The Nothing Man

by Catherine Ryan Howard

All around us were squeals of delight, tears and even a few handmade Welcome Home signs. I was holding a sign that said the name of a man I’d never met and I was waiting to talk to him about a murderer who’d changed the course of both of our lives. This was typical of what being the victim of a violent crime often felt like to me. I looked fine; I looked normal; I could blend in with everyone else. But I had a secret that set me apart, that made me an Other. The lives of the people around me were so different to mine they may as well have been science fiction. I would never stand in an Arrivals hall to wait for my family. I had lost all the family I’d had. And if I somehow found a way in the future to make a family of my own—something that, when I thought about all the steps I would need to take to make that happen, seemed utterly impossible—I would never let them go anywhere without me. I’d be too scared to. Because even when you were at home, altogether, you still weren’t safe. I had seen the proof of this firsthand.