Chapter 13
The entrance to the Blackwell State Park is barely noticeable from the road. It’s a wooden sign with white lettering that has long since faded, and it’s mostly covered by overgrown bushes and weeds. To the left of the main road is a thick wooded area with just a small, narrow pathway cut out from the brush.
I turn down the gravel road next to the sign and drive slowly through the shaded roadway. It’s long and winding, and just as I’m starting to worry that this isn’t a park at all but some kind of private land, the brush opens up to reveal an office building that looks like a log cabin. There’s a sign that points to the gift shop, which is another small log cabin to the left, and then a sign that says registration for camping is straight ahead. I drive up to the building and get out and tug on the door handle, but it’s locked. Then I read the sign next to the door, that tells me if I’m here to camp, the registration forms are just up ahead.
I walk to a weathered metal box that looks like a section of mailboxes from the post office. There’s about twenty boxes in all, and some of them have keys in it and some don’t. I read the instructions printed on the side of the box, while swatting a bug away from my face.
To rent a camp site for tents, you just put ten dollars a day into the slot on top of the cash box and then pick a spot. To rent a cabin, you insert twenty dollars a night into the box and then choose a key.
Wow, this isn’t the least bit secure. Who’s to stop me from just grabbing a key without paying?
I look around and don’t see a single soul, or even a car parked at either the gift shop or the office building. But I’m no thief, so I take out a twenty dollar bill and shove it into the slot, then I survey the remaining keys to the cabins. I grab number twelve because that’s the day that Ethan first told me he loved me. I take the rusty key back to my car and then drive forward, following the weathered signs that direct me to cabins 1 through 15.
The whole park is wooded and overgrown, with little pathways for cars to get around. I pass up the tent area which has about a dozen campers parked and set up in tents. It’s weird, but I’m glad to see other humans out here since I’ve felt extremely alone for the last half hour. Further on, I get past the tent area and to the cabins. They all look the same, little square log cabins with a single yellow light bulb turned on by the door. Even in the daylight, this place is a little creepy. I mean, isn’t this the type of area where every single slasher film takes place?
I try to ignore that nagging feeling in my gut that keeps reminding me I’m all alone in the woods in the middle of nowhere. Nature should be fun, and relaxing, and all that crap. Not terrifyingly creepy.
I just have to pretend it’s fun.
I park at cabin number twelve and walk up the broken stone pathway that leads to the door. The whole thing looks like it could use a power washing and a fresh coat of wood sealant and maybe even new hardware. This place is old and unkept.
I shove my key into the door, but it’s old and rusty and the lock doesn’t budge. I shove harder and then wiggle and twist and pray a little bit and finally the old lock gives away and I can open the door.
The stale stench of old wood and outdoors fills my lungs as I step into the cabin. Shouldn’t nature smell good? This smells like the deepest corner of an old antique store. Air so thick with dust it feels like it’s clinging to your lungs.
I close the door behind me and survey the tiny cabin. There’s a bed against the wall without any sheets on it. A nightstand with a janky old lamp that probably doesn’t even work on it. On the other side of the small room is a mini fridge that’s covered in dust and making a slight wheezing sound, and a table with two chairs.
I can’t help but stare in disgust. This place is filthy. The wooden floor is all dusty and the windows are covered in grime and tinted greenish from the moss outside. Also, I’m trying not to panic here, but I have to pee and there’s no bathroom in sight. The only other door inside this place leads to a closet that’s filled with towels and bed sheets that are sealed up in bags, so at least they’re clean, which is about the only positive thing I can find here.
I stand in the middle of the room and look around again, hoping that maybe I missed the kitchen and bathroom and hot shower. But there’s nothing else in here.
This cabin might as well be a wooden tent with electricity. I lower my forehead to my hand and stare at the floor. A tiny spider runs across the wooden planks and slips into a crack along the floor. This place is gross. That woman at the coffee shop had acted like this park was a wonderful hidden treat for people who were stranded. Instead, it’s like a creepy horror shack in the middle of nowhere that’s probably surrounded by serial killers who are just waiting for me to fall asleep.
