The Never List

sprays and sweat beading our foreheads despite the October chill outside.
    I scanned the interior of the car, trying to come up with a plan. And then I noticed it. There were small open air vents in the partition on my side, but those in front of Jennifer were connected to some kind of homemade metal and rubber contraption. Valves were connected to a pipe that disappeared from our view into the front floorboard. I sat very still, gaping at this intricate mechanism, my mind racing but unable to grasp a coherent thought for a moment. Finally, it sank in.
    “We’ll be drugged,” I said at last, whispering to Jennifer. I looked down at the pepper spray in my hand with regret, knowing I’d never be able to use it. I stroked it almost lovingly, then let it drop to the floor, as I stared back up at the source of our impending doom. Jennifer followed my glance and registered at once what it meant. There was no hope.
    He must have heard me speak, for just seconds later, a slight hissing sound told us we were about to get very sleepy. The air vents on my side slid shut. Jennifer and I held hands tightly, our other hands gripping the outer sides of the faux leather seat as the world slipped away.
    When I came to, I was in the dark cellar that was to be my homefor more than three years. I roused myself from the drugs slowly, trying to focus my eyes in the sea of gray that swam before them. When they finally cleared, I had to shut them tightly again to stop the panic that threatened to take over. I waited ten seconds, twenty, thirty, and opened again. I looked down at my body. I was stripped naked and chained to the wall by my ankle. A chill prickled up my spine, and my stomach lurched.
    I was not alone. There were two other girls down there, emaciated, naked, and chained to the walls beside me. In front of us was the box. It was a simple wooden shipping crate of some sort, maybe five feet long by four feet high. Its opening was angled away from me, so I couldn’t tell how it was secured. There was a dim bulb hanging from the ceiling over us. It swayed just slightly.
    Jennifer was nowhere to be seen.

CHAPTER 2
    Thirteen years later, anyone who didn’t know me—and let’s face it, no one did—might think I was living the dream life of a single girl in New York City. They might think everything had turned out all right for me in the end. I had moved on. Gotten over it. Survived the trauma.
    Even all that early work in probability had paid off, and I had a stable, if not very glamorous, job as an actuary with a life insurance company. I found it somehow fitting that I now worked for a company that made bets on death and disaster. Not only that, but they let me work from home. A virtual paradise.
    My parents couldn’t understand why I had moved to New York City so quickly in the first place, while I was still recovering and especially considering all my fears. They didn’t understand how much safer it felt to have crowds of people right outside my doorat all times. In New York City, I tried to explain, there is always someone to hear you scream. And better still were the glorious advantages of a doorman building in a city that never slept. There I was, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, surrounded by millions, yet no one could reach me if I didn’t want them to.
    Bob at the front desk would buzz up, and he knew that if I didn’t answer, it meant I didn’t want to see anyone—no matter what. He would bring me my food deliveries personally, because he felt sorry for the crazy woman in 11G, and because I gave him triple what everyone else did at the holidays. In fact, I could stay home all day, every day, and have every meal delivered and every errand outsourced. I had raging Wi-Fi and a premium cable television package. There was nothing I couldn’t do from the privacy of the well-appointed junior six my parents had helped me buy.
    The first years out had been madness, literally and figuratively, but thanks to five sessions a week with Dr. Simmons, the therapist they’d provided for us, I had been able to go back to college, get a job, and function passably in the real world. But as time went on and the relationship with my shrink stagnated, I discovered I couldn’t move beyond a certain point.
    And then I went into reverse. Retrenching. Slowly, imperceptibly. Until I found it harder and harder to leave my apartment at all. I simply preferred to stay safely in my own cocoon in the midst of a world I perceived as