When I turned back, Sir was choking Jenny, shaking her back and forth the way Rex had shaken me earlier.

Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch; kick when you have to kick.

—BRUCE LEE

SAVANNAH TAYLOR

I ignored the dizziness that threatened to swamp me. I didn’t feel the pain of my broken wrist. I didn’t feel anything but the desire to stop him. Hefting the axle to my shoulder, I swung it at his head like a metal bat.

It connected with a dull bong that reminded me of the cast-iron bell Sifu rang to begin kung fu class. Sir let go of Jenny, put both hands to his head, took two steps, and then toppled over.

Had I killed him? I decided I didn’t really care. Instead of checking, I ran to Jenny. She was on her knees, gagging and coughing. Her hands rubbed dark marks on her neck.

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know.” She looked at me. Her eyes were wide and wet. “But we got him, didn’t we? We got him, Savannah. We’re free!”

I was just starting to return her smile when she fell over sideways. I dropped to my knees next to her. Her eyelids were flickering. She was still breathing, even though it was shallow and fast. Had he hurt something in her throat? Cut off oxygen long enough that it had affected her heart or brain?

I looked from Jenny to Sir and back again. I had to get her out of here and to a hospital. But I couldn’t risk him following us. Given another chance, he would surely kill us.

I ran back to him. He still hadn’t stirred. I grabbed both his feet, tucked them under my good arm, and dragged him on his back to the nearest car, just as he had dragged me earlier. He was completely limp, his head bouncing over the gravel. His left temple was bleeding, leaving a streak on the dirt. I used the kung fu sash from my backpack to tie his hands behind his back and to the car’s bumper. My swollen left hand worked only reluctantly. I had to use my teeth to tighten the knots. He was still breathing, but it sounded rough and raspy.

Then I ran back to Jenny. She lay where she had fallen, but now her eyes were at half mast.

“Come on, Jenny, we have to get out of here.”

She tried to move, but it was like watching an overturned bug. Her arms and legs just scuffed back and forth in the dirt. Sobbing with exhaustion, I knelt beside her, grabbed her around the waist with my right arm, and somehow managed to get us both to our knees and then to our feet.

“We just have to make it to the van, Jenny. Come on. Stay with me.”

Like two drunks, we staggered toward it. A couple of times she started to tip over, but through sheer force of will, I kept her upright.

I opened the passenger door. It was a relief to see the keys dangling from the ignition. The airbags dangled from the dash like deflated balloons. Fine white powder was still floating in the air, like someone had blown flour off an open palm. For some reason, I thought of Bruce Lee blowing Chuck Norris’s chest hair at him, and let out a laugh that sounded like a rusty hinge. Somehow I managed to shove Jenny onto the seat.

I slammed her door closed, then ran around the front of the van. The headlights were broken, and the front of the van was dented and scraped from ramming the fence open. The driver’s-side door was still open. I dragged myself onto the seat. It was a relief when I started it up without incident. In stockinged feet, I drove past the cinder-block building with a big sign saying ALL AUTOS and out into the empty parking lot. In front of that was a long, lonely stretch of road. I had no idea whether to turn left or right.

I chose right because that was the only hand that worked. It slipped on the wheel as I turned. Resting on my lap, my left hand was throbbing in time with my heart.

I looked over at Jenny. She was slumped against the window. I wasn’t even sure she was breathing.

When I looked back at the road, a car was coming straight toward us. As I swung the van back into our lane, I slowed down and started honking the horn, little beeps that I hoped the other driver would understand were a form of communication, not a complaint. Imitating Jenny, I used the Morse code pattern for SOS. Three short beeps, three long beeps, three short. Still, the car—a dark-colored Subaru Outback—started to pass us.

But the guy driving it looked awfully familiar. Was I just hallucinating after everything that had happened? In the van’s sideview mirror, I saw brake lights flash. Then the driver flung his door open and started running back to me.

It was Daniel.

We looked at each other through the driver’s-side window. I put my good hand up against the glass, and he matched it with his own.

Then he opened the door.

“Are you all ri—” he started to ask. Then he looked past me and swore. “What’s wrong with that girl? Is she alive?”

And when I looked at Jenny’s white, still face, I didn’t know the answer.

If there is always light, you don’t experience light anymore. You have to have the rhythm of light and darkness.

—BRUCE LEE

SAVANNAH TAYLOR

“Left rear roundhouse kick on my count,” Sifu Terry said.

I shifted my stance so that my right foot was forward. So did the students in the line on either side of me. Tonight, I was one of three kung fu students testing for purple. Two others were testing for orange. One was Mr. Tae Kwan Do, whose real name turned out to be Jake Clowers. I’d never told him that I had briefly suspected him of being my kidnapper.

Sifu began the count. “One.” The five of us kicked into the air and then set our feet back down. “Two … three … four…” As he counted to ten, Sifu and the other black belts observed our kicks, sometimes scribbling a note or leaning over to whisper to each other. Behind us, the room was crowded with higher-ranking students as well as friends and family.

This time my mom was among them. Three months ago, we had moved into a new apartment, partly financed by my half of a GoFundMe account a stranger had set up after Jenny’s and my story hit the news.

“Nine,” Sifu called out.

My left leg shot out, but as I brought it back, I lost my balance and my toe touched the mat. I quickly moved my foot to the correct starting position. Sifu Terry and at least one other black belt noticed, but I didn’t obsess about it. There was a lot I didn’t obsess about anymore. I just threw the tenth kick when told to and then waited for the next instruction.

“Go to horse stance.” Sifu shifted his gaze to the rest of the room. “I need five helpers with air shields on the mat.”

Daniel was the first to respond. Holding the three-foot-long black pad, he stopped in front of me. His expression didn’t change, but after spending a lot of my free time with him over the past three months (including winter formal), I could now guess his thoughts. You got this.

After calling 9-1-1, he had tried to stop Jenny’s wrist bleeding while I begged her to stay strong and with us. Once we got to the hospital, though, it turned out that her recent injuries were not that dire. They gave Jenny antibiotics and a couple of units of blood. They also called in a plastic surgeon to consult about her face. Since then, she’d had two surgeries and was now undergoing laser treatments to reduce the redness of her scars. The plastic surgeon said that even after treatment, there would always be faint white lines on her nose and lip, but her scars were no longer the first thing you noticed about her. Jenny was back at school and also working with a one-on-one tutor her parents had hired to bridge the months she had missed. Her goal was to graduate in June.