Dani squeezed the water from her hair and shrugged her shoulders. “Everything fades in time.”
After changing out of her wet clothes and eating a tasteless dinner of chicken salad, Dani retreated to her bedroom. Everything seemed to be perfunctory in the aftermath of the attack. Eating. Bathing. Talking. It was impossible to care about anything, to feel anything but anger and fear. There was no more comfort. No more hope. Just dread, agony, and sadness.
She flicked on her bedside table lamp and scrunched her nose in disgust. Her room stunk of dirty sheets and laundry. All of the belongings she had intended to take with her to college were packed away in boxes, ready to be shipped. All that remained was her library of books, her school awards, posters and the remnants of childhood things she had intended to leave behind. Going away to school wouldn’t happen now. Part of her wanted to go to college anyway, leave Santana Beach and start all over, but she was too afraid. Dani knew that so long ashewas at large, her life would be frozen in time with the walls of her family home as her sanctuary and her cell. She would be a prisoner of her own mind.
No.
She had already lost so much. And for what? Some delusional, murderous monster who had become fixated on her? In that moment as she glanced around her childhood bedroom, Dani realized that she didn’t want to let this horrible thing that happened define the rest of her life. She had a future planned outfor herself that had nothing to do with her parents or Tommy or Matt Vickers or anyone. She owed it to Tommy and Kyle and the fisherman to fight and carry on. Nothing she could do would bring them back, but she owed it to them and herself to try and live the best way she knew how.
Her gaze flicked to the few items left on her bookshelf; a few trophies from elementary school, ceramic art class projects, and all four editions of her high school yearbooks. She grabbed the large tome from her freshman year and turned to the graduating senior class of that year. She flipped to Matt Vickers’ portrait and a sick feeling slithered into her gut. His shark-like eyes stared back at her, dark and hungry. His impossibly white teeth glowed against tan, freshly shaven skin. His spiky blond hair glued stick-straight with gel, defying gravity. She grabbed a permanent marker and slashed the felt-tipped pen across his face over and over again until he was nothing but a black smudge.
Dani blew a layer of dust from the other yearbooks and began to go through each one. High school had been everything to her. Her clubs and academic accomplishments. Friends and boyfriends, Tommy, most of all. As she turned each page, Dani realized that her high school years had been artificial. The girls linked arm-in-arm with her in candid photos began to drift away even before the attack. Lisa. Tiffany. Ashley. Talisha. They had all whispered secrets, declared allegiance as friends or best friends. Now that she had a target on her back, could she really blame them for staying away?
Finally, she flipped to the senior portraits section, immediately knowing where to locate Tommy’s page. Her heart broke all over again as his face smiled up at her. She hadn’t deserved his love and affection. And he didn’t deserve to die. Dani ripped out his page, folded it, and stuck it in one of her packed boxes, then took the rest of the yearbooks to the living room. She lit a fire in their hearth and fed the yearbooks to theflames, one by one. She waited by the fireplace and watched as the edges of the yearbooks curled and turned to ash. The past was done and she wasn’t going to look back.
Dani returned to her room, laid flat on her bedroom floor and envisioned herself taller. Stronger. More confident. She was tired of being cooped up in the house and afraid all the time. Self-defense classes were starting to sound more and more like a good idea. Her thoughts were still a little fuzzy from the medication, but her next dose was due soon and she could feel the effects of the drugs wearing off. Maybe a little bit of activity would sharpen her up again. Still wearing her damp funeral dress, Dani engaged her core muscles and sat up with all her might.
One. Two. Three. Four …
Dani crunched and lunged and squatted. She pushed up on her bedroom floor until her biceps burned. She whipped herself into a frenzy of jumping jacks and aerobics. She pushed herself until her forehead glistened with sweat and she was too tired to fight anymore.
The oppressive summer heat raged on as days turned into weeks and then months. The last of Dani’s so-called friends stopped calling as they all headed off to college for bigger and better things. She didn’t mind. Maybe they weren’t good friends after all, but none of them deserved to live in the kind of fear that she was experiencing. It was for the best that people kept their distance from her. Better to be lonely than be responsible for more innocent deaths.
