Aleah crouched low against the wall, bracing her injured palms on the rough, hard, aged surface. The sun was almost out of the sky, taking with it the heat and darkness threatened to swallow everything around her. She was outside a small convenience store at a gas station that had seen better days.
She had almost thought she was hallucinating when she caught sight of the dirty white and blue building while she stumbled down the dirt road, exhausted to the bone. Seeing it through the trees had been like spying on a glass of cold water in the middle of a desert. Too good to be true.
But once she realized it wasn’t her exhausted mind playing tricks on her, Aleah had a renewed source of energy which carried her down the road and straight into the store, begging the weathered old man behind t
