by Alana Terry
The tickle returned to the back of her throat. She hadn’t thought to bring any cough drops. Not even a water bottle. Where had he run off to? Why hadn’t he waited?
A chill covered her whole body although she was wearing her new coat. What if someone had followed them? What if they saw her go down beneath the Opera House? A sort of Phantom-of-the-Opera-type menace who would entrap her beneath the theater and hold her hostage in his cold, cement cell? Her wrists chaffed with the memory of handcuffs, and her lungs constricted without forcing out any air.
Where was Reuben? Had someone attacked him?
Her diaphragm spasmed. She couldn’t inhale.
A door slammed shut. Was someone locking her in? Would she be stuck down here forever? Would anybody even know she was gone?
Help.
She slipped up to the wall for support. She couldn’t hold herself up anymore. Had someone sucked all the air out from the basement?
Her cellphone. She could call Reuben. Call the police. Somebody would get her out of here. Somebody …
She fumbled through the zipper pockets of her backpack. Where was it?
Her fingers finally clenched the phone, which she had flipped off during the performance. She punched it on. Why did they take so long to start up again? A light flickered on the screen. A familiar, ominous tone.
No!
The batteries were low.
There was still enough power to make one call, wasn’t there? Please let there be enough. She found Reuben’s number in her contacts.
Please pick up.
Tiny bars danced across the screen. What was taking so long? She fought the urge to fling the phone to the ground. There wasn’t enough reception down here.
Three short beeps, and then her screen flashed with the message: Call failed.
Fear jolted through her entire body. What if this was a setup?
“Kennedy?”
She jumped, flinging her bag around. It hit Reuben in the gut.
“Oof.”
She forced herself to laugh, swallowing away the lump in her throat. “Don’t scare me like that!” Did she sound like someone who had just been startled? Or did she sound like someone about to have a nervous breakdown?
“I’m sorry.”
She sighed as her breath came back to her in a rush. “I didn’t know where you went.” She blinked her eyes. She had been taken aback, that was all. A little jolt. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to be ashamed of.
“I should have told you, but I thought you were behind me. Look. I just got a picture with the old guy. The uncle or grandfather or whoever he was.” He showed her the picture. “Come on, I want to get one with both of us.”
Kennedy shook her head. “You know, I’m actually getting really hungry. Do we have time to stop for something to eat?” Anything to get out of this basement.
“Angelo’s Pizza?”
Kennedy forced excitement into her voice. “Perfect.”
Reuben pointed. “I saw an exit back here. I think it goes right to the street level.”
Kennedy followed a pace behind, squeezing back her hot and silent tears of shame.
CHAPTER 6
The wind whipped and howled around them when they emerged on a side street in back of the Opera House. Reuben stood a little in front and shielded Kennedy from the biting wind.
“That was so fun.”
If Kennedy knew Reuben, he wouldn’t stop gushing about the show until next semester.
He let out a contented sigh. “Ready for pizza?”
They made their way to the T station. Kennedy just wanted to get out of the cold. Loathing and humiliation clashed together in her gut. When would she stop acting like such a baby? Maybe she really was coming down with something.
Ruben hummed a little tune from The Nutcracker as they waited for the T, and Kennedy wondered what her friends from high school would say if they saw her today. At the All American Girls School in Yanji, she earned a reputation for being responsible and studious. Now, the same young woman who took four AP classes her senior year and still graduated as valedictorian couldn’t sit through a simple general chemistry final without breaking down into a sobbing, coughing, hallucinating mess.
What was she doing wrong? She was praying. God knew how much she was praying these days. She had never been one for Bible study, at least not like the Secret Seminary students her parents trained in China, but for the past few weeks she had read her Bible nearly every morning and had memorized a dozen passages or more.
Forgetting what is behind, straining toward what is ahead. It sounded so simple. And if that’s really what God wanted her to do, why hadn’t he given her the ability to follow through? She was so busy on the weekends she didn’t always make it to St. Margaret’s Church, but she was there at least a few Sundays each month, and she went over to Pastor Carl and Sandy’s for dinner a couple times, too. As far as she knew, she was doing everything right. By the book. Exactly what any Sunday school teacher or VBS leader would tell her. Prayer and Bible study were the keys to the victorious Christian life. So why was she floundering, flailing her arms and still sinking into the miry muck of anxiety? She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept the whole night through. She didn’t always remember her dreams, but she often woke up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat.
Dear God, what am I missing? I’m trying so hard.
“What are you thinking about?”
Kennedy had almost forgotten Reuben was still there and fumbled for a response. “Oh, I was just wondering if Professor Adell will want me to retake the test in the morning.”
“I don’t think you need to worry about your final. Even if you have to take it again, you’ll do fine, like always.”
The Green Line train pulled up to the platform. Kennedy didn’t say anything else. Ruben followed her up the steps of the car, and they found seats toward the back.
Neither spoke as the subway chugged along noisily. When it came to the next stop, a heavyset woman in a huge fur coat climbed up the steps, panting from exertion. “Phew, that wind is really howling up there,” she announced to nobody in particular. She caught Kennedy’s eye and stared a few extra seconds before sitting across from her.
