Mom and I ate the same thing for dinner, and I wasn’t sick. And this was no flu. Mom was fine by morning. A little dehydrated, but back to herself. It was food poisoning. She’d eaten a cookie. I hadn’t.

We can’t and don’t know what others are thinking. We can’t and don’t know what motivations people have for doing the things they do. Ever. Not entirely. This was my terrifying, youthful epiphany. We just never really know anyone. I don’t. Neither do you.

It’s amazing that relationships can form and last under the constraints of never fully knowing. Never knowing for sure what the other person is thinking. Never knowing for sure who a person is. We can’t do whatever we want. There are ways we have to act. There are things we have to say.

But we can think whatever we want.

Anyone can think anything. Thoughts are the only reality. It’s true. I’m sure of it now. Thoughts are never faked or bluffed. This simple realization has stayed with me. It has bothered me for years and years. It still does.

“Are you good or are you bad?”

What scares me most now is that I don’t know the answer.

I STAYED BEHIND THE BENCH for probably an hour. It could have been much longer. I’m not sure. How long is an hour? A minute? A year? My hip and knee went numb from the way I was positioned. I had to contort myself in an unnatural way. I’ve lost track of time. Of course you lose track of time when you’re alone. Time always passes.

That song kept replaying: “Hey, Good Lookin’?” over and over and over. Twenty or thirty or a hundred times. It might have gotten louder, too. An hour is the same as two hours. An hour is forever. It’s hard to know. It’s only just stopped. It stopped halfway through a verse. I hate that song. I hate the way I had to listen to it. I didn’t want to listen. But now I know all the words by heart. When it stopped, it shocked me. It woke me up. I’d been lying down using Jake’s hat as a pillow.

I’ve decided I have to keep moving. No good lying down, hiding behind this bench. I’m a target. I’m too visible here. That’s the first thing Jake would tell me if he were here with me. But he’s not. My knee is really sore. My head is still aching, and spinning. I almost forgot about it. It’s just there. Jake would tell me to stop thinking about the pain, too.

You never think you’ll be in a situation like this. Being watched, stalked, held captive, alone. You hear about these things. You read about them from time to time. You feel sick about the possibility that someone would be capable of inflicting this kind of terror on another human. What’s wrong with people? Why do people do these things? Why do people end up in these situations? The possibility of evil shocks you. But you aren’t the target, so it’s okay. You forget about it. You move on. It’s not happening to you. It happened to someone else.

Until now. I stand up, trying to ignore my fear. I creep down the hall, silently, moving away from the bench, away from the stairwell I came up. I try a few doors. Everything’s locked. No exit from this place. These halls are bleak. There’s nothing on the walls, no sign of student existence. I’ve been down these same halls so many times. They repeat themselves, turn in upon themselves like an Escher drawing. When you think about it like this, it’s almost grotesque that some people spend so much time here.

All the garbage cans I’ve come across are clean and empty. Fresh bags. There’s no sitting waste. I look through them thinking there might be something I can use, something that might come in handy, something to help me move forward, to help me escape. They are all empty. Just empty black bags.

I’ve made my way to what must be the science wing. Have I been here before? I look in through the doors. Lab stations.

The doors are different in this hall. They’re heavier and blue, sky blue. There’s a large banner at the end of the hall, hand-painted. It’s an advertisement for the winter formal. A school dance. They’ll all be in here together, the students. So many of them. It’s the first sign of student existence that I’ve seen.

Dancing the night away. Tickets are $10. What are you waiting for? the banner reads.

I think I hear rubber boots. Footsteps somewhere.

It’s like I’ve been given a drug. I can’t move. I shouldn’t move. I’m incapacitated with fear. Frozen. I want to turn and scream and run, but I can’t. What if it’s Jake? What if he’s still here, locked in like me? If he were here, that would mean I’m not alone, that I would be safe.

