Where He Can't Find You

by Darcy Coates

It was at the lakeside where they’d first started calling themselves the Jackrabbits. Because a jackrabbit never drops its guard, Rhys had said. A jackrabbit runs, and it runs fast, and it survives.

Doubtful, Illinois, was a glue trap. People sometimes came in, but they very rarely left. There was something about it that stuck with you. That stole away your will to fight, your desire for a future. The longer you spent in the town, the more you felt trapped there. As though there wasn’t any space for you in the outside world.

Sometimes the worst things that happen to you come from the smallest decisions.

Tiny, tiny mistakes that would have been inconsequential any other day. But for some reason, the universe’s gears get jammed at that exact second, and your tiny mistake permanently changes the remainder of your life.