The next week passes by incredibly fast. I get closer to Sam, Lisa and Scott, and I even warm up to Stella. Maja and I have philosophical discussions every afternoon in the metro while Sam is watching us, smiling, and I didn't see Rachid and Amid during the whole week. That doesn't have to mean anything, though. Paris is a big city, and they might still be here, somewhere, planning their next cruel, inhuman act.
Every time I think about them, my stomach starts to boil with burning anxiety, destroying me from the inside, and that's why I try to distract myself from my own scary mind as much as possible. Sometimes it works, and I end up texting Lisa about a meme and watching YouTube videos, sometimes it doesn't work and I spend hours in my bed, crying, barely being able to move.
Today is Thursday, and we're going on a field trip with my Art class. Lisa and Sam are sitting next to me on the bus on our way to the museum, but once we arrive, Lisa ditches us for some other kids and leaves Sam and me alone, which doesn't really bother me.
"Is she always like that?" I ask Sam while we're strolling around in the gallery.
"Who?" Sam asks, his eyes focused on a very colorful painting by Keith Haring.
"Lisa," I go on, "She knows everybody, she's friends with everybody. Doesn't it get annoying after a while? That she has like 50000 other friends besides you?"
Sam shrugs and looks at me. "As long as she's a good friend, I don't mind."
"It kind of makes me feel like no friendship really matters to her," I mumble. "Since she has so many."
He chuckles, caressing my cheek with his thumb. His eyes are in a soft green today. "Roxane, Lisa is a very special girl. A prodigy. She excels at everything, and she always needs more, or else her brain gets bored. That doesn't mean she doesn't care about us." Then, he adds quietly: "You never know how another person's brain works, so don't even think for a second that you do. The mind, Roxane, is humanity's biggest mystery, and it will never be solved."
I think for a while about what he's saying before I answer: "But isn't that the beauty in humans? Our unsolvable minds?"
"Yes, it is." Sam looks like he wants to kiss me, his gaze burning, so I look away and pretend to be interested in the paintings.
I'm in a weird mood; I have this horrible feeling in my stomach, this horrible feeling telling me that something bad is about to happen. I know it doesn't make any sense: I'm in a museum with my friends, I'm safe, and still, I feel like the world is going to explode, and I'm kind of happy when we get out of the museum, because suddenly it seemed to become hotter and tighter in the rooms inside, like the walls were moving towards me and suffocating me.
Lisa is waiting for us at the exit of the museum, scrolling down Instagram and looking at us with an eye roll once we join her. "Took you long enough. All of the others went outside to find something to eat before the drive back to school. What did you do in there? Did you get inspired by one of the drawings and decided to eat each other's faces?"
She snickers at her own comment while my whole face starts burning. I'm pretty sure I've never resembled a tomato this much.
Sam, on the other hand, seems unfazed by Lisa and simply responds: "We didn't ask you to wait for us, you know."
She just shrugs. "And thinking about it, I shouldn't have, since third wheeling isn't exactly my favorite hobby." She winks at me, and my face becomes even more heated. My dear friend really needs to stop making all of these allusions.
"But I remembered that your dad used to work here and therefore you know this part of the city better than anyone else, so I decided to trust you with choosing where I shall eat my lunch today."
It's at Lisa's mention of Sam's dad that I realize that neither Sam nor Maja ever talk about their parents, like they don't even exist, which is weird. I decide to dig deeper on the matter and to discreetly ask Sam about his parents later on.
"Fine," Sam says, "Who's feeling like eating the best hamburger in the city?"
Obviously, we all are, so Sam leads us a couple of streets further. We stop in front of a tiny red restaurant with a long queue of people waiting to order.
"Oh my God," Lisa shouts, tilting her head back at opening her mouth slightly, "I can already smell the fries."
I tell her very seriously: "You look like you're having an orgasm."
Sam laughs, while Lisa grins at me. "Oh, my dear Rox, I am having an orgasm. But this particular one I call frigasm."
