It wasn’t until she was a mile outside of town that she looked in the mirror and saw the cop car, bulging hood and broad windshield staring her down, about a car length back. “Fuck,” Ivy muttered, taking another cookie from the package on the passenger seat. She became painfully aware of her driving, accelerating smoothly up every hill, braking carefully on every down slope, keeping her speed just a few ticks above the limit so as not to appear paranoid. The cop car matched her every move, even when she carefully eased onto a side road that wound up into a piney neighborhood of vacation rentals. “Fuck,” she muttered again, watching the mostly empty driveways go past. She could turn into one of them, pretend she’d reached her destination, and maybe the cop would just keep going. But what if he pulled in behind her? What if he asked to see her license?
The road was branching here and there, leading deeper into the development. Ivy picked a random street; the cop followed. She rounded a turn and cursed: a cul-de-sac. It was now or never. Park and be confronted, or act lost and prolong the game. She rounded the cul-de-sac, headed back out. Behind her, a blue light began to flash.
“Nooo…no no no,” Ivy wailed. She pretended not to see it for a few moments, continuing as before, but then the cop car chirped at her, loud and commanding. “No!” Ivy hollered. She wasn’t ready. She was just getting started. She clenched her teeth, stomped on the gas, and leaped down the hill out of the development, feeling something inside her start to spread its wings.
She fishtailed back onto the main road, the cop now whooping close behind, lights whirling. Ivy came up hard on the tail of a green pickup, then did something she never would have imagined doing before this moment. She pulled into the other lane and roared around the pickup, narrowly missing an oncoming station wagon. This bought her nothing, however, as the pickup swerved to the right to let the cop by, and in seconds, he was back on her tail. Now she came up on a black SUV. She whipped around it, and this time the cop came with her into the other lane, screaming past the black car. This is it, Ivy thought. This is how it’s going to end, like one of those dumb cop shows, crashing her car and bolting out of the driver’s seat, only to be tackled in someone’s backyard, her stupidity caught on video by the helicopter that should be appearing at any moment. Handcuffs, shackles, a toilet with no seat, and beatdowns in the yard.
Ivy pressed the accelerator as far down as it would go. The road had been pretty straight for the last few miles, but now it began bending and humping, making it hard to stay in her lane. She rounded a curve with a shriek, then swerved left to avoid another pickup that had suddenly appeared in front of her, practically at a standstill. Ivy’s head jerked back at the sight of what was lumbering toward her in the other lane: a cement truck, as tall and wide and fastened to the earth as a mountain. Ivy screamed again, jerked the steering wheel to the right without checking if she’d cleared the pickup, then winced at the sound of tires screaming back at her. In the rearview mirror, she could see the cement truck and pickup skidded sideways in the road, blocking her view of the cop car. She could still hear sirens, though, from many directions, getting louder. The cop was gone from her rearview, but there were more on their way, closing in fast.
Ivy slowed down and turned left into a modest housing development, then left again, trying not to go too fast so she wouldn’t attract attention, fear clawing at her insides. It was early; the neighborhood was quiet. Behind a row of one-story houses, beyond the carports and clotheslines and trampolines, she saw a muddy field edged by thick woods, and a gap in between that could be a dirt road or, just as easily, a ditch. She followed it with her eyes to a break in the trees. Might as well find out.
She yanked the wheel to the right, then stepped hard on the gas. The tires bounced energetically over the field’s caked furrows and grassy mounds, throwing Ivy up and down in her seat like a rubber ball on a wooden paddle. At the edge of the field, she found what was neither a road nor a path. It was something in between, but it looked like she would just fit. She eased the car down into it, then rolled hopefully toward the break in the woods where—yes—the track turned toward the trees. She felt the forest close around her like the softest, warmest blanket in the world. “Praise be,” she muttered, sounding like Gran.
The track turned out to be less of a road and more of an impression, picking its way through blank spots in the trees. Here and there, she could make out two ruts where someone’s tires had been, but mostly it was covered over with a thick layer of pine needles, dead leaves, and ferns. Eventually, she figured, the track would lead to a road, which would empty out into a state park or maybe a town far, far away from Forks.
After a while, the road became more clearly dug out of the side of a hill, climbing a little, tall weeds making a line up the middle. She came across a fallen branch that looked too big to drive over, so she got out to clear it away. Pausing by the warm hood, she thought she heard the sound of a highway in the distance, faintly constant and hopeful. She shoved the
