This time I did not laugh.
The speeding car had come to a complete and sudden stop. Right there, right in the middle of the slick road. The taillights came on, white and bright, and the car idled for at least fifteen seconds before making a decision. Tires squealing, it reversed in the empty street, skidding to a terrifying halt beside me.
Wrong again.
Not pneumonia, not electrocution, not asphyxiation, no—Today, I was going to be murdered.
I stared up at the sky again.
Dear God, I thought, this was not what I meant when we last spoke.
Four
I stood stock-still and waited, waited for the window to roll down, for my future to be determined. Waited for fate.
Nothing happened.
Seconds passed—several and then a dozen—and nothing, nothing. The silver car idled beside me, its heavy, glistening body dripping steadily into dusk. I waited for its driver to do something. Anything.
Nothing.
I couldn’t quell my disappointment. In the breathless interlude, my curiosity had grown greater than my fear, which now felt perilously close to something like anticipation. This near-denouement was the closest I’d been to excitement since the day I thought my father would die, and bonus: the car looked warm. At least death, I thought, would be warm. Dry. I was ready to ignore everything I’d ever learned about getting into cars with strangers.
But this was taking too long.
I squinted into the rain; I couldn’t see much from where I stood, just darkened windows and exhaust fumes. It was a short distance from the sidewalk to the car, and I wanted to clear that distance, wanted to knock on the car’s window, demand an explanation. I was stopped short by the sound of trapped, muted voices.
Not talking—arguing.
I frowned.
The voices grew louder, more agitated. I approached the car like a crescent moon, my back curved against the rain, head bowed toward the passenger door. I had no way of being entirely certain of my fate today, but if I really was going to be murdered I wanted to get it over with. I squelched the three steps across the sidewalk, adjusted my sopping headscarf, and waved at the dark window of the strange car. I might’ve even smiled. My trembling, secret hope was that the driver was not a murderer, but a kind Samaritan. Someone who’d seen me drowning and wanted to help.
The car sped away.
Without warning—its tired engine revving a little too hard—it sped away, bathing me anew in sewer water. I stood there dripping on the sidewalk, skin burning with unaccountable embarrassment. I couldn’t make sense of it, couldn’t understand how I’d just been appraised and rejected by a murderer. A murdering duo, even.
It occurred to me, briefly, that the car had seemed familiar, that the driver might’ve been someone I knew. This thought was not comforting to me, and yet it was a clinging thought, one that could not, at this hour, be probed sufficiently for truth. I shook my head, shook the congealing hypothesis from my mind. The sky was going gray, and silver Honda Civics were ubiquitous; I couldn’t be sure of anything.
I lifted one wet foot, then the other.
Of all things, I had the Toys R Us jingle stuck in my head, and I hummed it as I walked, as I passed faceless shopping malls and gas stations. I kept humming it until it became a part of me, until it became the disorienting background music for the PowerPoint presentation of disappointments looping behind my eyes.
I saw that Honda Civic again when I finally got to school.
It was parked there in the parking lot, and I dripped past it on my way toward the main building. The rain had stopped, but it was nearly dark now, and I was nearly dead. Right now I had only enough functioning brain matter to keep my teeth from chattering, but I couldn’t stop myself from staring at that Honda Civic as I walked onto campus, my neck turned at a comically uncomfortable angle. I was trying to look more closely at the car, but the sky seemed to have sunk down, sat on the ground. Everything and everyone was gray. I moved through clinging mist, couldn’t really see where I was going.
Metaphors, everywhere.
I tried not to think about my throbbing head or the blue tint to my skin. I tried to focus, even with the fog. Now, perhaps more than before, I wanted to understand what had happened. I wanted to know who drove that car and whether I really did know the driver. I was trying to understand why the car had pulled over without murdering me. I was trying to suppress the panic in my chest that wondered whether I was being followed.
And then I fell.
There were stairs leading up to the school, stairs I’d climbed a thousand times, and yet tonight I didn’t, couldn’t see them. I fell onto them instead, indenting skin and bones and catching myself with slippery hands. My head only just grazed the stone and I was grateful, but I’d slammed my knee pretty hard and could feel it bleeding.
I rolled over onto my back, my backpack; closed my eyes. Cold wind skated over the planes of my face, chilled my damp clothes. I couldn’t stop laughing. Mine was the mute variety, the kind betrayed only by the curve of my smile, the shaking of my shoulders. Pain was fracturing up my leg; I felt it in my neck. I didn’t want to get up. I wanted to lie here until someone carried me out, carried me away.
I wanted my mother.
Dear God, I thought. Why? Why why why?
I sighed, opened my eyes to the sky. And with a single, herculean effort, I pushed myself upright. I wasn’t going to class tonight. But I
