3.
Wren
No way to escape.
I’m trapped.
It’s that guy, I know it’s him even though I can’t see his face, and he’s got me pinned against the wall. We’re not outside in a parking lot, though, we’re in some sort of container, with slick walls and a slippery floor and I’m trying to keep my balance but I can’t. The feeling that I’m about to fall is constant, but the falling part never comes. There is a pervading sense of sickening dread and nothing I can do to escape it. There’s no one coming to save me this time, and I can’t even seem to move my arms or legs. My brain is screaming at my limbs to move but they won’t so all I can do is stand there and wait for him to—
My eyes flew open, heart in my throat, pulse racing. The sheets were a tangled, sweaty mess. The dull gray light seeping in through the closed blinds told me it was early morning, but late enough that I could get up. There was no going back to sleep after those sorts of dreams, anyway. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, though Dr. Mike said it didn’t matter how many times you had a recurring nightmare; it could feel just as scary as the first time you had it.
Awake, though, I could steel myself to the outside world. This didn’t mean closing myself off or being rude for no reason; it meant slipping on that irreverent, slightly sarcastic personality that I felt somehow protected me, that kept anyone from getting too close. At the same time, guys seemed to find it appealing, so there was never any shortage of dates, though I refused to ever let them go past the first one, no matter how good that first date had gone.
And if I wanted to, it’d be easy enough to be completely swallowed up by work, to not have time for anything else. I didn’t need to be there first thing in the morning; my line chef—Shaun, was fully capable of opening the place every morning, without requiring my presence—but I liked being there, and I’d whip up a few batches of muffins, and they’d be hot and fresh right out of the oven just as the first customers started coming in.
It wasn’t like going back to sleep was an option anyway. Even if I’d wanted to, I didn’t—it was better to be tired than to have another one of those nightmares.
The tiredness was taking its toll, though. I knew it when Lena gave me a concerned look after the breakfast rush was over. I was wiping down the counter, but she came over and took the rag from me.
“You go sit down for a minute,” she said.
“What? Why? I’m fine.”
“You look exhausted. You
look like you’re not even going to be able to make it through lunch. Sit. Let
me do this.”
Normally, I would’ve insisted that everything was fine and I didn’t need to
sit, but I gave in this time. I left the rag and sat on the other side of the
counter.
“You’ve been having those nightmares again, haven’t you,” Lena said. She reached over and poured me a big cup of coffee.
I nodded, even though they’d never actually stopped—they’d been happening all along, I just decided to stop telling her about them.
“Maybe you need to get away from this place,” she said. “Not that I want to see you go, but if something like that ever happened to me, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to stick around in the same town afterward.”
“The thought has crossed my mind,” I admitted, though I’d long ago made the decision to stay. I loved Carmel. I’d loved this town ever since middle school, when we’d taken a field trip and stopped at a little café for lunch. The state highway ran right through Carmel, and there were the usual fast food restaurants and chain stores. But as you moved further away from the highway, things took on a much quainter feel, and by the time you reached downtown proper, it was like you had taken a step back in time, with the white clapboard general store, the one-room post office, the gold-gilded movie theater with its faded marquee. I’d wanted to live here ever since then. Perhaps not the grandest of ambitions, but it was what I’d always wanted.
“I don’t really have anywhere else to go,” I told Lena. “It’s not like I’d go back home. I shouldn’t even call it that, really.”
She gave me a puzzled look. “I thought you said you got along pretty well with your folks.”
“I do. But that doesn’t mean I want to go back there. There’s a reason you’ve never met my parents, you know.”
“I have wondered why they never visited.”
“They’re afraid. They don’t leave the town if they don’t have to. Honestly, I don’t think they’ve left in over ten years.”
Lena widened her eyes. “You’re exaggerating,” she said.
I frowned, doing the math mentally in my head. “No, that’s pretty accurate, actually. They’re both just fearful people. They’ve always been that way, but it got even worse after this one time my mom and I went to Denver. I must’ve been . . . ten, I think. It was around Christmas and we were going to see the Nutcracker. It was a big deal, us going into the city. It took us a while to get there and my mom didn’t like driving long distances. We were even going to spend the night in a hotel. I was so excited. We had to stop for gas just outside of Denver, and I asked my mom if I could go with her and pick out a snack when she went inside to pay for the gas. I was standing in the front of all the candy when this guy came in wearing a mask, holding a gun, shouting for the clerk to empty the register. There was one other person in there, besides us and the clerk, and he made us all get down on the floor on our stomachs. People had tracked a bunch of snow and mud and slush in and I remember how it felt soaking through the front of my dress. My mother was crying the whole time. The guy got the money from the cash register and left, the police came, no one was hurt. But we turned around and headed right back home.”
“Oh my god.” Lena’s hand went to her mouth. “Wren, I had no idea. That’s terrible.”
“And that’s why I never told my parents what happened. They don’t even have a computer, so it’s not like they’d ever find out otherwise.”
“But that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t welcome you back home.”
“I know. I know I’m always welcome back there, and that they’d be happy to have me. But I don’t want to live in fear like they do. And I like it here. No, more than like it—I love this place. This is like my home. I’m not going to let one bad experience chase me out. No way.”
“Well, I am happy to hear that part, anyway,” Lena said. “I like having you around. I wouldn’t want you to go anywhere.”
I didn’t want to go anywhere, either, yet I also hated that this thing had happened to me that I couldn’t seem to forget. I wanted to move past it, I wanted to be free of it, I wanted it to not affect me the way it did.