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  This level repose was not new to me. In fact, in grade school, a counselor insisted I be examined due to the administration’s concern over my flat reactions and apparent failure to experience fear. My first-grade teacher was bothered because I didn’t wail or jump, screech or scream—like everyone else did—when a gunman opened fire on our classroom. Instead, as the video surveillance showed, I inspected his jerky hysterics, slicks of sweat, pockmarked complexion, enlarged pupils, frantic eye movements, track-lined arms, and, thankfully, fruitless aim. I recall to this day, the answer was so clear, he was drugged, skittish, high on acid or heroin, or both—yes, I knew the symptoms. Behind the teacher’s desk was her emergency bullhorn on a shelf under the fire alarm, so I walked over to both. Before pulling the alarm, I shouted “AIR RAID” through the horn, in as deep a six-year-old voice I could muster. The meth-head dropped to the ground, cowering in a puddle of himself as he pissed his pants.

  The video, which placed the issue of my evaluation on the front-burner, showed my classmates bawling in huddles, my teacher on her knees imploring God above her, and me atop a stool, trigger-fingering the bullhorn at my hip, and hovering as though directing the mayhem. My pig-tailed head was cocked to the side, my arm with the bullhorn across my baby-fat belly, the other up to my chin, and I had a subtle grin matching the almost wink in my eye, approving of the policemen who pounced upon the culprit.

  Nevertheless, after a battery of tests, the child psychiatrist told my parents I was highly capable of emotion, but also exceptional at suppressing distraction and unproductive thoughts. “A brain scan shows her frontal lobe, which supports reasoning and planning, is larger than normal. 99th percentile. Well actually, frankly, 101 percent, if you ask me,” he said. “She is not a sociopath. She understands and can choose to feel emotion. But she might choose not to, too. Your daughter tells me she has an internal switch that she can turn off or on at any given moment to experience things such as joy, fear, love.” He coughed and said, “ahem,” before continuing. “Look, I’ve never had a patient like this before. But one need look no further than Einstein to understand how much we don’t understand about the limits of the human brain. Some say we have harnessed only a fraction of our potential. Your daughter, well, she’s harnessed something. Whether this is blessed news or a curse, I do not know.” They didn’t know I was listening through the crack in his office door. I recorded every word to the hard drive in my mind.

  The bit about the switch was mostly true. I might have simplified things. It’s more a choice, but since mental choices are difficult to explain, I said switch. In the very least, I was lucky to have such a good doctor. He listened, without judgment. He believed, without skepticism. He had a true faith in medical mysteries. The day I left his care, I flipped a switch and hugged him.

  They studied me a few weeks, wrote some papers, and my parents yanked me back into a somewhat normal world: I returned to first grade and built a lab in the basement.

  Upon Day 3 in captivity—first day out of the van—we began the process of setting up a pattern. Three meals a day, served by him, on that stupid china plate, milk in a white mug, small cup of water, followed by a larger, lukewarm cup of water. After each meal, he would retrieve the tray with the empty plate, mug, and cups and remind me to knock only when I needed the bathroom. If I did not get a response in time, “use the bucket.” I never used the bucket. I never used the bucket for relieving myself, that is.

  From there, our developing process-setting was punctuated by a couple of visitors. Yes, I was blindfolded correctly for visits, so I did not then ascertain their full identities. But after what happened on Day 17, I set out to catalog all of the particulars so as to later exact revenge, not only on my captor, but also on my jail cell visitors. What to do with the people in the kitchen below, however, I did not know. But let me not get ahead of myself just yet.

  My first visitor came on Day 3. Certainly medical, he had cold fingers. I labeled him “The Doctor.” My second visitor came on Day 4, accompanied by The Doctor, who announced, “She is doing well, considering.” In a hushed tone, the second visitor said, “So this is her?” I labeled him “Mr. Obvious.”

  When The Doctor and Mr. Obvious left, The Doctor advised my jailer to keep me calm and to allow me tranquility. But nothing changed to afford me calm or tranquility until the end of Day 4 when I asked for Assets #14, 15, and 16.

