Sarai Walker - Dietland

I had no idea how to reply. Leeta stared from beneath her hood into the darkness that surrounded us. I could only imagine the scenes that played in her mind, that would always play. In my head I saw the Dirty Dozen dropped into the desert, the Harbor Freeway interchange, and all of the other attacks linked to Jennifer. “Did you know this was the beginning of something bigger? ”

Leeta said she didn’t. Days after the abduction, she called Soledad from the desert motel where she’d taken refuge and asked again what she was going to do with the men. “She said she’d let them linger for a while, that they weren’t going to be first. I didn’t know what she meant by first. I didn’t ask. That’s the last time I talked to her.” After the Jennifer attacks began to unfold, the first publicized attack with its link to the military, Leeta wondered if they were connected to Soledad and Missy. She tried to contact Soledad again, but it was Missy who replied. She and Leeta talked on the phone and through email, but Missy never admitted to anything. After Wilson and Martinez were killed with the rest of the Dirty Dozen, she knew for certain. “Missy was worried that I’d go to the police, so she wanted to keep tabs on me. I didn’t go to the police, but I told my roommate I knew who Jennifer was. I just couldn’t keep it inside anymore.” Leeta knew she’d made a mistake by telling her roommate. That’s when she went underground.

“How have you coped with hiding down here?” I asked, tugging on my collar. Finally, I was getting the answers to my questions, but what I really wanted to do was leave the suffocating hiding space. Leeta and I had both been underground—she in the Beauty Closet, me in Verena’s basement. New York was full of these dark places.

“During the day I know Julia is on the other side of the wall, but at night . . . sometimes there’s that screaming in my head again.”

“Why don’t you turn yourself in? Your sentence might not even be that long.” I was out of my depth, but this seemed like the sensible thing to suggest. Prison couldn’t be worse than this hiding space.

“The police wouldn’t believe anything I’d tell them. They’re out for blood. They’d want me to turn against Soledad, and I’m not going to do that. The truth is, I’m scared.”

Whether she ran or turned herself in, she was headed for a life of confinement. I wanted to reach out to her, to say it would be all right, but that would be a lie.

“Almost ready?” Julia said. Leeta struggled to stand up and so did I.

“I understand if you don’t want to give me the money, Louise B.”

“You need the money,” Julia said.

“It’s her choice. I don’t want her to do anything she’s uncomfortable with. She could get into trouble.”

I knew I could get into trouble, but I wanted Leeta to see the sun. “This money was given to me for a reason, but that reason no longer exists. You helped me,” I said. I wanted to say, You saved me. “Now it’s my turn to help you.”

She took the paper bag and stuffed it under her jacket. “I was right about you. You’re not like them.” She nodded upward toward the fifty-two stories on top of us.

“No, not like them.”

She pushed back the hood so I could see her face more clearly. She grabbed my hands, grasping them hard. “That time I spent spying on you was the last happy time in my life,” she said. “I’ve thought of you often while I’ve been down here. Julia has given me updates on how your life has changed, and that’s offered some rare moments of joy. Wherever I end up, just know that I’m on your side.”

She looked at me for several seconds more and then she walked away, inserting the earbuds and pulling the hood back up. Music blasted, muffled to me but deafening for her. I stared at the back of her, at the outline of her body against the hole in the wall and the light from the Beauty Closet. I’d imagined her for so long. In reality, I didn’t know her, but we lived in each other’s memories, each of us what the other needed us to be.

Julia removed the lamps from the hiding space, so the only light was coming from the other side of the hole in the wall. We helped Leeta into the crate. Once inside, she stepped into her sleeping bag and pulled it up so it rested under her arms like a strapless dress. She lowered herself into the crate and lay on the bottom in the fetal position, her face positioned near one of the air holes. Julia and I dropped eyebrow pencils on top of her and she didn’t flinch. We filled the crate with pencils, all the way to the top, until there was no sign of a person underneath. Julia attached the lid.

After we wheeled the crate out of the hiding space, Julia sealed the hole shut, pushing the boxes back in front of it. We moved down the Blush corridor toward the exit.

“Am I allowed to ask where you’re taking her?”

“New Mexico,” Julia said. “I’ll hand her off to someone there. She has to keep moving.”

We took the service elevator to the parking level and pushed the brown crate to the back of a small white delivery van that Julia had rented. I looked over my shoulders, exposed and scared. “Act normal,” Julia whispered. “There might be cameras.”

There were no windows on the sides of the van or in the back doors. With great effort, we lifted the crate and wrestled it into the hold. Once it was secure, Julia locked the doors. I wanted to say Be careful or Good luck, but nothing I could say would have been adequate.

“Write the book,” Julia said, and I told her I would. When she was in the driver’s seat with the door closed, I placed my palm against the glass and Julia did the same on her side. That’s how we said goodbye.

I followed the signs back to the lobby and rushed to get away before I ran into someone like Kitty. When I stepped outside I wanted to cry or scream or beat my fists against the Austen Tower, but I couldn’t. Other people would see. Wherever I went, I was seen.

After being in the hiding space, I found everything outside to be beautiful, even the concrete barricades and the neon lights. I headed toward Broadway. The white van was out there somewhere, but I didn’t see it. As I walked I stripped off my jacket and scarf and dragged them behind me. I pushed my way through the masses of tourists and began to run faster than I had ever run before.

Leeta was right. It felt good to be free. With unexpected power in my legs, I kept going, racing ahead with the wind and the sun on my face, taking a leap into the wide world, which now seemed too small to contain me.

Burst!

Alice Tasman, one of my lucky Alices, was the only literary agent in New York brave enough to take on Dietland. I am grateful for that every day. I am also tremendously lucky to have the other women at the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, and all my international co-agents and publishers, in my corner. I cannot possibly thank all these lovely people enough.

Lauren Wein, my editor (and admirer of my Dietland spreadsheets), shared my vision for the novel from our first phone call. Heartfelt thanks to her for helping me give Plum and company the editorial makeover they needed while always remaining true to them. Thanks also to Nina Barnett and Alison Kerr Miller for their help with improving the manuscript, and to the whole team at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. I am so appreciative of their efforts, I could just burst.

The generous and talented writers I met in the Bennington College MFA program continue to inspire me all these years later and will always be my writing community. In particular, I would like to thank William Vandegrift for his friendship, and Alice Mattison, my original lucky Alice, who encouraged me in the beginning and helped me reach the end.