Suddenly, she did. It was El who’d taught her.
“Goddamn it, El.”
How was it possible that a person could become more substantial by vanishing? The contradiction made no sense to Riley, and when things made no sense, she wanted to destroy them and build something more logical.
She wanted to find El and convince her that she had just as much value when she was visible.
When Sonny came on shift, Riley was waiting in the convenience store, sucking down a Slushee with her leather coat unzipped. She was running so hot that even an ice cream headache dare not trouble her. The boy behind the counter had begun to shrivel up beneath her gaze. He tossed his relief a warning glance.
Sonny’s eyebrows went up, so finely plucked, her round face looked precisely like the emoji for surprise, if that emoji had ingested tranquilizers. “Can I help you?”
Riley bottomed out the drink like a shop vac picking up lug nuts. “My friend was in here yesterday around five or six. She had a backpack?”
Recognition slowly dawned on the clerk’s face as she yawned. “Yeah, I remember her. Blonde. Seemed upset.”
Blonde? Couldn’t be. El had hair so dark it gleamed blue in the sunlight. Then again, both Mama and Rose had gone blonde. Suddenly, Riley knew exactly why this change might have happened. El was a minor.
She’d stolen Rose’s identity.
“Yeah. There was a whole thing . . . on the train?” Riley dropped her cup in the trash can and sauntered toward the counter. Once there, she picked out a lighter from the rack and rolled it around in her fingers. “Did she tell you about it?”
Sonny frowned. “No. You the friend she messaged?”
Riley’s teeth clamped down on what would have been a shout of happiness—El did have help! Knowing that there might be a plan, that there was perhaps a more experienced person guiding El, relieved her somewhat. But the truth was, Riley trusted no one but her father. She couldn’t be sure that El was getting the right advice, unless it came from her.
“That’s me! The friend! She didn’t want me to worry, but . . . I worried.”
Sonny chuckled. “I’d worry too. Girl looked frazzled. Mascara smeared all over her nose.”
Riley nodded with a worldly frown, but her stomach was tightening. She wanted to know what on earth had transpired on that train. If any of those men had put hands on El . . .
“Now I’m trying to find her, but she didn’t tell me what her new plans were before radio silence. She was supposed to stay on the train, but . . . well, that didn’t work out.”
Sonny shrugged and looked around with a slothful stare. “She asked about Greyhound stations. I told her the nearest town that had one was Beckley.”
Springing up to her full height, Riley tried not to leap out the door before the clerk finished talking. “Where’s Beckley?”
“About fifty miles southwest.”
“Thanks!”
Riley was out the door in an instant. Aella’s GPS determined the quickest driving route was to loop northeast and take the highway, but El wouldn’t have backtracked. On foot, she could have walked straight across via Hinton on what seemed to be a two-lane road. It would give her better cover, more forests and terrain to camp in. There would have been no way to reach Beckley by nightfall.
Unless she hitchhiked.
“Oh god, El, please tell me you didn’t hitchhike,” she murmured, staring at the map.
If Riley drove the route, she could intercept the girl. If that wasn’t the right path, she could double back via the other route and scour it. That circle made for about two hours of travel.
Two more hours of El walking alone. Two hours closer to darkness.
Riley put on the helmet. It was time to get moving.
In as long as El could recall, she’d never needed an alarm clock, because the fear of Mama’s intransigent meanness woke her in advance of every assault.
This morning, she opened her leaden eyelids to the sounds of birds. Sunlight dappled the walls of the tent, dancing in the wind in a dazzling display. She lay looking up at it, smiling at the rush of elation she felt. She had survived. Better than that . . . she was free, because if she could sleep in the wild and pass unscathed, then she was mistress of her own fate.
Her mother’s warding and spells were completely undone, because the world no longer seemed quite so frightening.
Joy warmed her through and through.
Then she tried to move and remembered that everything came at a cost.