  And so, as the light began to fade on my fourth day in captivity, the floorboards again rattled. Through Asset #8, the keyhole, I noted the time, dinner. He opened the door and handed me the tray with the nonsensically-patterned plate, mug of milk, and cup of water. Quiche and bread again.

  “Here.”

  “Thank you.”

  “More water?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Locks door, pipes clang, water runs, he returns: more water. Why, why, why does he do this?

  He turned to leave.

  With head to chest and in the most submissive, insipid voice I could tolerate, I said, “Excuse me. I can’t really sleep and I wonder if this hurts…anyway, maybe if I watched TV, or listened to a radio, or read, or even drew, a pencil with some paper, would maybe…help?”

  I braced myself for a brutal, verbal tirade and even physical violence for my insolence.

  He stared me down, grunted, and left without acknowledging my request.

  About forty-five minutes later, I heard the now familiar floorboards rattle. I figured he was back, as was the established routine, to collect my plate, mug, and cups. However, when he opened the door, resting on his wide chest, he carried an old nineteen-inch television, a yard-sale radio about twelve inches long, a pad of paper tucked under his left arm, and a rather long, plastic school-kid case. The case, pink with two horses on the side, was the kind you buy for the first day of school and lose in a week. I wondered if I was in a schoolhouse. Must be abandoned if I am.

  “Don’t ask for any more shit,” he said, yanking my tray from the bed and causing the empty plate and cups to topple and clatter. On his departure, he slammed the door. Noises. Uncomfortable noises with him.

  Tempering my expectations, I slid the zipper on the pink case, anticipating one dull and stubbed pencil.

  No way. Not only two new pencils, but a twelve-inch ruler, and a pencil sharpener too. The black sharpener had the number “15” on the side. I took immediate stock of this valuable asset, which I labeled, Asset #15, specifically the razor within. Asset #15 presents with its own label. I smiled at the whimsical thought that the sharpener purposefully joined my plot, a faithful soldier reporting for duty, and determined “15” would form at least a portion of the name of my escape plan.

  So as to make my captor feel appreciated for his effort, I plugged in Asset #14, the TV, and pretended to watch. Obviously, I didn’t really care about his precious ego, but these ruses we engineer to trick our enemies, lull and rock them safely in their weak insecurities, until the time comes to spring the trap, pull the cord, and strike with the swift hand of death. Well, maybe not so swift, perhaps a tinge prolonged. He needs to suffer, just a little bit. I unhinged the bucket and used the sharp ends of the handle as a screwdriver.

  Not one creature in the house or in the fields beyond surpassed my consciousness that night. Even the moon shrunk to a sliver of dawn while I worked the whole of Night 4.

  He did not notice the subtle difference in my jail cell upon delivering my breakfast on Day 5, again on the offensive china plate. At lunch, I fought back a giggle when he asked if I wanted more water.

  “Yes, please.”

  He had no idea what lay ahead for him, nor the lengths I would go to impose my brand of justice.

  I don’t care what the news said at the time, I did not run away. Obviously. Why would I have run away? Sure, they were mad. They were furious, but they would support me. They were my parents, and I their only child.

  “But you are an honor student? What are you going to do about school?” My father had asked.

 
; They were even more baffled during the clinic visit when they learned I had hidden my condition for seven months.

  “How can she be seven months pregnant?” Mother said to the obstetrician, even though her voice did not match the way her eyes accepted the undeniable sight of me.

  In reality, I had not merely “gained some weight,” but had grown a perfectly round globe beneath my then swelling breasts. Embarrassed with her own self-delusion, Mother hung her head and sobbed. My father put a tenuous hand on her back, not sure what to do with the woman who rarely shed a tear. The doctor looked at me and pursed his lips, kindly though, and he changed the subject to the near future. “We’ll need to see her again next week. I want to run some tests. Please stop at the receptionist for an appointment.”

