I don’t know where I am. Who I am.

It’s twilight and warm, but not hot. I’m perfectly comfortable in the shorts and t-shirt that I wear despite the hour. It must be late May, early June. The sun hangs low and orange over the crowded parking lot I stand in.

It’s the parking lot of the public library, Brightdale Public Library. Brightdale, that’s my home town, that much I know.

Cars speed by on the roads through the town center around me, a few parents lead children by the hand into or out of the library and an old man walks down the front steps. The stack of books he holds with both hands is so tall that he rests his chin on the top book.

Things become clear suddenly, so much so that it’s a little painful. My right eye twitches slightly. I am Jeff Frank, a junior at Brightdale High and I’m here at the library to meet my girlfriend Vanessa and my friends Doug, Chris, and Jenny to finish up our history project that’s due tomorrow. We’re meeting in our usual study room and we’ll likely be there until the library closes at ten, perfecting our diorama of the Spanish American War because Mrs. Bradley, our teacher, just might be the most difficult grader each of us has ever had.

I don’t know why I forgot all that, why and how I forgot everything. It’s concerning, especially for someone as young as me, to have some kind of episode or whatever, like that. 

I look down at my watch. 7:38. I’m practically ten minutes late. I decide to just drop it and chalk it up to one of those weird things.

I hurry up the steps, stopping to hold the door open for a woman pushing a stroller out of the library.

I cross through the lobby and into the front area of the library. I pass by the circulation desk and wave to the library assistant checking in books at a computer there and make a right turn down to the fiction section. At the bottom of a ramp in is our study room. 

I can’t even begin to count the number of times we’ve met to study or do projects here over the years. There’s just something about this particular study room that I can’t put my finger on. It’s just… special.

I hear voices chatting behind the closed door. They sound excited, which is a good sign. I had been slightly worried that they’d be upset with me for being late.

A piece of paper has been placed over the little window in the door. This isn’t unusual, we do this a lot to keep people from staring in on us from the nearby shelves. It can be pretty awkward otherwise. The librarians don’t care, as long as we take it down when we leave.

I knock on the door and the voices of my friends inside quiet.

“Jeff?” I hear Vanessa call.

“Yes,” I call back.

A moment later the door knob turns and the door swings open. Vanessa’s standing there, she smiles.

I smile back. I get excited just about every time I see her, I always have. Even when we were little and even now after all of the time we’ve spent together. It never goes away and I’m happy for it. I’ve never been so close to a person as I am to her and I know that I will never be as close with anyone else for as long as I live. Not after everything we’ve been through together.

Now, what exactly have we been through? I can’t quite remember. We’ve lived with the Franks, our adoptive parents, since we were five. What came before that?

I shake my head. Whatever, I’ll deal with that some other time.

“You okay?” Vanessa asks, her smile fades to an expression of concern.

I smile again, “Absolutely.”

Vanessa’s smile returns. She steps aside. I can see Doug, Chris, and Jenny now. They stand behind their chairs around the table. The study room has been decorated with streamers, balloons and a banner with colorful, handwritten block letters declaring: HAPPY 17^th JEFF!!!!.

In the center of the table is a big chocolate frosted cake. I know already that beneath the chocolate frosting it’s going to be a chocolate cake. That’s my favorite and Vanessa and the Franks have always made sure I had a chocolate frosted chocolate cake on my birthdays.

There must be seventeen lit blue candles on the cake.

“Surprise!” Vanessa and my friends all shout. Someone, somewhere in the fiction shelves makes a loud shushing noise, possibly even louder than the shout of “surprise”.

I don’t think that I remembered that it was my birthday today. But now, it seems so obvious that of course it is.

I can’t really even remember how I spent the day before I ended up in the parking lot. How I even got there is another question I can’t answer. I don’t remember driving over.

A memory briefly flashes through my head of me walking to the library from home because it was such a nice evening.

“Aren’t you going to come in?” Chris asks.

