Paralyzed

by Alana Terry

  The old has gone, the new has come. Kennedy quoted one of the verses she had memorized during a recent quiet time. Take every thought captive was another good one. That’s what she had to do. Seize her thoughts. Seize those horrible, relentless memories. Lock them up where she could control them. Give them nothing but water to sip, deprive them of warmth, feed them only on fear. Fear that she would never be rescued. Fear that her captors would murder her and nobody would find out for weeks. Fear that she would have to stand by and watch an innocent child die at the hands of godless, soulless monsters.

  She pressed her fingernails into her palms. No, this wasn’t the way to walk in victory. This wasn’t the way to find her freedom and deliverance. If God could take the sins of the world and throw them into the sea of forgetfulness, surely Kennedy could do the same thing to a few old memories that still haunted her. If she only knew how. More prayer, maybe. More Bible reading. She had gotten so busy with finals she had let her spiritual disciplines slide. That’s why she was suffering now. That’s why she felt like the wild rabbit, crouching in plain sight with no hope of shelter or safety, knowing the fox would pounce with its razor teeth but unable to guess when.

  Steps on the sidewalk. She felt the vibrations just a yard or two away. “Reuben?” she asked, her voice quiet. So uncertain. “Is that you?”

  No answer. Kennedy held her breath. What had her self-defense instructor said? She couldn’t let her brain shut down when she was scared. She had to channel that fear and turn it into positive survival energy.

  “Is someone there?” She sounded more like a mouse, her words a pitiful squeal.

  No, that wasn’t who Kennedy was anymore. She didn’t have to be afraid. She knew how to protect herself. She even had her pepper spray. Wait, that was still on the T along with everything else. Why hadn’t she remembered to take her backpack with her?

  “Don’t get any closer. Stay where you are.” She tried not to sound too forceful. What would people think of her? It was probably just another passenger getting off the train. How had she gotten so far from the main group in the first place?

  She hurried down the walkway. The footsteps echoed behind. She glanced over her shoulder. “You need to stop following me.” Kennedy spoke assertively like she had practiced in her class. She had been so self-conscious those first few times she had to stare her instructor right in the eye and say ridiculous things like, “Get back five feet,” or “No, you’re making me uncomfortable, and I want you to leave.” But nothing had been as awkward as the simulations when they brought in male volunteers to attack the students. She hoped to never suffer through something that humiliating again, whether in a controlled role-play setting or in real life.

  Hot breath tickled her neck. Or was that just her imagination? If she reached out her arm, she would know for sure if someone was there. But what if he grabbed her? What if Vinny had escaped custody? What if he followed her and was just waiting for the chance to get her alone?

  She wouldn’t be victimized again. She had to get away. She wouldn’t let him catch up to her. A footstep on the concrete. Not a fabrication. Not this time. It was real. Real as the scientific method. Real as her parents’ love for her. Real as death. In the pitch darkness, she rushed ahead, running her fingers along the grimy wall so she would know which way to go as she sprinted down the walkway. What did contracting a few germs compare to getting murdered?

  How close was he now? And why couldn’t she have remembered her pepper spray? She strained her ears but only heard the slap of her boots on the walkway, the sound of her own panting, the pounding of her heart valves in her pericardial sac. She didn’t want to stop, couldn’t slow down, but she had to save her strength. She needed energy to fight back when he caught up. She couldn’t hear him, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t coming.

  Any second now.

  CHAPTER 8

  Kennedy rehearsed every lesson from her self-defense class in fast motion, promised herself never to roll her eyes at her dad for all his unsolicited safety advice. Legs in a crouch, back hip at a slight angle. Hands up, ready to block, ready for a blow. Should she go for a throat strike with the fingers or palm strike to the chin? Her ears pounded as her heart plunged blood and oxygen and adrenaline to every muscle cell in her body.