"Girls," Sam, who is observing the long line of people trying to enter the restaurant with a frown, says, "I completely forgot it was lunch time for all of the big offices around us, sorry. Would you mind waiting a while before we get our food?"
Lisa shrugs. "As long as I'll be able to not only smell, but also eat those fries, I don't care how long I have to wait."
I don't mind either, and we are just making our way to the back of the queue when I freeze, making Sam and Roxane look at me with confused faces.
Because I just saw two people in this queue I really didn't want to see.
Rachid and Amid.
Suddenly, my heart is beating really fast, and the world is spinning, and I have only one single thought left in my empty brain: I need to leave. Now.
They haven't seen me, but it's only a matter of time now. If they see me, it's over.
The survival instinct in me takes over, and I start moving, mumbling: "I can't eat here."
Sam stares at me, obviously surprised at my unusual behavior. "What? The queue is not as bad as it looks like, I promise."
"It's not the queue," I answer, barely aware of him anymore. It's so hot here, why is it so hot here? We're in winter, and I'm sweating.
The world is hot, and it's spinning, and there's too many people around me, walking, talking, coming unnecessarily close to me, and suddenly they are not people anymore, but ants, crawling on my skin and into my brain...
"Roxane, where the hell are you going?" Sam asks, making me snap out of my thoughts. It's only then I realize than I've run over to the other side of the street, having a very confused Sam and Lisa following me. "What's gotten into you?"
"Sam," I say, my voice sounding weirdly calm – it's the calm before the storm- "I'm going to have a panic attack any second now, and I didn't want it to happen in front of many people." Especially not in front of Rachid and Amid.
"A panic attack? Why? Do you have a phobia of hamburgers?" Lisa asks, obviously not used to this kind of situation.
Sam ignores her and looks at me, his eyes full of concern. "What do you need me to do?"
"Nothing. Just don't freak out." I sit down, leaning my back on a random apartment building's wall.
He snorts drily. "You're asking me not to freak out?"
"Yes." I close my eyes, knowing that the panic attack is going to hit me any second now. These moments are the worst: being aware that you're going to have a meltdown any second, but not being able to stop it anymore.
Sam might not understand yet what I mean by telling him not to freak out, however I've experienced that me having a panic attack often frightens other people more than it frightens me.
It is horrible to suffer, but it is even more horrible to watch a person you care about suffer and not be able to do anything about it.
And then it comes, and my body starts shaking uncontrollably, and I cry and cry and cry, and I can see that Lisa comes forward to hug me tightly and that Sam kneels down and holds my hand, but I do not realize it, and I can see their mouths moving but I cannot hear them.
I am numb. My brain is numb, and this is the reaction of my body taking over while it is powerless. I can barely feel the tears on my face or my friends touching me. In my head, I am someplace else, someplace without Rachid or Amid or him or any bad people in general.
Someplace where I am safe.
Ten minutes later, I am sitting in a coffee shop, my hands around a mug with hot chocolate, staring mindlessly out of the window.
Lisa is chewing on her nails, staring at me worriedly, while Sam is calling my mom to ask her to pick me up. We were supposed to take the bus back to school with the rest of our school, but Sam and Lisa agreed that a day full of classes wouldn't be good after what just happened.
Sam hands my phone back to me. "Your mom will be here in 10 minutes, she said."
"Thanks," I mumble. My panic attack is over, but they all still seem so far away.
From the corner of my eye, I notice Sam and Lisa exchanging looks before Lisa hesitantly asks: "Roxane... do you want to explain to us what just happened back there?"
"I had a panic attack."
"Yeah, we saw that." Sam says. "What we'd like to know is why you had one."
I sigh as I realize they can never know the answer to that question, and that no matter how hard I'll try to get close to Lisa and Sam, my past will always be a wall between us, a wall separating us infinitely. "I wish I could tell you, I really do."
