2. Count backward from 100 by 3’s.
3. Tune into four things you can see, three things you can touch, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.
*Attempts to enter subway without a panic attack: 12 (none successful)
—Data Book, page 11
I THOUGHT AMANDA’S MEMORIAL service would provide a sense of closure, and things would get better.
But they’re worse.
Nearly two weeks have passed since I saw her jump, and I still can’t get close to a subway. Home is no respite; Sean rarely spends time at Jody’s place because she lives in a tiny two-bedroom with two other girls. So they’re always around, cooking dinner or cuddling on the couch in front of the TV.
I walk and take buses when possible, but sometimes taxis are the only option—like the other day when my bus broke down and I was running late to my temp job. The fares are whittling away at my bank account.
Geography is shaping my choices: I feel like my life is tunneling inward. Instead of visiting the Brooklyn Botanic Garden over the weekend, which always brings me peace, I went to a smaller park a few blocks away. My favorite CrossFit class is in SoHo, but I’ve begun frequenting a little gym that’s only a few blocks away.
Sometimes, when I reach into my tote bag, I think I feel the scrape of a tiny, sharp edge against my fingertips and I’m convinced I’ve found Amanda’s necklace. But it’s just the ridge on my Chap Stick tube, or the bend in the stem of my sunglasses, or the uneven seam at the bottom of my bag. I’ve turned my tote inside out more than once, but it’s never there. I wonder if it’s still glinting somewhere down in the Thirty-third Street subway station.
I dread falling asleep, knowing nightmares await. The worst one yet left me drenched in sweat: I was running down the subway platform, desperately trying to stop Amanda from jumping and knowing I wouldn’t get there in time. Just as I reached for her arm, clawing at empty air as she pulled away, she turned to look at me.
But instead of her face, I was staring into my own.
That’s what made me finally pick up the phone and schedule an appointment with a psychologist. I’d like to say I selected her based on her academic credentials or a referral, but the truth is, I chose my therapist because she is covered by my insurance—and the walk is only eight minutes.
My first session with Paula revolved around goal setting. I was a little nervous when I sat down in her small, utilitarian office on East Twenty-fourth Street, but I reminded myself how common it is to seek therapy: 42 percent of Americans have been in counseling. One in five millennials currently see a therapist—although I never have before.
Paula suggested I set a small objective to work on, and she agreed the one I selected seemed doable.
“It’ll be a good first step,” Paula had said, and I’d smiled, confident I was finally on the right track.
But now, at the start of our second session, as I sit aimlessly moving a tiny rake through a little Zen sand garden while Paula looks over her notes from our last session, I feel as if the hope she offered me has floated away.
Paula finally looks up and smiles. “Okay, then. Did you achieve your goal of touching the green subway railing?”
I put down the rake and cross my arms over my chest, rubbing my hands up and down my bare arms.
I’m aware of Paula’s gaze on me, but I can’t meet hers as I shake my head. “I only got to the edge of the grate.” I feel my throat thicken with the words.
She writes something in her notebook, then takes off her reading glasses. “Have you been trying the other techniques we discussed?”
I lift up my left hand to show her the blue rubber band around my wrist. Paula had told me to snap it hard when the panic began to descend. It’ll distract your mind, she promised. It was one of many remedies she’d suggested, from a gratitude journal to tackling my phobia by breaking it down to a series of steps.
None of it is working. The only thing that has helped me at all is the Ambien I bought off a sketchy Canadian pharmaceutical website. I took it for the first time last night. It delivered oblivion and left me so groggy I slept through my alarm, but at least that’s better than a nightmare.
We talk awhile longer about how to scale down my goal.
“Maybe you can look at pictures of subways on your computer at home. It could help desensitize you. And then perhaps attempt to walk over a subway grate.”
Even though I nod, I already know I’m not going to be able to do it. Just the thought of it causes a hitch in my heartbeat.
What’s happening to me? I want to cry out.
