As a human being, the idea of children as victims horrifies me. As a parent, I fear for the safety of my children, of all children, against predators who seek to hurt them. I wanted to empower Andrew, and so I did. He is smart victim, proactive and cunning, cool in the face of horror. He is this story’s hero.
But to stop there would be to fail to acknowledge the horror that remains in the lives and minds of victims of such abuse. We get a glimpse of this in Andrew after his escape and recovery. It leaves us with some untidy loose ends.
Real life is like that.
‡
THE PROMISES WE KEEP
Ronnie Seldano slid her fingers into the back pocket of Paul’s jeans, right up to the crook of her thumb, and sighed with happiness. Paul looked over and smiled back at her. “Almost there,” he said, before his gaze turning back to the front of the bus.
It was packed, more than usual for a weekend, but outside it was raining and there was a popular festival downtown, so it wasn’t any surprise all the seats were taken. Ronnie didn’t mind. As long as Paul was with her, she was happy.
He shifted his body against the pole he was leaning against, and repositioned his backpack, making sure it didn’t hit Ronnie. She was a head shorter than he was, and he was constantly checking on her, making sure she was safe from all the ‘tall people’ around her.
Sometimes it bugged her, being reminded that she was so short. It wasn’t Paul’s fault he was so tall for his age or that she was so short, but sometimes it felt like he made too much of an effort to protect her.
“You okay?”
She nodded.
The backpack now safely tucked away on his opposite shoulder, they smiled at each other once more, then turned their attention back to the people swaying around them as the bus pulled away from the stop.
“One more,” Ronnie said to his elbow, and Paul nodded. He lifted his backpack again. He had narrow, sloping shoulders and the backpack was constantly sliding off them. The gesture was more habit than conscious; he barely noticed he was doing it. Except when she was standing next to him.
“Hungry?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“I got a Twix somewhere in here.”
She shook it again, once, quick-like. She was looking at a boy sitting down in the row beside them, his sloppy sneakers pulled up onto the seat and getting the fabric wet and dirtier than it already was. He was totally engrossed in a game on his handheld player.
Ronnie frowned as she looked around, now noticing the half dozen or so other kids who refused to give up their seats to older folks. It almost embarrassed her to be in the same generation.
Someone rang the bell for the next stop. She shifted her gaze.
“You got the tickets, Paul?”
Paul raised his eyebrow and made a face.
“Just asking,” she said.
“You saw me print them off. I put them in my backpack right after.”
“Okay.”
The boy with his sneakers on the seat shouted something and jerked. His elbow hit the woman sitting next to him, but he didn’t apologize. He leaned forward in rapt concentration as his thumbs viciously attacked the player’s control pad. His feet thumped to the floor. After a moment, he leaned back again and lifted his feet back up onto the cushion.
“Aw, sonofabitch,” he uttered through his teeth.
The woman rolled her eyes, catching Ronnie’s gaze. Ronnie shrugged and shook her head.
The bus slowed, then came to a rocking stop.
“Let’s go, Ronnie.”
She didn’t move, even when the doors hissed open and people shuffled around her. She kept her gaze on the boy, willing him to notice her. She wanted him to see how pissed she was, how disappointed. But he didn’t. He just kept playing his stupid game.
“Ronnie—”
“Coming.”
She wanted to hit the kid.
They stopped in the bagel shop for lunch and, after receiving their orders, found a table by the window. Outside, the rain had stopped and the sun had broken through the clouds. The air was still full of wetness: drips from the trees and canopies overhead, steam rising from the drying sidewalks, cars spraying gutter water as they passed, their tires sounding sticky on the roads.
“You okay?” Paul asked. “You seem awfully quiet.”
Ronnie had been watching the people walking by. The sidewalks were crowded with bodies, some hurrying, some strolling. They knitted themselves through each other, the faster ones passing the slower, the slower eddying around those just standing. An intricate knitting of pedestrians, for the most part both conscious and yet oblivious of each other. She was thinking about the boy on the bus, a flaw in this otherwise wondrous tapestry of humanity.
She sighed and smiled at Paul. “Yeah.”
But it seemed to her that that the fabric of their coexistence was fraying. Maybe it was always like this and she was just starting to notice it more lately. Or maybe she was just getting old. In any case, she almost wished everyone could know the sort of connection she and Paul shared; she wished that sort of connection was more pervasive.
She lifted her ham and cheese bagelwich and chewed thoughtfully. Paul was looking at her funny.
“What?” she asked around her mouthful.
Paul shrugged and bent over his own meal, a smile touching the corners of his mouth and eyes.
They’d known each all their lives, had been in nearly half of each other’s classes since as far back as she could remember. Paul Lehane just been another boy, someone she’d never really noticed all that much, someone she’d never really spoken to. He wasn’t anything like her at all.
She was into black leather and spikes—not Goth, but not heavy metal, either—and he was geeky chic—not dweeb, but not super popular, either. They occupied the same universe, but the orbits of their worlds had never intersected.
