submitted by Jen Kohan, Minneapolis, MN

The first time I saw him, he was nearly gasping for air. To my right in the street behind me I heard his footfalls before I ever saw him. When I first knew that the sound was chasing me, I slowed my steps near the streetlight, and turned. He was spent. Forehead dewy with sweat, he rested his hands, like paws, on his hips and exhaled.

“That was a long jog.” Heavy breath. He was still in shadow then, but I felt the lamplight approaching him as he moved toward me.

The navy sweat suit matched the midnight pavement and softened his large frame, his chest a barrel. The navy baseball cap hugged his head low, and the bill cast the shadow more deeply over his face. The light still could not reach his eyes.

The last layer, that last tier of shadow fell from tinted lenses in square, wire eyeglass frames. The tennis shoes worn. Out of fashion.

Something wasn’t right. I started to back up, out of the fallen streetlight.

“Where are you headed so late?”

“Just walking.” I lied, too embarrassed to admit I was sneaking over to a boy’s house. My feet changed direction and turned my back toward home.

I imagined my open bedroom window, gauzy curtain hanging still in the summer heat. I would push it in softly with my face as I climbed back through.

“You shouldn’t be out so late.”

I didn’t answer. I kept my eyes on him. One foot closer to home with each step. Pretending he wasn’t stepping toward me, my thinking dulled. Body finally took over, torso swiveled and feet followed. The leather of my sandals pushed me forward, but I was running in water with heavy legs.

Couldn’t have gone more than three paces. Can’t remember running, only the trying.

When I first felt his arms around me I knew I was dead. Even if I lived, that girl was dead. That girl who played with Legos and sang show tunes. That girl who pounded nails into scrap wood in the garage. That girl who lay real quiet in the grass and let the bugs crawl on her like she was a mountain. That girl who made believe. She didn’t ever fit in with the girls who wore bras. Suddenly she never would, no matter how many boys she pleased. Not fitting in was just training her for this. And she was dead now anyway.

He must have been left handed, like me.

The knife was serrated, for sure. A kitchen knife, probably. One similar to the wooden handled knife resting in the drawer next to the sink in the kitchen. He must have been left handed because the mark on my neck was on the right side and he was standing behind me with his right hand over my mouth – the left arm across me tight. I only knew it was serrated because I could feel each scalloped point, on its own, just below my right ear. My gland bulged and my pulse beat wildly beneath the steel.

Both my hands wrapped on his forearm, as though I was attempting a chin up. My chest heaved and heart screamed but I could draw no breath. I tried to pull down, just enough to expose my nostrils.

In my ear: “Don’t make a sound. I know where you came from. Don’t make a sound or I’ll kill you.”

If I made a sound, my mom and dad would be in the morgue tomorrow standing over a steel drawer. Someone would pull a sheet down from over my face and my mom would put her face in her hands. My dad would put his arm around her but then his strength would leave him. They would be left to hold each other up.

I listened.

Over and over he whispered in my ear to stay quiet. We walked back and forth through the gaps between the houses. My manicured neighborhood with berms of annuals like freshly dug graves. We stopped walking in a yard belonging to people who rented a house to my sister when she was in college. He told me to take my shoes off. He pulled my sweater up over my head to cover my face and secured it behind my neck. My grandma had given me that sweater on my last visit to see her. Through the knitted cable I saw him set the knife down on the edge of an air conditioning unit. I thought about picking it up, but then I remembered the steel drawer.

I did everything he said. I closed my eyes against the wool. I walked when told to, cold mud forced upward between my toes. Laid myself in the grass when told to, peeking though the knotted yarn. I was in my friend Tara’s backyard. I imagined her sleeping upstairs in her violet room. Her flushed cheeks soft against the cool of a flowered cotton sheet. I looked to her window when he uncovered my face.

“You’re a pretty little thing.”

Later, he told me to walk home, and not look back.

“Sir?”

“What?”

“Sir, I can’t go home without my glasses. They must have fallen off before.”

Then there we were, together, side-by-side, searching on our knees for my red glasses. Before he sent me home, he warned me, “I don’t want to see you out here again.” He turned on a flashlight, bright in my eyes. “You shouldn’t have been out here, and remember, I didn’t hurt you.” He turned my shoulders away from him and turned off the light. “Don’t turn around. If you tell anyone, I’ll burn down your house, with everyone in it.”

I began to walk, and started to breathe again, but only through my nose, so I wouldn’t taste my mouth.

I didn’t see him again for a long time.

Within four months, we had moved to another state. I couldn’t sleep at night, even in the upstairs bedroom, until we did. Most of my friends were so uncomfortable around me that I didn’t see them much anymore. It was awkward. All wide eyes and weak smiles were on me, all the time, so the move was a relief. I went from a school of one thousand students to a school of more than four thousand. It was the beginning of my freshman year in high school, and I was grateful for the anonymity. I made a few friends that year. They also alienated themselves in the corner of the lunchroom.

At the end of that school year, I flew back alone to visit my sister and a few friends. I was watching TV in Mike Waldman’s basement when his mom called down the stairs, “Jennie, your mom’s on the phone.”

I picked up the receiver, “Hey Mom, you miss me?” Quiet for one second too many. Something’s wrong.

“Sure do,” another pause, “Listen honey, Detective Morgan called.” My arms became lead. “He wants you to look at some pictures.”

“Oh.”

“Today, he needs you to come today, though. As soon as possible. Can Mike drive you?”

I looked at Mike who was watching me over the back of the couch. He was two years older than me, and had his own car.

“Yeah, I’m sure he can.”

The top was down on the Jeep as we drove to the police station. I had to tell him how to get there, so I held my thrashing hair with one hand and pointed with the other. Mike and I met after “the attack” as I had taken to calling it, so he had only known this version of me.