  If only I knew then what I know now, I would have been more perceptive and caught the clue in real time. Instead, I was too wrapped in my parents’ disappointment to realize the duplicity behind the receptionist’s glare or the chlorophyll fog surrounding her misplaced presence. But I remember now; I had subconsciously logged this information at the time. As we approached her, the white-haired, tight-bunned woman with green eyes and false pink cheeks addressed only my mother.

  “When did the doctor say she should return?” the receptionist asked.

  “He said next week,” my mother answered.

  My father hovered over the scene, sticking his head into my mother’s space; his legs dovetailed hers—they appeared a two-headed dragon.

  Mother fidgeted with her purse with one hand and opened and closed her other around a non-existent stress ball by her thigh. The receptionist studied her appointment book.

  “How about next Tuesday at two? Oh, wait, she’ll be in school, right? Prospect High?”

  Mother hates unnecessary dialogue. Normally, she would have ignored, even sneered, at the irrelevant question about my high school. Normally, she might answer such a superfluous question with her own biting query, “Does it really matter where she goes?” She is volatile and has no patience for stupidity or people wasting her time. Ill-tempered, highly efficient, particular, methodical, and full of disdain, these are her qualities: she is a trial lawyer. But on that day, she was just a distressed mother, and she hastily answered the question as she fumbled through her date book.

  “Yes, yes, Prospect High. How about three-thirty?”

  “Sure. Let’s put her at three-thirty, next Tuesday.”

  “Thank you.” Mother was only barely listening at this point, and she quickly shuffled me and my father out of the clinic. The receptionist, however, continued to eye us, and I eyed her eyeing us. At the time, I thought she was collecting town gossip about an “unfortunate” teen pregnancy from a “prominent family.”

  She had our address from my records, of course, and just learned that I did not attend any of the local private schools, which meant she knew I lived a block from the public school, which, in turn, meant she could correctly conclude that I walked to school, down a heavily wooded and rural country road. Like a wrapped gift, I presented as the perfect target for this scout. Behind her squinting eyes of cold calculation and her curled hooked nose, she must have set things in motion the second we left the clinic. Perhaps my memory betrays me and makes me imagine this, but in the pictures in my mind, I see her pick up a phone and cover her pink-stained lips to speak. In this picture, her green eyes never lose sight of my return stare.

  Mother most definitely would have noticed my developing condition much sooner, but for the fact that she’d been gone for most of the prior three months, on trial, in the Southern District of New York. She came home one weekend, and I made sure to be “skiing with a friend in Vermont.” My father took the Amtrak once to visit her. I stayed at home, unattended but trusted, to do homework and complete lab experiments in the basement.

  Don’t get this wrong, my mother loves us. We knew, however, my father and I, we’d be better off leaving her be when she was in “trial mode,” a state of war where she became consumed with tunnel vision in her one mission, winning the verdict, which she did 99.8 percent of the time. Good odds. Corporations loved her. Plaintiffs hated her. Investigative units of the DOJ, SEC, FTC, and the United States Attorney General’s Office considered her “the devil incarnate.” The liberal press routinely vilified her, which only served to increase her book of business and solidify her status as a rainmaker. “Wicked,” “unrelenting,” “indefatigable,” “ruthless schemer,” these were the words they used and which she blew up and framed as art for her office walls. Is she wicked? Personally, I find her rather soft.

  My father would not have questioned my developing weight because he sees details only in miniscule and undetectable things, such as quarks and protons. A former Navy Seal-turned-physicist, he has a specialty in medical radiation. At that time in our lives, he worked feverishly on a book he was commissioned to write about the use of radiated balloons to treat breast cancer. As I recall, he, too, became consumed with tunnel vision. My mother in trial mode, my father with a publishing deadline. With this perfect storm of parental absence, my condition remained inconspicuous to their hurried lives. But, this is not about blame. It is about reality. I got myself into my situation. I and another, of course, created my state. And I have never regretted what some might call a “mistake.” I never would, but some might.