But then, last year, even before they’d been paired up in biology class for the pig dissections, she’d begun to notice him noticing her. That day, as Mr. Lambert talked about assigning partners, Paul’s eyes found hers, almost as if he’d had some sort of precognitive awareness that they were going to be matched up. She’d interpreted the look on his face as trepidation—she was, after all, a popularity poison pill.
Sure enough, Mr. Lambert paired them up.
To be honest, she didn’t want to be Paul’s partner, either. She was sure he might throw up or faint during the dissection. In fact, he’d done none of those things; it was she who’d passed out.
Paul had tackled the dissection with a grim seriousness that she found disarming at first. Everything went relatively smoothly until they’d gotten to the uterus and opened it up and found it was full of tiny, dead piglets the length of her thumb.
The next thing she remembered was being flat on her back on the cold floor with her head in Paul’s lap and wet towel on her forehead. Her concerned classmates were standing in a circle above her. They, in turn, were circled by the less-concerned, more amused classmates, who chortled their delight amongst themselves despite Mr. Lambert’s disapproval. But it was Paul’s face she saw, the concern in his eyes and the slight grin on his lips that conveyed to her the message not to worry, that everything was going to be all right.
She hadn’t been able to get him out of her mind after that.
She found herself writing his name on her papers, on her book covers, on her jeans. She dreamed about him at night and in the middle of dinner. She didn’t know what to do; she’d never had a boyfriend before. She’d been perfectly happy not to have one, and now that she wanted one, the pain deep inside her was almost too much.
And yet she wouldn’t want to have given it up for anything.
She wanted badly to touch him, to feel his touch again. For the first time in her life, she could understand those girls in the stories who pined away for their lost loves. She felt like she had recently discovered that she was missing a piece of herself, and the piece was named Paul.
&nb
sp; “You’ve got it bad,” her best—and only—friend, Tanya Kelty told her one day.
“Got what bad?”
“Crush.”
Ronnie sighed. There was no sense denying it. “It’s that obvious?”
Tanya reached over and pulled up the sleeve of Ronnie’s sweatshirt and rotated her arm, exposing what she’d written there. Ronnie jerked her arm back.
“Why don’t you ask him out?”
“Me?” she’d practically squeaked. “He doesn’t even know I exist.” It was a stupid thing to say, especially given what had happened two weeks earlier in bio class. How could he not know she existed? “Anyway, look at him. Look at me. We’re like oil and water.”
Tanya smiled. “Yeah, and oil and water makes salad dressing, without which, I might add, nobody would ever eat salad.”
Ronnie stuck her finger in her mouth and gagged.
In the end, they’d gotten together. The exact details surrounding how it happened were forgettable, but suffice it to say, it had been a little awkward at first, if only because Paul was just as inexperienced in dating as Ronnie was, as just as smitten with her as she was with him.
She remembered the first time she’d brought him to the house. Her father had insisted on meeting him and thought the two might get to know each other during a Mets game. But Paul didn’t watch sports and ended up pretty much sitting quietly on the couch while her father alternately cheered and jeered, except for during the commercials, when he recapped whatever great or horrible play had just occurred. There was nothing for Ronnie to do but peek in on them every so often and offer a sympathetic shrug.
When the game ended—unfortunately with the Mets losing by two runs and leaving her father in a sour mood—he’d turned on Paul, as if Paul had been responsible for the game’s outcome.
“So, you want to date my Veronica, do you?”
“Ronnie means a lot to me, sir. Yes.”
She watched her father size Paul up before saying, “If you ever do anything to hurt her, I swear I’ll personally rip your fingernails out myself.”
And Paul, bless him, had had the presence of mind to answer, “If she ever gets hurt because of me, I’ll rip them out myself.”
Her father had stared at Paul for a moment before suddenly bursting out in laughter. He slapped Paul on the back and looked over at the doorway where Ronnie was standing. “I like this guy!”
Afterward, walking him home, she asked why he’d said what he had. What she left unsaid was whether he meant it.
They were holding hands and he’d turned to her and said, “I don’t know what it is about you, Ronnie, but it feels like I’ve been looking for you my entire life—except I didn’t know I was looking. And the strange thing about is, you’ve been right there in front of me the whole time.”
She remembered her face had felt red hot right then. She’d slapped his arm and called him corny, but the truth of the matter was, it was exactly the same way she felt about him.
As the weeks passed and turned into months, their attachment grew stronger, their connection ever more solid.
Then, last month, out of the blue, she’d said it: “I love you, Paul.”
She’d been wanting to say it for…well, it seemed like forever. She’d felt like if she didn’t say it, it would come bursting out of her anyway.
And he had looked at her with this look in his eyes that spoke of so many things and there just weren’t enough words or time to say them. He’d taken her face in his hands and gently kissed her.
It should’ve made her feel secure, but instead she’d suddenly been overcome by uncertainty—not that he was going to not say the same thing back to her, but that he actually would. She feared that when he did, it would only be because she had said it first and so he felt obligated to repeat it back to her. And afterward, there would always be this doubt inside of her that he really didn’t feel the same way.
