Stolen! -6- Mascara

Bonnie did some makeup on my face, after putting jewelry on me. “Just a little mascara, blush and lipgloss,” she explained, working quickly. But she paused, staring at me with the mascara thing in her hand. “Are you wearing contacts?” she asked.

“Um, yes?” I admitted.

She went back to applying make-up. “What kind?”

“Extended wear,” I said. “I change them every two weeks.”

“Prescription or cosmetic?” she asked.

“Prescription, I’ve got hyperopia and astigmatism,” I explained.

She peered into my eyes and finished with the mascara. “Are they tinted?”

“Um, yes,” I said. “It’s an Irlen color tint, for eyestrain.”

“Green over blue?” she guessed.

“Y-yellow,” I said.

“Interesting,” she said. “So your eyes are really blue and the contacts make them look almost green. Do you like that?” She put the mascara away and got out more makeup.

“I-it’s kind of cool, actually.”

“How long before you need to change them?” she asked.

“About ten days,” I said. “I put in new ones last Monday.”

She grinned. “They look nice. Maybe this will all be over by then and you can change them back at home.”

“Y-you think maybe?”

“Nah, probably not,” she said, dashing my brief hope. “Hold still,” she ordered me. She had a lipstick in one hand and a tiny brush in the other with which she painted my lips. She had me blot with a piece of paper then painted them again. “You have beautiful lips,” she commented. “So plump and juicy.”

I know I blushed because she laughed. She finished with the makeup, brushing a bit of color on my cheekbones then let me see the result in the mirror.

I gasped. It didn’t look like my face any more, I looked like my sister.

“You make a very pretty girl,” she said.

“I don’t want to do this,” I protested, seriously creeped out by my image.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Moose wants you to be his girl and Earl wants you dead. I think I know which you prefer.”

I winced. My insides still felt chilled when I thought of Earl and the casual viciousness with which he had suggested they kill me. I looked at my image and felt a different kind of chill. It is shocking to look in a mirror and not recognize yourself.

“You need to learn how to move and speak,” she noted. “So we’d better keep you away from Earl as much as possible until you learn.”

I nodded. It sounded like good advice.

She gave me a few pointers. “Keep your arms close to your body but move your hands more. Guys are not so expressive with their hands.” She demonstrated what she meant. “When you walk, take small steps and keep your feet close to the centerline of your path. Men walk with long, wide strides. I picked a tight skirt for you to remind you not do that. And the heels will help.”

“I don’t know if I can…” I started to say.

“You can’t,” she said bluntly. “Not right away, no one could. It’ll take practice.” She started putting things back in the bags she had brought. My old boy clothes went in one bag. I tried to keep an eye on that, so I would know where they were. If I ever got a chance to escape, I wanted to take those with me if I could.

As if she read my mind, Bonnie said. “Don’t be thinking about escaping, now. We’re miles up in the woods from any kind of main road or settlement. There are only a few cabins up here and most of them are hard to find unless you know where they are.”

I risked a direct question. “Where are we?”

“You must have an idea, you’re not an idiot and Moose said you were awake almost all the way down. Where do you think we are?”

I debated lying about my guesses, but Bonnie would be suspicious if I played dumb. “Um,” I hesitated.

She quirked an eyebrow at me. I did have some pretty good guesses, based on times, traffic noises and light patters I could see through the camper windows. I took a breath.

“We’re somewhere east of San Diego, near the Mexican border, maybe?” I finally offered.

She nodded. “Pretty good guess,” she confirmed. “But it doesn’t do you much good to know only that. And you’re a city girl, you’d be lost out here in the woods.” She grinned. “I could warn you about bears and mountain lions, but I won’t kid you. Any wildlife you encounter would likely be more afraid of you.”

I resented her referring to me as a ‘city girl,’ but I said nothing, looking instead toward the one window in the back of the big RV. There wasn’t much to see, curtains covered most of the view, but I had the impression the camper had been parked under a large live oak. I sighed. She was probably right about thoughts of escape being useless. I was stuck.

After a few more adjustments to how I looked, Bonnie told me, “We’re going to go into the cabin, Earl’s in there, probably watching the big TV. You don’t have to have anything to do with him, but he’ll see you when we go in, so try to walk like wearing a dress is something you’ve done before.” She suppressed a laugh.

I didn’t think I looked too bad, in fact, I thought I looked scary-good, but she was probably right about how I moved and behaved being the biggest potential giveaway. “W-where’s Moose?” I asked. I wasn’t filled with a great deal of confidence, especially after she answered my question.

“He took the car into the city. Things to do. He’ll be back this evening. Maybe.”

I wasn’t sure why my heart sank at the news, especially when she added the last bit about his probable return. “I-I didn’t hear a car leave,” I protested.

“You were distracted,” Bonnie pointed out, gathering the bags she evidently intended to take with her. She opened the door to the outside, and went first, then held the door while I clambered down the short fold-out steps to the hard-packed earth. Sure enough, the RV sat under a wide oak next to a building that looked more like a ranch-style home than anything that I would have called a cabin.

Trees were all around us, mostly the typical Southern California oaks. A few pine trees and more of those went up a hillside behind the house. The afternoon sun hung above the hill, indicating that direction must be west, but the view was much the all around. Any road into the area must have been hidden on the opposite side of the motorhome.

I didn’t have a panoramic view with the vehicle on one side and the building on the other, but what I could see matched pretty well with my guesses about location, though maybe we were higher up in the mountains that I had supposed. I didn’t have that much experience with camping, with or without a giant RV.

The house’s one claim to being ‘cabin’-like was probably the deep-brown wooden siding halfway up the walls and the wrap-around rustic deck on two sides. To say I felt bizarre, standing there in a skirt and heels, wearing makeup and jewelry doesn’t express the feeling of unreality.

“Earl isn’t going to trust you,” Bonnie warned me as we crossed the deck to the front door. “But cell phones don’t work up here, even if you had one, and he controls the satellite phone that does work. We’re going to walk in, through the room with the big TV then down a hall to Moose’s room. Don’t make eye contact with Earl.”

“This is so weird,” I muttered.

She laughed. “Oh, one more thing.” She stopped, putting her bags down on a piece of plastic patio furniture and taking something out of one of them. It looked like a complicated web of inch-wide strips of velcro cloth. “Turn that way and put your hands behind your back.”

“Huh?” I said, hesitating. She yanked me around to face away from her, and pulled my right hand behind me. “Other hand, too,” she ordered. “Put your left elbow against your right wrist and vice versa.”

“You’re going to tie my hands behind my back?” I asked stupidly.

“Yep,” she agreed. “I told you Earl won’t trust you, now he’ll feel he doesn’t have to.”

My only choice seemed to be do what I was told or start fighting. I put my hands behind my back and felt Bonnie wrap strips of velcro around my wrists and upper arms above my elbows. I started crying.

“Your mascara will run if you cry,” she told me. “Very damsel in distress.” And she giggled.