Page 8 of Prey

I’ve been here at least two months longer than I should have stayed. The neighborhood has learned my face. The guy at the corner store nods when I come in. The woman in 2C said good morning last Tuesday, and I answered before I could stop myself. Small things. They accumulate.

I need to start looking for the next place.

I shower fast and cold—I’ve been doing that for three years now. Hot water relaxes muscles, and relaxed muscles slow reaction time.

The mirror above the sink shows me what I need to see: no obvious injuries, eyes clear, nothing that would make someone look twice. I don’t linger. A face is just a face until you start treating it like it matters.

Clothes come from the middle of the closet. The middle houses the boring, unremarkable clothes: a gray long-sleeve shirt, dark jeans, a brown jacket that’s a size too large and had cost me twelve dollars at Goodwill in a different zip code. The cut is shapeless. The color exists in that particular register of beige-adjacent brown that the human eye skates straight over.

That’s the whole point.

No jewelry. Shoes are dark, rubber-soled, broken in enough to be silent on pavement. The laces are double-knotted. I check them twice.

I look like someone unremarkable on their way to a shift somewhere.

The walk to work is forty-one minutes. I leave ninety minutes early and route each walk differently.

I take the long way out of the building first—down the back stairwell, through the side exit that deposits me on the cross street rather than the main avenue.

Outside, the air is cold and flat, smelling like car exhaust and approaching rain.

I start walking.

Blue Honda Civic, same parking spot as yesterday, same parking spot as the day before—resident. A Con-Ed van on the corner of Wacker has been there since Tuesday. I’ve checked the plates twice. They match the utility company’s registered fleet. Still, I cross to the opposite sidewalk when I pass it.

Old habit.

The couple outside the coffee shop on Michigan—laptops open, paper cups, the particular brand of loud-talking intimacy that only happens when people feel completely unwatched. A man walking his dog, phone to his ear, the dog straining left while the man drifts right. A woman in a yellow coat is swiping her transit card against the card reader, already thinking about something else.

Normal. All of it normal.

I turn left two blocks earlier than I need to and walk the long diagonal through the small park, cutting through the open space the way a fish moves in open water—not to get somewhere faster, but to see if anything follows. Nobody does. A jogger passes me heading north. A woman with a stroller camps near the fountain. I note both.

There are three exits from this park. I know all three, and I know what each one opens onto: a main street, a service alley that runs to a parking structure, a narrow pedestrian cut between two buildings that comes out on a quieter block. My childhood home had one exit. My stepfather knew it too.

I grew up mapping every room I was ever locked in. I just do it outside now. Bigger rooms. Same math.

The difference is I tell myself I’m not scared anymore, that this is a strategy rather than fear. Some days I almost believe it.

The thought slides in before I can catch it.

Will this ever stop? Will there ever be a morning when I just walk?

I kill it quickly, like pulling your hand off a hot surface. Not because the answer hurts. It’s just that the question is a luxury, and luxuries make you slow.

The pharmacy smells like antiseptic, floor wax, and the particular flatness of recycled air. My shift starts and continues uneventfully.

The fluorescent lights are doing their thing overhead—that faint, almost-inaudible hum that lives below the threshold of consciousness. I’m behind the counter, counting a restock of blister packs into their correct bins.

Priya appears at my elbow, her lanyard swinging, with a hopeful expression on her face that warns me I’m about to receive another invitation I’ll decline.

“We’re doing that escape room thing Saturday,” she says. “The murder mystery one over on Clark. Like, eight people so far, and it’s actually more fun with more.” A pause. “You should come.”

“I can’t.” I don’t elaborate.

“You always say that.”

“I know.” I keep my eyes on the bins. “I’m sorry, Priya.”