Run. You hear the voice in your head. It’s relentless. Is it yours? You don’t know.

 

You run, and as you do, the word echoes to the beat of your footsteps on the pavement.

 

It’s four miles to the next town, a tiny, pint-sized place, and twenty miles to a city that’s actually big enough to show up on a map.

 

Run. Don’t think about the sharp pain in your chest, the way your breath comes in gasps.

 

Look at the grass, wilted and covered in dirt from the dusty road. Look at the road itself, wide and never-ending. Look at the sky—no, don’t look at the sky. Tilting your head makes it harder to breathe. Keep your eyes ahead. Seeing what’s in front of you is important too.

 

And whatever you do, don’t think about back there. Don’t think about the screams and the broken glass and the ruins that were left behind. Don’t think about the silence that fell and that was broken when they screamed, broke, hurt.

 

Don’t think about it.

 

***

 

Run. Your back aches, your legs are growing heavier and heavier. Bricks. Lead. But you can be strong. Bricks can be lifted. Lead can be lifted.

 

Run! Stop thinking at all. The tempo of the words slows with your footsteps. They both drag on and on.

 

They’re coming. They’re coming. No, don’t let that become the new lyric, the word that pounds in your head.

 

Not them, not the ones that remind you of screams and hurt and the color red. Just them, the ones who try to help but will never be able to. They are perfectly painted and polished. You are chipped and worn. Oil and water don’t mix. Squares and circles don’t mix.

 

Just run. Run, even though breathing takes all of your strength. Run, even though you’re not sure how you can anymore.

 

No. Run.

 

Run.

 

Run-

 

***

 

This is why you can’t ever, ever stop running.

 

If you stop, they’ll come.

 

And if you fall, if you faint, then you’ve stopped.

 

And then they’ll come.

 

Not them, just them. But you don’t want them. You don’t want them and their ironed clothes, their faces filled with the worst thing—sympathy. You don’t want anyone’s sympathy, and you especially don’t want theirs.

 

You are strong on your own. You don’t need them. You will never, ever need them. Why can’t they just leave you alone?

 

Don’t look up, because they’re right there. You can pick out the sickeningly sweet smell of her hairspray and the fake-outdoorsy scent of his cologne. Their voices crowd your head, they pound against it. But they are outside your head. Don’t let them in.

 

Run. But you can’t run. You can’t even stand.

 

If only you had an excuse. If they had hurt you—no, that’s terrible. Don’t think that. You don’t have an excuse. You don’t have an excuse.

 

You could try to run. So you stand, and you fall, the ground rushing toward you at an all-too-fast rate for the second time with a span of time that is much too short in between.

 

They catch you.

 

Their voices are sugar-coated, trying to calm you, like candies that are too sweet for anyone to enjoy.

***

 

The room should be spinning around you, the sides around and around as if they’re caught in a tornado and the ceiling up and down, up and down. But everything is calm. All that you can see are the yellow walls and the clean wooden floor and the cream bedspread with little blue flowers stitched on.

 

So why does that make you want to cry?

 

Running makes you strong. Running distracts you. It makes you pay attention to the world in your head, not to the world around you. Pretending is a good thing.

 

Everything was better before. It was better because you were strong. You were hurt, but you were strong. Now you are safe, but you are weak. And you can’t, you can’t be weak.

 

Run!

 

But you don’t move an inch.

 

***

 

A knock sounds on the door, sharp but somehow hollow. It jolts you from your thoughts and forces you to notice what’s going on in the present. You feel like a rebellious child in school, not wanting to pay attention.

 

It’s her. You don’t call out to her and give her permission to come in, but she enters anyways. Something bubbles up inside of you, and you think it might even be hate, but you’re not sure. She’s still wearing her pajamas. She’s vulnerable, but that doesn’t mean that you are.

 

Let her break. You will never even bend.

 

Her voice is soft and caring, and you try to find something bad, something superficial about it, but you can’t. Her words are genuine. She may be fake on the outside, but the words she speaks are completely real.

 

You can’t deny that. You wish you could, but you can’t.

 

But you can keep her words from getting to you. Her words try to find the cracks inside of you so that they can seep through and reach you, but you seal them shut.

 

She sees that the little spell she’s trying to cast isn’t working. Her face grows sad. I am solid iron, and she wants me to be malleable.

 

She sits down cautiously on the side of the bed. I think about running.

 

Why does she even care about you?

 

Why does he even care about you?

 

Why do either of them even care about you at all?

 

***

 

It’s been the good part of an hour, and you still haven’t broken. She’s the one who’s breaking now. She isn’t breaking like you’ve been broken, but her shoulders are drooping and she stares at the ground.

 

It makes you feel satisfied, but it also makes you feel something else. Guilty, or maybe just sad. You don’t know.

 

Why don’t you ever seem to know?

 

She walks to the door, and you think she’s going to leave. Instead, though, she calls out to him and asks him to come upstairs. Her voice is weary. You hate it, but you feel weary too.

 

You can fight one of them now, but you don’t know if you can fight both. You wish you could give up.

 

But you can’t.

 

***

 

He isn’t vulnerable like she was at the start. He’s had time to shower and put on a preppy polo shirt, and he smells like cologne again. You hate the smell of cologne.

 

And you don’t know what it is, but before he even says a word, the cracks inside of you all open up.

 

Why can’t you be strong around them? Why do they make you weak?

 

It doesn’t make sense. And you’re telling yourself that it’s all wrong, but something almost seems right. And that in itself is wrong, and then you just don’t care.

 

And somewhere, somehow you know you are losing something, but you don’t care about that either. Because you also know what you’re gaining.

 

And then your eyes fill up, and then you taste salt on your face, and then you’re crying.

 

Now you feel vulnerable, and afraid, and you do feel sad.

 

She tentatively touches your shoulder. She’s probably afraid that you’ll pull away, but you don’t. He gives you a small smile.

 

You still don’t know why they care about you.

 

But it’s nice to have people who care.

 

***

 

Now, I’m going for a run. It took them a while to let me, but they finally did. I can’t blame them for thinking that I wouldn’t return, because I might not have before. But I will now.

 

This time, instead of hearing the constantly-repeating voice in my head, I just hear my feet hitting the ground. The only sounds that accompany them are neighbors laughing, dogs barking, and the howl of occasional gusts of wind.

 

I run, but everything is different. Because now, instead of running away, I’m finally running to something.

I’m running home.