I sat watching my shaking hands. After a while they started to move on their own. They started packing my crap up. Putting things into a backpack in no order and without reason, but then again, they were just my hands, right? They couldn’t think. I had to leave before my Aunt woke up or I would have to talk to her, and then she would know I’d gone crazy right, and she’d worry and be frightened—well she’s going to have to worry and be frightened anyway, isn’t she? She didn’t worry about what’s next door. She’ll worry about me, though. I have nowhere to go but away so that’s where I’m going, and if I can figure out a way back I’ll take it, but right now there’s two words spoken in a voice that isn’t human anymore going through my mind over and over, and each time they repeat it’s like a buzzer shaking my whole body, and it’s coming from next door, so it’s time to go.

I couldn’t go back into the street. The sound of brush being rammed into a garbage can told me that. So, I went up the trail again. There’s a concrete fire cut further along the ridge that links the trail to the street up by the landfill.

I walked for a long time, down out of the hills. Eventually, I came to the highway, the little three- and four-unit apartment buildings, the liquor store, the candy store. I shoplifted a bottle of water there. Kept walking. Over the hill, past the community college, the gas stations, the row of grandma stores with silk flowers and potpourri. The generic fancy Italian place. Two words behind me, echoing in the hills, getting further away, but still there, smoldering. Just keep going. Two feet, one after another. I don’t know anybody.