like clots in the veined webs of branches.
From the school bus, a creaky metal arm extended into the opposite lane, but cars kept right on going.
“You gotta stop, it’s the law,” the driver called weakly out the window.
Renee waved good-bye to Missy and Katie and Theresa, each of them hurtling off onto different streets toward home, shoulders pulled forward with their backpacks. Missy with her flute case knocking against a hip.
Renee, alone on the sidewalk as the bus pulled away. Across the street, the car. Lights off, but Renee saw a figure in the driver’s seat. A male silhouette. One elbow out the window. Sunglasses, despite the dark. She noticed the man, but she was not afraid, not at first. This was year three of the Pause. Renee was too busy to be afraid. Track practice, homework, Joe’s baseball, cooking dinners, running baths, washing dishes and clothes. Any childhood fears had been so fully realized—darkness, death, solitude—that she saw them now almost as comforts. Obstacles she had surmounted. Fears converted to routine.
Renee began walking fast, she always walked fast, thinking of the frozen pizza she would put in the oven for dinner—or had they eaten that on Monday? She recalled also a box of mac and cheese, an orange the color of a highway worker’s vest. She was hungry. She picked up the pace.
It was then she heard his voice.
“Hey, baby. I’ve seen you before.”
The car was there, right beside her, inching along the road. His voice was not threatening, not loud. He spoke so faintly she almost didn’t make out the words. She looked ahead: No one on the sidewalk. No cars passing. It was dinnertime. Lights blazed in the windows of every house she passed. Each one its own private universe.
Renee turned her head and smiled—why did she smile? Smile at the nice man. It was an instinct, a directive from childhood, and she regretted it as soon as she felt her lips split.
“Yeah, baby,” the man said. “You’ve got a pretty smile. Want me to drive you somewhere? Come on, get in. It’s cold.”
Renee shook her head. “No thanks,” she said. Home was still four more blocks east, then three north, up the hill, second house on the right. Her brother and sisters were waiting for her. They had not seen Noni for five days. Or was it six?
“I think you should get in. I think you want to get in. Come on. You’re pretty, does anyone ever tell you that? You’re such a pretty girl. I like pretty girls.” His voice was almost soothing in its repetition. But beneath his words, Renee felt more than heard an electricity of purpose. An urgency. The drip, drip of a faucet into a sink that has only just begun to overflow.
Renee didn’t look at the man. She pulled up her backpack, thrust her hands deeper into her pockets, walked faster. The car matched her pace.
Later she couldn’t say why she decided to run. Something flipped, a chemical reaction, a flight instinct, a realization that she was in fact in danger.
Running was something that Renee did very well. Cross-country was her event. She loved the variety of it, the spills and jumps. Now she sprinted, imagining that this was a course, the rutted sidewalk and slippery leaves, a jump from curb to street and back again. Backpack banging against her lower spine, lungs firing with the cold. She ran and turned, and the car turned with her, tires squealing. It was like a movie, unreal, absurd. She heard the car brake hard, and she glanced behind to see the man open the door, hurl himself onto the sidewalk. He was shorter than she was expecting, scrawny, except for a ball of a stomach that strained the white button-down shirt he wore. His hair neat and brown as the car. He looked like a banker or a teacher, utterly benign. He began to chase her.
Renee ran faster, ducked into a yard, crossed that one, then another. She should have stopped to knock on a door—of course that’s what she should have done. She would spend months, years really, wondering why she hadn’t, but in the moment, as she ran, it seemed impossible to breach those closed front doors, the warm glow of those windows.
Renee’s breath came in an urgent white column from her mouth as she ran. Behind her she heard the man’s footfalls, his labored, reckless breathing. One house was dark—the Hunters, out of town for a family wedding—and it