“Ronnie,” he said, his voice so quiet she almost felt him saying it rather than speaking it, “I promise you, I’ll always be here for you, right here by your side.”
It was yet another example of how corny Paul could be—how could he promise something like that?—but for Ronnie, in that particular moment, it was the most perfect thing for him to say, because she knew then that when he did tell her he loved her, it would be because he wanted to say it. Because he meant it.
And he finally had, just last night. And there was no doubt in her mind that that’s the way he truly felt.
“Not hungry?”
Ronnie blinked. The memory of the evening fluttering away from her, but leaving in place the warmth that had infused her body for the past sixteen hours.
“Just thinking about last night,” she said.
Paul’s face flushed, but he smiled and didn’t look away.
She picked up her bagel with its one bite taken out of it and poked her finger through the schmear in the middle. She held it up to her face and peeked through the opening at him, drawing it closer to her face until she could see his whole face and nothing else. He winked at her, then reached over and nudged her bagel with his finger so that some of the cream cheese got on her face.
“Hey!”
“Got something here,” he said, pointing to his cheek. Then he took his thumb and wiped it off hers. Any excuse to touch. Ronnie didn’t complain.
They finished their lunches and went back outside. The clouds had regathered and the sky was a metallic silver-gray and threatening rain again. Hand-in-hand, they made their way down the sidewalk, stopping occasionally to look through a store window or wander inside.
They eventually arrived at the Cineplex where a movie was playing that they’d both wanted to see. Paul pulled out the tickets he’d bought earlier on-line and they went inside. There were only a dozen or so other people already seated in the theater. They made their way to the back and sat down.
Paul reached over and took her hand. Out of the corner of her eye, Ronnie could watch his face while he studied the ads on the screen. He must’ve sensed her looking, because he smiled and squeezed her hand.
“Paul?”
He turned his head.
“I’ll never leave you. No matter what.
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “I’m going to hold you to that.”
† † †
The next morning, Ronnie was running late and missed the school bus. Her stepmother drove her in, and she arrived with only a few minutes to spare before classes started.
As she hurried through the quickly thinning hallways, she had this strange sensation that people were watching her, staring. She didn’t know why, or even if it wasn’t just her imagination. She patted her hair and checked her face in the tiny mirror in her locker, but there were no embarrassing zits or boogers, and her hair looked like it did any other time, which was somewhat plainish. Even her clothes weren’t anything unusual for her.
A group of cheerleaders standing by the water fountain glanced over at her as she passed them. She’d never spoken to these girls and had never really attracted their attention before, but today they quieted as she hurried by, bowing their heads and whispering conspiratorially and glancing at her out of the corners of their eyes. She tried to ignore them, but she was feeling even more self-conscious.
She saw the familiar form of Frank Taucher bending over at his locker, his head buried inside it looking like he was trying to find something and not succeeding. He suddenly stood up and slammed the locker shut. His eyes caught hers and widened. He quickly looked away, then scurried off without saying anything.
Her homeroom was down the hallway and around the corner from the assembly room, and as she made her way there, other students she knew only by acquaintance reacted as if she were infected by some horrible disease. At least, that’s the impression she got seeing them.
She slipped into her homeroom just as the bell rang and hurried to her seat near the back. The inte
rcom clicked on and the students all stood for the Pledge. This was followed by the morning announcements, which Ronnie ignored. She put her head down on her arms and closed her eyes and tried to catch a few minutes more of sleep.
All last night she’d tossed and turned in her bed, restless for some unknown reason. She remembered waking up at one point with her heart racing and breathing as if she’d just run a race. But the dream she’d been having fled from her like smoke in a brisk wind, and all she’d been left with was a sense of fear and anguish and a longing she couldn’t describe.
As a child, she’d had nightmares, terrible, frightening visions that haunted her sleep. This was back when her parents were getting a divorce, and so she’d been told that it was the stress of the family breaking apart that was causing her sleep problems. In fact, once the settlement was reached and her parents started being civil to each other again, once they’d all settled into a pattern of parental visits, the nightmares stopped.
She wondered what might’ve stressed her out enough for the dreams to return.
She became aware of the principal talking when she heard the words “grief counseling,” and she raised her head. Once more, she was confused by the glances she met from a few of her classmates. Her first thought was that something bad had happened to someone, and an image of Tanya came to mind. She hoped she was wrong. She liked Tanya.
The bell rang before the principal was finished speaking and the students began to stand and prepare to go to their first classes while their homeroom teacher tried vainly to get them to sit back down until the announcements were finished. A few students did, but then the intercom clicked off and they all began once more to shuffle to the door.
Ronnie stood and stretched. She was about to grab her backpack off the floor when Liz Baker popped up beside her and without saying a word gave her a hug. Ronnie didn’t know what to do, so she just stood there until Liz released her. The girl gave her a quick look, and Ronnie could see that there were tears in her eyes. Liz hurried away.
Insomnia: Paranormal Tales, Science Fiction, & Horror Page 24