The Never List

almostautomatically, executed our protective strategies with a military precision and focus, every day a continuous safety drill. Every activity had a three-point check, a rule, and a backup plan. We were on our guard. We were careful.
    That night was no different. Before we had even arrived on campus, we had researched which car service in town had the best record for accidents, and we’d set up an account. We had it billed directly to our credit cards just in case we ever ran out of cash or had our wallets stolen. “Never be stranded” was number thirty-seven on the list, after all. Two months into the semester, the dispatch guy recognized our voices. We only had to give him a pickup address, and moments later we would be safely shuttled back to our dormitory fortress.
    That night we went to a private party off campus—a first for us. Things were just getting going at around midnight when we decided we’d pushed the limit far enough. We called the service, and in record time, a beat-up black sedan arrived. We noticed nothing out of the ordinary until we were in the car with our seat belts fastened. There was a funny smell, but I shrugged it off, deciding it was within the realm of the expected for a local livery company. A couple of minutes into the ride, Jennifer dozed off with her head on my shoulder.
    That memory, the last of our other life, is preserved in my imagination in a perfect halo of peace. I felt satisfied. I was looking forward to life, a real life. We were moving on. We were going to be happy.
    I must have drifted off too because when I opened my eyes, we were in total darkness in the backseat, the lights of the town replaced by the dim glow of stars. The black sedan was hurtling forward on the now-deserted highway, with only the faint trace of the horizon ahead. This was not the way home.
    At first I panicked. Then I remembered number seven on theNever List: Never panic. In a flash, my mind retraced our steps that day, pointlessly trying to figure out where we had made a mistake. Because there had to have been a mistake. This was not our “fate.”
    Bitterly, I realized we had made the most basic and fundamental error of all. Every mother taught her child the same simple safety rule, the most obvious one on our own list: Never get in the car.
    In our hubris, we’d thought we could cheat it—just a little—with our logic, our research, our precautions. But nothing could change the fact that we’d failed to follow the rule absolutely. We’d been naïve. We hadn’t believed other minds could be as calculating as ours. We hadn’t counted on actual evil as our enemy rather than blind statistical possibility.
    There in the car, I drew three deep breaths and looked at Jennifer’s sweet sleeping face for a long, sad moment. I knew as soon as I acted that, for the second time in her young life, she would wake up into a life utterly transformed. Finally, with great dread, I took her shoulder in my hand and shook it gently. She was bleary-eyed at first. I held my finger to my lips as her eyes focused and she began to process our situation. When I saw the look of realization and fear dawning on her face, I whimpered almost audibly, but stifled the sound with my hand. Jennifer had been through too much and suffered so hard. She could not survive this without me. I had to be strong.
    Neither of us made a sound. We had trained ourselves never to act impulsively in an emergency situation. And this was definitely an emergency.
    Through the thick, clear plastic partition dividing us from the driver, we could see very little of our abductor: dark brown hair, black wool coat, large hands on the wheel. On the left side of his neck, partially hidden by his collar, was a small tattoo that I couldn’t quite make out in the dark. I shivered. The rearview mirror was angled up so we could see almost nothing of his face.
    As quietly as we could, we tested the door handles. Safety-locked. The window mechanisms were disabled as well. We were trapped.
    Jennifer slowly leaned down and picked up her bag from the floor, keeping her eyes on me as she rummaged in it silently. She pulled out her pepper spray. I shook my head, knowing it was of no use to us in our sealed-off space. Still, we felt safer having it.
    I dug into my own purse at my feet. I found an identical canister and a small hand-held alarm with a panic button. We would have to wait it out, in silence, in terror, with our shaking hands clutching our pepper