The electric doors slid open with a gust of air, Joon tumbling out with the hysteric crowd. Her feet stumbled beneath her, mind racing faster than her legs could carry her.
"Jennifer!" Someone was calling, but Joon's ears were ringing too loudly to respond. She didn't look behind her. She didn't look back at the IKEA bleeding out with people now escaping, she didn't look back at the woman calling for her with a name she knew wasn't hers. She didn't look back at the guilt building in her chest, thinking of her parents she could barely remember. Phone calls, red blood, metal handcuffs. A circus, a monkey, a scream. Star Wars macaroni in her pale hands. David Bowie blasting in her ears. Is there life on Mars? Drugs pumped into her until she couldn't even remember herself.
Joon could barely feel her legs but she kept running. The sky was dark, stars twinkling above her with bright light. Joon had always loved the stars. She grew jealous of them, their spot high in the sky, away from all of the world. They kept twinkling. She kept running.
Joon couldn't remember why she was running now, but she knew her name wasn't Jennifer, and she knew someone, something had taken her. She reached into her brain, prying away at the cobwebs to find something, anything to remember.
The Winthrop town buss noise of the incidents occurring, the stars still shone above.
Suddenly there was a bright light in her eyes, shoes still hitting the cement sidewalk.
Joon swore she heard a thump in her ears, then a screech of tires. She finally looked back.
A girl lays still as stone in the street, a car close to her. Headlights blinded her vision momentarily. Someone was opening the car's door.
Joon turned away. She was tired of looking. She was tired of saying sorry. She was tired of being a shadow in the town of Winthrop. So she kept running, her body floating away. Joon Rawlings was getting out.
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