Storm Warning

Saint Among Sinners

                    I have spent the last four hours walking. My heartbeat can be felt in the soles of my feet with each foot’s return to the ground. What was that saying? ‘My dogs are barking.’ Well, my dogs are howling. You never know how much you miss the things that you take for granted until you don’t have access to those things anymore. Like food anytime I wanted. A nice cold shower. A damn car!

                     I walk as the sound SQUISH SQUISH SQUISH bounds around my head as I walk. What the hell is that? I walk a couple more steps, and the SQUISH SQUISH SQUISH grows louder. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is blood in my shoes. I stop on a dime and look down at my feet in dawning horror. Bending down, I take off one of my shoes. I take a deep breath and look into the shoe with a sinking feeling in my stomach. What the hell?! There’s nothing wrong. There’s no blood. There’s no sweat. There is a God-Awful smell, but that was to be expected.

                     OH MY GOD! I am going delirious in this ninety-five-degree heat. The sun has been beating me into submission for at least the last three hours, and this was the final nail in the coffin. Delirium. Psychosis. It wasn’t bad enough that I am soaked with enough sweat that I could fill a bathtub but I have to be hallucinating too now. I shake my head to clear it as I trudge forward with a steely determination my mind and body didn’t feel.

                     My coat remains tied around my waist, and my hair has long since been put into a ponytail. Thank you, Maddie. But it is still didn’t help to keep me cool, which is expected when your hair weighs more than you do. My thick locks just may be my downfall in this heat. I groan in discomfort as I pull my clothes away from my skin. Nothing more annoying that having your clothes cling to your body in such awkward ways.

                     I know its wrong. Hell, it might even make me a little evil, but I wish Maddie and Derek were here with me. Not necessarily to be tortured by this dry heat. But it would be awesome if they were going through this with me because then, my existence wouldn’t so lonely. As long as I can remember, I have always had people. If my math is correct, I moved to that town when I was seven and started second grade immediately. I can’t remember the first seven years of my life. Even now, with me knowing about my past, those first seven are curiously blank. As if they never happened. And I wish this next part was just me being dramatic, but the truth is that this path I am on denotes that I will be alone for a long time. Breathing, but not truly living. And I cannot shake the sensation that this is my future: a lone fighter. The longer I am alone, the harder it will be to remember what it felt like to be loved by others and to not be alone.

                     I shake my head as I focus on the here and now. I can’t let myself think that way. Even if it may be true, that kind of thinking will get me killed, and I am not ready to be taken out of this world on someone else’s say so. So, I straighten my back and hold myself up with authority. Focus on your first step. Find Dave Lars. Then, worry about what comes next. Never forget the big picture. Assholes are hunting innocent children… er, or adults to hide the s**t they pulled behind closed doors. I glare ahead. No one will victimize me or the others anymore. When I find them, I will make them strong.

                     I’ve been trying to use the water sparingly, but in this blazing heat, the reality was that I needed the water to stay hydrated. What else could one do when the sun beams hit the pavement and bounces back to smack you with heat waves. I just hope that I find a place to refill them soon.

                     I continue to walk on the side of the road for another forty-five minutes before I hear a giant muffler back fire from several miles down the road. By now, the last of my water was long gone. Despite being on this road for the past five hours, only five other cars have passed me. Three were going in the opposite direction, and the other two just zoomed by in a hurry to get where they were going.

                     I don’t bother to look behind me at the approaching vehicle. I did that a couple of cars ago and managed to blind myself as the sun was shining down from that direction. I found myself blinking away bright white dots that floated across my vision for like a full ten minutes after that. Lesson learned. Besides, I don’t want to accidentally offer myself to anyone as a riding companion because that never goes well on television. And now, because anyone is a potential threat. I have to constantly remind myself of this, considering that about a week ago, I was immersed into a world that WASN’T trying to killed me on a consistent basis.