The police search for Matt Vickers tapered off before ending completely without any leads to his whereabouts. Despite everything, as the days rolled by, Dani felt a small semblance of her old self gradually returning. Everything in her life that was once vibrant and alive still seemed a little more muted and dull. Food didn’t taste as good. Movies and music weren’t as enjoyable. College could be delayed for a semester, a year or more; however long it took for her to feel ready to join the world of the living again. Despite her best efforts to put agood face forward and march ahead, a dark cloud overshadowed everything.
Dani spent hours wondering what she could have done differently. She still wasn’t entirely sure why Matt Vickers had become so fixated on her. His actions weren’t her fault, but still, she wanted to know what she had done to catch his eye. Out of everyone he could have obsessed over, why her? There was absolutely nothing special about her. Nothing at all.
Officer Owens provided a few clues during their follow up interviews. Police had uncovered shocking evidence from the Vickers residence that showed Matt had been watching her for months. He had filmed hours and hours of VHS surveillance footage outside her home, outside Tommy’s home, and at the video store. Matt had also collected bits of trash she had thrown away, and filled up a whole shoebox full of photos and documents.
Dani shuddered to think of what his real intentions were for her if he had caught her that night. If he had his way, they would have been driving off into the sunset with her bound and gagged in the trunk of his Mustang.
“Come on, Dani. We can be just like Mickey and Mallory! Just us and the open road. We’ll take care of anyone that gets in our way.”
She shuddered, remembering Vickers’ fucked up cinematic fantasy. Would she have had the strength to play along as his Mallory while he played out a murderous crime spree fantasy? Or would she have met the same fate as Tommy and Kyle?
The days bled into one another, and Dani continued to feel restless and unsure about whether or not her life was still worth living. It killed her to know that her college classes were starting without her; that life was going on despite the horrors that she and everyone else had endured. The one thing she did have to look forward to was martial arts class.
It had only been three months since the attack, and by all accounts, Matt Vickers seemed to have disappeared into the ether. He was gone, either sunk into the sea or hiding somewhere, but never far from her thoughts. The authorities had pretty much given up looking for him. The world had moved on, and she would have to get on with her life too. Dani didn’t know if she would ever truly be able to recover with the possibility of her attacker still at large. She knew she might never fully have her shit together, but she was still determined not to sit around and hide.
Once the police presence around her house faded away and the search for her attacker was called off, Dani knew it was up to her to take matters into her own hands. No one would be waiting in the wings to save her if Matt Vickers came back. She wasn’t prepared the first time he came after her, and if he was still alive, she wouldn’t make that same mistake again. She signed up for classes at a nearby mixed martial arts studio, and, despite her fear, forced herself to go. College could wait. Self-defense would be her focus of study now.
After her first lesson, it became obvious that taking out her anger on punching bags and learning basic self-defense was more therapeutic than anything else. She came to appreciate the dank scent of sweaty boxing gloves, the hum of the industrial overhead lights and the feel of the padded vinyl mat on her bare feet. Dani threw herself into training, quickly earning her yellow belt and gaining a new family of martial arts friends in the process. No one at the studio knew anything about her attack or her history, a fact she was grateful for. Training at the studio became a new safe place, where she didn’t have to worry about people looking at her with sympathy or fear. Most of all, it was nice to have a new set of friends her own age again, especially Jake.
“Nice form out there on the mat today.”
Mat. Matt.
Dani shook off the word and gave her sparring partner a smile. “Thanks. You too.”
“That sounded creepy.” Jake winced, his forehead lined under a mop of sweaty dark hair. “I just mean, you’ve really improved.”
“It’s okay.” Dani gave him a half smile. Jake was cute, but her heart was too dead to care. Still, it was nice to have someone near her age to talk to again.
“So, you, uh, go to college around here?”
“No,” she said. “I’m taking a year or so off. Trying to focus on getting in shape, getting my head together.”
“Nice. College is great and all, but there’s no need to rush things,” he said. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re here.”
