The Night I Almost Disappeared

These are the things I remember:

His face, watching me. He stood there in the dark, just watching as I ran away, so symbolically, towards the lights outside the gym at my high school. His maroon jacket with the faux-fur trimmed hood.

The absolute darkness of the driveway leading through the trees up to my school. I had never noticed it before that night. It was the road to school that I traveled every day, pretty, but in my background. That night it seemed like the scene of a dark fairy tale, the forest that Hansel and Gretel wandered through, dropping bread crumbs. In the dreams I have even now, I am running like I ran that night, losing steam but knowing I just had to get away, I just had to reach the doors of the gym.

Knowing that I would be okay. I knew he wasn’t going to follow me. I could see that truth in the look on his face, and in the way he just stood there, winded.

Because when he grabbed me, something happened.

Sitting in the convent which adjoins the school. It was dark in there, too – a long hallway, dimly lit. Not a comforting dark, but a foreboding dark, telling me I had done something wrong. I waited there while authorities were called, alone in the dark.

The way he had called “I wanna get high with you” from his car as he slowly drove up the hill beside me while I walked. He had said it a first time, but I didn’t hear. I thought he was asking for directions, and I was a polite young girl. This was the town where my school was, I knew my way around, of course I would give directions. But he slowed down, slower. I shook my head. I was on my way to my basketball game and I was late, and his statement scared me. I walked faster. He drove away. I was relieved.

The panic inside me knowing how late I was for my game. The shame and sadness I felt because I was the only person from my town who couldn’t fit in the car with all the other girls on the team who got a ride. The foolishness I felt because I had navigated the city bus system poorly, making the wrong transfer, and was walking up the hill, the long hill, as the game was already under way. Knowing how much trouble I would be in, how I would be benched the next game, and I was already a seasoned bench warmer.

The warmth and light of the gym’s lobby hitting my panicked face. The breath in my chest heaving in and out. Being unable to speak. Running into the bathroom before anyone could see me.

Going to the police station the next day with my father and looking through a thick book of mug shots. Two books. The flipping of the plastic pages. The endless faces. Not finding anyone who looked like him. I was sure.

The rumors on the next day of school. I was fine, I was whole, I was in school. The rumors had thrived as dark blooms of teenage imagination. But there I was, disappointing those who loved the drama. Even I loved the drama. But there I was. Nothing had happened, really.

And this is the story:

I was late for my game. The other girls had one of the fathers drive them. I didn’t fit, they told me. Sorry. They often left me out. I wasn’t a strong player, but I loved being on the team. I found a way to get there. I took the bus. I didn’t do it right, I was late. I walked up the hill after dark, from the city street to the side street, toward the long winding driveway to my private Catholic girls’ high school.

A man in a car slowed down and asked me a question. I didn’t hear him. He repeated it, it was a request. “I want to get high with you.” I kept walking. He drove away. I turned into the road that led to the school. He was up ahead, car idling in the road, standing next to it. Instead of turning and running back I kept going, I was late. I had to get there. The man came up to me, grabbed my arm.

Something happened.

I got away.

I had a good reason for being late, after all. I was forgiven, pitied. We kept the drama out of the gym that night. I don’t remember if our team won the game.

But I got away, and that’s all that matters now.

Or maybe more matters now, now that I am thinking about it.

I don’t think about this story very often. Writing about it tonight, I am choking, halted. It feels like I am there again, even though I can only remember a few images, barely. In recent years on the Oprah show, she featured stories about women who were accosted but got away. “Never let them take you to a second location,” the expert warned, because there, you would most likely be killed. I watched that show during its first airing, and didn’t associate that warning with myself in my teens.

I don’t have a daily thought of gratitude like I should. Thank you, I think now. Thank you for giving me the inherent strength of spirit to struggle. Thank you for making my attacker a strung-out junkie who was too weak to overpower me, if that was the case, if that’s why I got away. Thank you for allowing my story to continue with me for so many years, and continue in all the people I’ve met and touched since that day, and continue in my family and my children and here, on my blog. Thank you for not ending it that night in tragedy, and continuing instead a story of loss and sorrow and horror, an update on the evening news, a warning to other young women at that high school, extra security precautions for the surviving students, a ghost story for future generations.

It’s okay that those girls didn’t offer me a ride. I forgive them. How could they have known?