The Never List

turning on the lights.
    Eventually my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room, and I could vaguely make out the shapes of the furniture. I stared at the mirror across from me, my outline a visible but darkened shadow. A familiar friend, my only friend. I could pretend my reflection was Jennifer’s ghost. I often talked to her, though she never answered, just like the years in the box.
    Tonight I just looked at her for a long time, until I finally got up and walked over to the mirror, where I traced her image with my fingertip. The only other human I would dare touch. Who was the lucky one here? I wondered. Jennifer didn’t have to be alone anymore, while I was here, locked in my own box, a solitary figure unable to let anyone in. Sealed up as tight as a drum, with nothing but phobias and paranoia to guide me. Broken. Unfixable. Trapped.

CHAPTER 22
    A few days later Tracy and I flew into Birmingham. From there we rented a car and drove for hours down a four-lane highway, until we exited into the heart of small-town America, with its disjointed mix of farmers’ co-ops, half-deserted strip malls, and VFW posts. Tracy seemed relaxed, happy to be back in the South on her home turf.
    Maybe it was her good mood that enabled her to tolerate my many eccentricities. The way I jumped when she slammed the trunk of the car shut. The methodical process by which I counted my bags, checked for my phone, double-checked the credit cards in my wallet, secured my seat belt, and pulled it three times to confirm it was working properly. The way I was a backseat driver, nervously eyeing all the other drivers as though we were in a derby race and they were out to knock us off the road.
    I was grateful she chose to find it amusing, because I could onlyimagine how annoying it must be to travel with me. But I knew if I didn’t use those coping mechanisms, as Dr. Simmons would call them, my anxiety would ratchet up, then look for a place to land. I needed to calm myself by running through my lists. The oven is off, the front door is locked, the alarm is set.
    June in Alabama was more than I had bargained for. It was hot and humid, of course. That much I had expected. But the weight of the humidity pressed down on you so hard, you wanted to burrow into the earth to escape it. I cranked the car’s air-conditioning to high, just as Tracy turned up the volume on the radio, I supposed to avoid talking to me.
    Our plan was to drive directly to Sylvia’s parents’ house. They lived in the small town of Cypress Junction, in the southeast corner of the state, near Selma.
    When we finally reached the town, we could tell it was dying. The main street was lined with quaintly faded redbrick Depression-era buildings, which had nothing but To L EASE signs in the windows. There was one bank in the center of town, and we passed a post office, the town hall, and a single chain drugstore. No parking lot had more than two cars in it. A small restaurant displayed a placard declaring it was “open,” but through the windows you could see chairs flipped over onto tables. The lights were out.
    “What do people here do for a living?” I said, as I stared out at the empty buildings.
    “The ambitious ones make meth. The others take it. Or maybe work at the fast-food joints in the ‘new’ part of town. Welcome to the rest of America.”
    We turned a corner and drove out onto a large bypass. It was deserted, but Tracy assured me it would be busy on Fridays because it led straight down to the Gulf Coast beaches.
    We followed our GPS’s directions until we reached a brick ranch house in the middle of rolling fields, a mix of cotton and grazing.We pulled into the driveway, which was nothing more than a reddish, sandy dirt path. As I stepped out of the car, the sun blazed down on me again, and I wished I’d worn something even lighter than my gray cotton pants and white linen button-down.
    Before I took the first step, Tracy shouted, “Watch out!” I looked down and saw an anthill seven times bigger than any I had ever seen in my life. It was a foot high. I leaned over to study the swarming insects, frantic with their communal life, some carrying little white bits, some stopping to connect with their peers with a swift touch before moving on.
    “Fire ants,” said Tracy. I grimaced and stepped carefully around the hill.
    We hadn’t called ahead, so we didn’t know if Sylvia’s parents would be home. We knew they were farmers, though, and as Tracy said,