“I wouldn’t pay the ransom either,” said my father as he punched the open newspaper he was reading at the dinner table. The smack of his hand on the paper startled me. He got up, gulped down his shot of espresso and left the room. As the Corriere Della Sera lay flat, a picture of J. Paul Getty III’s ear, along with a lock of his hair was revealed to me in full view. Next to it, another picture of the side of his maimed head where the kidnappers had chopped his ear off and a hand written letter that started with, “Dear mommy, please don’t let me be killed.”

I lay awake in bed that night under the covers.

Why didn’t his mommy pay the ransom? What could he have done that his family didn’t want to pay for his return? I asked myself again and again. How can big people be so cruel? And why didn’t they love him?

I was afraid to fall asleep. The air was heavy in my chest and it felt like a brick. I lay perfectly still so as to blend in with the darkness because if I moved ever so slightly the evil shadows knew how to find me. I imagined the blunt knife used by the mafia men spotted with blood and rust dig out a hole on the side of my head. It would have been my left side because that was my least favorite side. The one in which I held my pen to express myself, and that was wrong according to my father. So wrong in fact, that every time I was caught using it to write, hold my fork or throw a ball with it, I was punished. The punishment was a smack on my hand just like the smack of the newspaper that would reverberate for years to come in my mind and my body.