The Long Weekend by Savita Kalhan Read Free Book Online Page B

and again, and then he turned around and pressed his back into it, and slowly, slowly, agonisingly, painfully slowly, the chest of drawers inched its way across the wall. Sam kept pushing, his arms and legs going all soft and quivery, and it took all his strength to make them hard again, but he kept on pushing, and yelling, 'Put your back into it!' like his mum might have done if she was a yelling kind of person, which she wasn't, but if she could see him now, she would definitely be yelling it. Sam was sure of that.
    Finally, it did reach the door, and a bit more pushing, and yelling, got it in front of the door. The door was well and truly blocked. No way anyone was coming in now. Sam fell to the floor in a heap, laughing breathlessly, and maybe a little hysterically, too.
    He rolled over onto his back, where he stayed until he'd managed to stop the silly laughing, and get his breath back. He brought his wrist up to his face and his watch now said eleven. It had taken him half an hour to get the chest of drawers across the door! That was a ridiculously long time. Either he was much weaker than he thought, or the chest of drawers had been really, really heavy. Did that mean that the man wouldn't be able to get in? Of course it did. There was no way he could open the door into the room, so there was no way he could get in. The chest of drawers was a good height – it covered over half of the door. If the man got an axe and chopped his way in, he might have been able to get through the gap above the chest of drawers and the top of the door. But that only happened in films, Sam thought. So he was okay.
    But, duh-brain, didn't that mean that he was stuck, too? Trapped? Forever? He stared up at the ceiling, thinking. And then he thought: camera. The man was probably doubled over having a laugh at the stupid kid with jelly arms and legs and tear-streaked face. Sam glanced around. No red dots, no glass eye watching silently. Phew, no camera. He wasn't being watched. He was alone, and he preferred it that way.
    All alone by himself – the way Lloyd didn't want to be. Sam hoped he was all alone, like him. But Lloyd hadn't been locked in. The man had said he was going to check in on him, to make sure he had everything he needed. He hadn't done that for Sam. He'd shown him to his room and locked him in. What would Lloyd need, anyway? He was just going to go to sleep, like Sam, and when he woke up that famous band would be there and they were going to have a brilliant day. Weren't they?
    Maybe the man just didn't like him, Sam thought, because he had been a bit of a baby, and that's why Lloyd was getting better treatment. Lloyd had been cool, and friendly, and Lloyd's dad was high up in the music business, so the man had to be much nicer to him than to Sam.
    But it all kept going round in circles in Sam's head. Round and round like a crazy carousel with no brakes. 'Come on, Sam, focus. Keep your eye on the ball.'
    He heard water running. He must have left the tap on in the bathroom. It was funny that he'd only noticed it now – it must have been running for an hour. He was just getting off the floor when somewhere, not too far away, he heard a door slam shut. He bolted towards the bedroom light switch and flicked it off and then ran into the bathroom and in one swift move turned the tap off and the bathroom light on. He left the door slightly ajar so he had some light in the bedroom, but nothing that could be seen through the cracks. He took the bedside table and placed it next to the chest of drawers and climbed up. For a moment all he could hear was the thudding of his heart. Baboom, baboom, baboom, baboom.
    Sam knew it was beating too fast, but how do you slow it down? Breathing might help, he thought. So that's what he did. He breathed in and out slowly a couple of times, and then couldn't wait any longer and pressed his ear to the door. The babooming had quietened down a bit, or at least it wasn't pounding in his head as much.