Success Is A Series Of Small Wins
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The first time I saw the new and improved Mr. Jiggle, he was wearing a bright red leather jacket. He had it zipped all the way up so that only his face could be seen; it was an oddly feminine gesture, but in a moment of weakness, we’d all made a deal: if we were going to keep running from the law, or worse yet, the press, then we would have to start playing by their rules.
And one of those rules included hiding our identities whenever possible.
It’s just that now the world knew my real name was Jason, they didn’t want me to go on pretending to be someone else anymore.
Mr. Jiggle, however, didn’t know my real name, which meant it wouldn’t hurt for him to think I looked like I might fall off the sidewalk at any given moment.
So when I walked into a coffee shop with him and he ordered two lattes—black and no foam, thank you very much—the barista stared hard until she got over the surprise of seeing me sitting across from such a well-known criminal. She didn’t say anything about his outfit, though, because Mr. Jiggle was a good tipper and he never asked her for her name.
So we sat there drinking our drinks and waiting for the sun to rise outside, the air to warm slightly, and the sky to lighten in pale blue. We were supposed to head out right after dawn when it would be too cold to stand around waiting in the street while people took their time opening doors and windows.
We’d already gone through half our coffees when I finally said, “Are we really doing this? Are we getting in a car again?” It seemed like a terrible idea to me.
“I’m driving,” he said and turned away. “You’re not riding shotgun.”
When he spoke like that, he sounded exactly like the old Mr. Jiggle. When he was Mr. Jiggle, he always insisted he drive because he was used to being behind the wheel of things. And I had to admit, I felt safer being inside a steel cage than in some stranger’s car where we couldn’t lock ourselves up together.
So he drove, and we followed signs directing us to the outskirts of a small town called Green Bay. The city was surrounded by a ring of tall gray buildings that rose high above the surrounding countryside.
From a distance, the whole thing looked like a walled fortress or maybe an amusement park—but then we passed under the entrance arches and realized we were walking into a giant, open-air shopping center.
And then I got it. This wasn’t a mall; it was a giant department store, like one of those places with miles of merchandise stretching out between each row of shelves. And we were walking onto its property. But how did we get out? We didn’t have enough money to afford even one item, much less all the stuff we needed.
He glanced at me once before turning his attention back to driving as we approached the gate. There were no guards, just automatic locks sliding shut behind us as we entered the parking lot. It took me a second to realize that these weren’t regular gates; they were retractable security panels that could be pulled closed with a few quick movements of a button.
They looked just like the automatic doors leading into every other mall I’d ever been in, except that this one opened on its own so that when we stepped up on the pavement, we were suddenly walking on a long stretch of road lined by dozens of large trucks and vans. And inside them, thousands of goods waiting to be delivered.
There was nowhere to hide among all the moving vehicles, although there was a small parking area for customers with cars. I watched with interest as Mr. Jiggle walked toward a sign labeled EXIT AND PARKING. “What are you doing?” I asked him.
But he wasn’t listening. He was looking at the truck ahead of us, watching the driver roll down his window and pull out his wallet and credit card. The man paid his fare and hopped into the cab without another word to the uniformed driver.
“Come on!” Mr. Jiggle called out. “Don’t be afraid.”
“Of course, I don’t—”
My words cut short as he jumped into the open door of a van marked “Frozen Food Delivery.” Then I saw that there were several rows of these big, boxy cargo carriers filled with frozen food stacked high against each side. A metal handhold hung from the ceiling, and Mr. Jiggle grabbed it and swung himself up and inside. “Hey!” I shouted after him.
The truck started backing up as soon as the sliding doors shut behind him.
A second later it pulled away from the curb and was swallowed up in the stream of traffic heading into the city, leaving me on my own to figure out what was next.
I waited ten minutes, but Mr. Jiggle never came back. Finally, I headed over to the exit ramp and climbed in.
***
We’d driven almost five hundred miles east by then, through a landscape that stretched as far as the eye could see. Trees and hills and grasslands, roll past us in endless succession.
“Are we going to cross a state border?” I asked him for the fifth or sixth time since leaving Green Bay. There was no way we were still in Wisconsin.
He nodded and slowed down to match his speed with the rest of the convoy. “Just a few more miles,” he replied, sounding like he was having fun for a change. I wondered if he was drunk.
We were crossing into Michigan now, and I recognized everything about this place that I’d only seen on TV shows: Lake Michigan spreading out before us with its blue waves; the flat land stretching along either side of the highway, broken here and there by farms that spread themselves across a mile of fields and barns and silos.
And we weren’t alone; we were passing a string of semi-trucks and vans carrying produce, and even a horse-drawn wagon. It made me wonder where the farmers were taking it.
I looked around nervously, and I saw that he was wearing his sunglasses again. But this time he hadn’t bothered to take off the dark lenses; he just left them perched atop his head, peering out through a thick layer of brown cloth. It was too easy for him to turn them off again.
Then he slowed down even more. We’d crossed over onto another stretch of interstate, and the cars that had been following us were falling back.
“Where are we going?” I asked, trying not to sound panicked.
Mr. Jiggle laughed. “You think I’m gonna tell you?” His laugh echoed around us, bouncing from the concrete walls of the highway. “This is the most important part of your journey!”
His voice sounded strange; there was something in it that told me he wasn’t happy with the situation we were currently experiencing. I tried asking him questions about where we were, who we were delivering stuff to, and how much money we would get for our work.