I swallow the fear rising in my throat and walk over to the bed. On the nightstand is a folder with some paperwork in it. I flip through the worn pages and discover that the bathroom and showers are in a communal building just up the road. Gross. It’s like a dorm room shared bathroom but in the middle of the woods.
But I have to pee, so I grab my phone and head outside. I don’t bother locking the door behind me because no one is around and I don’t feel like wrestling with the lock again. I walk along the pathway, past a couple more empty cabins and to the communal restroom.
Unlike all of the other log cabin buildings out here, this one is made from concrete cinderblocks. There’s a men’s and women’s side, so I step into the women’s entrance.
The stench of sewer makes me gag and I cover my nose as I step into the worst bathroom ever. The floor is concrete, the walls are concrete, and the ceiling doesn’t freaking exist. This place is open to nature with no roof at all. There’s a row of old rusty shower heads against one wall, should you want to take a shower out in the open where anyone could see you, and then a row of three bathroom stalls. Because there’s no roof in here, I see hornet’s nests in the corners, and leaves on the floor and dirt everywhere. I might as well pop a squat and pee in the grass outside, but for the sake of propriety, I squat over one of the toilets and hope to God that I don’t have to pee again before I leave tomorrow. This bathroom is the worst. I quickly rinse my hands off with just water since there’s no soap in here, and then I rush back outside where the air doesn’t smell like a sewer. Earlier I had been daydreaming of a hot shower but now I don’t want anything to do with bathing.
Why would anyone voluntarily camp here? This place is awful.
I make my way back to my cabin and I lock the door behind me. I close all the curtains and plug my phone into one of the two outlets that are in here. The only good thing about this place is that the window unit air conditioning blows cold and the bed isn’t too terribly uncomfortable.
I put on some fresh sheets and lay down, trying and failing to find a Wi-Fi signal on my phone. Luckily, I have a couple movies downloaded on my phone, and even though I’ve seen them a million times, I play one just so the sound can make me feel less alone.
There’s no getting ahold of Ethan this far out in the middle of nowhere, so instead I lay back on the bed and stare at the wooden ceiling and try to imagine that I am anywhere else but here.
After the sun sets, I’m still wide awake and rewatching Mean Girls on my phone again. My heart hurts in this way I’m not used to. I think I feel sorry for myself. This week was already going to suck because it was my last week until school starts and I have to leave Ethan, but now it’s just all screwed up in ways I never imagined.
The hurricane will make landfall tonight and it’ll tear through my state, and then my city, and maybe even my parent’s rental home. There’s a chance all of my new purple dorm stuff will be wiped away with the fury of the storm, and I’ll have nothing to come home to and nothing to take to my dorm next week.
I really hope that’s not the case, but you just never know. I start thinking about all the things I wish were true. Like I wish I was with Ethan, even if we had to sleep in his truck in the Walmart parking lot. I wish I was with my parents in New Orleans. I wish I was at the hotel with Ethan’s parents.
I wish I had someone with me. This is the worst sort of isolation ever. Not even a movie on my phone can break me out of this feeling. I keep watching the clock, counting down the hours until it’s tomorrow and I can try to drive to the hotel again.
I close my eyes and daydream about Ethan, trying to relive our best dates and all the times we hung out on the couch watching TV together. I try really, really hard to imagine that he’s here with me, laying in this squeaky bed in a cabin in Blackwell, Texas, and that it’s all okay because he’s here and I’m not alone.
But my imagination doesn’t work so well. The only solace I can find is knowing that somewhere several miles away Ethan is stuck in the same situation I am. He’s sleeping in his truck, he’s all alone, and he’s missing me just as much as I miss him.
It makes me feel a little better knowing that he’s also stranded and miserable. He’s stuck with Walmart bathrooms and no place to stretch out his legs and sleep. It’s probably horribly hot in his truck and he can’t run the engine for the AC because he’d run out of gas. Yep, my boyfriend is just as miserable as I am.
I hate that we are both stranded and miserable, but at least we’re in it together. Finally, after hours of watching the seconds tick by into the night, I feel an exhaustion settling over me, and I can finally go to sleep.
In just a few hours, I’ll get to be with Ethan again. We’ll make up for all the time we lost. We’ll share horror stories of being stranded in this evacuation. And everything will be okay.