I step into the room and shut the door behind me.

“You guys,” I say with a smile as I shake my head, “You didn’t have to do all this.”

“Hey, you only turn seventeen once, right?” Doug says.

Vanessa stands beside me and I give her a quick hug.

“Thank you,” I whisper into her ear because I know this all would have been mostly her doing.

“You’d better come blow out the candles before the outside becomes more wax than frosting,” Jenny warns.

I let go of Vanessa and say, “We can’t have that, can we?”

I step over to the cake. I appreciate them all so much in this moment. It’s so great that they remembered my birthday, even when I apparently didn’t.

“Make a wish,” Vanessa says as I lean over the cake.

I wish that my life can stay just like this, at least for another year, because it is just about perfect right now.

I blow out all seventeen candles and Vanessa and my friends clap.

Doug rubs his hands together, “Alright, let’s dig in.”

Jenny pulls up the candles and places them on a napkin on the table and Doug begins carving up the cake.

I was right, it is a chocolate frosted chocolate cake. It looks perfect too.

“Is that from Leo’s?” I ask Vanessa.

Leo’s Bakery is a very popular spot in town. It’s also very expensive, and for good reason too, you could argue.

“Uh-huh,” Vanessa says.

“This must have cost, like, forty dollars or something,” I say.

“Fifty-two,” Jenny says.

“We all pitched in,” Chris says.

I look around at everyone. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Doug says, handing me a slice of cake on a paper plate, “Just dig in so we all can.”

I take the cake but ask, “What about the project?”

“Already finished,” Vanessa says, “we met here and got it done while you were at baseball practice.”

That’s right, that’s where I was. I remember now hitting a couple home runs, really feeling it. But hey, what about Chris, he’s on the team. Shouldn’t he have been there?

“Weren’t you at practice today?” I ask Chris.

Chris smiles, “Are you kidding? I had you tell Coach that I couldn’t come today because I had to pick up my brother from the airport. You told him that, right?”

I nod. I do remember doing that. Now.

“I came here instead,” Chris says. “My brother wasn’t really at the airport.”

“Come on, please eat your cake now,” Doug implores, “we’re bound by tradition to wait until you do.” 

“Alright, big guy, sorry, sorry.” 

I pick up the plastic fork from the plate beside the slice of cake. I push it into the cake and pull up a piece.

Just as I’m raising the fork to my mouth, I glance over at Vanessa. She’s looking at me with a sort of intense concentration.

“What, is the cake poison or something?” I jokingly ask Vanessa.

She smiles and shakes her head, “No, sorry. It’s just, come on man, I want to eat some cake!”

“Thank you!” Doug says.

I raise the fork to my mouth again but just before I can put it into my mouth, there’s a sudden sound of shattering glass. The sound is loud and sudden enough to make me drop both the fork and the plate of cake onto the floor.

“What was that?” Jenny cries just as the door roughly swings open and smashes against the wall behind it, causing more glass to fall out of the door’s narrow window.

A police officer rushes in. He’s tall, Asian, and athletically built. He carries a strange looking silver gun that’s maybe a foot long between his hands. He fires it several times as he moves, making my legs involuntarily buckle and sending me down to the floor.

I end up right behind most of my dropped slice of chocolate cake, it lays on the floor a few inches away from its plate. Just as I’m looking at it, it disappears. Crazy, but I don’t pay it too much mind considering what’s happening.

Another officer, a White man, quickly rushes in after the first. He looks even more imposing. He stands at least a few inches taller than the Asian officer and while the Asian officer is built like an athlete, this officer is built more like a grizzly bear. He has to be the biggest man I’ve ever seen and his well-defined and threatening muscles bulge under his uniform.

The White officer doesn’t carry a gun in his hands. He comes straight for me and grabs me with his empty hands. He lifts me up, turns me around and slams my head down onto the table. I’m momentarily dazed.

“Easy!” I hear Doug yell.

“What are you doing?” Asks Chris.

