Taken Read Online Free PDF Page A

side of the table, one of the two boys. He was being treated for attention deficit disorder, as Mrs. Veck explained to us all in one of her “teachable moments.” He was taking a drug called methylphenidate, which supposedly kept him focused, but which had an unfortunate side effect. Ever since the onset of puberty, Sterling had been relegated to the back of all class photos because of his tendency to be in a perpetual state of sexual excitement. This was evident whenever he was called on to go to the smartboard to write something. Patience and I avoided him, but the girls across the table sometimes pretended to drop things in order to look at him.
    Hopewell Patterson, Patience’s brother, was next. He was a tall boy with a uniform layer of excess body fat extending from his neck down to his ankles, giving him a sausage-like appearance (just like his father). His terrible posture and his low self-esteem made him appear to be spineless. I was always surprised when I saw him stand up, or walk, or do other common vertebrate things. Like everyone else, even I had succumbed to the obvious temptation to refer to him as “Hopeless.”
    Hopewell had been taken three years ago, right before the Pattersons moved to The Highlands. The kidnappers had cut off his left ear, and he had never really recovered from the experience, physically or psychologically. That area of his head was always covered by a clump of thick brown hair. There was a rumor in The Highlands that Patience had also been taken and that they had cut off her little toe. I knew that was not true, because Patience was my best friend and we had gone together for pedicures. Patience, fortunately, had inherited her mother’s genetic traits. She was shorter and thinner than her brother (and three years younger—he had been kept back twice, due to poor grades). Patience had naturally blond hair, which she wore in cute, curly ringlets. Unlike her brother, she had excellent posture and a very feisty spirit. She also possessed the other hortatory name in the class.
    Mrs. Veck had begun school last year with one of her teachable moments, an improvised lesson on hortatory names. I guess she meant well, but she basically ruined our lives. Mrs. Veck announced cheerfully that “a hortatory name is a name that embodies a virtue, such as Patience, or Charity, or Faith. Such names were very popular among the first Europeans who settled here, the Pilgrims.”
    The lesson went on from there, but the evil Dugans weren’t listening. They had heard enough. From that day on, they referred to Patience and me as “the hors.” We minded it at first, but then we kind of embraced the title.
    I lay on my ambulance stretcher and thought about how they all looked, and how colorful the table looked, and how thin my own hands looked as I labored silently among them. I was the smallest member of the group, due to the fact that my mother had been only 1.5 meters tall and my father was 1.7. I had mousy brown hair, from my father’s side, that I wore shoulder length. I had bright blue eyes that I kept cast down on my work. I had skinny legs, a freckled nose, and a tight mouth that would not smile, owing to the presence of braces.
    After a while, a commotion behind the classroom mirror caused us all to stop coloring and cutting. I knew what it had to be, and I whispered to Patience, “It’s Mickie.”
    Patience raised the right side of her lip. “Gross.”
    “Yeah. She’ll be in and out for the next ten days.”
    “Is she going to make us be on her vidshow?”
    I shook my head fatalistically. “Is the sun going to set in the west?”
    Mickie Meyers threw open the classroom door and strode in. She was followed by her producer, a fierce-looking woman named Lena; then by her burly cameraman, Kurt; and finally by Mrs. Veck.
    Most people get excited when they see Mickie Meyers in person. Her red rectangular glasses, her big white teeth, the prominent mole to the left of her mouth, have become