When we arrived, Mike came in with me. His hands dove into his pockets. I reached my arms out to embrace Detective Morgan, who met us at the door. He towered over me, but treated me as his equal. He was a storm chaser.

The flap of his unbuttoned suit opened as he indicated with a long arm for us to follow through a doorway and up the stairs. We entered a familiar space I hadn’t seen in nearly a year. Never breaking stride, Detective Morgan motioned for Mike to wait outside his office, where a uniformed officer with kind eyes offered the newspaper. Mike looked at me with a little panic, and I nodded with assurance, “I’ll be back soon,” I offered, and the two of us continued down the hall alone.

Terry Morgan was anxious. We shared a similar enthusiasm. “I couldn’t believe it when I called and your mom said you were here, visiting.”

“I know. What luck.” I wasn’t completely clear what I was there for. I imagined a table and a binder of pages of mug shots. I imagined that Mike and I would grab some lunch at the sandwich place across the street when we left.

He stopped in front of a door, raised his eyebrows, and sighed. “We’ll see.”

It was a tiny room, with one metal table and two chairs. The walls were bare. An interrogation room, perhaps.

“Wait here, I’ll be right back.” I was glad he left the door open, and I could hear his certain footsteps the whole time he was gone. I was safe here. His frame filled the doorway as he entered. He was not carrying a binder, only one folder. He removed a page in a single sleeve. He held the pictures facing his chest, took another deep breath, and sat across from me.

“Now Jennie, I just want you to tell me if anyone looks familiar to you.”

I saw him immediately, almost before Terry’s fingertips left the table where he placed the sheet before me. I used my index finger to point.

“That one, right there, that’s him.” There were six individual mug shots on the page. Two rows of three. His was the center picture on the bottom row. I looked up at Detective Morgan.

He was already standing up, and had one hand cupped over his mouth. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“How sure, in percent?” He was shifting his weight, fidgeting.

“One hundred.”

He sat down again, and made some notes on a form in the folder. He was grinning now. “Are you ok?”

I was trembling a little, and more than a little disoriented. “Yeah, I’m ok. Are you? What happens now?”

“We have to move quickly. He’s in our custody on another charge, a burglary charge. But there was a girl in the house.”

I tensed.

“She’s ok. She was sleeping and he lifted the blanket to look at her feet.”

My stomach turned. That was why.

“So when I read that in the report, it felt familiar.” He looked directly at me. “Then it hit me, and I remembered your case, so I had to check. It was just gut feeling, but I had to check.”

He slid the page back into the folder and looked at the table for a second. “I’m so glad you’re here.” He looked back at me sympathetically. “The statute of limitations runs out in forty-eight hours.”

The last time I saw him, I was another year older.

The soles of my shoes slapped against the linoleum and echoed in the corridor. My escorts twittered lightly about nothing in particular. I was enclosed within a human fortress, their bodies surrounding me like the walls of a castle, and I was the keep. Fluorescent light panels passed above me and I counted them silently. If it weren’t for the sound of my heels, I might have been floating.

When we reached the waiting room, the cocoon of bodies opened and created a passage for me. For a moment I was alone in the cramped space. Folding chairs lined the walls, but I was lost.

“Sit here,” the blonde woman motioned with an open palm and her perfume embraced me.

My mother appeared next in the doorway, her hands in loose fists before her, like a mouse on hind legs. Her eyes were open too wide. She might have needed a sedative, or a brandy and 7up, but it was too early in the morning for that. She sat facing me, just inside the door. Her eyes darted around, and then settled on me. I tried to look composed.

“Do you need to use the little girls’ room?”

“I’m ok for now.”

“Can I get you anything? A pop maybe?”

“No thanks Mom. I’m ok.”

The metal chair pushed cold through my clothes. I was naked underneath them. The waist of my skirt was too tight and it cut into my sides. The inside button of the fastening stamped a circle into my flesh. I fidgeted a little and everyone looked at me as though I had opened my wrists.

“Everything ok?” The blond woman feigned relaxation better than I did. I nodded. I tried my hardest to think of something to say, something unrelated to the particular day, to remind them about tomorrow. I couldn’t think of anything, so I picked off my nail polish instead.

“Shouldn’t be too long,” next to me, Officer Price broke the sudden quiet, “and you’re gonna do just fine.” She would probably be called before I was, since she was there the day I made my statement. She had been there from the beginning, and held my hand with both of hers in the hospital during the bad parts. I imagined her in street clothes.

I suddenly wished my dad was there, but in the same moment, I was glad he wasn’t. I was spinning a ring on my finger when Officer Price took my hand, and I looked up to see her staring straight ahead. She cleared her throat. I looked through the doorway to see three figures approaching. I held my breath.

He saw me at the same time I saw him. He towered over the cops at his sides, and the shackles on his wrists and ankles were jewelry against the dark blue of his suit. His silken hair framed a square jaw. He didn’t turn his head as he shuffled past the doorway, but followed me with his eyes from behind tinted glasses.

When the footsteps grew fainter, I started to breathe again. Everyone had noticed the procession except for my mom, who rummaged in her purse for lozenges. No one said a word, but they looked at me cautiously.

“Hey mom,” she looked up immediately, her arm still elbow deep, “I think a pop sorta sounds good now.”

“You bet, sugar, anything you want.”

Jen Kohan is an English teacher and writing specialist based in Minnesota who has worked with young writers for more than a decade. She holds a B.A. in English from Northern Illinois University, and an M.A. in humanities with an emphasis in creative writing from Mount St. Mary’s College. Her poetry has appeared in the literary magazine Audemus, and can also be found on her website at jenkohan.com/wordpress/. She is currently working on her second screenplay, as well as a collection of nonfiction essays.