Run

This has never happened before. I know it happens-- to other people, never to me. I was lucky. Everything else, I could handle. The catcalls and whistling, the hungry stares. They stayed away. And they never tried to talk to me.

I have my headphones in when the truck passes. It’s a bright, warm day at the beginning of June, and I do not think I look particularly interesting today. I wear raggedy denim shorts and wrap style peplum top. It is long sleeve-- black with little blue flowers. My hair is down and I don’t wear makeup-- I never do. My shoes are Dr. Martens, dusty from the dry dirt roads. Why does he stop for me?

My headphones are in and the truck goes by and then it stops, and he backs up. The window is down. There’s a man in the front seat and the truck is a big white pickup. I know what is coming. He says something, and I can’t hear him, so I take my headphones out.

“Where are you going?”

Stupidly, I point uphill. “Home,” I say. I don’t think I am afraid just yet.

“Need a ride?”

He is a young man--in his twenties or early thirties, maybe. I am not good at guessing age. His head is close-shaven and he has a five o’clock shadow. He looks, I think, maybe a bit like a character I saw on some TV show once. I do not want to get into his truck.

“No thank you.”

“Where do you live?”

I don’t know what to say. I know I cannot tell him where I live, but my brain is sluggish. Again, I point uphill. “Just up the road. I’m just walking.”

“You sure you don’t want a ride?”

I want him to leave me alone. “No,” I say firmly. “I’m fine.”

The man shrugs and nods, and he starts to drive away. I put my headphones back in and keep walking, but I only make it four steps before he stops again. “Hey, you’re pretty hot, you know.”

I take out my headphones and turn around. My brain has not quite processed what he’s saying and the sun is right in my eyes so that I have to squint to see him. I’m hot? What? No I’m not. “I know,” I say dumbly. What?

“Yeah,” I stare. I’d like to walk away, but I don’t think I can. Neither of us says anything. We just keep staring. Locked in place. “You sure about that ride?”

My heart is pounding so hard I can hear it in my ears. The road is a side road, close to the main, and with a few houses on one side. But where I am, nobody can see me. I thought walking in the day was supposed to be safe. I don’t feel safe. He’s going to rape you! My mind is screaming. He might even kill you. “No,” I say, somehow keeping my voice steady. and finally, I get up the courage to walk away. I hear his tires on the gravel and as he drives away, I start to laugh. I don’t know why I’m laughing-- maybe at my own stupidity. Maybe at him. Maybe from relief. But I laugh until I get to the end of the road, and then I stop-- because I hear tires again: loud, spinning, crunching and the rush of an engine. I look over my shoulder and his truck is careening around, spitting up dirt. It looks like the beginning of a car chase scene from one of those action movies. For a minute I stand there frozen, my brain completely short-circuited. Then I run.

The road is completely uphill. I am wearing combat boots, and I think: I’m never going to make it all the way. But my legs aren’t burning-- it must be the adrenaline, and when I look back I don’t see the car. So I stop. And I almost laugh again. Then the truck is pulling up next to me and the man is leaning out his window. He looks annoyed.

“Why’d you run away?”

I gape at him, speechless. Why’d I run away? Because you chased me!

“I wasn’t trying to scare you.”

Suddenly brash, I snap back at him, my voice coming out shockingly strong. “Oh yeah? Well trying to get me in your car and calling me hot and chasing me kind of gave me the wrong impression!” He looks very angry, and I think I should be afraid, but I’m not. I reach into my pocket for my phone and pretend to type something. “My mom is waiting for me,” I tell him because I think if he knows someone is waiting for me, he will not try to take me.

He stares at me a minute more, and then says grudgingly, “I’m late for a game, anyway. Really didn’t mean to scare you.”

Liar. I think. His truck speeds away, and I am alone. Slowly, I stick my phone back in my pocket and put my headphones back in. Billie Eilish is still playing softly, hauntingly, through the speakers.

At the end of my driveway, I stop and look back at the road, searching for the white truck. I don’t see it, but I wonder for a moment if maybe I should continue to the next driveway and then cut back home through the woods, just in case. I don’t.

I don’t sleep well that night. In the back of my mind are all the true-crime stories I’ve heard, and I’m terrified that behind my curtains, that white truck is waiting for me. Waiting for me to fall asleep.

Later, everyone I tell will say that I should have gotten his license plates. I should have called the police. Even later, a freshman girl tells me that once when she was walking a young man in a white truck tried to offer her a ride, too. It could have been the same man, we think. It sounds the same. I am very glad she was smart-- that she said no, that she ran. But I wonder, how many times has this happened before?