  Kennedy stood as still as the fetal pig corpse she had dissected in high school. She prayed for protection, not in actual words but in that unspoken language of desperation, hopes shot heavenward with the full expectation God could understand and decipher her soul’s chaotic pleading. She strained to pick up the slightest noise around her. Nothing. Not even the voices of the people evacuated from the T.

  Why had she separated herself from the group? She should have raced back toward Reuben and the others the second she suspected someone was following her. Even if that sped up the inevitable confrontation, she would have been close enough for people to help. For people to hear her scream. Now she was cut off. Stranded. Completely unprotected. No witnesses. How far had she been running? What would happen if they found her body on the tracks tomorrow morning? Fears of radiation and cancer aside, she vowed to never ride the subway again without carrying her phone in her pocket. Her phone and her pepper spray.

  Stupid. Stupid what you do when you’re so afraid your neural circuits shut down one after another like a domino effect of idiocy. Isn’t that what her self-defense instructors had warned her about? Isn’t that why they ran her through all those painfully awkward simulations, so she could think straight when her veins flooded with epinephrine and her mind clouded with the rush of fear?

  Kennedy took a deep breath. There was nothing to hear, nothing around her but perfect stillness. If she didn’t know better, she might have thought herself the only human in a twenty-mile radius. She should go back. The farther she went down the rail, the more she distanced herself from people who might help her. If there really was someone after her in the first place. What if this was just another attack, a trick of her brain that now seemed to think trauma was a normal, everyday part of life, something to fabricate if reality didn’t provide enough danger?

  Part of her wanted to reach out, touch the phantom that had scared her so badly, figure out exactly what had made her run. Probably not even a person at all. She thought about Little House in the Big Woods. As a little girl, she had giggled wildly at the part when Pa was walking home late and saw a bear blocking his path. After a terrifying standoff in which the bear didn’t move a muscle, Pa finally charged it with a stick only to find that he had been having a stare-down with an old tree stump. It had been hilarious back then, picturing Pa with his big broad shoulders and his long scruffy beard getting scared by a silly shadow. Kennedy had never thought until now about the way his heart must have thudded underneath his flannel shirt, how his thoughts must have turned homeward to Ma and the girls, wondering if he would ever see their faces or hold them in his arms again.

  Kennedy shook her head. How had she let her own silly fears drive her this far down the tracks? It was probably the stress of finals week. Her meeting tomorrow with Detective Drisklay. How long until she could forget about the entire ordeal and get on with a normal life?

  It was silly to stay here and shiver in the dark. She had to get back to Reuben. He was probably worried about her by now. What would he say when he found out she had run so far on account of a few unfamiliar sounds? Kennedy smoothed his coat she was still wearing. It was time to go back. He might tease her, and then it would be over. At least she’d be safe. She’d probably been safe all along. Now she just wanted to get back to Reuben, get back to campus. Tomorrow would be another long, busy day. The semester was over, and now she wanted to relax. Get back to her dorm, maybe read a little from her Turgenev book, grab a snack, and then go to sleep. She could take her laundry to Aunt Lilian’s and wash it there.

  She still couldn’t believe what she had done. What would her self-defense instructors say if they saw what a coward she had been? How would they chide her for running awa
y from the group of potential witnesses instead of toward them? That silly class probably made her even more paranoid than she needed to be, all those scenarios she had to act out, all that talk about what horrible situations she might find herself in one day. Just like Pa and the bear in the woods. Only it had been a tree stump.

  She stepped slowly at first, thinking up the least embarrassing way to tell Reuben why she had freaked out and run a quarter mile or more in an unlit underground tunnel.

  She let out her breath, the sound of her sigh even louder than normal in the enclosed space. She thought about the chapter in Les Miserables, the fifty pages or more Victor Hugo devoted to verbose descriptions of the underground sewer system in Paris. How would Hugo paint the tunnels beneath the streets of Boston if he were alive today?

