AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I look at his profile, obscured by his beard, by his full head of long hair. How long have I been looking at him without ever seeing him?
“Please,” he says. “Can you just call me by my name?”
“Okay,” I answer. I say his name even though it sounds so strange in the air. “Steve.”
I have no idea what to say to him. I’m searching for words when something catches my eye in the road up ahead. A deer? Just out of the reach of the headlights, through the falling snow.
“What the fuck is that?” he says, slowing.
“Oh my god,” I say, seeing suddenly that it’s a slim form running toward us. “Slow down.”
25
“Lolly?”
The room is so cold, even though I’m buried under my blankets like I used to do when I was a kid, pull them all the way up to my chin. My mom sits in the rocking chair in the corner.
“Yes, Mom?”
“Were you a good girl this year or a bad one?” She smiles because she thinks she knows the answer. I can hear my dad downstairs in the kitchen, which is strange because he never cooked a meal in his life.
“I was bad. Really bad,” I admit. It feels good to release that, to let it out. Mom gives me a sympathetic frown.
“Oh, hush now. I don’t believe that. You were always my special princess.”
“I know that’s what you thought. I know you thought I was special. But I’mnot, Mom.” I urgently want her to understand this. That I’m not special. That I’m flawed and broken, just like everyone else. That I was only a little bit good at gymnastics, and ballet. That I was a mediocre student at best.
“You’ll never convince me of that, beautiful girl.”
“I dropped out of school back in January. Since then, I’ve been dancing topless at a dive bar outside of town.”
Mom smiles, the way she always did when she caught us doing something bad. Like there was a big cosmic joke and she was in on it.
“Okay, well, we all make mistakes.”
“Mom, I failed out of school. And I’m basically a stripper.”
It’s so cold, I’m shivering. Through the open door from my bedroom into the rest of my house, there’s a terrible darkness. I know if I walk through there, I’ll never return to the safety of this space with my mom.
“Okay, Lolly,” she says. “I get it. You’ve made some pretty big mistakes. What matters now is what you plan to do next. What are you going to do, Lolly?”
“I have no idea.”
“Lolly Anne.”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Figure it out fast.”
I startle awake and I’m pressed into the trunk of a tree, snow falling heavily around me. I ache with cold, my feet and hands so numb. I’m still gripping those two rocks, waiting. I listen to the night. Silence. I struggle to my feet. Keep moving. Keep moving or die.
That’s when I hear him, his wailing call in the night.
Lolly. Lolly. Where are you?
He’s close. Getting closer. Yelling.
You cannot hide in snow, he crows.
