The Never List Read Online Free PDF Page B

mentally, and learn whatever you can. We, my dear, are waiting for our miracle.”
    Miracle . I winced at the word, so contrary was it to everything I believed in. Tracy noticed.
    “Yes, I know, a miracle is not such a great thing to have as your only option, but I have given the matter a great deal of thought, and that’s all we have. All we can do is ready ourselves for it. I have a simple motto: ‘Eat whatever you’re fed, sleep whenever in bed, don’t let him fuck with your head.’” She laughed jaggedly at her own sad joke again before continuing.
    “The most important part of your body right now is your brain . As you will soon see, our enemy’s favorite—not only, but favorite—form of torture is psychological, so you need your mind to work . You have to keep him out of your head. Never tell him anything about your life before. Never.”
    “A Never List,” I whispered, more to myself than to her. “And Jennifer? What will happen to her?” I was finally able to ask the question without becoming hysterical.
    Both of them looked away. Christine, her eyes cast to the floor, whispered something under her breath that I thought I could just make out.
    “Forget her as soon as you can.”

     CHAPTER 5     
    After I read the letter, I spent another three days alone in my apartment. I canceled my shrink visits and didn’t answer the phone. Dr. Simmons left three messages, and Agent McCordy four. I knew they were worried, but I could not explain to them that I was gearing myself up for a major break with my post-traumatic lifestyle, a break I was only halfway ready for myself.
    I didn’t have the courage to tell Dr. Simmons that after ten years of our psychological struggle together—the tears, my long stares off into the distance while she waited patiently, the circles and circles we spun in as we churned through the facts of my life, picking over every memory except the ones I still couldn’t touch, the ones she most wanted to delve into—she couldn’t do anything more for me. We were at a dead end. I needed to do something real.
    After the first year of therapy, I was able to recite the facts ofmy captivity by rote. It was as though they had happened in some alternate universe, to some other person. A litany of terrible things I could mumble out across the room to keep Dr. Simmons at bay. New details whenever the conversation seemed stale, whenever she started demanding more of me.
    It was a history I revealed in isolated images. Me, blindfolded, my feet in chains hanging from the I-clamp bolted to the ceiling. Me, on the table, spread out like an insect for dissection, a catheter running to my bladder, filling me up milliliter by milliliter. Me, in the corner, strapped to a chair with my wrists cuffed behind me, a surgical needle piercing my tongue.
    Facts. Details. Specifics.
    Things that happened to someone else. Someone not here anymore.
    Ostensibly, I was opening up to Dr. Simmons, telling her my darkest secrets. But she always seemed to know that in reality I was pulling away. I could tell the stories, but I couldn’t feel them anymore. They were like poems repeated over and over until all the meaning had drained out of them.
    So for years now we had stood at a stalemate. Hours of sessions wasted, while she waited for me to make a move forward. But now, maybe, that’s what I intended to do.
    On the fourth day I called McCordy. He answered on the first ring.
    “McCordy here.”
    “Are you sitting down?”
    “Car—Sarah, is that you?”
    “It is. Listen, I wanted you to know that I am fine. I read the letter. You were right. Mumbo jumbo. I promise not to freak out like I did before, okay?”
    “So why wouldn’t you answer your phone?” A hint of suspicion sounded in his voice. “A second longer, and we would have sent inthe paramedics. You would not have liked it if we’d had to break down your front door.”
    “Why didn’t you then?” Silence on the end of the line. “You