The bus was filled with a mix of genders, ages, races, and socioeconomic classes. I’d taken the only available seat, between two older Eastern European women who were holding at least seven Target shopping bags between them.
As I was looking around the bus, I saw a face I recognized, near the back. He was seated next to a young South Asian couple with a baby.
It was Crow.
He smiled and nodded.
I forced myself to smile back as I watched him reach up and pull the cord. A loud bell rang, and the bus pulled over at the next stop.
But instead of Crow exiting the bus, everybody else got up and walked off, leaving the two of us alone.
At that point, the bus started moving again, and Crow came over and took a seat directly across from me.
We were now the only two people on the bus except for the driver.
“Hello again,” he said.
“Hi,” I said. “I was hoping I might be able to speak with you.”
“And here we are.”
I nodded. What the fuck was happening?
“You were surprised that Sidney Farrow didn’t recognize you.”
“Yes.” I was just about to ask him how he knew that, but I stopped myself; I wasn’t sure I was ready to handle the answer.
“I have some questions about you and my parents, and I’d like to speak with Emily Connors,” I said.
“I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible.”
“Why not?”
“I’m going to ask you to do something, K—but please understand that I’m not asking you to do this for me. This is for you. I’m giving you this…opportunity out of respect for your parents. If you were anyone else, this conversation would be much different.”
“Okay…can you please just tell me what’s happening? The last time we met you said that had you known I was here, you would have made sure we’d met much sooner. What did you mean?”
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said. “Or at least, that’s what I had been led to believe.”
I sat there for a moment, staring down at my hand gripping the edge of the sharp plastic seat. Was I dreaming? This couldn’t be real. Why did all of those people get off the bus?
“What the hell does that mean?” I asked.
“If you don’t stop playing the game you’re calling Rabbits immediately, everything you know is going to either change or disappear, and everybody you know is going to forget you exist. This includes that girl Chloe from the arcade, I’m afraid.”
“What…？”
He smiled. “I’m sorry it has to be like this. I really am.”
“Why are you doing this? Saying these things?”
“Like I said, this has nothing to do with you personally, K, but you need to stop playing Rabbits—and that means no looking into anything related to anything else that might be even remotely connected to the game. Do you understand?”
“I’m not even sure I am playing. Not really.”
“Well, then,” he said, “what I’m asking shouldn’t be difficult.” He rang the bell, and the bus pulled over and stopped.
And then the man called Crow stood up and stepped off the bus.
After a moment, I leapt up to follow him, but the doors had already closed. As the driver guided the bus slowly back out into the traffic, I rang the bell repeatedly.
“Pull over!” I yelled, but the driver just kept driving.
He finally pulled the bus over two blocks later, at the next scheduled stop.
I hurled myself off the bus, pushed past a group of people trying to get on, and rushed out onto the sidewalk.
I ran the two blocks back to where Crow had exited the bus, but he was gone.
* * *
—
I walked the rest of the way home.
I’d been inside my apartment for about five minutes when somebody buzzed.
I pressed the talk button of my intercom. “Hello?”
“I’m outside. Let me in.”
I was trying to come up with some way to tell Chloe about the missing Sunday, Crow, and Emily Connors that didn’t make me sound like a lunatic when Chloe burst into my apartment and handed me her phone.
“This guy,” she said.
There was a pale, thin man with a skinny black mustache on Chloe’s screen. He was standing in front of a bank of computer monitors.
“Who is he?”
“He’s Fatman.”
“Fatman?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“He’s not fat.”
“I guess it’s ironic or something.”