My first session with Paula revolved around goal setting. I was a little nervous when I sat down in her small, utilitarian office on East Twenty-fourth Street, but I reminded myself how common it is to seek therapy: 42 percent of Americans have been in counseling. One in five millennials currently see a therapist—although I never have before.
Paula suggested I set a small objective to work on, and she agreed the one I selected seemed doable.
“It’ll be a good first step,” Paula had said, and I’d smiled, confident I was finally on the right track.
But now, at the start of our second session, as I sit aimlessly moving a tiny rake through a little Zen sand garden while Paula looks over her notes from our last session, I feel as if the hope she offered me has floated away.
Paula finally looks up and smiles. “Okay, then. Did you achieve your goal of touching the green subway railing?”
I put down the rake and cross my arms over my chest, rubbing my hands up and down my bare arms.
I’m aware of Paula’s gaze on me, but I can’t meet hers as I shake my head. “I only got to the edge of the grate.” I feel my throat thicken with the words.
She writes something in her notebook, then takes off her reading glasses. “Have you been trying the other techniques we discussed?”
I lift up my left hand to show her the blue rubber band around my wrist. Paula had told me to snap it hard when the panic began to descend. It’ll distract your mind, she promised. It was one of many remedies she’d suggested, from a gratitude journal to tackling my phobia by breaking it down to a series of steps.
None of it is working. The only thing that has helped me at all is the Ambien I bought off a sketchy Canadian pharmaceutical website. I took it for the first time last night. It delivered oblivion and left me so groggy I slept through my alarm, but at least that’s better than a nightmare.
We talk a while longer about how to scale down my goal.
“Maybe you can look at pictures of subways on your computer at home. It could help desensitize you. And then perhaps attempt to walk over a subway grate.”
Even though I nod, I already know I’m not going to be able to do it. Just the thought of it causes a hitch in my heartbeat.
What’s happening to me? I want to cry out.
I try to swallow down the wobble I know my voice will contain before asking, “I guess I was wondering how long you think it’s going to take me to feel better.… I have another job interview next week, but if I’m hired, I’d have to take three buses to get there.”
Paula closes her notebook, and I see her sneak a glance at the clock on her desk.
“Shay, you came in here because of one specific incident, but I believe there’s something deeper going on.”
My gut clenches because I know she’s right. I’ve tried to put what I witnessed into perspective by analyzing the data, by framing Amanda’s tragedy in facts: More than two dozen other people leaped in front of New York City subway trains this year alone. A hundred pedestrians were fatally hit by vehicles in my city last year, along with dozens of bikers. Jumping from a tall building is the fourth most common way to commit suicide in New York, and homicides occur here daily.
There are witnesses to almost all of these horrific deaths; I read some of their quotes in the newspapers. While it seems certain that other observers are also affected—how could they not be?—I wonder if it’s a natural consequence for onlookers to be as traumatized as I seem to be.
Maybe it isn’t what I witnessed that’s causing all of this, I think as I sink lower into the chair across from Paula. Perhaps the tragedy of that muggy Sunday morning and the bad luck that preceded it simply flipped some kind of a switch in me that was waiting to be activated.
“I’d love to give you a specific timeline for healing, but I can’t,” Paula says.
“But—like weeks? Months?” I ask desperately.
“Oh, Shay.” She seems truly sorry. “There’s no quick fix in therapy.”
Just like that, the wispy tendrils of hope float even further away.
I walk home in the sundress and flats I wore to my temp job, hoping Sean and Jody are out so I can have the sofa to myself. All I have the energy to do is make microwave popcorn for dinner and watch mindless television.
When I enter the apartment, one of my wishes is granted: the apartment is empty.
I head into my bedroom to strip off my sundress. I pull a pair of shorts off the top of my basket of clean laundry, hesitating when I realize they’re the same ones I wore the day Amanda died.
But this is a challenge I can surmount. I pull them on.
The pockets are bunched up from being swished around in the washing machine, so as I wander into the kitchen to grab a seltzer, I absently stick my fingers into them to flatten them out.
My feet stutter to a stop.
I checked my tote bag several times, shaking it upside down and running my hand along the seams. But I never once thought to look in the pockets of what I’d been wearing that day.
As I slowly draw out my right hand, I know what I’m going to see even before my fingers clear the top of my shorts.
It was here all along, inches from me. Waiting to be discovered.
If I’d gotten rid of these shorts to avoid the reminder, I would never have found it.
The necklace is heavier than I remembered. Maybe that’s because I feel like it’s bearing the weight of all the emotions I’ve experienced since the moment I first picked it up.
I must have shoved it in my pocket sometime after Amanda stepped toward the edge of the platform and I heard the whoosh of the oncoming train.
It was the last thing I did before everything changed.
My lungs feel as if a vise were squeezing them.
I stare at the gold necklace with the sun-shaped charm dangling between my fingers.
The one I’m now certain belonged to Amanda.
CHAPTER TWELVE
CASSANDRA & JANE
THE SISTERS ARE STEALTHILY ransacking Shay’s life—scouring the internet for every wisp of her electronic footprints, dissecting her routines, canvassing her contacts, and delving into her background.
From her LinkedIn account they learn Shay has held three jobs since she graduated from Boston University, but now temps for a Wall Street law firm. By tracing the tentacles of her Facebook profile, they discover that her best friend, Mel, has a new baby and lives in Brooklyn.
They learn even more by following Shay, like the fact that she enjoys the falafel from the Greek restaurant a few blocks down from her apartment, and that she works out almost every day. “Her roommate, Sean, is in a serious relationship,” Stacey reports after following Sean to a bar, where he met his girlfriend for happy hour. “He’s trying to start his own college-prep tutoring company.”
Their scrutiny extends to encompass her family: Her mother, Jackie, isn’t shy about posting bikini shots on Instagram, and her stepfather tinkers with his Ford Mustang in his spare time.
What the sisters still don’t know: how the mysterious woman who clearly goes out of her way to avoid even getting near a subway station is linked to Amanda.
“She can’t be a relative or she would have acknowledged Amanda’s mother at the funeral. She can’t be a close friend because she wasn’t even listed in Amanda’s contacts,” says Cassandra.