Scene 1
They ran franticly, with hair like raving monkeys, down the hill.
“Did you get a shot?” she said, breathless.
“Got it,” he said, his hands shaking. “I so freakin got it.”
She ripped the car onto the road. He kept looking back up the hill. “I can’t believe it,” he said.
“But why are we running?” she said. “Really.”
“Shit,” he said. “A bright light. Trees. Nothing else.”
Scene 2
She opened the door to a boy selling chocolate boxes.
“You’re selling chocolate?” she asked.
“For the Club,” the boy said, “and their good causes.”
“Their good causes?”
One side of his mouth elevated. “Ours, sure. Five dollars a box. You should buy many. They’re good chocolates.”
“Why are you wearing one blue sock and one yellow sock?” she asked.
“I’m color blind,” the boy said.
“You’re wearing a sneaker and dress shoe,” she pointed out.
“I have one leg shorter than the other,” the boy said, his face pressed to the screen, the lips waffling in the little wire divisions.
“Did you know your shirt’s inside out?” she observed.
“They go into and out of the laundry that way,” the boy explained.
“Would you like to come in?” she said. She still wondered why, indeed, anyone would run.
“If it means you’d buy more chocolate,” the boy said. “The causes are good.”
The boy ate a potted plant in the living room. The cat hissed and fled somewhere then quickly returned, watching from a shelf.
“I’m not a big chocolate eater,” she told the boy, who drank the water in the pot.
“It’s really no matter,” the boy said, distracted by the CDs.
She wanted to say, ‘You must have left the chocolates outside,’ as he bore no evidence of sweets, but instead she said, “It’s hot outside. The chocolate’ll melt.”
He said, “It’s of little consequence now.”
Scene 3
When he got home, they had dinner, the three of them, she on one side, he at the head of the table, the boy gnawing at a glass of beer.
“We shouldn’t have run from you. We know that now,” she told the boy.
“Would you like to stay with us?” he asked. “You could stay here. It would be amazing.”
The boy swallowing the last of the glass. He took a bite of the plate.
“We wonder why you run,” the boy said.
“Come to think of it, I have no idea why,” she said.
“Me too,” he said.
The boy looked out the kitchen to the front door. He turned back to the plate and bit. He looked out the kitchen to the front door again.
“Instinct,” the boy said. He looked at her. He looked at him. “You should probably run now,” the boy said.