El had been smart to dress for the next day, because as she failed to sit up and crawl out of the tent, she knew she wouldn’t have had the strength to do it now. Every single muscle in her back was either made of pure concrete, or had the elasticity of jello. Her skin was feverish and somehow hurt. Her joints were swollen to the point that it was almost impossible to bend her knees. She needed to stretch, but lacked the stamina to even move to do so.
And to top it all off, her stomach was completely empty. After twenty minutes of writhing and careful breathing, El managed to rifle through her pack for sustenance. She found some fruit leather, some freeze-dried veggies, and a pack of salami. At some point in the night, she’d slurped up all that was left in her bottle from the gas station. She would need fresh water and more food very soon.
El tucked the filtration unit and her bottles beneath her arms and made her way to the water’s edge on her hands and knees. The instructions—when she could read the words blurring in and out of focus—said that for optimal results, she should filter it twice, and if fearing other contaminants, boil the results.
Looking around the area at all the signs of habitation she could see, she knew she could not start a fire, even though she had the things to do it.
Maybe she could just filter it a couple extra times?
The water looked like a thick pea soup. The whole area was mining country. She read the filtration instructions again, praying it could handle all the heavy metals she was about to put through it.
Finally able to stand, El walked out into the water. While the filter dripped, she reached for the sky, brought the clouds to meet the earth, performed every ballet pose she’d been taught, contorted and cracked herself in slow motion. Dizziness and darkened vision came and went. The blood began to move again, and the soreness to recede a bit. By the time she’d finished stocking up her water, she could walk without wincing.
El took a long while to figure out how to flatten the belligerent tent. The bedroll and sleeping bag were wound tight. She even made certain the area was free from every sign of her before she again lashed the pack to her back and climbed up to the railroad.
She turned on the cell’s data and texted Oscar. He praised the gods that she was all right.
This is actually pretty easy. I’m really sore, but otherwise, it’s working great to do things this way, but it might take me longer than I thought.
Girl, I would be like, where’s the fucking Holiday Inn? You are the man.
By noon, however, El was truly rethinking her life. The heat was unbelievable. After dipping the handkerchief in the river and tying it around her neck to keep it cool, she finally resorted to taking off her shirt and wetting it. The water she’d bottled tasted like pond scum, even though it was mostly clear. Waves of hungry nausea were growing stronger by the mile. Her body hurt so badly that she’d had two pain relievers before she’d even finished her modest snack.
Oscar rolled his eyes at her with an emoji, when at last she checked in. Why don’t you just strip down and go for a swim?
What if someone sees me?
OMG Snow . . . your bathing suit covers less than your underwear.
That’s not true! My mother only ever let me wear a one piece with a skirt.
WTF? Is she scandalized by table legs too? Do we need to have a locksmith come when you get here to remove the fucking chastity belt?
She laughed in spite of her agony. NO. But I’d take a therapist.
Done and done! Get your
skinny ass here so that I can fatten you up with free avocados, cheap whiskey, and give you all my stored-up hugs.
I need hugs. I think. There’s not a lot of hugging in the Glasse household, but humans like that sort of thing, right?
Oscar called her. The conversation was full of soothing tones and comforting words. Somehow, he’d known she needed contact and was making it happen. Even after she’d hung up and stripped down, she was thanking providence that she’d managed to find such a wonderful friend.
Floating in the water was exactly what she needed. Her legs touched more than one undulating form she would rather not think about, but the loss of gravity and the cold was divine. She’d never gone into the pool much at home. Somehow in her mind it was linked to being the wrong shape or too pale, her sister’s lengthy physical training, or her mother’s lavish summer binge-drinking parties. This was something completely different. She rolled onto her back and closed her eyes, content to drift in the current for a bit.
What did it matter how fast she moved? No one was timing her. She was in just as much danger here as at Oscar’s house. The warmth of the day ate through the tension in her shoulders. Her head began to clear. She used the water’s drag to help her work the vigor back into her frame, and when she’d finally gotten her body under control, she redressed and went back to walking.
