PANIC

PROLGUE - ROOK

DAY 1,110 in Captivity

Six Months Ago

Wayne, Illinois

Thirty-one days.

That’s how long it takes my face to heal.

I watch the girl in the mirror, looking for marks. She tilts her head this way and that, lifts her chin, stretches her neck for any sign of fingertip-shaped bruises, and then she sighs.

They are all gone. I can see a tiny scar on the edge of my lower lip, but it’s not as bad as it could’ve been if Jon hadn’t rigged up a rudimentary butterfly bandage so he didn’t have to take me to the hospital. It should’ve been stitched, but it wasn’t.

My pack is waiting on the floor of the bathroom. I wasn’t sure if today would be the day. I tried last week but there were still a few purple splotches on the skin under my eye and the lip was scabbed.

It’s been torture waiting to heal. And I kept thinking—what if he does it again? Before I heal? Then I’ll be stuck here even longer.

But enough of that. It’s healed now and I have an appointment. I take one more look in the mirror and give myself a little pep talk. “You’re going to live, Rook. You’re going to live. You might not have the best life, but it will be better than this one. No matter how bad it is at first. Things will get better.”

I really believe it too. Before all this mess with Jon—that’s what he calls it, the mess—I was what some people might call an optimist. A half-full kind of girl.

I think I can be that girl again.

I think I can.

My suitcase contains all my worldly possessions. It’s not much really, just some clothes and trinkets. A few softcover books I never finished, and some crap that meant something to me at one time or another, but no longer matters.

I just want to leave it all behind. Every bit of it. But I don’t want Jon to have anything of me. I want to leave this house and leave no trace of myself.

It’s impossible, I’m not delusional. I’m all over this place. I picked out the dishtowel hanging on the stove. I found the dishes at an antique store not far from here. I’m the only person to ever have used the oven. And I’m leaving behind an entire room of things I can’t bear to look at.

But I can’t change any of that. I can’t erase the imprint I’m leaving here.

All I can do is remove the few very personal items I have and stuff them in this suitcase.

Jon left the car keys today. And a list of errands he wanted me to do. Go to the store, buy his favorite foods, pick up a package at the post office—he was pissed about that, that it had to be picked up instead of delivered. But it was his fault. I couldn’t exactly open the door with my face all purple.

I take one more look down the hallway to the last door on the left. It’s closed. It’s always closed.

I hope it stays closed forever because I’m so tired of thinking about it.

The suitcase is very heavy since it contains all the things I’d rather throw away than leave with Jon, but I manage to get it in the backseat of the Toyota, then plop myself down in the driver’s seat and put my pack on the passenger side.

I’m remarkably calm for a girl who is about to run away. I expected my heart to beat wildly, like the last time I tried to leave.

I didn’t make it that time. But that was two years ago now. He’s made a mess of me so many times since then and I never tried to run away again, so I guess he figures I’m beat. He’s won.

The car protests with backfires and clouds of smoke when I turn the key. I just press the gas until it gets over it. It will work today, I know it will. I’m not worried about the car breaking down at all, and typically I worry about that even if I’m just going to the supermarket in town.

Today it doesn’t matter.

I pull out of the driveway and never look back.

The first thing on my checklist is to ditch the suitcase. I have no use for all that crap in my life anymore. My pack contains two extra day outfits, seven pairs of underwear, one pair of pajamas and some personal hygiene items.

I pull up to a dumpster just inside the Chicago city limits, then lug the suitcase out of the backseat and throw it down on the ground. There’s a few homeless people sleeping nearby so I call out in a friendly voice, “Free stuff in this suitcase. Take whatever you want.”

Most of them just stare at me looking pretty miserable. But a few get up and mumble out a ‘thank you.’

I shrug and get back in the car and weave down a number of streets filled with cars and people walking. Going places and generally being busy on this Monday morning.

Monday is the perfect day because Jon can’t work from home on Mondays. He has to go into the office downtown and work on the servers and stuff at the police station. So even though I won’t answer his calls all day, he won’t be able to figure out what’s wrong until he gets home tonight. By then I’ll be long gone and he won’t be able to find me easily. His thing is computer forensics, so he’s like a god in the virtual world. But I don’t do anything virtual these days, so that’s a total dead end for him. I have cash in my pocket that I’ve been stashing away, little by little, down in the basement for years.

And my bus ticket isn’t even purchased yet, so he can’t track me that way.

I park the car in a trendy neighborhood far away from the bus station and check the mirror one more time.

I smile. My lips pull back from my cheeks and I look like a skeleton. I’ve lost a lot of weight, probably fifteen pounds, and skinny is in my nature, so right now I could probably stand to gain at least twenty to fill out my frame. I smile again and try not to see my life in my eyes.

This time I look almost OK. When you ignore the fact that my soul is crushed and my eyes really are a mirror inside. I don’t look so bad.

But like the car, it doesn’t matter today. I’m not worried about how people see me. If they see my fading bruises, or my cut lip, or the lost, tragic look in my eyes—I do not care. I exist alone in this world as of today.

There is just me.

The smile stays on my face as I enter the beauty salon.

And when I come out two hours later, I’m someone else. There’s no sign of the limp blonde hair I’ve been dyeing since Jon took over my life. The tragic eyes are only half full of sadness and despair, the other half is hope. My hair is as close to its natural brown-black as you can get and not look fake and I changed into my other outfit before I left. All the ladies in the salon made a big deal out of me because I told them I had a special first date tonight and they chuckled and smiled and congratulated me and told me to ‘go get him.’

What I left out was that my first date was with myself.

I end day one thousand one hundred and ten sitting on a Greyhound bus heading to Las Vegas. It’s a two-day trip and I’ve been sitting in this seat for less than half of that and my back already aches and my legs are going numb.

But I don’t care.

It’s nice to meet me again and I can’t wait to get to know me better.