Paralyzed

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1

Loud.

Why was it so loud? Kennedy’s knee-high boots clicked against the hard floor of the science hall. She glanced over one shoulder and then the other. Who was staring at her? She sensed his presence, felt his eyes — ominous black beams boring into her soul. She looked around, but all she could see was the crowds of students, milling, giggling, oblivious to fear and danger.

She should warn someone. There had to be almost a hundred students filing into the lecture hall to take their chemistry final. Didn’t they know someone was watching them, waiting for them? No, waiting for her. Everyone else was safe. Kennedy was his only target. She glanced behind her.

Her imagination, or something far more insidious?

She longed for the days when stress meant finishing a paper by its deadline. There had been a time when her biggest frustration was working out a calculus equation so her TA wouldn’t get mad at her for not showing her work. Was it really only six weeks ago that her little safety bubble had imploded around her?

When she left China to head for college last August, she had expected drama. Occasional tiffs with her roommate. Maybe a little dating awkwardness. The loneliness that would come from being on the other side of the world from her missionary parents. She was ready for that, just as she had been ready for the academics. She hadn’t graduated first in her high school class by sitting around texting her friends or streaming videos all day. When she got off that plane last fall and took the airport shuttle to Harvard, when she tipped the driver and rolled her two suitcases up the stairs to her dorm, she had felt mature. Adventurous.

She was prepared.

Kennedy clutched her book to her chest. It was part of an old Ivan Turgenev collection she had picked up at the antique book shop near Boston Common. She had always been a big reader, but she couldn’t breeze through action novels anymore. She hadn’t even tried a mystery since Vinny kidnapped her. She stuck mostly to works by dead authors from centuries past. During her first semester of college, she had lived through more suspense than she had ever experienced from a thriller. She wondered if she’d ever be able to pick one up again. How had she once considered that kind of reading enjoyable?

“Hey there.”

She recognized her lab partner’s slightly accented voice, but her body still jumped.

“I’m sorry.” Reuben frowned. “Are you all right?”

Kennedy let out her breath and didn’t bother to blush. Not in front of Reuben. He had seen her at her worst this semester — he had seen her through her worst, really. She gave her best attempt at a smile. “I’m fine. Just a little anxious about the final.”

Reuben glanced at her book. “I thought you were done with Russian lit for the semester.”

Kennedy followed him into the lecture hall. “I am. I just brought this with me to read when everything’s done.”

Reuben snatched the volume out of her hands. “Actually, you’re not going to have time for that.”

Kennedy focused on grabbing it back so she didn’t have to acknowledge the crowded, noisy lecture hall, with its endless rows of chairs, the perfect place for a kidnapper to blend in with the crowd. Professor Adell wouldn’t be able to tell who was and who wasn’t actually enrolled. If Vinny wanted, he could sit hunched over behind a test for the whole period, wait for Kennedy to finish, follow her out of the science building ...

After she was kidnapped that fall, her dad signed her up for a self-defense course, but Kennedy had done what she could to get out of it. She had been preparing for midterms by then, still struggling to make up the work she missed while recovering from her injuries. She didn’t want the constant reminder of her own hopelessness, the powerlessness she felt while cuffed downstairs in that cold basement. She promised her dad she would enroll in the class during spring semester, but his message was as clear as an Erlenmeyer flask: Take self-defense, pass the course, or else fly back to China. He also ordered her some pepper spray, which he expected her to carry around wherever she went, even to the dorm bathroom and back.

At first, she tried to write her dad off as paranoid. But when Detective Drisklay started talking about security measures and even mentioned the possibility of witness protection, she realized how dangerous it was to have survived an attempted murder while one of the culprits was still at large. What could she do, though? Her self-defense course did more to creep her out than to instill confidence. The class focused on warding off one unarmed attacker. If or when Vinny came after her, it wouldn’t be that simple.

“... celebrate the end of the semester,” Reuben was saying.

Kennedy’s head felt as though it was spinning, an electron buzzing around the nucleus in its nebulous cloud orbital, constantly in motion. Constantly searching for the perfect energy level, still rushing around madly after finding it.

“That sounds great.” Kennedy wondered what she had agreed to.

