She closed her eyes. A moment later she heard movement at the other end of the room. Fabric rustling. A brief flow of water in the sink. She remained still as he walked past her, and it wasn’t until she heard the sweep of the door against the carpet, saw sunlight glowing orange through her lids and then saw it extinguished, that she opened her eyes. He was gone.

She got up and went to the window. Inching the curtain away from the wall, she saw the empty spot where the station wagon had been. She wasn’t surprised. Everyone had seemed angry when they went to bed, but her father had seemed the angriest of all.

She’d slept in her clothes, so she only had to put on her sandals. Next to the television was the note he’d written, saying he’d be back soon. Next to that was the room key. She slipped it into her purple purse, eased the door open, and left the room.

Judy Rhodes, the tall, slender girl at school who gave her cigarettes, had taught her a game called Heads You’re Right, Tails You’re Dead. “If the last seat is already taken,” Judy might say, approaching the bus after school, “we’re both going to die of cancer.” Or, while standing in the lunch line, “If they run out of cobbler before we get any, the Nazis will kill our families.” It was dismemberment sometimes, or a car crash, but usually cancer or Nazis. It was a dumb game, but the kind that stuck in Karen’s head whether she wanted to play it or not, and she often found herself playing it alone. One afternoon, as she was cutting through the Winn Dixie parking lot on her bicycle, she counted four blue cars parked side by side. If I see another blue car in the next five seconds, she thought, I’ll be kidnapped. The next blue car she saw was the station wagon. It was sitting off by itself, aimed away from her. She stopped her bicycle two rows away. It’s our car, or a look-alike, she thought. If it’s ours, I’ll be kidnapped and brainwashed, and turned into a criminal. There were two people in the front seat: a man who looked like her father, and a woman she didn’t recognize. If it’s him, she thought, I’ll be forced to rob banks. It was him—she could tell by his profile. He leaned across the seat and kissed the woman on the mouth. They kissed again. Finally, the woman got out, walked quickly over to her own car, and climbed inside. Karen leaned into the handlebars and pedaled straight across the parking lot, in the opposite direction, without looking back.