And all he did was answer briefly, then change the subject. When he wasn’t talking about anything else, he seemed to forget all about me entirely. I felt like we were driving along for hours and hours together, while his eyes were fixed on something beyond us, far behind.
The sun was dropping low by the time we arrived at some huge warehouse complex with a massive parking lot full of vehicles. “That’s it!” Mr. Jiggle exclaimed, slapping the steering wheel.
It took me a moment to realize he meant one particular place.
A big, gray building sat in the middle of a vast expanse of the flat ground; a large loading bay door led straight inside. It was surrounded by chain-link fencing, which extended all the way to the edge of a nearby forest and then curved around to block off any access to the trees.
We parked next to a white cargo van. Mr. Jiggle popped open a small hatch between the front seats and pulled out three pairs of handcuffs. “Get these on your wrists,” he said.
They locked around my right wrist easily enough, but when he turned me around he found that one of the cuffs had snapped. “Dammit! What do you expect? You’re not strong or tough. Get these on!”
I struggled to undo them myself, and then he finally gave up and did it himself. “Now come on, you have to trust me,” he said, grabbing my arm and dragging me toward the entrance to the parking lot.
There was someone standing outside, waiting for us. A tall man with a broad chest and short, dark hair. He was watching us as we approached, and when I glanced back to see who it was, I got a glimpse of something in his hands. I turned back to see if Mr. Jiggle had noticed it, but he just stared ahead, grinning happily.
The man holding the gun pointed it straight at my stomach and barked out a single command in Spanish.
Mr. Jiggle froze in his tracks. His smile disappeared, and his eyes darted to the weapon. Then he slowly lowered his arms to his side and stepped away from me. I didn’t move a muscle.
“Come on,” he said, waving his free hand in front of my face, but I ignored it and continued to stare at the man with the gun.
I didn’t recognize his voice as he spoke again, but this time I heard what he was saying: “You must be the new boy.” The gun never wavered from my stomach, so I couldn’t see him. “Let me introduce myself. My name’s John. And you might remember me as being involved in that unfortunate situation with that other guy. Your friend.”
My mind spun. Was this really happening? Who was this man who was pointing a pistol at me?
“What are you doing?” Mr. Jiggle whispered, his tone changing from angry to frightened.
John just ignored him and held up a small box with a keypad on it. His voice was calm now. “You know, you can go home and pretend all of this never happened. Just walk into a police station tomorrow, tell them what’s been going on, and then let them figure it out. You’re safe.”
He looked around carefully to make sure nobody was paying us any attention, then he pressed a button on the box and handed it to me. “Take care of yourself, kid.”
I stared at him numbly, and I knew he could feel me looking at him because his shoulders tensed slightly. “You know,” he began to say, as he started walking away from me with slow, shuffling steps, “there isn’t anyone you have to hurt anymore.”
But I wasn’t listening. I still hadn’t processed what he’d done. I had no idea how he planned to save me, or who he wanted me to kill. But it was only a matter of seconds before I realized that my life was about to end—and I had nowhere left to run.
***
I dropped the box on the ground and ran after John.
He turned to look over his shoulder at me. I saw fear and anger in his eyes, mixed with a strange sense of betrayal. Then he shrugged his shoulders and hurried down the road without another word.
“Wait!” I yelled, sprinting forward.
But he kept disappearing around the corner of the nearest building. So I threw myself against the chain-link fence and dug my fingers into the dirt. The razor wire sliced my skin, and sparks flew from my fingertips, but I didn’t let up until I ripped apart a section of metal with every ounce of strength I possessed.
“Hey!” Mr. Jiggle shouted over at me. “Why don’t you take a nice hot shower and relax for a while. Let us think for a minute.”
I ignored him.
The sky had gone dark and rain was pouring down, but I climbed through the hole I’d made in the fence and headed toward the gray building.
When I pushed open the heavy doors at the entrance, a blast of air conditioning hit me hard. There was an empty hallway lined with rows of doors leading to offices. I took off across it, searching for the stairway that would lead me upstairs. I needed to get to the roof of the building. I had to be high enough to jump, and I was too afraid to try flying like Mr. Jiggle did.
As I raced toward the stairs, I spotted a door that led outside. It stood wide open, and for a moment I thought I might find an alley to hide inside and escape the rain. But then I recognized where we were and stopped dead in my tracks:
We were on the third floor of a hospital, so there was no way I could sneak past a nurse if one walked by. Instead, I jumped onto the ledge between two sets of windows. A long drop lay ahead of me, but at least the glass had melted to make it easy to climb down.
And when I reached the bottom of the wall and slipped through the gap, I found myself in a large courtyard. At some point during my escape, I’d managed to lose Mr. Jiggle and his men, but I still felt exposed out here.
I needed somewhere to go, so I headed for the far corner of the garden and the edge of a parking lot. From there, I could see the city lights stretching out below me—the whole of New York seemed a million miles away, as though nothing bad ever happened in such a beautiful place.
I’d already decided to stay low tonight and avoid everyone, including Mr. Jiggle’s gang; but the rain was soaking me through and it was hard not to be tempted to fly back to our apartment, turn on the TV, and just let somebody else solve my problems. It was raining buckets outside and even harder in my head.
After a few minutes of staring at the ground, I heard a familiar voice behind me and looked up to see Mr. Jiggle standing in front of the entrance to the courtyard. He was wearing a black suit now, which he tossed aside and kicked off into the parking lot. Then he pulled out his gun again, holding it in both hands.
I was about to start running when he pointed it straight at my heart. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said, sounding bored. “There’s no need to run anywhere.”
The End