The semi-deserted parking lot shouldn’t have been scary. There were splashes of light from poles that dotted the concrete, and five hundred feet away cars honked, tires squeaked, and muddled bass thumped as traffic eked down Nineteenth. But either way I was a woman who was aware, who watched all the “it could happen to you” specials and who had been pummeled by everything from a sweaty book agent to a rabid vampire. I walked with purpose, making a zippy beeline toward my car with my keys threaded through my knuckles—a makeshift set of eyeball-gauging claws.
It was these claws that tumbled from my hand when I awkwardly tried to stab them into the door lock. I bent over to retrieve them and my shoulder bag walloped me in the chin while my backpack clipped the back of my head. I steadied myself against my car door and pressed myself back up slowly (lest I behead myself on a side view mirror). That was when an engine revved and the headlights from the car half a parking lot away clicked on and flooded me and mine in glaring white light. I was temporarily blinded, unable to see anything but the glowing white orbs. I squinted and the driver revved his engine again.
“Big engine, small dick,” I mumbled, searching for my car key.
I heard the faint crunch of gravel and then the unmistakable sound of rubber peeling over concrete. My head snapped back and the white orbs were growing bigger and bigger as the car came hurtling toward me, its engine throbbing so loudly that the sound pinged through my bones, made my teeth feel weird and achy.
The driver saw me, I know he did. Or if by chance he didn’t, there was no mistaking my car beside me, my smashed-up, vampire-scrawled car. But he didn’t seem to care. The headlights didn’t waver, didn’t move a millimeter to either side. The driver knew where I was and was aiming right for me—quickly.
My brain told me to move, to dive, to swerve, to run, but my feet weren’t mine. They wouldn’t respond, couldn’t respond, and kept me rooted to the vibrating concrete as the car closed the distance between us.
I could smell the exhaust from the car, the fast burn of gas on the chilled night air. I knew it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds—five at the most—but it felt like a lifetime, me rooted to that spot, my meager offering of skin and bones and muscle and flesh against two thousand pounds of rocketing steel. Adrenaline shot through me in fiery waves and my legs gave out. I felt my hair whip across the flying car and I clenched my eyes shut, crushing my palms against my ears as the sound of metal pulverizing metal deafened me. I heard the pop of glass, saw the shards fall in delicate slow motion—like snowflakes, I thought—as they danced to the ground, glistening in the weakening light. I felt my flesh breaking, hot against the concrete.
And suddenly it was quiet. Dead quiet.
I couldn’t feel anything. My heart wasn’t beating, the blood that had been coursing through my veins was stiff and oddly silent. I dropped my head and felt the concrete grating into my cheek.
Then there was pain, and noise.
Cars honking, tires squeaking, the muddled bass of cars on Nineteenth.
Blood pulsed from my bottom lip, now swollen and tasting like dirt. I edged myself out from under my car, amazed that I had gotten there. My arms and palms looked like someone had taken a cheese grater to them and bloomed with fresh heat.
My heart started to thunder. The blood started to pulse. Suddenly, I was gasping, crying, coughing, doubled over with my arms wrapped around my stomach, hugging myself while fresh tears rolled over my nose and fell onto the ground in front of my shoes.
“Ms. Lawson? Ms. L, is that you?”
I heard Miranda’s voice over the din of traffic. I inched my eyes up, and when hers met mine, she vaulted out of the doorway and sprinted toward me.
“Oh my gosh, Ms. Lawson, what happened to you? Are you okay? Should I call someone? The police or 9-1-1?”
I sucked in a deep, steadying breath and pushed myself to standing. Miranda’s cheeks were flushed—whether from the short run from the school or her concern for me, I wasn’t sure—and her eyes were glassy and wide.
“No, thanks, Miranda,” I said, shaking my head slowly. “I’m okay. Really.”
She shifted her weight and a shard of glass from my smashed side-view mirror popped under her foot. She jumped. “What was that? What happened?”
“That”—I used the toe of my shoe to nudge some errant glass aside—“is what remains of my mirror.”
“Your car mirror?”