Anushree Rayarikar
TW: Blood and Violence
Friday, September 16, 2016.
9:15 p.m.
The tile is cold. Where am I?
Tile. I’m in a room with tile. Am I in the bathroom? No, wait. I can smell something. It smells clean and fresh. Laundry detergent.
I’m in the laundry room.
In front of me are two rows of three hooks each, holding dozens of cloth bags, backpacks, tote bags, and purses. It looks like a rainbow threw up in here, each bag a different shade of bright color, some with words written on it like “Chesterbrook Academy” or “I Heart New York”. Focusing on the bags on the wall in front of me helps to bring me back to my senses a bit. I count the bags. 15 that I can see, but there’s probably dozens more tucked into one another, like Russian nesting dolls. Who needs that many bags?
Anyways, that’s not the point. The point is that it’s past 9 pm, I’m home alone, and I’m sitting on the floor of my laundry room. Why am I here?
7:15 pm.
Having the house to yourself when you’re sixteen is a weird feeling. Like, what should I do? I have this huge house with a stocked fridge (and a stocked bar). In an ideal world, I would throw a big party and somehow clean it up before my parents get home from their fancy dinner party in the city. Ferris Bueller would LOVE that. But this isn’t an ideal world, and I realistically only have like 8 friends, so it would be a sad rager.
I walk to the fridge and grab myself some leftovers. It’s pesto pasta. Not bad. I was expecting some kind of rice bake, but I’ll gladly take pesto instead. I scoop some out in a plate to heat it up. Cody Ko’s voice echoes out from the YouTube video playing on my phone, but aside from the low hum of the microwave and the ever-present buzz of the appliances in the house, the house is quiet. So quiet, in fact, that you can even hear the crickets chirping outside as the sun sets in the background.
As my food gets warmed by the radioactive waves, I walk over to the glass sliding doors that lead to our backyard and pull shut the sweeping tan blinds. I twist the rod to make the slats of the blinds shut completely, blocking out the outside world. The microwave cries out three loud, high pitched, long beeps to let me know that my food is done. As I walk over to grab the food out, even the soft pitter patter of my feet on the hardwood flooring sounds like high heels walking down a school hallway in this giant, open, empty, quiet house. I didn’t notice what a difference it makes to have my sister running around the house, my dad watching the news in the background, and my mom cooking and gabbing on the phone.
Whatever. I grab my pasta, a fork, and a glass of water and I go over to the living room and sit on the couch to eat my dinner. Independence is so liberating, isn’t it? Who needs dining tables!
Thank God the living room is carpeted, so the sound of my feet walking across the floor doesn’t sound so loud now. I turn the TV on and flip to Netflix. I’m almost finished watching the last season of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. I’m just about to start the episode when I hear a rustling noise and a couple of thumps outside the house. I turn around to look out of the living room windows. The backyard is now tinged indigo, as twilight settles in. A few fireflies spark here and there, but aside from that all I can see is our lawn, trees, and vegetable patch.
No, wait. There that noise is again. I can hear the fallen autumn leaves crunching. Thump. Thump. Thump.
2:30 pm.
Man, today’s school day sucked. I mean any day would suck when it starts at 7:20 a.m. and lasts until 2:30 p.m., but today was weird.
In gym class, they gave us the option to choose what type of gym class we wanted to do for the first half of the semester. The options were Recreational Sports, aka the loser gym class, Competitive Sports, aka the jock gym class, Dance, aka where all the cheerleaders go, and Health, aka learning about sex. None of those options seemed even the least bit appealing. But, this semester, they also decided to offer a self-defense course just for girls, to teach us how to protect ourselves. It seemed cool, it also seemed like an easy A, and there would also not be any annoying dudes in it, so I decided to take it.
Today in self-defense, they had a guest speaker come and talk to us about a time when she needed to defend herself. I had no idea how serious it was actually going to be. Apparently, she had been home alone one day, and she was supposed to go meet her family somewhere, but this weird man came up to her house and rang the doorbell. She opened the door and he started asking her for money. When she wouldn’t give him any, she tried to just shut and lock the door, but he broke down the door and broke into her house. He then locked the door behind him and threatened to kill her with a knife unless she gave him money. He made her take him upstairs, give him cash, and then he stripped her, sexually assaulted her, and stabbed her multiple times. By some miracle of God, she was able to run out of the house and run to her neighbors where she screamed for help. She was naked and covered in blood, but somehow the neighbors called 911, she got taken to the hospital, and she recovered. She then went to learn Jiu Jitsu, and now teaches it in schools across the nation. The man was never caught.
It was straight-up terrifying to be in that classroom, listening to that story. I mean, it could’ve happened to anyone! I’m glad she’s okay.
These thoughts raced through my mind all day, but now it is 2:30 and it’s time for me to go home, forget about school, eat some Lucky Charms, and relax. What a glorious Friday.
7:40 p.m.
I get up to check out what the sound is, but my heart is racing. I remember the story from self-defense class in school today. All reason and logic leave my mind, and my body freezes. I mean, literally, I can’t move. All I can think of is that I am about to die. Someone is about to break into my house, and I am about to die. I’m frozen on the couch for what feels like forever but is actually probably 10 minutes. I know that sitting here on the couch is not a good idea, especially if there actually is someone in my backyard. I need to move, I need to get to a safe spot, but I. just. can’t.
I make a conscious effort to breathe.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Okay. I need to get somewhere else. Where can I go that has no windows? That’s what they say when we go on lockdown drills in school, right? Keep the lights off, stay away from windows, and don’t open the door.
My adrenaline kicks in a little, and I finally start to feel my body again. Okay, now RUN. I run, nearly tripping over my own feet, and I stay as close to the wall as possible. I stumble into the laundry room, and I shut the door. I sit by the wall and wait.
Fear seizes my body again, and I am once again frozen. My legs feel stiff. My hands shake. My breath is wavering and inconsistent. My eyes are open wider than they ever have been before, but I can’t see. I’m frozen. I’m frozen. I’m frozen.
Thursday, September 16th, 2021.
5:00 p.m.
The anniversary of my first panic attack never gets easier. I remember it in vivid detail. The moment I heard the noise, the fear that I felt in my heart, the feeling of pure panic coursing through my veins, the feeling of the cold hard tile under my feet, and the concerned look in my mom’s eyes when she came home and found me shivering on the floor of the laundry room. I had been there for almost two hours. Time flies when you’re panicking.
Life changes forever after a moment like that. The smallest reminders can send me back. Whenever the sky is a certain shade of indigo, I’m home alone, or the fireflies spark their lights in just the right way.
There never was anyone in the backyard that night. It must have been a rabbit or something.