The Drive
1096 Words
The car arrived exactly at nine.
Elowen had been awake since five, sitting on her bed with her duffel bag at her feet, watching the pale morning light creep across the water-stained ceiling. She'd showered. Dressed in her cleanest jeans and a dark sweater that didn't have any holes. Braided her thick blonde hair into the two tight buns at the base of her skull—armor, always armor—and waited.
When the knock came, sharp and professional, her heart kicked hard against her ribs.
She picked up her bag and walked downstairs.
Linda was in the kitchen, pouring coffee. Frank sat at the table with the newspaper spread in front of him. Neither of them looked up when Elowen appeared in the doorway.
"Car's here," she said quietly.
"Good." Linda didn't turn around. "Don't forget anything. We're not mailing you s**t if you leave something behind."
Elowen's fingers tightened on the strap of her bag. "I won't."
Frank turned a page of the newspaper. The sound was loud in the silence.
That was it. No goodbye. No good luck. No acknowledgment that she'd lived in this house for three years and was now leaving forever. Just the scrape of a chair, the rustle of paper, the smell of burnt coffee.
Elowen turned and walked to the front door.
The driver stood on the porch—a man in his fifties, maybe, wearing a dark suit and a neutral expression. Professional. Polite. The kind of person who'd driven a thousand students to a thousand places and knew better than to ask questions.
"Miss Cross?" he asked.
"Yes."
"I'm here to take you to Primori Academy." He gestured toward the sleek black car idling at the curb. "Whenever you're ready."
Elowen glanced back at the house one last time. The peeling paint. The sagging porch. The windows that had never felt like they were looking at her with anything but hostility.
She didn't feel sad.
She felt nothing.
"I'm ready," she said.
The driver took her bag and opened the back door. Elowen slid into the car, and the leather seat was soft beneath her, expensive in a way that made her hyper-aware of how cheap her clothes were, how worn her sneakers. The interior smelled faintly of something clean and unfamiliar—not the stale cigarette smoke and mildew she'd grown used to.
The driver placed her bag in the trunk, got behind the wheel, and pulled away from the curb without a word.
Elowen watched the house shrink in the rearview mirror. Watched the street she'd walked a thousand times disappear. Watched the neighborhood with its chain-link fences and overgrown yards fade into the distance.
And then it was gone.
Just like that.
Three years of her life, erased in the span of a few blocks.
She pressed her hands flat against her thighs and focused on breathing. In. Out. Steady. The terror was there, coiled tight in her chest—the fear that something would go wrong, that the car would turn around, that someone would realize this was all a mistake and she'd be dragged back to that house and that life.
But the car kept moving.
They drove through New Orleans, the city waking up around them. The narrow streets and colorful buildings, the wrought-iron balconies and corner stores, the sprawl of a place that had always felt too big and too indifferent to notice her. She'd lived here her whole life and never felt like she belonged to it.
The driver didn't speak. Didn't ask her questions or try to make small talk. Just drove with quiet efficiency, his eyes on the road, his hands steady on the wheel.
Elowen was grateful for the silence.
She watched the city give way to the outskirts—the industrial areas, the stretches of empty lots, the places where New Orleans frayed at the edges. And then, slowly, the landscape began to change. Trees appeared, thick and tangled, their branches heavy with Spanish moss. The road narrowed. The buildings disappeared.
They were heading into the swamps.
Elowen's pulse quickened. She'd expected the academy to be in the city, maybe in the Garden District or near Audubon Park—somewhere prestigious, somewhere visible. But this was something else. This was isolation. This was a place hidden from the world.
The letter had said the academy was elite. Exclusive. Unlike any institution she'd previously encountered.
She was starting to believe it.
The road stretched on, winding through the trees, the sunlight filtering through the canopy in fractured patterns. The air felt heavier here, thicker, like the world outside the car was holding its breath.
Elowen's hands were shaking again. She pressed them harder against her thighs, willing them to stop.
This was what she wanted. This was her escape. Her chance. Her one shot at something different.
But the terror was there, sharp and insistent, whispering that she didn't know what she was walking into. That the letter had been too good to be true. That someone had paid fifteen thousand dollars for her and she still didn't know why.
The driver slowed.
Elowen sat up straighter, her heart pounding.
They were on a stretch of road that looked like every other stretch they'd passed—trees on either side, the asphalt cracked and uneven, nothing remarkable. Nothing that suggested an elite academy was anywhere nearby.
The driver pulled to the side of the road and put the car in park.
Elowen stared at him. "Is this—"
"We're here," he said simply.
She looked out the window. There was nothing. Just trees. Just road. Just the thick, humid air of the Louisiana swamps pressing in from all sides.
"I don't understand," she said quietly.
The driver met her eyes in the rearview mirror. His expression was calm, unsurprised, like he'd had this conversation before.
"You will," he said. "Just wait."
Elowen's breath caught.
She didn't know what she was waiting for. Didn't know what was supposed to happen. But something in the driver's voice—something certain and final—made her believe that whatever came next would change everything.
She sat back in the seat, her hands still pressed against her thighs, her heart hammering in her chest.
And she waited.
The road stretched out in front of them, ordinary and unremarkable.
But Elowen could feel it—the invisible line she was about to cross. The threshold between her old life and whatever came next.
She didn't know what waited on the other side.
But she was about to find out.
- Writer
