The Never List

notes drifted to the floor. She leaned down quickly and picked them up before even looking over at me. As she put them back in order and tucked them neatly into a notebook, she turned to me calmly. I noticed that her right hand rested protectively on a small stack of thick books.
    “You startled me.” She said it in a neutral voice, but her eyes clearly expressed displeasure.
    I mumbled an apology as I glanced surreptitiously at the books on the table. Most of them had scientific-sounding names, but one very simple title caught my eye before Adele could put anything on top of it: Coercive Persuasion . When she noticed me studying the spines, without looking, she turned them to face the back of the room. Only then did she seem to relax, motioning for me to take the seat next to her.
    “Not the best place to chat.” She spoke quietly but not in a whisper, as though the library’s rules didn’t quite apply to her. “But what happened to you last night? I was worried.”
    “You know, I just needed some air. That place was a little overwhelming.” I tried, unsuccessfully, to force out a laugh.
    “Sounds like a panic attack. Do you take anything?”
    The look in her eyes was familiar though I hadn’t seen it in a while: curiosity and professional interest, masked as actual concern.
    That first year out of the cellar I had tried to be helpful to the psychological community while they ostensibly tried to be helpfulto me. It had been one long blur of sessions, meetings, and examinations. I knew this look. It was the look of someone piecing together her peer-reviewed article in her head. Here I was again, someone’s thesis. And I didn’t like it one bit.
    “I’m fine. No need to worry. Thanks for taking me there, actually. It was tough, but I think it gave me some good … insights.”
    “You really shouldn’t be driving if you feel an attack coming on. I could have given you a ride.”
    She paused, looking at me with that same penetrating gaze I recognized from Dr. Simmons. Studied, practiced, manipulative. I knew what it signaled. She was about to go in for the kill.
    “What are you really doing, Sarah? You don’t actually think you are going to find a body, do you? Are you exploring your past? Trying to make sense of what happened to you?”
    Her tone was patronizing, and I felt an all-too-familiar surge of resistance building up inside me. I imagined it as a wall forming between us, rising up brick by brick. That’s what years of cognitive therapy gets you. There we were in battle, swords drawn, in some centuries-old feud of good versus evil. Subject versus object.
    She shifted a bit, leaning forward. She must have thought I wouldn’t be able to detect the eagerness in her face. I wanted to see where she was taking this, though, so I decided to play along.
    “Look,” she began, “I hope this doesn’t sound strange, but I’ve been thinking about something. I wonder if, as long as you are here anyway, you wouldn’t mind participating in a study. It really wouldn’t take much of your time. It wouldn’t interrupt your search. Just a few interview sessions. Your case is unusual, of course, and there has never been much of a sample set for people who have survived your type of ordeal. A few years ago I worked on the design for a victimological study, and—”
    “Victimological?”
    “Just what it sounds like, the study of victims. To help us understand not only the recovery process but also to learn whether there are specific psychological traits that can be used to develop a victim typology for a specified crime.”
    “Victim typology? As in, whether I was the ‘type’ of person to be abducted?”
    “Not exactly, but you know, we can study patterns of behavior, activities, locations—that sort of thing—to develop models for characterizing those who might be ‘victim-prone,’ as they say.”
    I heard her voice continue to drone on, and I saw her lips moving clearly in front of me, but my mind could no longer make out what she was saying. The phrase “victim-prone” was echoing in my brain, and I thought surely the heat I felt on my face was visible as a red rage. The image of her face swam in front of me. I was appalled, but even then, even with my entire body set against her in that moment, I tried to keep my expression neutral.
    So that’s what they do here in these big universities, I thought. They sit back and figure out whether you did something unknowingly to nurture catastrophe