It was mindless, in a landscape that hardly ever changed. At the first town, she ducked off and wandered as far from the rails as she dared, buying fresh supplies at the nearest store. By the next check-in, her limbs felt human and though she was weak, she was fed and moving at an excellent pace.
“Send me pictures! I wanna see this fucking state,” he said when she called him later to check in. When he received them, Oscar let out a whistle. “It’s like really green!”
“Yeah, but there’s all these abandoned buildings and stuff. I’ve seen about ten people wandering the tracks like me, most of them missing teeth.”
“Mmm . . . Snowy, you better fuck yourself up a bit before they do.”
El frowned. “What does that mean?”
“Like, smear dirt on yourself. Mess up your hair. Look strung out. Get the backpack a bit grubby. You gotta look like you’ve got nothing, or someone is gonna target you.”
She halted abruptly. That hadn’t occurred to her. She’d been walking this whole way in brand-new everything, newly bleached hair, white teeth and perfectly manicured nails because her mind had been trained to see always looking perfect as the best option. Mama had drilled it into her, that to get what she wanted in life, she had to look respectable. But in this environment, she was not a tramp and it was far too obvious.
“Oh, my gosh.”
“You mean, Oh fuck, right?” Oscar chuckled.
“Oh . . . fuck. You’re right. Wow. I’m so bad at this!”
“Stop changing clothes. Get dirty. Fuck the people who look sideways at you. Girl, you gotta be mean! You gotta look like you’re on a trek into destruction, not a fucking cake walk.”
She tossed her pack down, sure to roll it in as much gravel as she could. Plopping down beside it, she leaned back against a tree. “Riley would have told me to scowl more.”
Oscar let out a gasp. “Is that her name? Is it Riley? Oh my god, I have to tell my boyfriend.”
El snorted. His excitement was adorable. She still couldn’t come to terms with the idea that she was important to anyone, let alone that she might be somewhat famous in some circles for who she was, not for her last name.
“Yeah . . . her name is Riley.”
“She sounds like a bad bitch. I imagine her like . . . as an Amazon, you know? Like strong and lean. With a bared breast and like . . . a headdress.”
Riley’s grinning face and wicked glimmering gaze filled her thoughts. She closed her eyes on the image and sighed happily. “Riley is . . . Not that tall, actually. A little taller than me. Curvier than me . . . just . . . gorgeous. She’s got dark auburn hair that she dyes all these colors. Her skin looks like . . . like . . . I don’t know, like sandalwood. She has freckles all over her face and the backs of her arms. Oscar . . .”
“Girl, you are so in love.”
Suddenly, her heart fluttered. “Oh my god, I just realized something.”
“What?”
“I’ve never said it aloud. I’ve never said what I think of her with my own voice.”
“Sing it, girl.”
“I love her. She is the most amazing person I’ve ever met. She’s brave. She’s funny. She pushes through things that would petrify me. She’s unbelievably smart. She’s complicated and strong. She’s just . . . she’s just . . .” El threw up her hands and let them fall. “Amazing.”
Oscar was giggling. “Now that is the kind of preaching I can handle. Come on, Snow. Keep marching.”
“You’re right. Okay, I’m up.” She took in a deep breath and held it until her mind began to float. Finally, she let it out in a giddy chuckle. “Oscar . . . thank you for being my friend. Without you, this wasn’t possible.”
“Shut up. You got this. I’m just here to feed you guacamole.”
Laughing until tears fell, El bid him goodbye.
Somewhere, about a mile outside of the nearest town, El knew she had to make camp. The sun had sunk below the hills, the sky was draped in twilight and mauve clouds. This time, she refilled the water and took twice as much ibuprofen, anticipating tomorrow’s aches and pains. With the oath that the next day would begin with a swim, she crawled into her tent and was unconscious before she could blink.
