“You’re overthinking.” Lydia’s ponytail swings back and forth with style and grace. We are not the same. “Your body will get the job done. Don’t let your mind play tricks on you.”
“How far are we going?”
“I run five miles a day.”
“And how far have we come?”
She laughs, and the sun fills her mouth with sunshine. “Camilla, we’re only a block from the apartment.”
Dog pulls the leash tight, digging his paws into the concrete sidewalk to urge me forward. I find a pace that lingers between life and death, surviving on sharp breaths in my nose and out of my mouth.
Waving Lydia forward, I huff and say, “Go on. I’ll be right behind you.”
She shows off and runs backward in front of me. “Everybody has a day one.”
“Since when are you such a source of enlightenment?”
Leaving me with a half-smile, Lydia turns around and sprints out of reach. It’s on-trend with our entire relationship. She’s always a step ahead of me, and I watch with envy as she disappears around the corner an entire block away. Once she’s out of sight, Dog whines and concedes to my snail-like tempo. He would probably cover more ground if he were to actually drag my dead body.
“Oh, shut the hell up,” I grumble.
I tell myself that I can take a break if I make it to the end of the street where Lydia disappeared. The world bobs up and down as I put one foot in front of the other, panting and perspiring like I’m competing in a triathlon and not a quarter-mile jog. Dog walks briskly at my side, somehow finding an opportunity to stop and sniff a fire hydrant as I suffer to pick up speed.
Reaching the hypothetical finish line, I double over and brace my hands on my knees, gasping. The late autumn air is crisp, narrowing my airways more than my sad attempt at running. I straighten my posture and place my hands behind my head, breathing in and out of my mouth. Dog sits on the sidewalk with his back facing me, like I’ve shamed him.
“Everybody has a day one,” I remind the mutt coldly.
The later in the season we go, the cooler the temperature drops and the earlier the sun sets. It’s only four p.m., but the blue sky has already turned the dial down on the horizon and it glows gold. A porch light goes on as if on cue, preparing for the early night as an internal voice warns me to hurry home before dark.
My plan was to follow Lydia to the end of her run, but I have to chase the sun instead.
I reluctantly turn away from the path she took and head back to the apartment, nudging Dog to follow. Cool air chills where I’ve sweated and stings my eyes until they fill with tears. I wipe them dry on the sleeve of my sweater when a black SUV turns onto the road ahead. Its large tires chew gravel as it approaches slower than the twenty-five mile an hour speed limit. Partially blinded by the stinging in my eyes, the only thing I can make out of the driver is the baseball cap on his head and dark sunglasses on his face.
Yael’s here to take me home,I think to myself fleetingly. But that would be ridiculous. Home is a stone’s throw away. As the vehicle inches closer, an identical pricking sensation I felt last week at the coffee shop flattens my spine and tightens the muscles in my neck.
Moving to the far side of the sidewalk, I nearly collide with a twosome pushing strollers going in the opposite direction. The leash gets twisted around my feet, and I apologize immensely for my clumsiness while I untangle myself from the dog. The SUV’s engine suddenly roars as it picks up speed and drives by, but the panic stays.
I watch it vanish down the road as I mumble another apology to the women.
The sky resembles a pastel finger painting by the time I get back to the apartment complex. The blunt scent of freshly cut grass and sprinkler water is heavier when the sun is descending. A car door closes, and I find myself turning in a complete circle to make sure a dark SUV hasn’t followed me here. It’s only one of my neighbors returning home from work with a white grocery bag hanging from their wrist.
I don’t know if I was truly afraid of the SUV or if it was the thought of being stuck outside alone when the sun set that left me edgy. The vehicle wasn’t doing anything wrong. It could have slowed down for a handful of reasons that don’t include kidnapping. Maybe he was looking for an address, or maybe he was texting and driving. Maybe he was simply enjoying a drive near the beach.
My fear of the dark has left me deranged at best.
Lydia shows up fifteen minutes later, flushed and out of breath. “I didn’t realize it was going to get dark so early. I wouldn’t have left you alone if I had, Camilla. I’m sorry.”
If I was going to tell Lydia about the SUV, her apology nails my tongue to the roof of my mouth. How can I expect her to treat me like an equal when she feels the need to apologize to me because the sun went down?
Children can’t be left alone after dark. I’m not a child.
“Why are you apologizing? I told you to go ahead of me,” I say in a sharper tone than intended.
I shrink into myself as if I were going to be thrown into a closet for backtalk. But Lydia doesn’t react at all, simply giving me a side-eye as she walks past me to her bedroom. It’s not as if she doesn’t have reason to be concerned. The damn candles are lit.
Blowing out the row of candles perched on the kitchen bar is a decision my body reacts to immediately. It feels as if a pair of hands can reach out of the smoky darkness to wring my soul like a wet towel, ridding me of logic, time, and space. My lungs, my heart, my stomach and kidneys and liver are squeezed together—tighter, tighter, tighter—crushing me. I hold my hands over my mouth, remembering not to make a single sound if I want to get out…
The shower is running when I scurry past Lydia’s bedroom, following a neon blue light to the nightstand beside my bed. Wilder’s name tiptoes across my lips as I see my favorite sequence of numbers flash on the display window. Pounding harder and faster than it did during the run, my heart frees itself from the squeeze and jolts back to working condition.
