Run on Red

by Noelle W. Ihli

Ziggy was a “mage”: which Laura and I had to Google. It meant he was some kind of magician.

I’d been bracing for something bad to happen for as long as I could remember. Ever vigilant, ever anxious,

“You just have to remember the rule of threes. You can survive three minutes without air. Three hours without shelter. Three days without water. Three weeks without food. First things first, and you’ll survive.”

In a survival situation, everything is inconvenient. Stay focused on your top priority. Resist panic.

I’d always thought of myself as a true-crime junkie. But it turned out, that was only when it happened to other people.

Men like this said things like that to girls like us, knowing we’d been told our whole lives that if we listened carefully and followed the rules, we’d stay safe.

The idea that every choice, no matter how small, mattered had fascinated my anxious brain.

Your chances of surviving an assault at any given location are 97%. Your chances of survival, if you are taken to a second location, drop to 30%.

Narcissists think they’re smarter than everyone else. But that doesn’t mean they are. That’s how they get caught. They make mistakes. They underestimate the intelligence of police. And they underestimate the intelligence of their victims.

I’d always thought I could skip the bad parts of life if I tried hard enough. If I was smart enough. But sometimes the trouble came to you—for the simple fact that it could and it wanted to.