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The instant she sees me, the worry goes away and she smiles. A genuine smile that’s just for me.
“Is this yours?” she offers in a soft voice that makes the anger go away. Only for a second though, because the moment she asks me, she peeks over at the woman and looks nervous to even be talking to me.
Because I’m a bad kid. That’s why. Everyone knows it. Even her.
Her knees nearly buckle as she stands there, holding the candy out to me even though I’m feet away from her.
She’s afraid to move. “My mom told me to stay here,” she explains.
I nod and swallow the lump in my throat. She looks sad like me until she smiles at me, then it changes everything.
She’s strange. Like she doesn’t want to be here.
I may not belong here, but she doesn’t either.
“Thanks,” I tell her as I walk to her and she nervously looks between me and the woman again, her mom.
She’s shy as she talks to me. “I haven’t met you before.” And then she smiles again, even sweeter this time. She smiles at me like her happiness was meant to belong to me. Like I could take that happiness from her. Like I could be happy too. “I’m Chloe Rose.”
CHLOE
Maybe if I leave, the nightmares will go away.
Places hold memories. They can’t help it. The image of a dented brass doorknob comes to mind. I’ll never forget the memory of what put that dent into the hard metal. The sound of a click against a window, the window he crept through late at night. It can’t help but exist, yet it carries so much heaviness with it. So much more than just an object, so much more than just a place.
I’m done crying; I’m done remembering.
I think I’ve been ready to leave for a long time. Longer than the time that first light went out on the street and I had the urge to run in such a primitive way. I think I was ready to run the first time Bastian’s lips pressed against mine. My heart knew it, but it would only beat if he came with me.
There’s a method to the way I place each item in the old duffle bag. I was given the bag in gym class one year in high school. It was a promotion for some sports drink and I think it could carry at least two weeks’ worth of clothes. That’s all I need.
Each piece fits in easily. My books I can put in a cardboard box and place in the back. I’ll always need my books.
Other than my clothes, I don’t know what I’ll take. Toiletries, obviously. But these photographs aren’t mine and the ones I have, I don’t want.
The light catches the glass of a photo on the far right of the wall. A photo of my mother when she was young, and I was in her arms. I don’t remember that far back, but my uncle said she loved me deeply. That she bundled me up in that picture because it was so cold out and she was worried about taking me outside for the photos.
She loved me once.
But she loved the alcohol more.
I’m okay with it. I’m okay with it all. Because I survived, and I still know how to love. A piece of me will always love her. I’ll love the woman in this photo because she’s not the woman in my nightmares.
My fingertips brush along the edges of the frame as my throat tightens and I wish I could go back to that time to tell her. I wish I could go back to so much.
You can only move forward, a voice tells me, and I close my eyes, letting the last tears fall. They linger on my lashes as I open my eyes again and say goodbye to her, leaving the photo where it is.
I carelessly brush them away, gazing at the full duffle bag as my phone pings. It’s only one of two people. I already know that.
Please tell me you’re okay. I read the text message from Angie and my heart sinks. I think I would have been good friends with her. Even though neither of us ever belonged here. I’m grateful to leave, but I don’t know how much this place will take from her before she walks away, if she can even walk away.
I don’t know why she’d stay here any longer than she has to. But it’s her choice, and she knows what she’s doing. Maybe me leaving will push her to run; I try to justify leaving her in the dark with the thought of her being warned to stay away with my disappearance. I can only hope that’s what she does.
There’s not a damn thing good that lives in Crescent Hills.
Answer me, she texts me, but I don’t text her back. The next time it pings, I turn off the phone without looking.
Bastian said it’s better to just disappear and for no one to know where we’ve gone. He’s right, and I don’t want anyone to come looking for me. If I could disappear and be lost in the wind with Bastian forever, I would. Tonight, I’m going to try to do just that.