“Where are you going?” Reuben asked. Kennedy loved his clipped Kenyan accent, but now she could barely hear it over the drone of so many dozens of students waiting to take their final exam, waiting to see which of them would pass on to next semester and which would become one of the leagues of Harvard pre-med dropouts. So much noise. So much bustle. Enough to drown out a muffled scream or the shot of Vinny’s gun.

Kennedy slipped into an aisle desk near the back of the room. Reuben stared down at her. “Why all the way back here?”

Kennedy and Reuben had spent their semester in this lecture hall in the two center seats of row three, but now when she looked at their usual place, all she could think about was how many students would fill up behind her, students she couldn’t see. Students she didn’t know.

She shrugged. “I thought it might be nice to be in the back today, you know, just so we can be that much closer to the exit when we’re done.”

“We’ll still have to walk to the front to hand in our papers.”

Kennedy didn’t respond but swung her knees to the side so Reuben could slip in beside her. He passed her a stick of gum. “Hey, if I get stuck on a problem, can I take a peek at yours?”

Kennedy chuckled. She and Reuben were both getting good grades, but he managed to do so without giving himself an ulcer. While Kennedy recovered from her injuries after her kidnapping last fall, Reuben had been there, talking her through the lectures she missed, encouraging her through the quizzes she had to make up.

He leaned toward her. “Just remember, nothing can be harder than that calculus final yesterday.”

Kennedy didn’t even want to think about it. She had one focus now. Finishing chemistry. The very last exam before semester break. It didn’t matter that Vinny had tried to kill her less than two months earlier. It didn’t matter that he had evaded Detective Drisklay and the scores of police officers searching for him. It didn’t matter that her parents were working in China and couldn’t afford to fly Kennedy home for Christmas. It didn’t matter that she would be lucky if she passed yesterday’s calculus test with a B. All that mattered was that in an hour and a half her last final would be over. She still had laundry to wash. She still had clothes to pack. And there was that meeting with Detective Drisklay in the morning before she left for her aunt’s. But she didn’t need to worry about any of that right now. She had excelled in chemistry this semester, even more than in her AP class in high school back in Yanji. This was her day to outshine even her own high expectations.

Professor Adell stood in front of the room. She was an eccentric old woman. Some whispered she was one of the few remaining h*******t survivors; others said her parents immigrated and she was born after the war ended. Nobody quite knew how she had gotten so involved in chemistry, but it was impossible to deny she had found her passion. After filling up the chalkboard with notes during her lectures, instead of pausing to erase the whole thing, she would throw the eraser into her right hand and switch to writing with her left. Her students couldn’t tell if she was originally right- or left-handed; the writing was atrocious either way.

She was a great scientist and decent lecturer, but not much of a motivational speaker. “Take your tests. Turn them in when you’re done. No noise.” Those were Professor Adell’s only instructions, and she passed the exams out to the students in the front. Kennedy stared at the back of everyone’s heads. Was someone here who shouldn’t be? Someone who had sneaked in just to watch Kennedy, make sure she didn’t leave the science building alive?

The stack of chemistry finals eventually made it to Kennedy and Reuben in the back of the hall.

“Good luck,” Reuben whispered, clicking the back of his mechanical pencil.

She pried her eyes away from the other students. She had to focus. She took a deep breath and skimmed the problems on the first page. She could do this. It would be fine.

A tickle in the back of her throat. Was she catching a cold? No, she couldn’t get sick. She was flying to Baltimore tomorrow to spend Christmas with her aunt. It wasn’t the same as going home to her parents in Yanji, but at least she’d be out of the Boston area. Vinny couldn’t reach her there, could he? Of course, he could hack into the Logan Airport system, look up her flight plans ...

No, she couldn’t think like that. She had a test. A test she was supposed to ace. That’s all that mattered. There were a hundred people here. She was safe.

She cleared her throat, and another student a few rows ahead coughed back at her. She licked her lips, felt Reuben’s glance, and attacked the first problem.

She was halfway through the second page when it came again. That tickle. Why hadn’t she thought to bring a water bottle? Or a cough drop? She tore off a corner of her test and spit out her gum. She let out three coughs, loud enough for Professor Adell to frown at her from the front of the lecture hall.

A nice deep breath. That’s all she needed. But when she tried, her lungs refused to expand and convulsed instead. More stares. She coughed again.