They both stay mute for a long time, before Lisa finally speaks up: "We know that you have secrets, Roxane. Things you don't want to share with us. But that's okay. We're not expecting you to share anything with us. Everyone has secrets. We just hope that you know you can trust us, and that we're there if you need us. We want to be your friends, Roxane. You just need to let us."
My heart warms up at her kind words, and I cannot help thinking that maybe, maybe, with people like Lisa and Sam by my side, I can get through this.
My mom doesn't say anything as I get in the car.
"Mom."
Still nothing.
"Mom. Mom, look at me. Why do you look like you're mad at me?"
She turns her head towards me and I can see that her eyes are full of tears. "I'm not mad at you, sweetie, I'm mad at myself. I'm mad at myself for not being able to protect my own fricking daughter."
"What?" I lightly touch her arm, trying to calm her down. Seeing your mother cry is probably one of the most painful things in the world, and knowing that I caused that sadness in her makes it even more painful. "You do protect me. You protect me more than anyone else. But you can't control what they are doing, mom. You can't control where they are."
"No, that's true, I can't. However, someone else can." Suddenly, she has a determined look in her eyes.
"Whom?" I ask slowly.
"The police."
"The police? Mom, I'm not so sure if that's such a good idea." I doubt the police can help us. They can't even prevent terrorist attacks from happening.
"Why not? They're supposed to help us. We need to at least try."
I sigh, knowing that it would be pointless to convince her otherwise. She is very stubborn in that way.
Once we've explained the situation to the police officer, he chews his lip, looking at us with a concerned look on his face. "I'm sorry, miss, but I'm afraid we can't do anything about that."
This is what I expected so I just nod and get ready to leave the police station, but if course my mother has other plans.
"What do you mean, you can't do anything? It's your job to protect the people of this country!" my mother pesters.
"You're right, it is." I respect him for being so patient with my mother. Poor guy, I'm sure he has more interesting things to do right now. "However, our job is to protect all people, and as long as these two young men your daughter described are no visible threat to her, it also our job to protect them."
My mom scoffs, obviously not satisfied. "Might I remind you that these people were in the same organization than my daughter? Isn't that enough proof that they are a threat to my daughter?"
"An organization whose every trace vanished after your daughter and her associate were arrested. We were not able to identify any other members." The mention of him makes me shudder.
The police guy looks at me. "I'm not saying I don't believe you, miss. I do believe you. But sadly, a simple statement from a person who's committed crimes in the past is not enough to arrest two young men with a perfectly clean record."
"So there's nothing we can charge them with?" my mom asks, sighing.
He shrugs. "Well, we could have charged them with stalking if you had seen them very frequently but you haven't, right? This is your first time seeing them?"
"Second time," I correct him and instantly regret it as I remember I haven't told my mom about the first time I saw them, in the metro.
My mom stares at me, her eyes wide. "Excuse me? Second time?! How come I did not know about that?"
I wave her off. This is not a conversation to have front of the police officer, we'll talk about it later. "Because nothing happened. Anyway, I definitely haven't seen them enough to accuse them of stalking."
The policeman chews on his lip, deep in thought. "Alright... there's nothing else we can do then. Unless you want to charge them or even your associate with anything else? Something you forgot to mention before and could be important?"
I scoff, not believing he's serious. "He's already been sentenced to 15 years of prison, isn't that enough?"
A gentle smile tugs at the police officer's lips. "Sure, but we could make his stay there even longer if you can think of anything."
So I try to think about it. It is true that 15 years are not a very long time- it means that he will come back one day, and try to find me- and that I would like him to stay there longer, but how can I achieve that?
There's nothing else I can blame him for.
Except for one thing.
Suddenly, the blood freezes in my body as I think of the worst night of my life. The act he committed that changed me forever.
But I realize that in order to accuse him of doing that, I would have to tell the police officer about it. And my mom. And everyone else. My stomach flips at that thought.
I swore to myself that I would never tell anyone about that night, about what happened to me.
When I was arrested 8 months ago, I told my mom and the police all of the secrets I'd been keeping for a year. All of them except this one.
This one will stay mine, and only mine, forever.