Red and Black

by Nancy O'Toole Meservier

  I barely noticed the gasps around me as I hit the ground and came back up again. In fact, it wasn’t until I landed a few feet away from a woman with a stroller and saw her wide eyes as I ascended that I finally came to.

  Shit. Didn’t I say I was never going to do this? Run around in my own neighborhood while costumed up in broad daylight? That the risk of exposing who I was, of connecting the costumed identity to my own home was just too high? What rule was that again? Seven? Nine? What I was thinking? There was no crime to stop. No people to save. I was just jumping for the sake of jumping. No, worse. I was running away.

  I landed at the top of the suspension bridge that separated my neighborhood from the city at large. The platform up here clearly wasn’t meant for sightseeing. It was large enough for me to stand on, but not very comfortably. I leaned my head against the steel frame of the bridge, hoping its shadows would protect me from eyes above and below.

  I hadn’t lied to Detective Bronson. If I were to look at my memories of the previous summer, I would find a disturbing gap. But what I did remember…well, that came all too clearly.

  It had all started with a party.

  As one might expect, parties aren’t exactly my thing. My ideal Friday nights typically involved solo Netflix marathons or going to the movies with friends. But when Mark had mentioned the end-of-the-semester party out at Renee’s lake house, I could see in his eyes that he was set on going, and nothing I could say was going to change his mind.

  Which was how I found myself awkwardly sitting on a chair in the corner, my sole companion being Renee’s cat (a large, fluffy tabby named Miss Muggles who, thankfully, was up for endless pets), as my more sociable boyfriend made the rounds between partygoers, laughing and shouting over the thumping beat of the music. Every now and then I would glance out the window, the full moon illuminating the surface of Echo Lake, a body of water located an hour’s drive outside of Bailey City, and hold back a sigh.

  Mark…well, I really liked Mark. We had been dating for a few months. Everyone (save for Sunshine) said that we complemented each other so well. Mark brought me out of my shell, coaxing me into doing things I normally wouldn’t have the guts to do (nothing squicky, of course; this is the girl who just described one of her ideal Friday nights as including a “solo Netflix marathon”). In return, he often told me that my more cautious nature kept him grounded. He liked that fact that I wasn’t “too high-maintenance,” and told me I was the one girl he could truly be himself around. With everyone else he had dated, he always felt as if he constantly needed to impress them. With me, he could finally relax.

  Also, he was really cute. Blond hair, blue eyes, strong jaw, great smile…the type of guy to give you butterflies. The fact that I was willing to come to this party in the first place probably indicated that I was falling for him.

  But there were days when I saw how different we were, and I wondered just how long our relationship could last.

  Perhaps it was because I was so happy to leave that I hadn’t realized Mark was drunk. So instead of offering to drive, I turned to my phone, texting Sunshine over the next several minutes. Then I looked up at the darkened, narrow country road in front of us and realized Mark wasn’t driving nearly as straight as he should have been.

  “Mark?” I asked tentatively, picking up on the one thing I was usually so aware of. “Are you drunk?”

  “I’m fine,” Mark said, his words coming out clear, not slurred at all.

  And then another car came from the other direction and Mark swerved out of the way, nearly sending us into a ditch.

  “You’re drunk,” I said, more definitively. “Here, I didn’t drink anything. Let me drive.”

  “We’re already on the road. Don’t worry about it.”

  He waved me off with one hand, and the movement sent the car jerking.

  It was impossible not to think of my father at that moment. When we had received the call that he had been killed. The shock and defeated look on the drunk driver’s face when we finally went to trial. How he had cried, blubbering on and on about how he never drank. He had just been so stressed with work and if he could take it all back…

  I knew that was an experience I never wanted to live through again.

  So I had done something I rarely did with Mark. Outgoing, determined Mark. Who was just the right level of stubborn to talk me into trying new and exciting things. The right level of stubborn, I realized, looking back on our relationship, to make sure he won every argument.

  But that night, with my father and his killer just as stubbornly at the forefront of my mind, I pushed back. Hard.

  “Just let me drive,” I said for what must have been the tenth time. “Seriously, I won’t mess up your car or anything. You know how this bothers me.”

  “Jesus!” Mark threw up his hands in the air. “Would you just get off my case for a moment? I told you I can handle this.”

  But even as he spoke, he turned the wheel of the car and pulled over to the side of the road. I felt relief spread through my chest.

  “You must be spending too much time with Sunshine. Since when are you so goddamn pushy?” He opened the door.

  I frowned at the insult to Sunshine, but was too relieved to say anything. Instead, I unbuckled, opening the door with a click. I circled around the front of the car, telling myself that Mark would apologize tomorrow. Hell, he’d probably do so before sobering up. He would get like that sometimes, when he’d had too much to drink. Not mean, necessarily, but short, abrupt. Then, he would realize how rude he was being and say—

  The door slammed shut in front of me just as I got to the driver’s side. I blinked in shock.

  Then Mark put the car in drive and left me there, the sound of squealing tires filling the air.

