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Maybe then I’ll stop.
Or I’ll just keep running forever.
Townhouses blur as I sprint across a road, leaving the bars and restaurants behind, following the pulsing bass from a bar or club that must be on one of the side streets.
People glance at me. Women in tight dresses and high heels, made-up faces, and perfumed to within an inch of their lives. I’m moving too fast that the scent only tickles my nostrils instead of making me sneeze like I want to. Men smoke cigarettes as they ogle the girls. But not everyone is out to party tonight.
Some carry plastic bags bulging with groceries, eyes tired and worn, backs hunched, steps slow. Must’ve been a long, hard day.
Every one of them looks at me as I speed past.
Your day couldn’t have been as long as mine has been. Or as hard.
I lose track of how long I run but eventually, the pain in my ribs forces me to slow, and then stop. As I do, two men in dark leather jackets, their mouths hidden behind thick beards, their eyes glinting at me, peel away from the brick wall just ahead.
One tosses his half-smoked cigarette on the ground. “Hey, pretty lady. You look lost.”
I inch back a step, still struggling to catch my breath.
His friend’s beard twitches. I guess he must be hiding a smile back there. “That she does. Can we help you find somewhere you need to be?”
Shaking my head, I retreat. “No. I don’t need help.”
They prowl closer, blocking the path ahead with their thick bodies. “Now, I’d disagree. I’d say it looks like you need a lot of help. But that’s okay, we’re friendly guys. We know how to help you.”
Before Mom died, groups of men liked to hang out at the end of our street. Back when Dad was still Dad, and I was just like everyone else.
When the men were there, Dad wouldn’t let me play outside, and I never knew why.
They’d stand there for days, in their black jeans and leather jackets, smoking cigarette after cigarette. The air was so thick with fumes I was sure I could smell it through the glass in my bedroom window.
The prettiest girls in the neighborhood would start showing off expensive jewelry and handbags I’d only ever seen in magazines. It wouldn’t be long after that they started to look different. Their skin all gray and washed out. Sometimes they would wring their hands and grind their teeth. And they sniffed. Constantly.
Soon the girls would disappear and cops would go door to door asking questions, but by then the men would have moved on to some other neighborhood. Sometimes they came back, or other men who looked just like them would spend the next several days smoking cigarette after cigarette in that same corner.
I never forgot the look in those men’s eyes as I peered through the gap in the curtains from my bedroom window.
It was the same look Mom had on her face when she took me shopping with her to the grocery store and she was trying to decide between two peaches.
I’d ask her what she was looking for. She’d tell me sometimes the peaches were bruised on the inside and those were the ones you didn’t want, so you had to inspect each one carefully to find the ones that didn’t have any bruised insides. Those were the ones most likely to be juicy and sweet.
That’s how the men would look at the girls in the neighborhood, and that’s how these two men are looking at me.
Wheeling around, I sprint back the way I came.
They don’t call out after me, but beneath my heavy pants, the hard smack of boots on the ground warns me they’re following.
A few feet ahead, a man emerges from somewhere brightly lit, tearing open the plastic on a pack of cigarettes with his teeth. As he does, a woman edges around him, the contents of her plastic bag chinking.
I give it everything I have, gritting my teeth against the pain in my sides.
I’m less than two feet from the entrance of the grocery store when a man steps out of nowhere and I run right into him.
“Oof!” The air leaves me in a rush, but I’m already spinning around, my hair windmilling around me as I check to make sure the two men aren’t waiting to pounce.
They’re close. Maybe five steps behind.
I push myself away from the man I crashed into and throw myself into a grocery store with spotless white floors and lights so bright that it feels like the only bit of dirt in it is me.
