Page 9 of Prey

She doesn’t say anything for a moment. When I glance up, she’s nodding in that particular way people nod when they’re swallowing disappointment. She leaves without pushing it, and I feel the guilt settle in my chest like sediment—quiet, familiar, useless. I couldn’t go. She doesn’t know what she’s asking.

Dev is running the register at the far end of the counter. We work beside each other most shifts, and he’s never once askedme about my personal life. I don’t know if that’s by nature or design, but it feels comfortable.

Around two in the morning, he says, without looking up from his receipt tape, “You ever think about just leaving? Like, the city. Not going anywhere specific. Just gone.”

“Yeah.” It comes out before I weigh it.

He nods. “Me too.”

We don’t say anything else. It’s close to a conversation, the closest we get, and I feel the edges of what might’ve been friendship, in another life, where I was someone different.

The dead zone hits at three and holds until five. I’ve learned the shape of it.

Dev clocked out at 2:45. The overnight manager, a tired man named Glen who communicates mostly through grunts and clipboard gestures, disappears into the back office around three and stays there. The store doesn’t close—the pharmacy never closes—but the customers thin to almost nothing. A man in a puffy coat buys NyQuil at 3:12. A woman who might be a nurse, still in scrubs, picks up a prescription at 3:40. After that: nothing.

Just me and the hum.

I restock what doesn’t need restocking because moving is better than standing still, and standing still in fluorescent light at four in the morning does something to a person’s head. The lights here are the industrial kind—bright without warmth, illuminating everything and flattering nothing. I’ve spent hours under them, and I still can’t decide if they feel safer than the dark or just a different sense of discomfort.

The security camera in the corner above the cold medicine aisle has a slow sweep. I’ve timed it. Twenty-two seconds from left to right, pause, back again. I tracked it the first week without meaning to, just noticed. Logged it. Couldn’t stop.

I straighten a row of antacid boxes that are already straight.

Is this it?

The thought arrives without fanfare. Not dramatic, not despairing. I’m twenty years old. I work nights in a pharmacy that smells like antiseptic. I go home to an apartment I’ve already mentally packed up. I have no one who would notice immediately if I didn’t come back.

I am safe. I built this. Piece by piece, address by address, door lock by door lock. This is the thing I strived toward.

And it’s a box. A clean, well-lit, thoroughly secured box.

My chest tightens, and I put the antacid boxes down.

Wanting is the problem. Wanting gets you moving in directions you can’t control, toward people you can’t protect yourself from. I know what it costs to want things.

I pick up the antacid boxes again.

The hum continues overhead. The camera sweeps left.

The day shift workers filter in—first the stock clerk, a kid named Omar, then the pharmacist, then finally Becca, who takes over the front counter from me with the energy of someone who has slept and can’t imagine why everyone else looks like they haven’t.

“Long night?” Becca asks, already pulling her hair into a ponytail.

“Quiet.” I start counting down my register.

“You okay? You look—” She tilts her head. “I don’t know. You’ve been off lately.”

I keep my eyes on the bills. “I’m fine. Just tired.”

“You’re alwaysjust tired.” She says it lightly, no edge to it. That’s the worst kind—the gentle noticing. “You should come to Priya’s thing Saturday.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

She knows it’s a no. I can tell by the way she stops pushing and busies herself with the schedule clipboard instead. I finish the count, log it, and sign out before she can circle back.

The bathroom at the back of the pharmacy is single-occupancy with a lock that actually works. I change fast—work shirt off, plain black long-sleeve on, jacket over it. Different shoes from the bag: a worn pair of white sneakers that don’t match anything the overnight counter girl was wearing. If anyone clocked me coming in, they won’t clock me going out.

Outside, the city is halfway through becoming itself again.