The Last Romantics(35)

“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 was here that she turned. Into the front yard, around to the back, to a yard that looked like their old yard at the yellow house. A swing set, a rectangular sandbox, the lawn lined with flower beds that now lay dormant, clipped to the sleepy essentials to wait out winter. Sometimes Renee babysat for the Hunter twins, girls with brown ringlets. She liked to play with them out here, no matter the weather.

Now Renee looked for somewhere to hide, under the swing, behind the shed. She crouched beneath the low, sloping plastic slide, trying to make herself small. Invisible. The man entered the yard, still breathing hard. He slowed, stopped. There was no easy way out of here, Renee realized. The man roamed the yard, his eyes scanning. How long did it take? The yard was small. Of course he found her.

The man from the car grabbed Renee’s arm and pulled her from beneath the slide. She turned her head, and—bam—he punched her, his fist glancing off the left side of her head. The force made her lose her footing. How did it happen that he was on top of her? Her backpack had come loose, spilling pens and stickers and erasers across the lawn. A note from her friend Dawn, folded into an origami star.

“Don’t run from me,” the man was saying. “Don’t you ever run away from me again, do you understand? I will find you. I will always find you.”

Renee was fighting, but his hands were on her shoulders and he was strong, his breath in her face. “I will always find you,” he said again, and spit rained onto her face, into her eyes. He was hurting her, she was blinking, blinking, trying to clear her sight.

And then she heard Joe’s voice.

“Renee? Renee!”

“Joe—” Renee tried to yell, but she couldn’t. The weight of the man compressed her chest, her stomach, and she couldn’t speak, but she saw him, her brother, Joe. He was standing behind the man.

“Get off her,” Joe said. He growled the words, a sound Renee had never heard before and would never hear again. He kicked the man hard and then again, kicked against the man’s body as though it were a locked door Joe was trying to open. At ten years old, Joe was shorter than the man but stronger from all the baseball workouts. And he was wearing his spiked cleats, the ones for baseball practice. One more kick and the man’s weight rolled off Renee.

The man lay panting in the dirt beside the swing set. “Hey, kid,” he said, and held up his hands. “What the—” Joe kicked the man once, twice in the stomach, and then in the head. Again and again and again.

“Joe!” Renee screamed. She pulled herself to standing and ran to her brother.

“You can stop now,” she said. “Stop.”

The man’s face was bloody. In her memories Renee would never recall what the man in the car looked like. She would remember only a bloody blur, nose smashed, chin collapsed.

Joe was shaking.

“We have to go,” Renee said. “Leave him.”

“Is he okay?” Joe asked. “Is he—” His voice had returned to normal. It was again the voice of a boy.

“It doesn’t matter. We need to leave. Let’s go home.” An essential calm took hold of Renee then. Her heart beat solid and cold inside her chest. Her fear of the man was immediately gone. Nothing bad had happened, nothing worth mentioning. The only true thing was that she needed to remove herself and Joe from this yard, from this place beside the bloodied man. They needed to leave no trace of themselves behind.