Have you ever been kidnapped and sent away? Sent to a school type thing where they completely reform you, or at least tried it? It went kinda like this.


She would always leave me with him. My mom I mean, with my stepfather. I have two brothers and a sister. My mother would disappear for days at a time without reason and him, well, he would just sleep. I, as the oldest, am forced to take care of the little ones without help. It isn’t fair.

“Sissy!” yells my sister from the kitchen. “Fix me a sandwich. I hungy!”

“Amber, I’ll be there in minute,” I say. I’m a little busy helping the lazy man who my mother decided to marry. I turn my attention towards him. “You could help, you know.”

“Don’t talk to me like that, young lady,” he says. “I can always turn you in.”

I snort. He’s always pulling that on me. See, I have this secret. I can’t tell you now, or any other time for that matter. But I can say this; if he turns me in, I’ll either be put in jail or in a special camp.

“Fine Joseph,” I say. “Don’t help.”

“I won’t,” says he. “Don’t have to. I’ll turn you and your weird family in if I have to help.” Truth was, he just didn’t like us. Not even my mother. He only liked being around us because we make him look better.

“Hey, Nicole!” shouts my brother. “Can you get the mop down for me?”

“Justin, I’m right in front of you. Don’t yell,” I reply. “Why do you want the mop?”

“Well, I see you need a little help,” he admits. “I just wanted to help you with some chores.”

“Aw, thank you Justin,” I say. “If you really want to help, why don’t you go fix your sister a sandwich.”

“Ok,” he agrees, smiling. I love him. He always helps out. It was breakfast time; why did Amber want a sandwich now? Oh well.

We all sat down at the table to enjoy a nice breakfast: cereal, milk, and toast.

Suddenly, our front door busted open. Four men came in and grabbed us out of our chairs from behind, me and my 3 siblings.

“What do you want?” I question, struggling. “Why are you here?”

Right then, I realized they didn’t grab Joseph.

“Joseph?!” I yell. “Did you turn us in?”

“Of course I did,” he said. “I want this house to myself. Your kind doesn’t deserve to be among normal people.”

“These children?” the main officer begins. “Amber, Nicole, Justin, and Maximillian Dare? The four children in this town who can speak to the dead and all forms of magical creatures?”

“Actually, they just have super powers. Only one can talk to the dead,” Joseph says. “One has telepathy, one has speed, and the last has invisibility.”

At the word, I turned invisible. Then they dragged us off.

“But wait!” my other brother cries. “I didn’t finish my cereal!” Yeah, I knew this wasn’t going anywhere progressive.

The big men put us in a large van, as if there were other stops they were making. There were. It felt as if we were all over the country. We were tied up and moving all over the van like luggage. Whenever we stopped, before we started again, they threw more people in, all tied up.

“Where are they taking us?” I ask one of the older girls.

“To a sleep away ‘camp’,” she tells me. “They keep us locked up and kept away from normal people until they figure out how to get rid of our powers.”

“Sissy, I don’t wanna go,” Amber said.

“Too bad,” Max said.

“Max, be nice to your sister,” I order him. “She’s only six, ok?”

“When we get out of here,” say some other boy, “we won’t go with the ladies. All the boys are taken separately to some other camp.”

“But I don’t want Maxie and Justie to go!” Amber complained. “I wanna go home and eat my cereal!”

“I’m sorry sis, but we can’t,” I tell her. I turned my attention to the other girl. “What will happen to my brothers? What about my mom?”

“Your mother left you as well?” says some random Indian boy.

“All our mothers did,” says the girl I was originally talking to. “They had to. You know what happens to mothers of us, right? They get killed.”

“That’s why she disappeared for days at a time,” Justin noticed.


Then, we were at the evil place. There was a grayish black building with a big “S” on it. I were about to be dragged in there without our brothers and for the rest of my life. When they picked us out of the truck one by one, they lined us up in a straight line. They took my brothers away. I had a bad feeling this was going to end up like the Holocaust with Prague. They murdered all the boys. I hope that doesn’t happen to my brothers. I love them. They asked us to show them our powers, just so they can make sure they’re putting the right people in the right place. Of course they found the detail in everyone they caught. Why don’t they just let us go? It’s not like we’re harming society or anything. We’re just different.

They took us (ell, dragged/ pushed us) inside. There, we met up with the advisor in a small, steel, dull room.

“I am Joseph Dare, director of this camp,” said the man in stupid looking clothes. I couldn’t believe it! Joseph, my evil stepfather, was the director of this prison.

“Joseph?” I asked, just to make sure it was really him.

“That’s Mr. Dare to you little miss different,” he said. It was as if he didn’t know me at all! That lying piece of scum. Because of him, my siblings have to spend the rest of our lives in a prison and he’s pretending he has absolutely no idea who we are!

“Now where was I? Oh yes! There is nothing to fear. No one will harm you,” he promised. Yeah right. “Supers Camp is an Ethiopia for your kind. It may look dreary from the outside, but trust me; it’s much different on the inside. Let me give you a tour.”

For the first time in his entire life, he wasn’t lying. This place WAS an Ethiopia! It has a glass ceiling that always displayed sunshine; although it was impossible to use our powers (we tested it). The dorms have comfy beds and solid gold bathrooms. This place was awesome! I may like it here. Probably not though.