Reuben turned his head. “Are you ok?”

“I just need a drink,” Kennedy whispered, and a student in the middle of the room let out a loud, “Shhhhhh.” Kennedy raised her hand, but Professor Adell was already glaring at her. Kennedy pointed to the back doors. The drinking fountains were just around the corner. Couldn’t she run and come right back? Adell took a few seconds to respond. Did she think that Kennedy was going to cheat? That she had stashed some formula or answer sheet outside the lecture hall? If she had wanted to do something like that, she could have just brought it with her to the test. Who would notice one dishonest student out of so many?

Finally, Adell gave a curt nod, and Kennedy slipped out of her chair, thankful she was near the back. She knew Reuben was watching, probably worrying about her, but before she could give him a reassuring smile, another coughing fit seized her, and she ran up the stairs trying to stifle it.

In the hallway, she coughed so hard she thought she’d throw up. Doubled over, hacking on the floor, she pictured the young girl who had been kidnapped with her. Hopelessness wrapped its unyielding, icy tentacles around Kennedy’s body. She couldn’t stop the coughing, just like she hadn’t been able to stop the bleeding in that ice-cold basement. Helpless. Victimized. Paralyzed.

She still had to finish her test. She couldn’t let her mind sink to these depths. She would pray. She would find a way to take these thoughts captive. She was shaking now. Her whole body was trembling, reminding her of the pit bull who lived next door to her growing up who would thrash his head and growl until Kennedy ran home in tears and hysterics to her mother’s arms.

She stumbled to the drinking fountain and waited for her breathing to calm down. The first attempt at a drink failed and sent snot-flavored juices burning her sinuses. By the third try she could manage a few sips. She didn’t dare a deep inhale, but she could take a few short breaths before she had to cough again.

This was ridiculous. She had a final to finish. Her last test of the semester. If she didn’t get back to the lecture hall soon, Adell really would accuse her of cheating.

She just needed to pray more. Isn’t that what Christians always said? You’re in trouble? Pray about it. Your parents are so busy training underground missionaries they don’t even care that you brought home another straight-A report card? Pray about it. You’re ready to take your last final of the semester, but a horrible cough has got you trapped outside in the hall because you know the moment you walk in you’re going to become one gasping, wheezing, hacking mess?

Pray about it.

Well, Kennedy did pray. In fact, she had been praying all semester, at least since she got back to campus after her kidnapping. Praying for relief from the nightmares. Praying for the scar on her back not to stand out so glaringly on her pale skin. Praying for her body to stop trembling at random times, interrupting her studies, flashing her back to that cold, dark basement.

By now, Kennedy was all out of prayer energy. Besides, didn’t God know what she needed before she even asked? Didn’t he see how needy she was right now?

Pray about it. So simple to say. So hard when you actually have to pick up one boot and plant it in front of you. So hard when you’ve got to pull yourself out of murky water so deep you can’t even see the bottom, so muddy you’re stuck before you realize you’re sinking one deadly centimeter at a time. The suffocating, soul-starving fear that grips you in the middle of the night when you should be asleep but wake up gasping, drenched in sweat and certain your assailant is staring into your second-story window, waiting until you drift off to sleep again before he finishes you off for good. That’s what Kennedy had been trying to pray against, but it was like trying to send a rainstorm back up to the troposphere with a broken umbrella.

She pulled back some of the hair that had fallen out of her ponytail and counted. Five seconds since her last cough. Maybe she was ready now. She had been accepted out of high school into Harvard’s early-admissions medical program, but that offer was contingent on her GPA. If she failed general chemistry, even with high scores in all her other classes, she would probably end up on academic probation. Maybe even flunk out of the pre-med program altogether.

The itch tickled its way up her throat once more, and Kennedy decided she’d take another sip from the fountain and then go back. Until she threw up or got thrown out of the lecture hall for distracting other students, she would finish that final, and she would get the A she had worked for all semester, the A she deserved.

A door opened, and for a moment Kennedy worried some cocky TA would come out and shush her for making so much noise in the hall, but all Kennedy saw was a bald head and two mean, brooding eyes that widened as soon as they met hers. The door shut. The face disappeared. Kennedy’s stomach dropped to the floor of her abdominal cavity.

She would have recognized that face anywhere.

Vinny.