From my bedroom window, once the leaves had dropped from the trees, the steeple of Blessed Sacrament stood out against the clouded night sky, solitary at the end of a three block long slot behind apartment buildings slightly narrower than ours. I slept on the top bunk those days. The top bunk on this side of the room. Bookcases split this side off from the girls' side, and with Mark in the Army, I had the most alone space of anyone in the family.  When my brother had gone I'd slipped into using the top because it just felt safer, especially since I hardly fit under the bottom bunk anymore.

Tonight I stared at my landmark as a Nor’easter howled against the glass, sharp tiny gales licking through weak caulking and around a rattling frame. I could hear my sisters’ breathing, one softly, one with the labor of a coming cold treated with Vapo-Rub. I had heard my mom shuffling back and forth from the living room to the kitchen, cleaning up, but those sounds had ended more than an hour before.

I leaned tightly against the wall in the bed's deepest corner, shoved the curtain aside and stared out. It was a bad night to run, I told myself, but I still created the plan I needed to feel safe. My jacket and shoes were jammed inside the lower bunk. Jeans and a sweatshirt were tucked next to me. I could dress in seconds, slip out through a dozen inches of open window and shut it behind me. It was a short jump from the sill to the fire escape of the apartment next door. I'd done that dozens of times in weather just as bad. From there, it was an easy drop. I'd get wet and muddy as I hit the ground and soaked by the time I got to Blessed Sacrament, but there was no place closer I could depend on. I knew how to get into the church: the big mail slot let thin arms like mine pull the door-opener bar inside, and I knew where the heat for the rectory drifted through the vents behind the alter. I could curl on the cushion of the bench there, and that was way better and safer than trying to hide in the lobby of someone else's building.

Once I had the plan set in my head, I dropped into sleep, though I struggled through rain in the dream as well. I awoke when I heard the door slam behind him. Then, hands on my jeans in case, I listened and tried to decipher if I'd need to go.

Ira Socol