  In the car ride home from the clinic, I sat silent in the backseat as long as I could. My parents held hands and consoled each other, without pointing fingers, in the front seat. I assumed Mother ached in her maternal guilt, and I tried to tell her that her career had nothing to do with my predicament. “Mom, I didn’t plan this, but trust me, it would have happened even if you stayed home and baked brownies every day. There is, on average, a .02 percent failure rate with the latex condom, and, well…” I paused because my father audibly cringed, but I continued nonetheless; after all, science is objective. “Biology will find a way, even with the smallest of odds. I’m still getting straight A’s. I don’t take drugs. I’m going to finish school. I just need your help.”

  As expected, I received a litany of predictable lectures about disappointment, how unprepared I was for this responsibility, and how I had made my own life difficult at a time when I should be enjoying my childhood and focusing on finding a college.

  “I just don’t understand why you didn’t come to me sooner—and how you chose to reveal yourself. I, I don’t understand,” Mother said, her eyes weak and dark with a depression I’d never seen in her. It was true, the manner in which I showed her my pregnancy was a bit, well, stark. But let me not get ahead of myself here.

  I didn’t answer her anytime she asked why I hadn’t told her sooner because, frankly, I didn’t know how to answer in a way that would please her. When you often neglect to turn on emotions, you act on facts alone, on practicalities. And the bare truth was, I was factually pregnant and I did not think it practical to disrupt Mother’s trial. I understand this may be hard to understand. Perhaps my story will help to explain, even to myself, my thoughts. My actions and inactions.

  “We love you though, very much. We’ll get through this. We’ll get through this together,” she said. She repeated this mantra, “We’ll get through this,” in mumbles as she coached herself to action over the remainder of the week. And, as she calmed, she went to her safe harbor: scrupulous strategy. At some point, she called her office and said she wouldn’t be back until the following Monday. She collected the appropriate prenatal vitamins and turned the library into a nursery. I did whatever she told me to, relieved and grateful for her support and, in spare moments when I released and tested my fear switch, scared out of my mind.

  On the Monday following the clinic visit, the day before my scheduled follow-up OB/Gyn appointment, I slipped into my lined, black raincoat and grabbed an umbrella before leaving for school. My backpack was stuffed with books, a pair of stretch pants, sports bra, socks, and change of underwear—all needed for an after-school yoga class I had not signed up for. It was a
tiny detail remaining from my months of unintentional deception, one I had neglected to tell my parents, for I was taking yoga on advice from a maternity book I had stolen from the library. Bottom line, to anyone else who didn’t know, it appeared as though I’d left with a change of clothes.

  Nevertheless, I slung my backpack over my shoulders and hunched out the front door, where I stopped. Damn, I forgot the flat tacks and hair dye for art class. Lunch too. I better bring two lunches, so I don’t pass out from exercising. Without closing the front door, I went back to our butcher-block kitchen counter, grabbed the tacks—a mega-pack from my mother’s law firm supply room—and dye and dropped them in my backpack, which I’d thrown on the counter. I then made four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, threw them in too, and, because I didn’t have time to parse everything, I also stuffed a whole canister of peanuts, a bunch of bananas, and a two-liter bottle of water. Look, you try being sixteen and pregnant. You get hungry, okay?

  With the strained parcel on my back and my belly out in front, I looked like a terribly drawn circle with stick legs. I continued on my way, with poor balance given the weight on top, and stepped to our gravel driveway. At the mailbox, for some unknown reason, I was compelled to pause and look back at my house, a brown gambrel, shaded in a pine forest. Red front door. I believe I wanted to see if my parents’ cars were both gone and to confirm they had returned to work—to their regular lives. Perhaps I found security in believing they’d continued their routines despite our familial upheaval.

  At the end of the driveway, I had an equidistant choice of turning left or right: the back entrance of the school to my left and the front entrance to my right. I timed the distance once, going to the left took 3.5 minutes, and going right took 3.8 minutes, door to door. Really, the decision of going left or right landed upon my daily whim. My whim got it wrong on that Monday.