Page 18 of Liar Byrd
The man slows down.
Whipping back around, I pump my legs faster, toward the cop car parked outside a grocery store. Two cops are inside. One is speaking into a radio. The other is looking right at me, one deep line between his eyebrows.
I glance over my shoulder again.
The man is no longer chasing me.
A car door creaks open.
I whip back around.
The cop who was looking at me is sliding one leg out. I dash around the parked cop car and sprint down the road, away from him.
My hair is damp with sweat, with strands at the front sticking to my forehead. As I run, the world around me blurs, and everything sounds muffled except for the thud of my footsteps and the pounding of my frantic heartbeat.
Trust no one, Byrdie.
Especially men.
I’ve learned my lesson.
The next time I look around, there’s no sign of the pimp. No sign of the cop who was getting out of his car either.
Just me, drawing stares and curious glances from the few people wandering the streets in the middle of the day.
I spend my second night away from the compound under a bridge, as far from people as I can get.
Brushing bugs off me, I settle down, doing my best to ignore my growling stomach as I close my eyes. If anyone comes this way, I’ll hear them long before they come close to me. And I’ll run.
If anyone even looks at me wrong, I’ll run and I won’t stop.
Are there good people in the world? Probably.
Do I want to keep running up against bad ones if I can avoid them all?
I use my hand to muffle my yawn, my eyelids getting heavy. “Absolutely,” I mutter to myself.
As the night settles around me, I think of Mom.
Of how the man she loved with every fiber of her body let her leg rot away, and she died, in agony, thinking the man with an angelic smile would save her.
I think of all the pain and the hurt, and a hopelessness that weighed so heavily on me I could never breathe.
Tears prick my eyes.
I glare up at the darkening sky, willing myself not to cry. I’m out. That’s all that matters.
Most of all, I think of the baby I never knew, who died because I didn’t want to exist anymore.
A hot tear slides down the side of my face, and I scrub at the cooling wet mark.
I didn’t want Jeremiah’s baby. I didn’t want anything that was a part of him.
But that baby was a part of me too.
My fingers flutter to my belly.
It’s flat and hollow. Empty of life and food.
