Forced to Change Ch. 03

Chapter 3

Paul Donnelly, Jr. was already in college my last summer with the Build-A-Village program. He'd been in college for two years, but Mrs. Wellington, the teacher who supervised the trip, adored Paul. She worked him in at the last minute as a chaperon. Paul was excited by the responsibility. He found the situation hilarious. He loved the responsibility because he was friends with all the students that signed up that year. He thought it would be impossible to discipline anyone, especially me, his longtime girlfriend.

I was sitting against the last of the cement bags, using one wall of the school we'd built for shade. Paul walked over with some bottles of water and bright green apples. We were almost done for the season and we'd just finished planning our goodbye party for when we got back to the hotel. We had only a day in the city before we flew back to the States.

The bus would arrive shortly to take us away from what had been home most of the summer. Paul smiled and stretched out beside me. I curled against his side and watched the village children playing a game of Marco Polo. We'd taught it to them my first year on the trip and the kids eagerly played it when we were around. Their screams of infectious laughter trilled through the stifling hot air. The humidity had buckets of sweat pouring off me, but I snuggled closer to Paul and ate my warm apple, enjoying the late summer afternoon.

"Someone looks sleepy," Paul said.

"I could nap." I stretched my arms above my head. "You shouldn't be this excited to go home. Your parents are going to kill you. Well, probably not your mom." I smiled, picturing Natalie Donnelly's face. "Your dad is going to have your ass. Where do they think you've been all summer?"

Paul smirked and gave me a quick peck on the lips. "Don't worry. So what if I didn't actually take the London internship that my dad set up?"

I rolled my eyes. Paul could be so arrogant and ungrateful sometimes. "He'll just think I bummed around Europe again like last year. Besides, I missed you too much to do it again."

"Uh huh. Worst boyfriend move ever. I don't want to talk about it again." I rolled my eyes, but the smile that consumed my face didn't leave.

"I said I'm sorry. Come on, this more than makes up for last year, right?" He gave me a Paul Donnelly award-winning smile and my heart melted.

"Grrr. Still debating," I said, pouting even though I'd forgiven him the first time he apologized for running off without telling anyone where he was going the previous summer. I had no idea what he'd done until after the fact, so it wasn't like I spent my summer worried about him. His parents, on the other hand, especially his mom, had spent all that time agonizing over his disappearance.

A part of me wished I'd been able to convince him to contact his parents this year just to let them know what was going on. I picked my battles and that was a fight I would lose. It didn't sit well with me, but I respected Paul enough not to interfere. I was still a little mad at him on their behalf, although the entire summer together had more than made up for it.

The previous summer we'd gotten into a huge fight over the slight misunderstanding that happens between boyfriends/girlfriends when said girlfriend, me, had decided to wait for marriage to lose her virginity and said boyfriend assumed otherwise and spent a lot of money on a luxury hotel suite on prom night.

Yes, I thought we'd get married eventually, but I also thought it was too cliché, like a cheesy television show (think nineties version of 90210) to give it up on prom night. It wasn't even a special prom, where either one of us was graduating or something. I was only a junior and still had another year of high school, while he'd just finished his freshman year of college.

I'm the product of a broken condom high school sweetheart romance, and although my father never said as much, I know he would rather I didn't repeat my parents' mistake. Paul and I knew I was too young when he graduated, and this year he didn't even bring it up because of what happened last time. Plus, I was only seventeen at the time of the Beverly Hills, 90210 virginity debacle.

Paul sulked about my declining his deflowering while he was in Europe, leaving without telling anyone where he was going for the summer, while I enjoyed my second year with Build-A-Village. I loved him too much to ever really stay mad at him. I tried to be supportive of Paul's decisions, even when I disagreed or found them foolish.

The bus arrived and picked us up. The ride on the rickety contraption was an adventure in itself. The floor was rusted through in areas and I could see the ground from some of the seats in the back. Not that it mattered much; we were headed to indoor plumbing and hot showers, ice cold drinks, and soft beds—all sorts of luxuries that I took for granted at home and learned I didn't need, but truly wanted. It seemed a reward for all the hard work. Paul's warm hand was in mine as I rested my head on his shoulder.

Kelly McKnight giggled as she passed in her too-tight florescent green tank top, batting her eyelashes at Paul. Once again he didn't notice the display, but I did. She'd thrown herself at Paul all through high school, even after Paul and I started dating.

Paul never noticed her, no matter how provocatively she dressed or how often she flirted. I shook my head at her latest attempt. Where she was concerned I'd learn long ago to practice third party passive-aggression. Most days she was a vicious, narcissistic bitch. The other two days of the year she was just a vapid bitch. Either way she was to be avoided like anything causing an allergy. Kelly frowned and took a seat across the aisle, shooting daggers at me with her eyes. I smirked and snuggled closer to Paul, resisting the urge to stick my tongue out at her.

"You gonna help with the Miss Dub prank?" Paul asked.

