Hybrid Book One: Becoming

I was sitting in what had once been my room. All that was left was some bare furniture and the contents of the desk that I was slowly putting into boxes. I don’t remember the last time I had been here but it had been almost a decade since I had called this place home. My father had left my mother before I was born and for fifteen years I had lived here with my mother. It wasn’t a large house, two bedrooms down a short hallway and one shared bathroom, it had been enough for us. Until she got sick anyway.  Before my sixteenth birthday, my mother had fallen mysteriously ill. I had woken for school and found that the house was quiet. This was strange because my mother always made my breakfast and woke me up for school. I had called out for her and gotten no response. She wasn’t outside, she wasn’t in the kitchen, and she wasn’t in the living room. I found her in her bed, asleep. Though, when I tried to wake her, she hadn’t responded. Living in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness our town was small and I ran to fetch the only doctor we had.  Dr. Fahey, the town doctor, had been unable to help so they flew my mother to a hospital in Fairbanks. They ran many tests but could not find a cause for her coma. She had no identifiable health problems and she hadn’t been sick beforehand, since my mother and I NEVER got sick. They put her in a hospice facility, where she could be comfortable, as they weren’t sure how to help her. I hated it because hospice facilities are for those who are dying and my mom was just in a coma, not dying.  I stayed with Dr. Fahey and his wife while they worked on my mom, but once she was moved to hospice care child services began to look for my father.  They couldn’t find him, as his name wasn’t even on my birth certificate and I knew nothing about him, I didn’t even have a picture. When they came to take me, Mrs. Fahey put up a fight and said they would adopt me so I wouldn’t be placed in the system. Somehow they let them do it. I thought we would stay in Alaska, but as soon as the paperwork had been filed, we moved to a small town in Pennsylvania called Womelsdorf.  I had lived with them for six years, moving out before I turned 22, but they were still my family and they still called me their daughter. That’s why two weeks ago, they had called me and asked me to come by for dinner. I hardly missed a chance for Mrs. Fahey’s cooking so of course I went. There they told me that my mother had finally passed away and that the hospice center had made a mistake. They had already cremated my mothers body. I felt broken after hearing the news of her death and I felt robbed of the chance to say goodbye. I hadn't been to visit her in years though. After I turned eighteen I had tried to forget about my past and seeing her was too painful. I had called once a week to check on her condition, but that was it. I felt so much guilt that I hadn’t seen her again before she was gone. They always say hindsight is 20/20 and man, were they right.  So now, I was here to clean out the home we had left behind. My mother had been a sheriff for our town, but I had found out after I turned eighteen that she had a very sizeable trust fund. We didn’t know where the money came from, but the balance never stayed below two billion for more than a day. It was like someone was consistently maintaining the account. When we asked the bank about it, they just said her family had invested well but they couldn’t tell us who the family was or what the investments were.  This trust had included the deed to this house, which was mine now. I had decided to sell the house and use the money to finish paying for my nursing degree. I tried not to use the trust account more than necessary because I felt like the whole situation was kind of shady. So, the money from the house would come in handy. This house was filled with too many painful memories of a mother that would never know her grandchildren or got to see her daughter graduate. I had paid for a moving company to come up ahead of time and start packing, but I had requested them to leave my old room for me. I wanted to say goodbye to my old life and this was the perfect way.  “Katherine?” A voice echoed down the hallway drawing me from my reminiscing. I poked my head out of the door and saw one of the movers standing at the end of the hall. “We’re ready to start loading the furniture in there if you’re up for it.” He was a bulky man with thick black eyebrows and a bright red beard. It was a strange combination, but he had a very kind smile behind the burly looking exterior. His nametag read, “Owen.” “Yeah, let’s do it. We should probably hit the road soon anyway, if we want to beat the storm coming in.” I told him. I went back into the room and quickly finished emptying the dresser. I carried boxes out as the men moved the heavy furniture. Knowing that I wasn't going to be much help with furniture I hopped into the passenger seat of the moving van. I had flown here to make it all easier and I was just going to ride with the movers to my house back in Pennsylvania. I lived in the town over from my adoptive parents in a cute little two story home.  It was going to be a long drive but I wanted to be sure all of my stuff arrived safely. It was all I had left of my childhood. Owen opened the drivers side door and hopped in the cab, shivering and rubbing his hands together.  “I bet you’re happy to be getting back to someplace warmer, aren’t ya?” He said as he started the van and turned the heater on high.  “I haven’t lived here for a long time but I actually never minded the cold. It’s freeing.” I told him as I looked out the window at the house. The smaller, white van behind us started up and after a minute both vehicles were warmed up and ready to go.  “You sure you didn’t leave nothin?” Owen asked me. I shook my head. “No. I’m not leaving anything behind that doesn’t need to be left.” When I said this, I didn’t just mean the physical things. I wasn’t leaving here with anything attached to me that I didn’t need anymore. I was finally moving on and letting go.  “Alright, then let’s burn rubber! We have a long drive to Texas!” He said.  “What? No, we’re going to Pennsylvania. Reading, Pennsylvania.” I said, confused why he didn’t know where he was going.  “No, sweetheart, we’re going to Texas.” With that, he flipped some switch on the dash and an acrid smoke poured from the vents. I began to cough and my eyes started watering, splashing tears down my face onto my lap. I tried to roll down the window but the handle was broken off. I tried to open the door and found that it refused to open, no matter how hard I pushed. I looked down through the hazy, smoke filled cab to see what looked like a metal bar holding the door in place.  “W-why are you doing this?” I gasped between my attempts at breathing. I didn’t understand what was happening, or why he seemed completely unaffected by the smoke pouring in.  “You’ll find out soon enough. Now sleep.” Owen said. Blackness overtook my sight and sweet nothingness embraced me as I slipped into unconsciousness