Tell My Dad

P
ublished
in 2016 by Waimea Publishing

C
opyright ©
2016 Ram Muthiah

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transported in any form by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book.

T
his is a work of fiction
. Characters, organizations, product, locales, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

L
ibrary of Congress Control Number
: 2016936705

Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0-9973906-6-7

E
ditors
: CreateSpace Team, Donna Rich, Ramya R, Lisa Z; Proofreader: Donna Rich; Cover Design: Denis Lenzi

T
his book is inspired
by a tragic event that happened in California, where a five-year-old girl was kidnapped because of her kindness in helping strangers. The girl’s friend helped the cops track the kidnapper. However, the cruel man had killed the innocent child in a gruesome way before the cops could track him down. That incident, combined with seemingly never-ending Amber Alerts, motivated me to write this book.

Although inspired by true events, this story is a work of fiction.

T
o all children
who were taken away from their families

B
ecause of the
rush of excitement, Amanda Rivera felt more like flying than driving as her Honda sedan cruised on El Camino Real South. Exactly twenty minutes earlier, she had read the acceptance email from Stanford. She was jubilant and screamed with joy when she realized that the university had confirmed MST, her requested major. MST covered music, science, and technology. She was passionate about music. She was also madly in love with technology. It seemed that most teenagers who lived in the San Francisco Bay Area were seriously thinking of starting the next social media venture or the next Google. It may have been the water in Silicon Valley or the positive entrepreneurial vibe emanating from Apple headquarters in Cupertino.

Amanda was a senior at an all-girls Catholic school in Burlingame. She had loved music since she first started learning piano in the San Mateo Cultural Center at the age of eleven. She loved to go to all the music festivals in the San Francisco Bay Area and daydreamed about releasing an album. Her bedroom wall was fully covered with posters of Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez—just like many other teenagers. However, there was one difference. In the middle of the room, she had a poster of herself with the Grammy Award in hand, thanks to her photoshopping skills.

In a Catholic school, no one could escape religion class. It was a boring one for most of the girls, but not for Amanda. She loved the message of compassion and synergy. She also loved the fact that her music teacher, Ms. Ramirez, taught religion class as well. Ms. Ramirez turned boring religion lectures into musicals. Instead of making them memorize Bible verses, she composed rhyming songs by fusing the scripture with music theory. She was the guiding angel for Amanda. Whenever Amanda was down, she was always there for her, encouraging her and cheering her up. She preached “what you think is what you become,” and then gave the photoshop idea to Amanda and asked her to visualize herself every day holding the Grammy Award in her hand. It seemed to be working!

Amanda was grateful to Ms. Ramirez for another reason—proposing a policy to the school board to collaborate with the all-boys Catholic school in Burlingame for their annual theatrical performance. That policy helped Amanda to meet her sweetheart.

Amanda was a junior when she met Billy for the first time in her choir classroom during the rehearsal. They rehearsed along with twenty other students every weekend for a month. As per the original plan, Amanda was going to sing a solo and Billy would play the piano solo. God bless Ms. Ramirez. Just before the live event, she got the wonderful idea of having them do a duet, which was a hit. It also made them fall madly in love with each other. It had been almost nine months since Billy had declared that he could not live without Amanda. However, Amanda felt like she had known him for a very, very long time.

Two weeks earlier, Billy had told Amanda that it was possible that they were Pyramus and Thisbe in ancient times and had been reborn again to continue where they had left off. Amanda laughed nonstop when she heard that the first time.

“How do you come up with this kind of lame idea?”

“This is not lame, you know. It is very possible. I feel a strong connection when I sit next to you.”

“
Really
? Are all boys like this? This is how you guys trick girls?”

“Oh, Amanda! You think I am tricking you. I sense something powerful. Maybe we were not Pyramus and Thisbe, but there is something!”

Amanda smiled as she remembered Billy’s romantic gesture. She took a sharp right into Hillsdale Mall’s parking lot. It was eleven o’clock on Friday morning. Traffic around the mall was not bad. She drove the car to the parking lot closer to Sears and found a space. Sometimes, getting a parking space was like winning the mega million lottery.

Amanda jumped out of the car, clicked the remote to lock the car, and walked across a small lane to enter Sears. She was still on top of the world; Stanford admission was surreal.

Earlier in the day, she had called Billy as soon as she read the acceptance email. He did not answer. So she left a voicemail. “Hey, Pyramus, call me back ASAP. I have important news!” without revealing the good news; she loved to keep him in suspense.

Inside the store, she related every object she looked at to the college dorm room she imagined. When she passed through the appliance section, she wondered whether Stanford dorm rooms had microwaves. Her mind raced with the questions about the kind of room she would get in the university housing: single or double. She made a mental note to ask the housing people for a double room as she crossed the furniture section.

As she moved up on the escalator, she sent a text message. “Hey, lazy. Call now.” She waited for thirty seconds. Then, she sent another one.

After grabbing a couple of pairs of jeans, lots of tees, and two tall red mugs with Stanford University’s logo, she waited for a long time in the checkout line. It was pretty obvious that the woman at the checkout counter hated her job.
No wonder Sears is closing shops.
While waiting, she checked her phone every minute to see if there was a reply from Billy. Nothing.
What happened to him?

Amanda came out of the store holding paper bags in both hands and walked toward the car. It was noon. The weather was nice although it seemed warmer than usual. The parking lot was sparsely occupied. A few people walked toward the store as she crossed the small lane in front of Sears to enter the open parking lot. She was more excited than she could ever remember and wondered for the tenth time how Billy would react to her Stanford news. She was just a few feet away from her blue Honda Civic when she noticed something odd.

A tall man, about six-foot-six, wearing a dark T-shirt and dark sunglasses stepped in front of her and grabbed her right hand tightly.

Panic set in. She thought someone was trying to steal her bag. Immediately, she shouted, “Help! Thief!”

The man tightened his grip and pulled her into the Lexus SUV parked to his left. Then, he slapped her face and pushed her inside through the back door, which was held open. She lost the grip on her bags and let those fall on the concrete floor next to the muddy wheel of the Lexus.

Her head bumped into the back of the headrest and rested on the backseat. She smelled rotten leather for a second. Then, she quickly bounced back and tried hard to push him away. She screamed from the top of her lungs, “Help! Help! Help!”

As she tried to push the ferocious man away and get out of the vehicle, she spotted an old couple walking behind the Lexus, looking confused. The woman gasped and looked at her husband, who stood speechless. The tall man came toward Amanda with something in his hand. She screamed again, crouched, pushed into his stomach, and emerged from the vehicle. He grabbed her hair with one hand, placed a small towel in her nose, and pushed her into the backseat. The chloroform-soaked towel fully covered her nose now. She saw herself holding a Grammy Award at MetLife stadium in Los Angeles. Then, the stadium went dark.