Another man came on, thickly built, slightly bald. His eyes passed over Kennedy, but he didn’t smile. Had she seen him somewhere before?
“What will you be reading over break?” Ruben’s voice startled her, but she hid her surprise.
“I’ve still only made it through two of the Turgenev books.” She glanced at the man, who was sitting near the emergency lever. He opened up a newspaper, and Kennedy looked away.
The fur coat lady still stared at her quizzically. Finally, she leaned forward. “Excuse me, but are you that girl from the news? The one that got kidnapped last fall?”
Kennedy’s spine stiffened, and she wished those transporters from her dad’s favorite sci-fi shows were real so she could beam herself straight to bed. Instead, she just gave a quick nod.
“I thought so.” The woman folded her arms across her massive chest. “You know, I’m very good with faces. As soon as I saw you, I knew you had been on the news. Terrible thing, isn’t it, what happened to that little girl?”
Ruben leaned over and whispered in her ear, “We can get on another train at the next stop if you want.”
Kennedy shook her head. She was a gifted, mature, capable young woman. Isn’t that what all of her high school teachers had written in their letters of recommendation to Harvard? What kind of straight-A pre-med student couldn’t handle a little chitchat with a nosy stranger on the T?
“You’re shaking,” Ruben whispered.
She wished he hadn’t said anything because now she could acutely feel every single muscle tensing. At one time, she had joked with Willow that all this trauma would be worth it if she got a six-pack out of it, but in reality she had put on a few extra pounds. Probably due to the late-night crunching on Craisins and dry Cheerios.
“You
know,” the fur lady continued loud enough for everyone in the car to hear, “my husband and I are big supporters of Pastor Carl’s mission to unwed mothers.” Her earrings jingled ostentatiously as she nodded her head up and down. “A great ministry.”
Ruben stared at Kennedy in concern. Sometimes his sympathy was harder to bear than her own mess of emotions. He would get to looking at her like she was a dying butterfly about to take its last flutter. How was she supposed to forget about the past and move on when everyone kept reminding her about it?
“I was telling my husband,” Fur Lady continued, “those women sure need our help. You know, back in my day, when a gal got pregnant, she would either marry the boy or she’d put the baby up for adoption to be raised by a real family. Nowadays, it seems like all these girls want is a baby or two, no matter if there’s a dad in the picture or not. The state pays more with each kid, you know, and then of course these girls go and demand child support. You get enough babies lined up and make the state and those dads all shell out their cash, and you can make a good living without lifting a finger.”
Kennedy bit her lip and glanced around. The man near the exit glared from over the top of his magazine. Just a few more stops. If she could handle complex computations during a lab titration without using a calculator, she could keep her mouth shut for a few more minutes on the T with a rude, loud-mouthed busybody.
“In fact,” the woman prattled on, “I was at the store just the other day, and one of those welfare moms came up with her coupons …”
The T jolted to an unexpected stop, and the woman let out an unbecoming expletive. The lights flickered once and then went off.
“What was that?” she screeched, her voice rising to an even more annoying pitch, somewhat akin to a silver fork scraping against a ceramic plate.
“Must be having some kind of problems with the T,” a man answered. Several passengers pulled out their phones and let the light from the screens pierce through the darkness.
Kennedy tried to ignore the fluttering in her heart. Things like this probably happened all the time. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all. She scooted a little closer to Reuben.
“Maybe it’s the wind,” someone suggested. “Coulda blown down the electrical lines.”
“Welcome to Boston,” muttered another.
Beside her, Reuben sat as calm as always. He was probably enjoying the extra time to think about his favorite scenes from The Nutcracker. She pressed her hands to her throbbing temples. There was too much work to do. She still wasn’t packed for her trip to her aunt’s tomorrow, and she had to be up early to meet with Detective Drisklay. She had to get in touch with Adell to see if she needed to retake the exam tomorrow morning or if it would count as an excused absence. She’d be a little disappointed if she didn’t have to take it at all. What kind of school would let someone out of a final because of a cough? It wasn’t fair to the other students. It wasn’t even fair to Kennedy, given the hours she had spent studying.
“How long until we start going again?” asked the woman in the fur coat. “Shouldn’t the conductor say something on that system of his?”
“Power’s out,” a passenger mumbled. “No way for him to tell us anything.”
“So we just stay here?” Her voice rose higher. Kennedy wanted to cover her ears.
“They’ll get it up and going soon enough.”
“Are you cold?” Reuben took off his parka.
“You really don’t need to. I’m all right.” Why did she always do that? Why did she always pretend that she was hanging on better than she really was?
He draped his jacket around her shoulders. She stretched her arms into the soft nylon. His warmth still clung to the inside, wrapping her up like a foam insulator around a lab flask. Like a warm hug on a cold, blustery night.
“Any minute now,” he said. “We’ll be moving again soon.”
His coat smelled like the student union. The student union and all of Reuben’s favorite foods. Pizza, Doritos, plenty of bacon. The faint scent of smoke.
Smoke?
