Golden State by Stephanie Kegan

hand on my shoulder. Someone was pounding on our front door. Eric raised his head from the pillow.
    “It’s the police,” I said to him. Only the police rapped on a door that way. Our alarm sounded. It was six thirty. Eric got up and pulled on a pair of pants and a sweatshirt. “Stay here,” he said. At least he was home, not away on a business trip.
    Julia climbed into his spot in bed, grabbing on to me. “I’m scared,” she said.
    Downstairs there was yelling. I heard Eric shouting, “Get the fuck off my porch,” the door slamming, and then my husband’s furious steps on the stairs.
    Julia and I huddled together like small children.
    “Get dressed,” Eric said when he came back. His face was pale but his voice was calm. “Now,” he said to Julia. “And close your blinds.”
    “What’s going on?” I asked. It was too noisy outside.
    “It’s news slime. Get dressed. You have to see this.”
    As I followed Eric down the stairs, I saw he had drawn the curtains to the front windows that we almost always left open. We peered between the drapes.
    Satellite vans were parked in front of the house. Clusters of what I presumed were newspeople stood on the sidewalk with their gear. Beyond them our neighbors in their robes and jogging outfits chatted in small groups, their dogs on leashes, all of them looking up at our house. I had my hand over my mouth. There was no reason to laugh, but once I started, I couldn’t stop.
    “Jesus, Natalie, will you get hold of yourself?” Eric said.
    I could see how angry he was, how frightened, and I tried to look serious, but the effort just kept me laughing. Couldn’t I just go back to sleep and deal with this in the morning? Except that it was morning.
    “There’s a man looking in the kitchen window,” Lilly said, coming toward us in her flannel nightgown, her hair a tangle of dark curls, her teddy bear under her arm.
    Eric pulled her into his lap, staring at me fiercely, as if to say, Get it? This is real.
    It had the intended effect.
    “What are we going to do?” I asked, suddenly sober.
    “We can’t stay prisoners in here,” he said.
    “I have to go to work and the kids have school.” But as I said it, I thought, we really don’t have to do anything. Our old life is gone.
    As if he were a lieutenant commanding us, Eric snapped into control. “I want everyone packed with an overnight bag and ready to leave in ten minutes.”
    I didn’t even think to ask where we were going. I threw a nightgown and some work clothes in a duffel bag. I got Lilly dressed and packed. I checked on Julia. She was still in her nightgown, on the floor of her room, crying on the telephone.
    “Hang up,” I said.
    “Everyone knows,” she said.
    “Get dressed,” I said. “Put your nightgown and a change of clothes in a bag. Now.”
    Like escaped convicts, the four of us dashed across our own back lawn to the garage. The girls and I slumped in Eric’s car with our heads down. A news van blocked the end of the driveway. Eric cut across our neighbor’s lawn and over their curb. The newspeople shoved cameras at the windows of the car, yelled questions at us. Eric gunned past them. This too-familiar picture would be on the news tonight, except it would be us running away, not some anonymous others. Us. People I hadn’t seen since junior high, old boyfriends, acquaintances I couldn’t stand, would see us on the news and say, “I know her.” They’d have a story for their friends. Maybe I shouldn’t have cared, not in the face of what Bobby was going through right then, but I did. I tore the address labels from magazines I discarded because I was afraid of strangers knowing too much. I wondered how upset the neighbors would be about the tire marks we were leaving on their lawn.
    “You and the girls stay out of school today,” Eric said when we were safely on Marin. We didn’t argue, not even Julia. I used Eric’s cell phone to call work.
    “Oh my God, Natalie,” Claire