I try to swallow down the wobble I know my voice will contain before asking, “I guess I was wondering how long you think it’s going to take me to feel better.… I have another job interview next week, but if I’m hired, I’d have to take three buses to get there.”
Paula closes her notebook, and I see her sneak a glance at the clock on her desk.
“Shay, you came in here because of one specific incident, but I believe there’s something deeper going on.”
My gut clenches because I know she’s right. I’ve tried to put what I witnessed into perspective by analyzing the data, by framing Amanda’s tragedy in facts: More than two dozen other people leaped in front of New York City subway trains this year alone. A hundred pedestrians were fatally hit by vehicles in my city last year, along with dozens of bikers. Jumping from a tall building is the fourth-most common way to commit suicide in New York, and homicides occur here daily.
There are witnesses to almost all of these horrific deaths; I read some of their quotes in the newspapers. While it seems certain that other observers are also affected—how could they not be?—I wonder if it’s a natural consequence for onlookers to be as traumatized as I seem to be.
Maybe it isn’t what I witnessed that’s causing all of this, I think as I sink lower into the chair across from Paula. Perhaps the tragedy of that muggy Sunday morning and the bad luck that preceded it simply flipped some kind of a switch in me that was waiting to be activated.
“I’d love to give you a specific timeline for healing, but I can’t,” Paula says.
“But—like weeks? Months?” I ask desperately.
“Oh, Shay.” She seems truly sorry. “There’s no quick fix in therapy.”
Just like that, the wispy tendrils of hope float even further away.
* * *
I walk home in the sundress and flats I wore to my temp job, hoping Sean and Jody are out so I can have the sofa to myself. All I have the energy to do is make microwave popcorn for dinner and watch mindless television.
When I enter the apartment, one of my wishes is granted: The apartment is empty.
I head into my bedroom to strip off my sundress. I pull a pair of shorts off the top of my basket of clean laundry, hesitating when I realize they’re the same ones I wore the day Amanda died.
But this is a challenge I can surmount. I pull them on.
The pockets are bunched up from being swished around in the washing machine, so as I wander into the kitchen to grab a seltzer, I absently stick my fingers into them to flatten them out.
My feet stutter to a stop.
I checked my tote bag several times, shaking it upside down and running my hand along the seams. But I never once thought to look in the pockets of what I’d been wearing that day.
As I slowly draw out my right hand, I know what I’m going to see even before my fingers clear the top of my shorts.
It was here all along, inches from me. Waiting to be discovered.
If I’d gotten rid of these shorts to avoid the reminder, I would never have found it.
The necklace is heavier than I remembered. Maybe that’s because I feel like it’s bearing the weight of all the emotions I’ve experienced since the moment I first picked it up.
I must have shoved it in my pocket sometime after Amanda stepped toward the edge of the platform and I heard the whoosh of the oncoming train.
It was
the last thing I did before everything changed.
My lungs feel as if a vise is squeezing them.
I stare at the gold necklace with the sun-shaped charm dangling between my fingers.
The one I’m now certain belonged to Amanda.
CHAPTER TWELVE
CASSANDRA & JANE
THE SISTERS ARE STEALTHILY ransacking Shay’s life—scouring the internet for every wisp of her electronic footprints, dissecting her routines, canvassing her contacts, and delving into her background.
From her LinkedIn account they learn Shay has held three jobs since she graduated from Boston University, but now temps for a Wall Street law firm. By tracing the tentacles of her Facebook profile, they discover that her best friend, Mel, has a new baby and lives in Brooklyn.
They learn even more by following Shay, like the fact that she enjoys the falafel from the Greek restaurant a few blocks down from her apartment, and that she works out almost every day. “Her roommate, Sean, is in a serious relationship,” Stacey reports after following Sean to a bar, where he met his girlfriend for happy hour. “He’s trying to start his own college-prep tutoring company.”
