The Polar Bear? I remember that race. Wasn't that where you missed your start because you were so busy flirting with that guy from Heathrow?"

I bristled. "At least I've never broken a pole trying to go down a downhill hill on cross-country skis."

El quickly cleared her throat. "The movie doesn't start until twelve or so, but it's too early to eat lunch. What do you guys want to do?"

Both of the boys shrugged. "I dunno," said Matt. "Whatever is fine, I guess."

I sighed irritably. "Come on! Matt, you started this whole thing, so you get to decide what to do. Now, talk."

He grimaced. "Well, what can we do that won't take us that far away from here? Shopping's boring--" El sniffed, but held her peace "--we went to the museum last week, and the library is more of a one-person thing. So what else could we do?"

"We could go for a drive," Nate suggested hopefully. "I can be the sacrificial victim and take the wheel. I just got my license two weeks ago."

"Thanks, but no," said Matt. "I have to but my own gas, and I don't really have much money to spare. Anyway, you aren't touching my car. Got any better ideas?"

"We could go to the zoo," El said tentatively, sounding like she didn't really think her idea would work but wants to try anyway. Surprisingly, both of the guys agreed, so we headed out of downtown to where the zoo was.

Our town, while not super-small, wasn't large enough to have a huge selection of animals, or breathtakingly wonderful zoo facilities. There was just the usual tropical fish tank, a few bears, a handful of penguins, a lone lion, and maybe a few dozen other animals in cages just big enough to let them pace from side to side comfortably. It was rather depressing, to tell the truth.

As we came in, we saw a rather large family with several screaming children go into the monkey house, but other than that it seemed like we had pretty much the run of the place. I guess that 11 o'clock on a Thursday morning isn't the most popular time to go to the zoo. Or maybe there wasn't any popular time. In any case, we went in, chatting about nothing in particular.

By common consent, we went to the snake house first, as far away from the monkeys and the screaming children as we could get. It was dark and cool, and we stood blinking for a moment until our eyes adjusted. On either side of the center aisle the walls were made of glass, so you could see the whole of the small rooms with fake-looking trees and vines and stones that the snakes lived in.

I noticed that Matt was staring awfully intently at the back of El's head (she, of course, was talking animatedly to me and not acknowledging that he existed), and so I made a stupid comment to Nate about his skiing skills--or rather, his lack of them. He, of course, insulted me back, and then I had to say something else, and El was gradually forced out of the conversation, looking vaguely hurt. I motioned frantically to Nate with my head, hoping that Matt and El couldn't see. He winked.

We sped up and ducked around a corner fast. Nate sighed and shook his head hopelessly. "She is so mean to Matt! I don't know why he puts up with it. I mean, it's been two months and they've only danced a few times at school dances, and yet he still won't even think about dumping her. If it could be a real dump when they're not really going out."

"El's not mean!" I protested to him, even though secretly I thought the same. El was my best friend, and there was no way I wasn't going to stand up for her against the likes of Nate Crawford. "She's . Anyway, I don't see Matt doing too much to remedy the situation."

Matt grinned broadly. "He's shy, too."

Matt and El's voices came closer. They appeared to be having a rather bland conversation about the weather, filled with awkward pauses on both sides. "Come on," Nate suggested. "Let's give them a little more time to themselves."

I nodded, and we stealthily crept around the corner of a boa constrictor cage.

Straight into the arms of the kidnappers.