  I must have stood still for a full minute, my hand outstretched toward where the car door had been, my mouth agape in surprise. Had he just left me? On a long, winding country road an hour’s ride from Bailey City. Where the houses were few and far between. Hell, it wasn’t even Memorial Day yet. Most places were probably empty. Had he just—

  “Shit,” I said, reaching to my pocket for my cell phone, and coming up with…nothing.

  I must have dropped it in the car, my mind focused on getting my drunk boyfriend to pull over.

  It had dawned on me that he had my purse as well, which contained my ID and credit card, but it was the lack of cell phone that really scared me.

  Mark, my fun and outgoing boyfriend, had left me alone in the middle of nowhere with no way to contact anyone.

  And it was getting cold.

  I could feel tears forming in my eyes, my body beginning to shake as the reality of the situation descended upon me.

  Shit, shit, shit. Don’t think about it. Turn it off. Put it away. Panicking out here isn’t going to help anyone. What would Golden Strike and Silver Shot do?

  Well, given that Golden Strike could mentally enter the minds of her friends, she could probably get help pretty quickly.

  Don’t think about that. You haven’t been on the road all that long. Maybe, ten minutes? That had to be at least a five-mile walk. Probably longer. Still, the party had been going on for a while now. Other people should be starting to leave, right? If I could just catch someone coming my way…

  The glare of headlights came around a nearby bend. I began to wave my arms. Hoping, against all hope that it was someone from the party and not some stranger unlikely to pick up a crazy lady on the side of the road. Of course, it could also be a psycho nutjob, someone you’d find in a Stephen King novel—

  The headlights blinded me, and I heard the soft whistle of brakes.

  And that’s where it all cuts off. My next clear memory was wandering on the side of a different road. Being broad daylight, it didn’t take long before someone had caught sight of me and pulled over. My rescuer had thrown open his door and said the words that would become all too familiar over the next few weeks.

  “Oh my God, you’re her. You’re h
er!”

  The man’s name had been Antoine Alvarez. Dressed in a shirt and tie, he had been on his way to work when he’d caught sight of me. My picture, it turned out, had been all over the news. Dawn Takahashi, the daughter of a New York Times bestselling author and lifelong resident of Bailey City, had been missing, alongside her boyfriend Mark, for over a month.

  Antoine had taken me into the city, explaining in a rushed, excited voice how everyone had been looking for me. How I, and my family, had been all over the news. He had kept asking me where I had been all this time. Only I couldn’t remember a thing.

  A month. More than a month was gone from my memory.

  The following weeks had been, to put things bluntly, torture. I had been poked and prodded by doctors, who wanted to check on everything. Was I malnourished? Had I been drugged? Raped? All came back negative. I wasn’t even dehydrated. Then I had been equally poked and prodded by a psychiatrist, Dr. Abbey, who had done her best to pull any memories out of me. When none emerged, it was determined that what I had experienced was so traumatic that I had blocked it from my mind.

  I had refused all requests for interviews, wanting everything to go back to normal. Only…that was impossible. For a large chunk of the summer, reporters had lined outside of my house with cameras. Local news stations had begged me for interviews, wanting to know every sordid detail of where I had been. My mother had accepted a few solo sessions, but had never pressured me into attending, doing her best to explain to the public that I was just trying to put my life back together and get ready for school. She had asked that everyone respect my wishes and give me “privacy during this difficult time.”

  But not everyone had listened. For weeks, I had been trapped in my own house. Alan made weekly trips up from Boston to pick up my comics. Sunshine, ice cream and movies in hand, had been mobbed at the front door. Reporters had mistaken her for me, despite the fact that we look nothing alike besides being short, Asian, and female. Before long, people had started to get angry. They had been so invested in my disappearance, after all. Didn’t they get to learn why? Couldn’t they hear, from my own lips, the end of the mystery? My Twitter feed was mobbed with @replies, and as the days went by and I stayed at home, they began to turn ugly.

  Do you think your better than everyone, or something?

  Stuck up bitch.

  I bet it was fake. She just wanted the attention. #fakebitch

  I took down my account.

  Eventually, everyone moved on to other stories and scandals. As long as I didn’t wear the Bailey U sweatshirt that I had been sporting in the picture that had been all over the news, I wasn’t likely to be recognized. The people close to me were still shaken, though. Alan, never a warm and fuzzy guy, texted me far more than usual. It had taken days of begging to get my mother to agree to go on her scheduled book tour, that I was “okay enough” to be left home alone. Even Sunshine…well, it was clear that she still worried about me. I mean, what person calls three times in a panic because her best friend is twenty minutes late for breakfast?

  Unfortunately, no matter how much I ignored the issue, it didn’t change one very important, very permanent thing.

  Mark had never been found.

  And even if our last conversation had been a fight, that didn’t change the fact that we had been going out for months, and I genuinely cared about the guy.

  And now he was gone. Maybe even dead.

  I had seen the warning signs, that the stress of it was getting to me. I was finding it hard to get out of bed in the morning, to concentrate on anything bigger than a comic book. And then, to even do that.

  So I had started jumping around on rooftops.

  And the more that I soared above the streets, the more people I was able to help, the more I began to realize something important.