Their scrutiny extends to encompass her family: Her mother, Jackie, isn’t shy about posting bikini shots on Instagram, and her stepfather tinkers with his Ford Mustang in his spare time.
What the sisters still don’t know: how the mysterious woman who clearly goes out of her way to avoid even getting near a subway station is linked to Amanda.
“She can’t be a relative or she would have acknowledged Amanda’s mother at the funeral. She can’t be a close friend because she wasn’t even listed in Amanda’s contacts,” says Cassandra.
The two women’s lives have no other natural intersections. They didn’t grow up in the same town or attend the same college.
“They lived near each other,” Cassandra says to Jane as the Town Car they’ve hired for the evening pulls up in front of a Chelsea art gallery. “Six blocks apart.”
The sisters are careful to sanitize their conversation in case the driver is eavesdropping: no names or identifying details.
“That doesn’t mean they ever met. New York can be a city of strangers.” Jane keeps her tone light, as if they are gossiping about acquaintances. “Do you know the names of everyone in your building? Or in our yoga class?”
Cassandra nods to acknowledge the point as the driver opens the back door.
Right now, Shay is a bigger concern than even the police detective who reached out to Daphne to ask about Daphne’s date with James.
Daphne had been badly thrown by the call, but the sisters had coached her well, and Daphne had handled herself beautifully during the brief police interview.
Daphne had told the detective, a woman named Marcia Santiago, that she’d gone out on a single date with James that previous fall. She’d found him handsome and charming. They’d ended the romantic evening in her apartment.
Then had come the tricky question: Why did you send that hostile text to a man you say you liked?
Daphne had given her practiced answer: He never called like he promised. I was upset.
Detective Santiago had stared at her for a long, unsettling moment. Then she’d closed her notebook, saying, I may have some follow-up questions.
That was two weeks ago. There has been no further contact.
There’s no reason to worry that the police are continuing to investigate any connection between Daphne and James.
Cassandra and Jane thank their driver, then step out of the sedan and walk toward the entrance of the gallery.
The balmy early-September air caresses Cassandra’s shoulders, which her slinky red halter top leaves bare. She wears butter-soft leather leggings and high-heeled sandals. Jane’s fitted dress accentuates her hourglass shape, and her delicate gold and platinum bangles clink as she pulls open the door.
The gallery is hosting an opening for the promising young mixed-media artist the sisters represent, Willow Tanaka. She was profiled in this week’s New York magazine.
Heads turn as the sisters step in—shoulders back, high-wattage smiles in place. They are completely at ease in this cultured, sophisticated environment: They know which clothes to wear, the correct way to eat the oysters offered by a passing waiter, and how to gracefully extricate themselves from unproductive conversations.
Seeing Cassandra and Jane in this moment, no one would ever guess the details that compose their backstory: Their father died when Jane was still an infant. Their mother scrambled to make ends meet. The girls wore hand-me-downs and often ate peanut butter sandwiches for dinner alone while watching television.
But the sisters possess something money can’t buy. Something grittier than perseverance and more powerful than determination. It carried Cassandra and Jane through college, as they cobbled together scholarships and loans and part-time jobs, and led them to an enviable life in one of the world’s most dazzling cities.
As Cassandra accepts a glass of champagne from a waiter, she looks at the collage hanging on the wall, priced at seventeen thousand dollars.
The canvas, one of fifteen on display, depicts the water’s edge. Rough, foamy waves crash into gray boulders under a bleak sky. It’s delicate yet assured and stark—at least at first glance.
When they glimpsed Willow’s work in the small, turpentine-scented apartment that doubled as her studio, they were mesmerized. Layered into her paint strokes are curious objects: a feather, a typewriter key, and a dried mushroom.
Right now, Willow is just a few feet away, talking to a prospective buyer. She’s as compelling as her creations: Willow’s blunt bob is dyed white-blond, which contrasts with the thick red liner winging her eyes and her midnight-black dress.