                     I walk as the old hatchback slows down beside me. The driver rolls down the passenger side window without pulling onto the side of the road… not that there is any need. He is the only one currently on the road, and there is an obnoxious amount of space for driving around him. “Hello.” I keep walking. “Hello. Miss.” The voice crackles as it speaks up. I stop and turn to the hideous Honda hatchback that probably should have been forcibly removed from the road some twenty years earlier with its peeling golden-brown paint and its rusting bumpers. With a deep sigh, I crouch down to look into the window and half expected to find myself staring down the muzzle of a g*n since my life is now an adventure movie. The driver stares out of steely gray peepers with an unexpected focus. The man assesses me in my sweaty clothes and lands on my drippy wet pony tail of gross as I take this time to evaluate him in return. The driver is a little old man with a receding hairline with tufts of white puffing up around his head and large black frames with obvious bifocals. He leans over the console to look me direct in the eye. “Miss. Are you okay?”

                     “Yes sir. I am just walking from that gas station back there. I am trying to get to the next town.”

                     The old man’s eyes widen in surprise. “That last gas station is about 18 miles from here.” With concern, he asks, “How long have you been walking out here?”

                     I shrug and look back in the direction I just came from with pinched brows. “I actually don’t own a timepiece, and I don’t have a phone anymore. If I had to guess, about five hours. I have been out here for a long time today.”

                     The old man offers me a small kind smile with a mouth full of toothless gaps. “That is an incredibly long way, and it is way too hot to be out here walking. I bet any water you had is long gone.” I nod. “It’s still about another 20 miles away.” I drop my head in defeat. I will never get there at this point. Wow. That moving forward with determination thing lasted all of an hour.

                     I nod. “I didn’t know it was that much farther. But I have no choice. I need to get there before I can rest. Sleeping on the side of the road is too dangerous.

                     He looks at the road ahead of him as if thinking before turning and looking back at me. “Do you have anyone you can call? Like if I let you borrow my phone?”

                     “No sir. I used to have people, but it’s just me now.” I start walking again as he looks away. I can see he doesn’t want to offer me a ride as much as I know I shouldn’t accept it.

                     He drives forward to catch up with me after a couple of minutes. I had been expecting him to just pull off and drive on past, but he slowed as he reached me yet again. “Miss. I know that is not safe to offer rides to strangers or to accept rides from strangers. You just can’t trust people like you used to, but I have a granddaughter your age. I would never want her out here alone in this heat with no one to contact and no way to get where she needed to go. Let me drive you to the nearest town. It is at least another 6 hours of walking before you can get there, but I can get you there in like 30 minutes. Seriously, without water in this heat, you will pass out and die of dehydration before you get where you’re going.”

                     I look at the road ahead of me. Trust no one. I sigh as the overwhelming nature of getting to one stinkin’ little town. If this is how the whole trip goes, I am not going to be able to do it. This lack of resources is incredibly frustrating. I shake my head at my situation. I look back to the man and nod. I have a mission that will take an unknown amount of time. I have plenty of time to do things the hard way or to be forced to do things by myself. Sometimes, you have to take a leap of faith and hope that somewhere out there, there is someone that looking out for you and that believes that you will and can succeed. And no, I don’t mean Maddie and Derek.

                     I take a step closer to the door, and the little old man takes this opportunity to put as much of his little body across the seat to unlock and open the door for me, as was expected of his generation. I open the door, sit in the seat, and move my bag to my lap. I mumble, “thanks.”

                     Little old man reaches into his back seat and comes away with a bottle of water in his head. He holds it out to me in expectation. Not wanting to be rude, I take it. I turn the lid and close my eyes in relief as the sound of it breaking free from the security ring. Untampered with. Safe. I bring the bottle to my mouth as I drink long and hard, and before I realized it, I down the whole bottle of water. My drinking ended with a soft but pleasant sigh of satisfaction. The old man laughs and brings out a second bottle for me. I open this one with the same scrutiny and am, again, pleasantly surprised as the breaking free of the tamper-evident ring from my lid. I don’t drink this one but I hold on to it just in case. “Now, that you are properly hydrating. I have something for you.” I look at the man with suspicion burning bright across my features. “You mentioned not having a time keeper. So, my granddaughter… my younger granddaughter is an eight-year-old girl, and she has promptly decided that a Bratz watch was for little kids. So, she left this little trinket in my car. It’s nothing special, but it will at least help you know the time of day.”

