The magazine started to shake, but that was only because Gina had started to shake, too.
She felt the freak-out steaming through her nerves like a boiling tea kettle. Her hand went to the back of her neck again. She sputtered out a breath. Her lungs went rigid. She couldn’t get enough air. She knew that someone was watching her. Was he standing behind her? Had she heard footsteps? Could she hear a man walking toward her now, his arms outstretched as he reached for her neck?
“Shit,” she whispered. Her entire body was shaking, yet somehow her legs would not move. She felt her bladder start to ache. She closed her eyes. She forced herself to spin around.
No one.
“Shit.” She said the word louder this time.
She walked back toward her house. She kept looking over her shoulder like a crazy person. She wondered if the woman who lived across the street had been watching her. The nosey nelly was always in everybody’s business. She wrote long screeds on the Nextdoor app about people leaving their trashcans out on the street and not properly separating their recycling. If she wasn’t careful, someone was going to slap some deli meat on her Nissan Leaf and then it would jump off like the Sharks and the Jets.
Gina’s knee almost buckled as she leapt up the front stairs. She slammed the door behind her. The mail dropped from her hands and scattered onto the floor. She fumbled with the deadbolt. She didn’t lock it.
The door had been open while she was outside. Had someone sneaked in? She had spun like a top at the mailbox. Her back was to the front door for several seconds. Someone could’ve slipped inside. Someone could be inside the house right now.
“Shit!” She rushed to check window and door locks, looking in closets and under beds, because that was just how insane she was lately.
Was this what it felt like to go stir crazy?
She went back to the couch. She grabbed her iPad. She googled symptoms of being stir crazy.
A quiz came back.
1. Are you moody?
2. Have you lost interest in sex?
3. Do you feel anxious or restless?
4. Are you overtired or sleepy during the day?
She checked yes on every question, because her vibrator couldn’t read.
The result:
You are at risk of developing depression. Have you considered speaking with a therapist? I have located four different specialists in STIR CRAZY in your area.
Gina let the iPad fall back to the couch. Now the internet knew that she was depressed. She was probably going to be inundated with spam and ads for natural cures and supplements to improve her mood.
She didn’t need a pill. She needed to get ahold of herself. Paranoia was not her personality type. She was goal-oriented. A self-starter. Highly organized. Methodical. She socialized often, but she was as equally pleased with her own company. She was all of the things that a different quiz had told her were good qualities when, two years ago, she had googled Am I the type of person who can work from home?
Gina had easily transitioned away from the office, but she had quickly determined that she needed a reason to occasionally shave her legs and wash her hair. Her two outlets were the gym, which she hit at least three times a week, and lunch dates, which she tried to schedule at least twice a month.
She pulled up her calendar on her iPad. To her surprise, she saw that she had not been out of the house in six days. Canceled lunch plans. Skipped workouts. Missed work meetings. Instead of rectifying the situation with a burst of phone calls, she started strategizing. Between Postmates and InstaCart, she could eke out another week before she would be forced to leave the house. That was when her twelve-year-old boss wanted her in the office for a video conference with clients in Beijing. Gina would definitely have to put on clothes with buttons and zippers and actually show up because I accidentally fed a mogwai after midnight was an excuse that only worked on twelve-year-old boys in the year 1985.
She stared at the squares on the calendar. Another week would extend her confinement to a total of thirteen days. Thirteen days was nothing. People took thirteen-day lunches in France. She had lasted almost thirteen days on the Atkins Diet. In college, she had eaten ramen noodles for a hell of a lot longer than thirteen days. Hell, she had pretended to have vaginal orgasms with various boyfriends for thirteen years.
She got up from the couch. She went into the kitchen. She opened the fridge. Four tomato slices in a Ziploc bag. Twenty-six cans of Diet Coke. A cucumber of obscene proportions. A half-eaten Kind bar.
If the cops looked in her fridge, they would think she was a serial killer.
She found a pad of paper and pen in the drawer. She started a grocery list for InstaCart. She could make soups, chowders, even casseroles. She had downloaded tons of meditation apps that she’d always been too stressed out to open. There was that book she’d put off reading, the one everyone was talking about. She could download that book. She could read it like a person who reads books. She could burn the midnight oil and get her presentation for Beijing finished ahead of time. She would power through this unsettling freak-out by eating healthy meals, keeping herself fit, reading, sleeping and doing all of the self-care that was clearly lacking in her life.
Sunlight!
That was what she needed. Her mother used to chide her when she was a little girl.
Get your nose out of that book and go outside!
Gina could bring the outside in. She opened the blinds in the living room. She looked out into the street, which was a normal street without a scary man watching her house. She opened the curtains in her bedroom. She went back into the kitchen and opened the door for some fresh air. She leaned over the sink to unlock the window.
What she really needed to do was call Nancy. Her sister would shake her out of this. And she would remember the pink scrunchie, and she would hopefully not tell her daughter that Gina had stolen it because right now, Gina could not handle a screeching howler monkey telling her she was the worst aunt on the planet.
She felt her bubble burst.
Nancy was her older sister, a natural-born, bossy busybody. Worse, she wanted to be her daughter’s best friend, which had worked out just as awesomely as you’d expect.
Gina tried to refill the bubble.
Nancy would not tell her daughter about the scrunchie. She would come over with a bottle of wine and they would laugh about how stupid Gina had been and they would watch home remodeling shows on TV where twenty-five-year-old Canadians had saved a $100,000 down-payment to buy a house while a recent item in Gina’s search history was, Is it safe to eat the part of the bread that does not have mold on it?
She looked down at the empty bowl on the windowsill.
The scrunchie had been there.
And now it wasn’t.
Gina knew that she had not misplaced it, because she was not a misplacer. She was an exact placer, as in she was highly organized, methodical, and tidy. Which was why, according to one quiz, she would be a really good candidate for working from home.
“Fuck me.”
Gina’s fingers twisted the window lock back into place. She would not call Nancy. She would not tell her sister any of this because, legally, it only took two people to get another person committed for a twenty-four-hour psychiatric observation and Gina could not think of one reason right now why her sister and mother would not lock her up in a rubber room.
She reversed course through the house, bolting the doors, drawing the curtains, closing the blinds. The house got dark again. She sat on the couch. She opened up a new Google search. Her fingers rested above the keyboard. She shivered. Either someone was walking over her grave, or her body was telling her that she was about to pass the point of no return.
Gina stared at the cursor on the tablet. She looked around the room. The remote control was lined up to the edge of the coffee table where she always left it. The blanket was neatly folded in its usual spot over the back of the chair. Her gym bag waited by the kitchen door. The keys were on the console table just inside the hallway. Her purse hung from the back of the kitchen chair.
The bowl where she always kept her pink scrunchie with the white daisies was still empty.
Gina typed on the iPad—
Can I buy a gun and have it delivered to my house in Atlanta, Georgia?
17
Sara jotted down some notes from the briefing as she sat at her desk. She stared at Rebecca Caterino’s name. She found herself silently listing the same what ifs that she had asked herself eight years ago. What if Lena had found a pulse? What if Sara had gotten to the woods more quickly? What if those lost thirty minutes had meant the difference between a victim who could identify her attacker and a young woman sentenced to a life of unknown suffering?
Leslie Truong might still be alive. Joan Feeney. Pia Danske. Shay Van Dorne. Alexandra McAllister. All of those stolen lives could’ve been returned if only they had found Beckey Caterino’s real attacker.