“This one is my favorite,” Cassandra tells her sister, pointing to a piece featuring the Kiso Mountains.
The collage holds the eyes of a puffer fish, a Nerium oleander flower, and the silver mercury from a thermometer, all woven so seamlessly into the brushstrokes that it takes several moments for the eye to distinguish them.
As with all of Willow’s work, the seemingly disparate elements share a common denominator: They are linked to death. Even the key is from the typewriter of a serial killer.
Without the relevant information, though, the ingredients appear innocuous.
Maybe there’s a lesson here, Cassandra thinks. They’ve been assembling facts about Shay. But they’re missing the invisible ingredient that will link all the disparate parts together.
Shay also appears innocuous. But is she?
Cassandra’s thoughts are interrupted as Willow rushes over to give them both a hug.
“Cheers,” Jane says, lifting her champagne glass and handing one to Willow. “Tonight is a triumph.”
“The Times review is going to be a rave,” Cassandra says.
The sisters want to savor the moment, but the alert tone for Valerie’s texts—one that’s distinct from the sounds assigned to everyone else in their contacts—is erupting on both of their phones.
Valerie is keeping an eye on Shay tonight—or more accurately, the tracker in the necklace that Shay somehow got from Amanda.
Cassandra and Jane don’t look at each other, but a cord of energy pulses between them. Cassandra murmurs an excuse to Willow while Jane turns and pulls her phone out of her purse as a second text sounds.
Shay just left her apartment with the necklace.
Then: She’s heading uptown. I’m 20 minutes away from her. Getting a cab.
As Cassandra stares over Jane’s shoulder at the phone, a new text lands: She’s past the Starbucks now, going toward the subway.
It’s the exact route Amanda took on the last day of her life.
The sisters weave toward the door—waving at an acquaintance, sliding their champagne glasses onto an empty table, dodging a man who steps in front of them with a smile, never stopping but never giving the impression they’re rushing out of the gallery.
Why now, so many days after Am
anda’s death, is Shay moving the necklace? And, far more important, where is Shay taking it?
They’re almost at the exit when a hand lands on Jane’s arm.
“Darlings! You’re not leaving so soon? The evening’s just getting started!”
It’s Oliver, the owner of the gallery and the one other person here besides Willow that Cassandra and Jane can’t rebuff. When the sisters first started out, they splurged on an abstract painting for the entryway of their new offices. Oliver sold it to them—and became enamored of them, announcing, “I’m going to be your fairy godfather!”
Oliver, a slim Brit, throws lavish but intimate dinner parties, pulling in a mix of some of the most relevant people in the city. In addition to Willow, he has connected the sisters with two other good clients.
“Come with me,” he commands, gesturing toward the thick of the crowd. “There’s someone you must meet!”
Again, the identical sound erupts on their phones. It’s barely discernible amid the noise of a dozen conversations in the gallery. But it’s all the sisters can hear.
Jane sucks in a breath. Cassandra’s grip tightens around the handle of her purse.
Another chime. The sisters can feel tension rising not just in themselves, but in each other.
“I’m so sorry, but we have to rush off,” Jane tells Oliver.
“I’m afraid I’m coming down with something.” Cassandra puts a hand to her stomach. All the color has drained from her face, supporting her fib.
“Poor girl, go get some rest.” Oliver blows them kisses.
This time, they manage to depart without any interruptions.
They pull out their phones and read the new texts from Valerie:
At 49th Street. Just saw Shay crossing street.
Where are you two??
Then: Out of cab. I’m right behind her now.
Jane phones their driver and instructs him to pick them up as quickly as possible.
Cassandra types to Valerie: We’re in Chelsea, coming as fast as we can.
“Come on!” Jane says, pacing the sidewalk and craning her head to see if the driver is approaching. But traffic is clogged—it’s still the tail end of rush hour—and the Town Car isn’t in view.
You Are Not Alone Page 5