  Yes, she would think about Les Miserables. Even before she read the book, her mom took her to see the Broadway show when they still lived in New York. She had loved the music as a child and let the lyrics run through her mind. Another few minutes and she’d be back with Reuben. Then they could go back to …

  Slam. The thud of a shoe pounding the pavement. So there was someone after all. He was behind her now. How had he circled around on the other side? It didn’t matter. She was running, pushing forward, lunging ahead.

  Noise. She needed to make noise. There wasn’t time to recall those forceful sayings she had practiced in self-defense. So she screamed. At least she tried to. It came out more like a squeal. It didn’t sound particularly bold or courageous, and it wasn’t even loud. Not as loud as his boots smashing into the cement. Any minute now, she would get tackled from behind, but she didn’t have time to plan and visualize how she would fight him off. Getting away and making as much ruckus as she could — that was the only plan.

  She surged forward, her heart close to bursting from exertion. Her only other feeling was the pain in her shins, the sting in her lungs. He was right behind her. She pictured him reaching out his hand, knew he was about to jerk her to a dead stop, braced herself so the whiplash wouldn’t be so bad. She arched her back, as if gaining another centimeter or two of distance could delay the inevitable.

  Please, Lord, get me out of this.

  “Watch out!”

  By the time she realized the voice was in front of her, she didn’t have a chance to slow herself down. She slammed into him, and her breath rushed out of her chest. They both stumbled. He grabbed her by the shoulders to keep them both from falling, and all those simple moves she had practiced in self-defense deserted her. There was no reflex reaction, no autonomic response. Instead, she froze, and he gripped her by both shoulders. Almost as an afterthought, she tried to thrash her body to throw him off, and for a minute, she was afraid they’d both topple over the edge onto the rails below.

  “Calm down.” He wrapped his arms tight around her, and her brain stopped trying to recall how to get out of a bear hug and instead focused on his voice. “It’s me.”

  “Reuben?” Saying his name unleashed a torrent of tears, and he held her, whispering comforting words that made her feel even more wretched.

  Kennedy shook her head. “Someone was coming.”

  Ruben took out his cellphone and let its glow fall on the tracks and walkway around them. “I don’t see anybody.”

  “I was being chased. He was right …” Kennedy stopped. Pa and the bear. If she could have turned into a corrosive acid, burned a hole into the cement, and disappeared from sight, she would have.

  “I’m sorry.” She sniffed, afraid to get some of the snot from her runny nose on Reuben’s coat.

  “Another episode?” Reuben offered quietly.

  She turned her face away. God was merciful to have turned off the lights. Now she wouldn’t have to look Reuben in the eye. Not yet, anyway. She would have been willing to stay there in the darkness forever, but once she started breathing a little calmer he said, “We’re only a few hundred yards from the Boylston station. You think you’re ready to walk?”

  “I’m sorry,” Kennedy repeated. This was supposed to be a fun night. Why couldn’t life be more like the chem lab? If you didn’t get it right the first time, you could just dump everything down the drain and start over fresh. “I’m such an idiot.”

  “No, you’re not.” The good-natured teasing never came. The playful jabs, nothing. “You’ve been really stressed out. This kind of thing doesn’t mix well with stress. You know?”

  No, Kennedy didn’t know. Reuben could talk about this kind of thing, but what was it really? She recalled the large, scrawling letters the doctor wrote on the notepad. Post-traumatic stress disorder. But he was wrong. He had to be.

  “You ready?” Reuben asked and shined the light from his cell on the walkway in front of them.

  Kennedy swallowed through the tightness in her throat. “Yeah. I’m ready.”

  When they passed the train car, the smoke was gone. The conductor and a firefighter pointed their flashlights at the tracks. Most of the passengers had gone. Kennedy was thankful she didn’t have to meet anyone’s eye.

  “I got your backpack,” Reuben told her, patting the straps on his shoulders. This was the second time he had retrieved her bag for her when she had one of her … episodes, or whatever they were. Any other night, she might have made a joke about being careful so this sort of thing didn’t become a habit, but her humor as well as her energy were stuck back there in the subway tunnel, pounded into the ground where her feet had smashed the pavement. Her heart rate was steadier now, but her stomach churned with the bitter aftertaste of humiliation.