“What is that?” the fur lady screeched as grayish fog filled the car from the bottom up.
The passengers jumped to their feet in a noisy, confused jumble. Everyone spoke at once. Kennedy held her breath. What was going on?
“Where’s it coming from?” someone asked. A few passengers coughed.
“There. I see something over there.” Several phones flashed their lights to a corner of the car where smoke piled more densely around the fur lady’s feet. She let out a little wail and rushed on her high heels to the far side of the T as the smoke billowed up to the level of their waists.
The smell was stronger, a mix of melting plastic and something else that stung Kennedy’s sinuses. Most of the passengers covered their faces with their scarfs or sleeves. Reuben held her arm. How were they supposed to get out? She glanced around, trying to guess what her dad would do in a situation like this. He had safety protocols for any type of crisis — getting kidnapped, getting mugged, getting carjacked. Before she left for Harvard, he even made her role-play what she would do if a professor threatened to lower her grade unless she slept with him. All those ridiculous hypotheticals, all that paranoid crisis training, but he never once thought to tell her what to do if she got stuck on a burning subway car during an electrical outage.
The smoke swirled higher and stung her eyes. She hid her face in the collar of Reuben’s parka. Her empty stomach swirled, and voices flew by her, hardly perceived. The extinguisher … Pull that pin … What if it’s electric … Aim toward the bottom. Shouting. Chaos. Kennedy tried to conserve her breaths. She had to get out.
The strange, almost sweet smell of the fire extinguisher spray. The sound of a dozen passengers sighing as one, but Kennedy’s lungs remained paralyzed in her chest.
No, not again. Not here.
More voices. Relief and fear mingled in their tones. Got it … Still smells like smoke …
She coughed. That wasn’t the extinguisher fluid stinging her lungs.
Still just as bad … More smoke … Out of spray.
“Open the doors!”
Banging on windows. A walking stick swinging overhead. The thud of glass refusing to give.
The man who had been reading the magazine jostled the lever of the emergency exit. Fresh air. Everybody surged toward the opening. Ladies first … Make room … Not all at once …
Hands reaching out, grabbing her shoulders, propelling her forward. All she could think about was getting out of the car. Out of the tunnel.
Watch your step … Gonna be all right.
She hopped off the train, and another passenger held out his hand and helped her to a small sidewalk running alongside the tunnel. Bending over, she coughed until her lungs were clear, thankful the choking didn’t set off another crying fit. She was safe. She was off the T. Everything was going to be just fine.
CHAPTER 7
It took Kennedy a moment or two to adjust to her new surroundings. She was standing on some kind of platform, narrower than a city sidewalk. She touched the wall to steady herself and immediately snatched back her hand, her spine prickling at the thought of all the germs she had just contracted. She reached instinctively for the Germ X in her backpack, only then remembering she had left her bag on the T. She rubbed her grimy fingers together, her nose and cheeks crinkling in disgust.
She stepped farther down the platform. If she had her phone with her, she could have shined some extra light on the path, but of course she had left that behind in her backpack as well. It would be easier to keep her cell in her pocket like every other college student she knew, but the thought of all that radiation sitting right next to her made her skin feel hot and scorched.
Any minute, she expected Reuben to materialize beside her. What was taking him so long? And why didn’t the MBTA keep some kind of emergency lights down here, anyway? It was so dark. She shut her eyes and inhaled. It was all right. She was in a subway tunnel. They had encount
ered some technical difficulties, but the T lines were so old, the cars so decrepit, this was probably a regular occurrence. Maybe the MBTA would give them all free passes for a year or something as recompense.
So much smoke. She hadn’t known a car could fill that fast.
Kennedy took another few steps away from the train. What if the smoke had come from a bomb? What if it exploded? She thought about the action movies she and her dad liked to watch together, how the hero would leap forward as a fireball blasted behind, outlining him in glorious shades of red and orange. The explosion always gave an extra push but never really injured anybody. Maybe a few scrapes, a small bruise if the directors wanted to be gritty. But Kennedy knew the science behind an explosion in an enclosed space like this. It wouldn’t matter if she was five feet away or fifty. She inched down the platform to put more distance between herself and the train. She didn’t see any flames. That was a good sign. When would Reuben come out?
Submerged memories forced their way to the surface of her mind. Handcuffs, the sharp metal digging into her wrist. The ache in her back from spending a whole night chained on the couch. The crawl of her skin in her squalid surroundings. Images of lice and bedbugs and rodents growing to IMAX proportions on her brain’s mental projector. She hurried farther away from the train, picking up speed as her boots clanked against the cement.
She was panting now. She heard the sound of her own breathing but couldn’t control the rate. Cold. Why couldn’t they at least give her a blanket to wrap up in? The feel of a small child shivering next to her, a child far too young to be trapped with her, a child Kennedy could do nothing to help.
She drew in a sharp breath. She was in a subway station, not handcuffed in a cement basement. It was dark because she was in a tunnel, not because her captors had blindfolded her. She was still free. Nobody was keeping her here against her will. She could walk away whenever she wanted. Nobody would point a gun at her or pull a knife to make her stay.