Prologue
“Being brave means to know something is scary, difficult, and dangerous, and doing it anyway, because the possibility of winning the fight is worth the chance of losing it.”
– Emilie Autumn
“A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
I am still alive…
Her teeth chattered mildly at first. Lee tried yet could not stop them from telegraphing their Morris Code about the chill set upon them. Her teeth issued a dull ache from the constant collide. The action became pronounced like the trembling in her hands. They resembled someone coming off a bad high. Both fists were balled tightly back in the pockets of her worn windbreaker. The wetness spat in steady sheets from an unfamiliar night sky. It seeped beyond the thin material to her clammy skin and sore muscles, right to the bone with a freezing that stole her breath in wisps.
Flexing her numb fingers, Lee winced yet squeezed them into her palms, hoping the movement might generate warmth. The exercise didn’t help much. Each finger and toe, for that matter, pained her in deadened stiffness. She could take the cold but not with the awful wetness in cahoots together.
No clue occurred to Lee where she landed on the map this time while she walked upon the asphalt of the narrow shoulder. Hitchhiking twice on the same lonely route brought her into the midst of tall trees and evergreens. They towered and encroached around her on what she could only guess were mountains, unsure what state she stumbled through.
All Lee knew for certain was that she headed west, not that it mattered. One state was as good as any other to get lost, but Lee had never visited western America. She tried to look at the travel like an adventure. Lost suited her far better than where she once was found. That place Lee dared call home made her give off an inward shiver that had nothing to do with the dropping temperature that night.
The house of horrors stole my soul like its owner slowly sapped the will right out of my marrow.
Since a little girl, Lee learned not to gripe. The saying went: There was always someone more worse off. Besides, what good would complaining do her? Nothing done could be undone anyhow. Lee could not magically go back in time and tell her earlier self to beware that her coin purse, which weighed a ton, and messenger knapsack would be stolen.
Nope, I’ve got no such superpower.
Intuitively, Lee comprehended that no person could be trusted. No one. She lived in the big city her entire life to have that very truth ingrained in her brain. Hadn’t she learned that by now? Those wandering miscreants who seemed harmless, at first, had their own agenda to screw over some poor sap. Why not a tender-hearted one like Lee? She was the perfect mark. Who would she tell? Certainly not the police. Anyone who saw Lee noted the fear in her eyes at the mention of them. She was on the run from something. The authorities were the very last group she ever sought to engage.
Too trusting for my own damn good. Why did I do this at all? I will never survive on my own. No money left to speak of. No food or shelter. I’m bound to die alone out here in the wilderness.
Placing one drenched canvas-covered foot in front of the other, Lee pondered the alternative. Somehow, she hunted for the positive in her predicament that grew more dismal with the weather. To be optimistic in the way her mother taught her to be for as long as she survived the tyranny of Lee’s father, for instance, was tough. That did not halt the tears from overwhelming her tired eyes with their rapid roll down icy flesh slopes. Neither did it lift the weight of the dreary outlook settling upon her shivering shoulders.
Lee’s stomach rumbled in its emptiness. The last meal she ate was two and a half days ago. Her strength waned in her fatigue and hunger. Each shuddering breath she took fogged in front of her face. Regardless, Lee continued to move forward. The aching in her body advanced, too.
Part of her wanted to chastise herself for leaving the warmth of a beautiful home. It shocked her that since encountering hardship how quickly her own mind denounced her. Already Lee forgot the strength it took to finally go in the first place, to escape while breathing. What she accomplished was no easy feat. She should be grateful not to be caught by now, so many days alone with no one to protect her. Countless women like her never survived to see such a day where the future was wide open with a plethora of possibilities.
Ha! The only possibility now was that I get eaten by a bear or wolf with all these evergreens surrounding me.
Gratefulness had filled Lee at the consideration of a real new beginning until she ran into the young skater couple. Dean couldn’t have been more than 21 or 22 with a killer rainbow mohawk, and his magenta-haired girlfriend was maybe 18 or 19. The duo had seemed friendly enough when Lee encountered them after eating a quick bite at Sugar Creek Diner outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming. They struck up a conversation about California dreaming and how the couple sought to make a break for it in Hollywood.
Dean and his girl Lynn, who picked Lee up on the side of the road walking away from the diner, had seemed so nice. The guy sought hitting it big as a singer and songwriter. Lynn tagged along for the ride in support of her man. Proudly, she helped with vocals on Dean’s demo. Along the way, they rehearsed the songs Dean wrote with Lee as their audience.
When they stopped at a rest stop in Idaho, it was the third day of their travel. They all climbed out of the rusted blue Subaru Outback to use the facilities, got soft drinks from the vending machine, and had a smoke. Not Lee. She hadn’t touched the cancer sticks a day in her life and didn’t plan on starting. It also conjured memories she would rather let die.
“Why had I taken so long?” Lee whined for the seventh time in so many hours.
Sometimes, she could look at people and knew. Something in their eyes made it clear for her to see the bad or the crazy and not question. Lee detected if they were trustworthy or not. Of course, if that were true, she probably would not have been in half the trouble she was. However, she realized that where she went wrong was in the foolish thought to go against her instincts--an old habit she needed to curb.
You must trust it more—yourself more, Lee reflected, and stop second-guessing your gut.
Travel on the road was dodgy. Being a woman alone doing what she did, conjured fear, yet Lee had little choice. All she could do was have faith that everything would be okay, which she accomplished up until the long walk down the dark road.
The truckers met so far had been fatherly and pleasant, though. No creepazoids. They chastised her on the many crazies out there she should be wary. Not everyone was kind or would be the same toward her. If given a chance, they would take advantage of her if she let them. Case in point, Dean and Lynn.
Stupid woman! I knew... I knew they were shifty. Hell, I even caught Lynn nipping into my knapsack until I started tucking it under my head like a pillow. Of course, hours later, I totally forgave it when she offered me a soda she bought when they stopped for gas in the small town of Julesburg, Colorado. I had not left the car, not even to stretch my legs.
Lee came out of the bathroom at the rest stop feeling pounds lighter for more reasons than one. She didn’t find the musician smoking Newports by the vending machines anymore. His bae didn’t post updates to their Instagram page cataloging their adventure cross-country from her phone under the “free WI-FI” sign. The last of everything in the world Lee owned vanished in the backseat of their beat-up hatchback sedan. Not that she took much in the way of things when she departed her cozy home for the scary unknown.
Lee’s loose-fitting jeans soaked through like her jacket. The thin hood over her head did little to block the frigid air and rain from penetrating her to the bones. This cold was a peculiar sort that she was not used to back east. The weather slowed her down when she paused to catch her breath. Lee glanced around, wishing to get out of the elements, to curl up and quit.
I am a survivor despite my shortcomings. I will never give up!
Taking a deep, juddering breath at the warring disposition in her exhausted mind, Lee once again put one foot in front of the other. A distant howl carried to her on the wind. She found the second wind of energy to motivate her onward away from that animalistic sound. Her every thought focused on that action despite the ache in her bones becoming unbearable. Gritting her teeth that still chattered away, Lee understood that she could not halt again because it would be the end.
