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The ring with the hidden blade was pretty cheap on Amazon, but I’m not sure if it’s going to hold up against an attacker. It was pretty useful when I needed to open my six-pack of pepper spray though.
I keep my finger on the power button of my phone whenever I leave the house. Whether I’m walking Frankie or walking out to my car, I never let the power button go. It’s because I remembered to press it five times when I saw those guys standing outside my door that the police were even sent to my apartment. I will always utilize that feature as my first line of defense.
After figuring out what I needed to protect myself, I took on a monumental task. Mitchell told me that I needed to cope with what happened. But coping with traumatic events leads you down a rabbit hole. And in no time at all, I was looking at a page that outlined the symptoms of PTSD.
Upsetting dreams about the traumatic event? Check. That’s why I was in the shower every morning at 4:00 am to wash off the sweat from my nightmares.
Trying to avoid thinking or talking about what happened? Check. I still haven’t told my friends or family and I don’t bring it up with Mitchell either. Whenever he mentions it, I change the subject.
Difficulty experiencing positive emotions? Check. One of my coworkers announced that it was her birthday this weekend and she’d be hosting a party. All I could think about was how dangerous it’d be for me to come home in the middle of the night alone.
Being easily startled. Always on guard for danger. Trouble sleeping. Irritable. I could list all the symptoms on the Mayo Clinic’s website. They were all happening to me.
Some other websites said that inappropriate actions were also a sign of PTSD. It made me think back to that first day with Mitchell. I let him draw me a bath and I asked him to stay there while I undressed. I let him tuck me into bed after giving him a key to my apartment. I was virtually naked and only a few feet away from a stranger.
I make myself sick.
I used to think that when bad things happened to me, I handled them pretty well. When my uncle died from lung cancer on Christmas Day when I was sixteen, it barely phased me. We were very close and he called me a few hours before he passed to say that he wasn’t going to be here much longer. I thought that meant he was coming home soon. When we got the news a couple of days later, I cried for a few minutes and that was it.
When my dad got into a wreck when I was fourteen with me in the front seat, I came out with a broken arm and told a few jokes. I wasn’t afraid to get back in a car.
When I failed a class in the first semester of my senior year in high school. I didn’t freak out and start thinking my life was going to go down the drain. I girded my loins and put on my thinking cap until I came up with a solution.
Truly terrible things haven’t happened to me, but I feel like I’ve handled the ones that have with grace. This is the first time in my life that something has gone truly, terribly, utterly wrong and I haven’t been able to regroup.
I know what’s happening to me; I just don’t know how to fix it.
9
MITCHELL
I’m not angry or upset. I’m not frustrated by the early morning text messages. I read them as they come through and try to determine what Kaitlyn needs. Is it someone to reassure her that she’s safe? Or does she need me to drive over and hold her until she falls back asleep? Reading between the lines is easy.
Kaitlyn should see a therapist. I deduced that from the first morning I woke up to the sound of my phone chiming at 4:00 am. I don’t know what kind of care she needs, but I think she should speak to a professional.
But in lieu of that suggestion, Kaitlyn talks to me. Not about what happened, anything but that.
She tells me about her overprotective parents and admits in no uncertain terms that she won’t be telling them what happened to her. “They were nervous enough that I came out here to go to college,” she admitted. “If I told them I was robbed at gunpoint, or worse,” Kaitlyn hid the nervousness on her face, “they’d force me to come home.”
And in a way, I understand why she’s keeping this secret from them. She has a life out here. She’s a paralegal and she loves her job. She has friends from her college days and friends from her office. It would be difficult to uproot her life and move home on a whim, all because two teenage boys picked the wrong house to rob.
I tried to learn as much about the boys as I could after I left Kaitlyn’s place. The blonde was Thomas Montel, 18, fresh out of juvenile hall for vandalism to his high school campus. The brunette was Darrell Brooks, 19, a resident cashier at a gas station down the street. He’s the one who cased the Amherst Apartments and determined that they’d be easy to break into it. He was right. If he’d stopped at robbing Kaitlyn, he’d have gotten a few months of jail time, but the second he pulled out that gun, he added years to his sentence.
Darrell and Thomas had lives outside their extracurricular activities. A quick internet search pulled up Darrell’s Facebook. Every other post was a tag from his girlfriend’s page with another cute picture of their kid. He hung out with his brother a lot and talked about becoming a tattoo artist one day. He posted sketches and designs with the caption, ‘Who’d let me ink this on them?’ There was never a shortage of takers.
Thomas’ social media was a little more sluggish. He’d been in and out of jail since he was thirteen years old. Every few months there’d be a slew of posts saying ‘Free Thomas!’ But when I found out what he’d done, I couldn’t justify his actions. Anything from petty theft to slashing tires was on the table. He was a repeat offender who never quite learned from his mistakes.
A deep dive into Kaitlyn’s past was just as revealing as the men who’d tried to rob her. She’d gotten a Facebook account when she was fifteen years old, a solid decade ago. In the early years, she didn’t post many pictures, but she wrote a lot of status updates. In typical teen fashion, she alluded to being sad, having crushes, wanting someone to talk to, and more. Things that would make a person cringe now if they did it at twenty-five, but that were staples of being a teenage girl.
As she got into college, she shared more photos. Her at parties. Her with friends. Her twenty-first birthday. Her rock climbing. Her final product from a paint and sip night. She had a full life when she was in college.
The updates became fewer after graduation. She shared things like getting a new job and pictures of her food from new hole-in-the-wall restaurants she’d found. Kaitlyn’s feed felt more curated. She shared her successes, never her failures. In some ways, it felt fake. In others, you could tell that she wrote the words when she was brimming with excitement.
Her parents commented on all of her posts. They were diligent to like every photo she shared and every status update she made. Her mom seemed nice, always supporting her daughter regardless of the choices she made or the content she shared. Her father was a little more aloof in his compliments, but you could tell that he cared for Kaitlyn deeply.
They seemed like nice people, but I didn’t want them to take Kaitlyn back to California. I was just starting to get to know her and I couldn’t afford to lose her.
Trauma might have brought us together, but I stayed because I cared about her. In a strange way, all the research I did and deep diving into her past and her parents was just another way for me to get to know the girl she once was.