                     He opens the console and pulls out the Bratz watch. He holds his hand out to me as I grab ahold of the watch; thus, resulting in his release of the object. It is a small digital clock with faces of what I can only assume are the Bratz. I look at him and thank him in a choked voice. A kindness that one may not deserve, but that one definitely needed.

                     He smiles and says, “seatbelt.” I couldn’t help but appreciate that he didn’t get all concerned at my clearly emotional moment and just decided to let me have it by changing the subject. Nodding, I buckle up. We ride in silence for ten minutes before he starts talking. Thankfully, I have since bottled my feelings back up and am acting quasi-normal. “How old are you?”

                      I had expected this, but still, I found myself not wanting to talk about me or my problems. I look out of the window as I answer. “18.”

                     “Ah. I was right. You are about my granddaughter’s age. She is 17 and is just starting her senior year. She turns 18 in another two months.” I nod, but offer no reply. I see him look at me briefly out of the corner of my eye. “So, where are you headed?”

                     “Vermont.”

                     “What’s in Vermont?”

                     “Family friend.”

                     “What kind of friend?”

                     “Don’t know.”

                     “Where is he in Vermont?”

                     “Don’t know.”

                     “How are you going to find him?”

                     “Don’t know.”

                     “Are you a run-away?”

                     “Not technically.”

                     “Well, aren’t you chatty?” The old man laughs at his ‘joke’.

                     I sigh as I uncross my arms. I don't want to tell him too much that he could get hurt if others came looking for me, but he didn't deserve the two-word answers of noncommittal conversation either. Especially since he is helping me. “I’m looking for someone who can help me. I don’t know if he is still there though. His last address was from two or more years ago.”

                     “It seems like an impossible task to find someone when you don’t know where they are. Not to mention… dangerous.”

                     I shrug. “You gotta do what you gotta do.” I look at the older man as he drives along, but he doesn’t notice. He is staring straight ahead with his hands at ten and two.

                     “You are a bit young to be trying to be trying to find your own way across two to three states. Where is your mom?”

                     I look down at my feet, which are settled on dark brown shag carpeting. Gross. “She died.”

                     He looks at me sharply before looking back to the road. “I am so sorry for your loss. How long ago?”

                     “Um. Five or six nights ago.”

                     “That’s not very long ago. Did you bury her?”

                     “No.”

                     “Why?”

                     “She was murdered, and they haven’t found out who did it yet?”

                     His eyes water with shock. “That’s horrible. They could still release the body.”

                     "True. But whoever did it would come back for me."

                    "How do you know that?"

                    "She told me so."

                    The old man nods his head because there was nothing else to say and started a different line of questioning. “Who found her?”

                     “I did.”

                     “Oh no. Do you have anyone back home to stay with?”

                     I picture Maddie and Derek and their laughing faces, which is quickly replaced with a crying Maddie and a stoic Derek in a rear view mirror. “Not anymore.”

                     “Do you have any other family?”

                     “No. It was just me and Sarah. Er, my mom.” I fight back tears as the last image I have of Derek and Maddie reasserts itself in my mind. They are standing huddled together in my rear view mirror as they watch me drive away. Maddie is crying as Derek wraps his arms around her and holds her close. The early morning sun is rising and paints the sky in orange and pink, offering a brightening to an otherwise dreary backdrop.

                     “I’m sorry.”

                     “Don’t be.” He looks at me with shock. “Don’t get me wrong. I love my mom. But saying ‘I’m sorry’ won’t bring her back. It won’t leave me any less alone. All it does is point out that my only family is gone, my previous life is gone, and that I am the only person to truly mourn her. It’s just a reminder that I am all that is left and that I am going to have to be my own family from now on. To make matters worse, I am looking for a family friend, who may or may not be where I desperately need him to be.”

                     The man behind the wheel says nothing because… really? What is there to say? We pass the rest of the ride in silence.