"No," I said. Last year's prank on Mrs. Wellington—or Miss Dub as we called her—had seemed cruel to me. Kelly and her friends had mixed a vibrant purple dye into Miss Dub's shampoo and conditioner. In addition to the unnatural hair color she had to return home with purple splotches all over her hands and face. I knew from personal experience she'd used a lot of lemon juice to clean up the excess dye from her skin.

Kelly had pulled the same prank on me freshman year, only with me the color had been green. Miss Dub always accepted the pranks with good humor and she even showed up to school the following week still sporting her lavender locks. She kept the look for the first two weeks of the new school year.

The excited chatter among the other students was cut off as an army truck blocked the road ahead. Our bus shuddered to a stop, almost sending the vehicle crashing into the trees on one side of the dirt road. There was a steep wall of a mountain on the other side. I turned my head and saw another truck as it closed in behind us. The silence inside the bus was punctuated by the engine turning off.

Our bus driver opened the door and climbed out, presumably to assist the truck ahead of us. Before he could reach the other vehicle and the various conversations could resume, three men with guns stepped from the back of the seemingly disabled truck. Our driver approached the vehicle, looking for the operator. He didn't see the men and we stared in disbelief as he was shot in the back of the head.

It's funny the way the mind compensates for extreme fear. I saw the bus driver shot, but it seemed like a high-definition movie playing out before my eyes. As it was happening, everything became brighter and more vivid. I could smell Paul's breath, sweetened by the apple he'd eaten. The gun shot was loud, but distant. The reality didn't settle in my head. It was more like I was watching a cruel joke. It's not really happening, I thought, but it was. Fear coursed through my body even as the details of the events played out with perfect clarity.

The seemingly small space filled with our screams of terror at witnessing the murder of the bus driver. It was as if I had no choice in my reaction; I screamed with the other students because there was nothing else to do. My mind tried to tell me none of it was real, but it was happening whether I wanted to believe it or not.

The men from the army truck climbed into our bus from the front door. The back door was thrown open and more men with guns stood outside. Paul grabbed me, cutting off my own screams. He pushed me down between the floor and seats as I trembled, barely able to move or be moved. He used his body as a shield above me before I could even think what to do. I watched as Kelly slipped through a hole in the floor. There were more screams and more gunfire. Then Paul was lifted off of me and we were shoved down the aisle and out the back.

I saw Kelly on her hands and knees, two gunmen focused on her; she was bleeding from a cut above her eyebrow. Her face was so pale, ghostly white even with her deep summer tan. The rest of the students were lined up against the side of the bus and Mrs. Wellington was being dragged by her silver hair toward the trees. Some of the students were being herded toward the front truck, and photos were being held up next to each of their faces, I assumed to confirm their identities.

"We should make a run for it," Paul whispered in my ear. I barely heard him above the pounding of my pulse in my ears because his voice was so hollow and surreal.

"No, w-we can't," I stammered. I trembled at the idea of escape as we were shuffled toward the army truck. When we reached it, the man with the pictures said something to another man with a rifle and that man grabbed me and tried to pull me away from Paul. I couldn't understand them. Their language was Latin based—similar, but not the same dialect as the villagers. They were shouting and speaking too quickly.

Paul refused to let my arm go and I was just as reluctant to let go of his hand. He released my arm to shove the man who grabbed me, pulling me closer to him. A man appeared from nowhere behind Paul, and the man's face was immediately imprinted on my mind forever. He raised a handgun to Paul's head and shot him before I could even get out a warning. The blood from Paul's head sprayed thick and warm across my face. I blinked rapidly, trying to understand what was happening. A smell similar to raw ground beef filled my nostrils.

Screams exploded all around me as I fell to the ground with Paul, choking on my sudden large tears. I was still holding on to his hand as his blood soaked my clothes. There was more screaming, loud in my ears. At the time I didn't realize it was me. I was dragged away from Paul, kicking and bawling. Another soldier with a gun pointed it at me, but the man with the pictures yelled at him and threw his arm under the rifle, flinging it into the air a moment before he pulled the trigger. The gunshot was deafening and I couldn't hear a single thing for a moment, not even my own voice.

My body felt cold, my mind numb. Again I thought I was in a vivid dream. This can't really be happening. It couldn't be happening, not to me, or Paul, or all of us. The men yelled at each other. The one with the pictures pointed at Paul's body and then he slapped the man who'd tried to shoot me. There was a confused look on the face of the man who'd shot Paul.

All the men seemed soldier-like to me, but they weren't. If they were soldiers why had they murdered Paul? It didn't make sense, even though they all appeared to be wearing some type of uniform. My mind couldn't reconcile the conflict of their actions with the way they were dressed. Wake up, I thought, but this wasn't a nightmare, it was real.

The man with the pictures gestured at me. I was dragged by two other men around the truck that most of my classmates were in to a Jeep parked a few feet away. They lifted me over the back and then a cloth bag was tied over my head. The bag cut off the intense sights, but not the horrible sounds that slowly got louder and louder from the world around me. Please God, why can't I wake up?