Jenny declares, “I’m livestreaming this!”

I come to and see that I’m facing Vanessa. She stands wobbly on her feet with both of her palms held out in front of her. There are what look like darts all over her. Some in her chest, her stomach, and even one the side of her face.

The Asian officer has his gun pointed at Vanessa.

“Get away from her!” I yell.

The officer holding me presses my head down hard on the table and roars: “Shut up!”

Then he says to the Asian officer, “Don’t use them if you don’t have to, each one costs more than your life. Looks like she’s had it as it is.”

“Does it look like I’m still firing?!” The Asian officer snaps back.

Vanessa finally collapses to the floor. Slowly, she raises her head to look me in the eyes. She looks so tired, what did that officer shoot her with?

“I’ll find you,” she says in a slurred voice before her eyes close and her head falls back to the floor again.

“Vanessa? Vanessa!” I shout. “What did you do to her!” I demand of the officers.

“I said SHUT UP!” The officer holding me roars.

“I’m livestreaming this!” Jenny says again, “This is police brutality!”

“Why are you even here? What are the charges?” Chris demands.

“Is she going to be alright?” Doug asks.

The officers ignore them all.

The Asian officer kicks at the air over and around Vanessa and declares: “No use here.”

“Well, like I said, she’s had it,” the White officer says.

“We should get out of here just in case,” the Asian officer says.

“Let’s roll out,” says the White officer.

He roughly pulls me up. He keeps my right arm pressed behind my back with one hand and grips the back of my neck tightly with the other.

The Asian officer steps out of the room first and I’m pushed forward after him.

“Where are you taking me?” I ask. “What have I done?”

“Where are you taking him?!” Jenny echoes.

“You can’t do this!” Chris yells.

“What did you shoot Vanessa with?” Doug asks.

The officers ignore them all again as they step out of the room and my friends don’t follow.

I’m led up the ramp and back into the open center of the library. The Asian officer holds a black pistol out in front of him with two hands now, the weird silver gun placed in his belt. There’s a strange smell, like some kind of chemical.

“What’s that smell?” I ask.

Then I see two bodies lying near the front of the circulation desk. Both are men and both are dressed in all black from their boots to the helmets they wear on their heads. In each if their hands is a semi-automatic rifle.

“Who are they? What happened to them? Where is everyone else?” I ask in quick succession.

The officers ignore me.

Soon we’re in the lobby and then quickly moving down the front steps. There, in front of the library, a white van idles. I’m being pushed right towards it.

I should have realized this earlier but now it seems so clear to me that there’s no way these two men are actually police officers.

“Help!” I yell. “Help! Help! I’m being kidnapped!”

I struggle against the large man’s grip, but of course to no end.

“Let him scream,” the Asian man says in front of me, “the area’s already been cleared.”

The back doors of the van open as we approach, an Indian man dressed in camo stands in the wide-open space behind them.

“Let’s move! Let’s move!” He says and I’m pushed forwards even faster, so much so that I nearly trip.

The Asian man hops up into the van and I am tossed in behind him soon after. 

I land on the bare metal floor and before I can move, the Asian man is putting twist ties around my wrists.

The doors are slammed shut just as the van speeds away. The back of the van is lit by only the dull orange glow of a few lights in its ceiling. The front of the van is not visible.

My ankles are pressed together and I hear the sound of duct tape being pulled open and then I feel my ankles being tightly bound together. The tape is quickly wrapped all the way to my knees.

I’m too afraid now to say anything and I soon couldn’t say anything if I wasn’t. A length of tape is pressed down across my lips.

I’m left to lie there in the center of the back of the van. I face the wall and can’t see any of the men. I hear them sigh as if out of relief.

“Got there just in time,” I hear the White man say in his gruff voice.

“The girl?” The Indian man asks.

“She’s down,” the Asian man answers.

“You sure?” The Indian man presses.

“Yeah, we’re sure.” The White man says with finality.