  “What’s that light ahead?” she asked.

  “I think that’s the Boylston station.”

  Kennedy squinted. “I thought the power was out.” She would have preferred the darkness, at least for a little while longer.

  Reuben slowed down. “I heard the conductor and the firemen talking. It sounds like the problem was localized. Something on the subway grid.” He adjusted the straps of Kennedy’s backpack. “Do you still want that pizza?”

  “No, thanks.” There was only one thing Kennedy wanted to do — get home and forget this night ever happened. Maybe Reuben was right. Maybe she should talk to somebody about her episodes. She hated the idea of rehashing her abduction all over again, but could it be worse than being a slave to these fears? How many more tests would she miss? What would happen if she fell victim to an attack while working with dangerous chemicals in the lab?

  When they stepped into the lights of Boylston station, Kennedy wished she could wrap her scarf around her entire face, not just her neck. She avoided Reuben’s eyes and everyone else’s. Could these strangers tell just by looking at her that she was crazy? Maybe even delusional?

  What was wrong with her? Was it just stress from finals, maybe? Lack of sleep? Or was she truly losing her mind? No, crazy people never worried about going crazy, did they? It was only sane people who questioned their sanity, right?

  Home. Well, at least the closest thing she had to a home in the States. Willow would be at Cape Cod for the next few days before she flew back to Alaska. Kennedy wouldn’t have to answer any questions, engage with anybody. Home. She glanced at the map of the T. Five stops and one transfer would get her back to her dorm in half an hour or so. Maybe less if there were no more delays. Could she do it? Could she force herself to step onto another subway?

  Just a malfunction, she told herself, but her lungs still stung with the memory of smoke, and her pulse quickened at the sound of an oncoming train. What if she had lost her balance running away from phantoms in the dark? What if she had landed on the tracks and knocked herself out and nobody found her before …?

  Reuben slipped his hand into his pocket, flipped casually through his wallet. “How would you feel about taking a taxi?”

  Kennedy didn’t know how shallow her breaths had grown until her lungs let out one prolonged, choppy sigh. “That sounds like a really good idea.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “You don’t need to keep telling
me you’re sorry.” Reuben leaned against the doorway of Kennedy’s dorm room. “Did you know you apologized five times in the taxi?”

  Kennedy still wished Reuben had let her pay the fare. She was thrilled to be as far away from the subway system as possible, but it wasn’t as if Reuben had a whole lot of discretionary income. She didn’t, either, but she would have felt less guilty about plunking fifteen bucks on a taxi ride back to campus if it had been her money, not his.

  “So, you’re really all right?” Reuben stalled at the door. On any other night, Kennedy might have thought it was sweet. Right now, she only wanted to get to bed. All the energy she had exhausted getting ready for finals had finally caught up to her. She was drained, sucked dry like a pile of old Craisins left out on her desk. She needed sleep.

  “Maybe we can hang out again when I get back from Maryland,” she suggested. “Rain check?”

  “Rain what?” Reuben was even worse at American idioms than she was.

  “Rain check. Since tonight didn’t work for pizza, we can do it when I get back from Maryland. Deal?”

  Reuben flashed her a thumbs up. “It’s a deal.”

  “I promise I won’t chicken out on you next time.”

  “Chicken?”

  “Never mind.”

  Sleep. She wanted to sleep. Her bed beckoned to her with its own irresistible gravity.

  He stepped into her room and gave her an awkward half-hug. “Merry Christmas.”

  “You, too.” Heaviness sank in her gut, disappointment over their failed night out mingling with her own embarrassment. She plopped onto the bed. Why did she always do this to herself? She had let her own anxiety and nerves ruin her evening out with Reuben, and now she didn’t even have the strength to pack her bags for tomorrow. The morning would come all too soon.