Our first real day was dreary. I was absolutely right. They cover all of the bad stuff here. The classes were cruel. They had us sitting in electric chairs, doing impossibly dangerous obstacle courses, and worst of all, telling us we weren’t normal and having entire seminars about it. This place was horrible! This place may have looked like an Ethiopia, but it was far from it. This was my schedule until they figured out how to get rid of my powers? I was supposed to and the electric shock room tomorrow.

I was bunked with the girl I was talking to in the van; I found out her name is Samantha. She took much more pleasure in me calling her Sam. Maybe it wasn’t going to be all bad. It was weird though. Sam had a pretty deep voice. Well, I’ve seen many like that. She had probably been played a prank upon, since that happened to my brother. His voice is like 30 year old man deep instead of 10 year old boy deep.

The prison camp made one mistake in trying to hide us from the world. They gave us newspapers. As soon as I saw the headlines, I started weeping. It said:

Three boys murdered by unknown person


Then it had pictures of the Indian boy I met on the van, next to my two brothers. How could they?! I just knew the stupid prison camp had done this. They only need free labor to do business and they knew girls would do it without complaining. The only guys in the truck were my brothers and the other boy. They murder all males. Then I realized the only people in the prison camp today were females. I should’ve known. I should’ve tried to kill them (not my brothers)! I blamed this all on myself.

Sam tried to ask me what was wrong. I just gave her the newspaper, and she began to try to comfort me. Nothing helped. My brothers were dead. They were the only thing I had in the world besides my sister. I knew I had to break out of this prison, and I needed Sam to help me. But would she? I had to ask.

“Sam,” I whispered. “We need to break out of here.”

“We’ve only been in here for a day,” she points out. “We may be able to help it. By the way, I made a room and bathroom schedule.” She handed me the schedule.

“Why do we need one?” I asked.

She hesitated. Then she said, “I like to do things at a certain time and on schedule. I’m kind of a neat freak.”

“Just like me,” I said. Truth was, I was about to make a schedule myself.

“Why don’t we wait ‘til the end of the week, see how you like it,” Sam suggested.

“They murdered my brothers,” I remind her. “I already can’t take it. The insane thing today, the next insane thing tomorrow. Our lives will be miserable here, in prison.”

“You’ve got a point,” She said. “But they will catch us and they will capture us again and they WILL punish us. I’ve seen their security. It’s not easy to get past.”

“I don’t care Sam,” I snap. “I’m getting out of here whether you’re going to help me or not.”

“Fine, I’m going to help you,” Sam said after hesitating. “But we’re going to need a plan.”

“No,” I said. “We’re going to need a map of the campus.”



And we did get a map. A very detailed one that led us to every exit, including secret passageways. How’d I get it? Let’s just say I got “detention” for escaping class and smacking a security guard. The map laid out everything for us. We decided on this:


“We’ll take the secret passage next to the P.E. room,” Sam suggested. “We’ll go through right after P.E. before dinner, when no one’s looking for us. Then we’ll take that passage through to the laundry room then escape through the outside vent behind the washing machine.”

“Then, once we’re outside we can make an immediate right and run past these 16 trees,” I finish, pointing at the row of 16 trees on the map. I told you it was detailed. “Then we’re going to have to make a left, since the security guard I stole this from has patrol duty on the right turn of the road.”

Finally, Sam concluded, “Then we run straight to the main road down Lincoln highway and go until we hit Massachusetts Road. There, the ride I arranged will pick us up and drive us all the way to the airport to get to California.”

“So we try tomorrow?” I question Sam.

“Day after,” Sam said. “That’s when we both have P.E. at the same time.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I sighed. “I’m really eager to get out of here and take revenge on my brothers’ deaths.” I began weeping again. I was going to miss my brothers more than anything in the world.

“It’s ok,” Sam said. Her deep voice was not at all comforting right now. “We’ll bust out of here.” She held me for a long time. If I wasn’t in need of so much comfort right now, I would have found that disturbing.

When we tried our escape plan, we got caught by the guard on evening patrol at one of our exits. The map I stole didn’t have all the security guard places and positions on it. We got caught on the final stretch.

Our punishment, you ask? We were condemned to a day in the eel tank, which, in hind sight, wasn’t as bad as the electric chair. But before we had to go to our punishment, they did a strip search of us to make sure we didn’t steal anything. I found out the most disturbing thing of my life.

“Take all your clothes off!” the guard demanded. “Shirt, pants, hats, gloves, everything.” We were only wearing clothes, not spy gear!

When Sam took off her shirt, I first noticed she wasn’t wearing a, you know, girl top part undergarment. And second of all, she didn’t have, you know, certain girl parts that girls should have.

“Sam,” I gasped. “You’re a boy?”

“Yes, Nicole. I am a boy,” she, or I should probably start saying he, admitted.

“Take him away,” said one of the later arriving guards.

“Wait!” I called out. “Where are you taking him?” They had to restrain me from jumping out to Sam.

“To the waiting room,” he (Sam) explained. “They’re going to put me to death.”