I can get back to the stairwell. It’s just across the hall. I can get up to the third floor. Maybe Jake is there. I squeeze my eyes shut. I make fists with my hands. My heart is thumping. I hear the boots again. It’s him. He’s looking for me.

I exhale in a burst and feel sick. I’ve been in here too long.

I can feel my chest tightening. I’m going to vomit. I can’t do this.

I dart into the stairwell. He hasn’t seen me. I don’t think. I don’t know where he is. Upstairs, downstairs, over, under, somewhere else. I feel like he could be hiding, waiting, in my own shadow. I don’t know.

I just don’t know.

AN ART ROOM. UPSTAIRS. A different hall. A door that isn’t locked. This could be anywhere. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt relief like I did when the door to this room opened. I close it behind me, very slowly, but don’t latch it. I listen. I can’t hear anything. I might be able to hide in here, at least for a while. The first thing I do is try the phone fastened to the wall, but as soon as I dial more than three digits it beeps at me. I tried dialing nine first and even 911. It’s hopeless. Nothing works.

The teacher’s desk at the front of the room is tidy and neat. I open the top drawer. There might be something in the desk that I can use. I quickly rummage through the drawers and find a plastic retractable X-ACTO knife. But the blade has been removed. I drop it on the ground.

I hear something in the hall. I duck down behind the desk, close my eyes. More time. There are bottles of paint and brushes and supplies lining the back and side walls. The whiteboards are wiped clean.

I wonder how long I can stay in here. How long can a person last without the essentials, with no food, no water? Staying hidden like this is too passive. I need to be active.

I check the windows. The bottom window opens, but only enough to let in a little air. If there were a ledge or something out there, maybe I would consider jumping. Maybe. I open the window the full couple of inches. The cold air feels good on my hand. I leave my hand there, feeling the breeze. I bend down and breathe in what small amount of fresh air I can.

I used to love art class. I just wasn’t any good at it. I desperately wanted to be. I didn’t want to be competent and successful in math only. Art was different.

High school was such a strange time for me. For some people, it’s a peak. I did the work and got high marks. That wasn’t an issue. But all the socializing. The parties. The attempts to fit in. That wasn’t easy, even then. By the end of the day, I just wanted to get home.

I was unremarkable in the ways that matter in school. It was the worst type of oblivion, for years. I was scentless, invisible.

Adulthood. Late blooming. That’s me. Or it was supposed to be. That’s when it was supposed to finally get better. I’d get better then, everyone said. This is when I would start coming into my own.

I’ve been so careful. So self-aware. I’m confused less. I haven’t been reckless. I understand myself. My own limitless potential. There is so much potential. And now this. How did I get here? It’s not fair.

And Jake. It wasn’t going to work out between us. It’s not sustainable, but that’s irrelevant now. He will be fine without me, won’t he? He’s coming into his own. He’s going to do something big, that I know. He doesn’t need this. Me. His family doesn’t need this, either. They aren’t my kind of people, but that doesn’t matter. They’ve been through a lot. I probably don’t know the half of it. They probably think we’re back home now. They’re probably sound asleep.

This is not the end. It doesn’t have to be. I need to find him. And then I can back out, start again, try again. Begin at the beginning. Jake can, too.

It feels good to rest, by the window, to feel the air on my skin. I feel tired suddenly. Maybe I need to lie down. Go to sleep. Maybe even dream.

No. I can’t. No sleep. No more nightmares. No.

I have to move. I’m not free yet. I leave the window open and slink to the door.

My right foot hits something. A bottle. A plastic bottle of paint, lying on the floor. I pick it up. It’s half-empty. I have paint on my hands. There is paint on the outside of the bottle.

It’s wet paint. Fresh paint. I can smell it. I put the bottle down on a desk.

He was here. Recently, he was right here!

My hands are red. I rub them on my pants.

I see more paint on the floor. I smear it with my toe. There’s writing, in small letters:

I know what you were going to do.

A message. For me. He wanted me to come in here and see it. That’s why this door was open. He led me here.

I don’t know what this means.