In the dead of night, she startled awake. A bright light was punching through the dark and stabbing at her bleary eyes. El scrabbled upright as a man’s voice silenced the nearby cicadas.
“Hello? Hello in there!”
El swallowed hard, her mind reviewing every scenario she’d contemplated for some inkling of what to do.
“This is private property. Can you come out, please?”
The accent had a patina to it. El put the age as being greater than her own. Her heart beating fiercely, she stuck her head out of the tent flap. A flashlight pointed right at her eyes, blinding her in a painful burst.
“I didn’t realize. I’m sorry.” She blinked furiously and shielded her gaze with a hand. Against the pitch of the woods, a large figure could be seen. Bits and pieces came into focus—a beard, a pair of large boots. “I’ll pack up.”
“Well, miss . . .” The man ran a hand over his face and seemed to be considering her. “I’ve already called the police.”
El’s blood turned to ice in her veins. “Oh, no! Please don’t! I’m so sorry! I’ll leave! You don’t have to report me!”
He grumbled, but it seemed as if she might be able to persuade him. “Are you alone?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I was just tired. I can go.”
“No . . . hell . . . no. It’s okay. Look . . . the cops are gonna come whatever, so . . . Why don’t you come back to my house? You can talk to them there. Maybe we can clear this up. I know most of them anyway.”
El crawled out of the tent. He dropped the light as if he’d just realized it bothered her. Finally, she could make him out—overalls and a ball cap, a utility belt and workman’s boots. From head to toe, he was every inch the blue-collar sort. His brown beard and hair were shot through with gray, and a pack of cigarettes peeped out from the bib at his chest.
“I don’t want to cause trouble.”
“What’s your name?”
El began to say her own name, but at the last instant, remembered herself. “Rose.”
“Are you a runaway?”
Her eyes fell to her feet, her mantra a whisper against the prospect of dealing with the police. She was chasing freedom, not running away. She had to keep hold of that. “No. I just . . . I like to wander.”
He chewed his lip and then ticked the torch in a gesture. “Come on. I’ll get you a drink. You can talk to the deputy and sort this out.”
El wondered if she could just leave now. H
e couldn’t stop her legally, could he? But if he told the police she’d run, they would surely go looking for her. She knew they had jurisdictions, and that she might be able to make it to a county line, but she had no idea where those lines were, and the authorities had radios.
To her sleepy mind and sore body, the only reasonable option was to explain.
The man began to walk back into the brush. She took one step, before she thought of her bag and grabbed for it. The tent and sleeping stuff she could come back for if she managed her way out of this, but the bag had her life in it. It couldn’t leave her body.
As she followed her guide back into the woods, she wondered if she’d hidden her true identification well enough. She didn’t know if the police were allowed to search her pack, but she’d done as was suggested on the websites she’d found, folding her birth certificate, her passport, her ID all up inside of plastic sleeves, and stuffing them into a metal water bottle. If they found these items, everyone would know she wasn’t actually an adult, and most importantly, they’d call her parents.
The flashlight fell on a fallen tree. The man held out a hand for her. “You gotta climb over top. Sorry.”
Without thinking, she took his hand. The fingers closed on her wrist tightly. She had an instant only, to look up at him in question and see the hunger there. With a single blink, he yanked her arm nearly out of the socket. Gravity caught her. She hit her knees, one colliding with something very sharp. A shriek was pulled from her, but then he had hold of her pack, and a hand around her face.
El’s thoughts had no substance to them, no words or reason. Without them, she could do nothing but react. At once, her arms and legs were numb, her ears deaf to practically every sound but his haggard breathing.
“Move!” he growled.
Hurled into the dark, her knee refused to take her weight. The pack made her top heavy and sent her end over end down an incline. At the bottom, she staggered, but the leg was worse than she’d realized, and the man was much too fast.
Love Under Glasse Page 17