The Girl in the Car

I was eight when I saw myself in the back of a stranger's car.

Not a girl who looked like me.

Me.

It was a Marfa afternoon. The kind where heat makes the air thick and time stops mattering. Sally and I were running through the sprinkler, burning ourselves on hot concrete, bored and perfect.

Then a car rolled by.

Too slow.

Not lost-slow. Not neighbor-slow.

Predator-slow.

"That girl looks just like you," Sally said, flat, already looking away.

I turned my head.

Brown hair. My age. My face.

Staring back at me through the rear window.

No smile. No wave. No expression at all.

Just a slight tilt of her head, like she was deciding something.

Like she was counting.

My stomach dropped.

She didn't blink. Didn't move. Just tracked me with eyes that felt too old for her face, too empty for a child.

The car kept crawling.

The heat bent around it.

And then she was gone.

The sprinkler kept ticking.

Sally stretched out on her towel like nothing had happened.

But I knew, even then, without words for it,

That wasn't a stranger.

That was the day I saw myself leave.

And I've been trying to figure out what stayed behind ever since.