Keep moving.
I go to work.
I steam milk, ring up commuters, smile at regulars, pretend my lower back doesn’t feel like it’s being held together with chewing gum and bad intentions. One customer tells me I’m glowing. Another asks if I’m having a boy or girl. I lie and say I want the surprise because I’m tired of strangers acting like my body is public property.
I go to a doctor’s appointment.
The waiting room smells like disinfectant and stale magazines. The baby is healthy. Strong heartbeat. Good growth. The doctor tells me to rest more, which is funny because apparently, she thinks I am someone with access to rest. I nod dutifully anyway and take the printout of measurements and recommendations I will probably ignore by tomorrow.
I go home. I write.
Chapter seven becomes chapter eight, then chapter nine. My heroine gets sharper. My hero gets crueler and somehow softer at the same time. I tell myself it’s fiction. I tell myself I am just good at borrowing emotional truth from memory.
I do not let myself think too hard about whose memory.
I answer my mother when she texts. I ignore her when she calls. I eat too many oranges. I cry once because a grocery store was out of the only yogurt I wanted and decide not to interrogate that too deeply.
Life resumes.
Not normal, exactly. But routine. And routine is sometimes the closest thing to safety a person gets.
That brings me to today as I finish my grocery shopping and return home to my apartment.
It’s early dark, the kind of gray-blue hour where the streetlights have come on but the sky is still deciding whether it’s night. I’ve got two bags cutting into my fingers and a carton of eggs balanced precariously in the top of one. My shoulders hurt. My ankles hurt. The baby has apparently decided to practice martial arts directly against my bladder.
I am tired. I make it to the front step of my building and fumble for my keys. That’s when I hear it.
“Zatanna.”
My name from a man’s voice.
I turn just enough to see movement in my peripheral vision, dark and fast, and then something slams into the side of my head.
Pain bursts white behind my eyes as my temple cracks against the building door. The grocery bags hit the ground. Something shatters. I scream.
The man grabs for me again. Instinct takes over.
I shove him with both hands, wild and off-balance, and he stumbles just enough for me to wrench the door half open and bolt back down the sidewalk instead of inside. I don’t think. I just run.
Or as much as seven months pregnant counts as running.
My whole body is screaming at me. My head is ringing. My breath comes in short, terrified bursts. Behind me, I hear footsteps.
He’s chasing me. “Stop!” he shouts.
I do not. I cut around the corner too hard, one hand braced under my belly, the other reaching blindly for anything, anything I can use. A trash can. A loose bottle. A brick.
My fingers close around the strap of my own bag instead.
When he grabs at my coat from behind, I swing the bag backward with every ounce of strength I have. A can inside connects with something solid. He curses. I twist, half-falling, and jab my keys straight at his face.
He jerks back with a snarl, one hand going to his cheek.
For one crazy second, I think I might actually get away.
Then he lunges again, angrier now, and this time I know I’m not going to outrun him.
I plant my feet and scream as loud as I can, not words, just noise, raw and desperate and furious. I swing again. He catches my wrist. Pain shoots up my arm.