  I had no idea what happened to me during that month. In fact, the entire event, including Mark’s disappearance, the pain it caused my family, and the strained weeks that followed, was the worst thing that had happened to me since losing my father.

  But whatever had happened, it had given me powers. Now I had focus, a purpose beyond anything I had ever felt before. Making being abducted, in some weird way, the best thing that had ever happened to me.

  And yes, I realize just how fucked up that is.

  Atop the bridge, I opened my eyes to see that twilight had descended upon Bailey City, painting the river shades of gold and the sky purple and pink. It was gorgeous, and I probably had the best view of anyone in the city now that the Commerce Center was closed down. And thanks to my powers, even though the wind beat at me, the cold didn’t bother me.

  And I couldn’t even appreciate it.

  I looked down at the crumpled-up business card in my hand. Detective Amanda Bronson, it said. A tough-minded, female detective who didn’t take no for an answer. A character out of one of my mom’s books. A woman who wanted me to remember.

  I shivered, despite not feeling cold. In the months that followed my abduction, not a single memory had returned. But whenever I looked back, whenever I let my mind linger on that gap for too long, I was filled with a sense of crippling, inescapable, all-encompassing terror.

  So could you blame me for not really trying?

  I sighed, reaching to put the business card in my pocket and then realizing, with a start, that my costume didn’t have any pockets.

  Which was, now that I thought about it, highly inconvenient. All superheroes should have sufficient pocket space.

  For a few seconds, I just looked down at the card and frowned. Even if I wanted to dredge up the memories of my abduction, what would be the point? Wasn’t it better to move on? To focus on the present, the future? On all the good I could do with these powers? On helping people like Dana Peterson or Arthur Hamilton? As Alex had said, there’s thinking over something, and then overthinking something.

  This was what he had meant, right?

  I opened my hand. The wind picked up the card and pulled it away, fighting with gravity’s desire to pull it down to where the cars rushed by on the bridge.

  Cars…and a man.

  I blinked, looking downward. There was a walkway on the bridge of course, for people that wanted to walk across instead of taking the tram. A walkway separated from the traffic by a sidewalk.

  Only the person beneath me wasn’t on the sidewalk. No, he was on the other side of the outer railing, leaning out over the open water.

  And he was going to jump.

  Don’t get too close to him! The warning bells in my mind went off. You’ll spook him.

  I jumped down, aiming for (and hitting!) the narrow walkway about ten paces away from the jumper. Despite my efforts to be careful, he started a little at my arrival, his head snapping in my direction.

  I recognized him immediately.

  It was the creeper mustache that did it. Granted, his facial hair wasn’t as neatly groomed as it had been a week ago. But there was still no denying it. This was Sully, the man who had tried, and failed, to kidnap Dana Peterson.

  And now he was about to take his own life.

  The fence that separated the bridge from death came up to his mid back. There were dual railings—one at the top and one at the bottom—and vertical bars that that connected the two.

  Sully’s eyes widened in recognition. I guess I’m the type of girl that tends to stick in your memory.

  “You,” he said.

  “Sully,” I replied, in my friendliest tone. “Fancy meeting you here. Why don’t we—”

  “You,” he repeated, his voice rising. “You screwed it up. Everything!”

  Okay, that was anger. Well, if he was angry at me, that was probably enough to distract him from jumping to his death, right?

  “I’m sorry, Sully,” I said, raising my hands as if in surrender. “But I couldn’t let you take that man.”

  “Don’t even know,” he said with a scowl. “The Mistress. Needed him.”

  Mistress…there was that person again…
<
br />   “Why did she need him?” I asked.

  “The plan,” Sully said. “All part of a plan. I heard…”

  His voice trailed off.

  “Heard what, Sully?” I asked, trying to keep my voice gentle.

  “She…it’s all changed now,” he said. “When I used to think of her…everything was simple. Clear. How it was supposed to be. That I was more. And now…”

  “It’s different?” I asked, beginning to make my way toward him. Slowly, cautiously. Ten paces. Nine…

  “Empty,” he said. “Like there’s a hole in me.”

  “A hole? What caused that change?”

  Eight paces, seven…

  “I don’t know…I don’t—”

  He shook his head violently. And the movement caused him to slip. I felt my breath catch as he stumbled, then regained his footing. His eyes were wide as he looked down at the waters far below. Not a trip he could survive.

  “Sully,” I said. “Are you okay? I can help—”

  Six paces.

  “Stay away!” He turned back to me, the whites of his eyes standing out starkly. “No closer!”

  “Okay!” I said, raising my hands. “Okay, okay”

  “Don’t move,” he said. “Just…stay there.”

  “I’m not moving. See?”

  I kept every muscle in my body perfectly still. My eyes darted down to where his feet stood. He had regained his balance. He could have just let himself fall, right then and there. That had to mean he wanted to live.

  “They were talking,” he said, shaking his head, his eyes focused back over the waters.

  “Who were talking?”

  “The Mistress and…that Amity woman.” He paused and shivered. “She gives me the creeps.”

  “Sure, sure,” I said, taking another step forward. Five paces.