63 Days

It’s funny how you can smell a friendly place even before you get there. I was sitting dizzy in the back of Kathy’s car and we were pulling up into her driveway when I smelled it. It smelled familiar, like her house, like the place I’d gone over to hang out and listen to music…talk about boys…do our hair. The scent of it was so overwhelming it brought me to tears. I leaned forward into my hands and wept.

Kathy helped me into the house and walked me to the shower. She got out some towels and told me to call her if I needed help. My stomach at this point was in constant cramp mode and the ringing in my ears was persistant. I told her that I’d be fine and I stepped out of the clothes that I’d been wearing now without a shower for about a week. The faucet couldn’t go on fast enough as I turned the knobs til the most beautiful hot water poured out of it. Getting underneath the spray felt like shedding my old dirty skin, revealing a new pure layer of me, drop by drop.

After I washed my hair and body 3 times, I pulled the robe around me and twisted my hair up into a turban on top of my head. The door opened and cool air rushed into the steamy coccoon that had been cradling me for the last 20 minutes. Looking past the hallway I could see into the living room. Natalie sat on the couch, stuffing pancakes down her throat by the fistful it seemed. I could hear Kathy in the kitchen mixing something, but as I glanced over to the rocking chair in the corner, I saw some shoes I recognized.

I ran down the hall, tears pouring out of my eyes as fast as they could come. He was sitting there. Eddie, my boyfriend. I jumped onto his lap, threw my arms around him and layed my head on his chest while I cried even more.

He rubbed my back and rocked me. Still, steady rocking. I cried for a good while and he rocked me the whole time.

“How…how? Who told…oh gosh…how did you get here?” I stammered. looking up into his face.

“Kathy called me as soon as you guys hung up. I was out at the mailbox when you’d called me, I’m sorry. Just relax, you can tell me all about it after you eat. Baby, eat.” He nodded behind me where Kathy had brought out some food.

I turned to the plate and tried to put some pancake into my mouth, dry. It sounded the best right then for some reason not to eat anything really sweet or greasy. I could feel my stomach tearing apart as I swallowed, and I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I kept on eating.

“So, we gotta get you guys outta here” Kathy said. “My dad will die if he comes home from work today and finds you guys here. I’m not supposed to even have people in my house, let alone run-aways.”

Natalie laughed. “Runaways eh? Yeah, thats what I am. I’m a lowly runaway. You don’t know who you’re dealing with, do you?” She looked around at all of us. “Listen, thank you for the food, the ride, everything, but I’m gonna be losin all of you in the next little while. I needed a partner to get me outta that shithole, and Alli was perfect for the job. She’s smart, she had balls and most of all, she knew the way out.” She looked at me “so yeah, you should go try to throw up. Those pills you took? They were out of a bottle that had mouse and rodent killer in it. It said to put 1/2 a pill in some cheese or meat to kill 3-5 rats, so when I gave you 3 of those things, I figured that you’d either be slowing me down already, and this way, I could drop yer ass off after you got to Vegas and you’d die and nobody would know where I went. OR, I could make you sick enough where we could make people feel bad for us on the strip. You know, panhandling? Yeah, a cute little sick girl would work better than a big ol’ buff chick. Either way, ya, sorry.”

She didn’t say another thing about it, just continued shoving food down her huge mouth. I should have kicked that bitch’s ass right there, but like she said, I was pretty much down for the count. I found out later that it contained Strychnine, a common household pest killer. Causes terrible cramps, and with enough exposure, death.

Kathy told us that we had 30 minutes to get out, and she handed me some clothes and we were on our way. We walked a few blocks, stopped, walked a bit more, stopped…until we got to Eddie’s house. Kathy didn’t want anything to do with Natalie, so she refused to drive us over there. I was afraid to lose Natalie because she knew where I was, and if she got caught, we were sure to be found, SO…she was with us. The three of us got to his place and I went into his room and layed down while he made some phone calls. A bunch of neighborhood kids came over and just stared at me through the door. All those teenagers who weren’t afraid of their parents until the second they saw my bloody heels, now realized what adults were capable of…nobody even spoke above a whisper.

So after some more calls, we found that nobody with a car could just pick up and leave with us. We had to get out of this city, and fast. Around 4 pm it started getting dark and Eddie’s parents were about to get home. He packed up some clothes and a few pillows and threw them in a garbage bag and tossed the bags over the wall into the desert. He helped me over, and then Natalie, and then he jumped with us. Two little girls named Kristen and Melissa came with us because they said they wanted to run away too. They were each 14. I should have stopped them, but I didn’t. I was afraid of being alone with Natalie at this point.

The trek through the desert wasn’t far. We got to a small strip mall within .5 miles that had a 7-11, a teriyaki place, a dry cleaners and a small video store. We sat on the curb behind the 7-11 waiting for an answer. After about an hour, a man started getting out of his car in front of the video store, and Eddie told me to hide my face. The less people who saw my face the better, of course. Suddenly I felt my arm being jerked forward. I was being pulled into a car, the car the man in the store had left running as he went all the way up to the counter to return some videos. All 5 of us piled into the vehicle and sped off, hearts pounding louder than the air that was rushing through the windows of the car. I was going to pass out from all of the drama and Eddie kept telling me to sleep. This was stolen car number 2.

My mind was running a mile a minute. What if we got caught. Would they take us right back? Would I go to jail or back to Challenger? Who were these girls with us? What would we eat? How could I hide from the cops with no money and only the clothes on my back for 3 more years?

Lights on the freeway passed the window that I stared out of, gold and silver streaks, red cutting through occasionally. The sound of static screeching louder than banshees through my head. My stomach was cramping and pulling, twisting itself out of my terrified torso. I could barely think because of the 200 things I was being forced to see…hear…smell…feel…

A green sign passed by us going 80 miles per hour, yet I read it clearly.

LAKE MEAD 27 MILES

Yes! The lake. That much water in the middle of the desert was itself an anomaly, but the thought of standing in its coolness right now almost made me cry with relief. I could stand in that water, the water that wasn’t supposed to be in the driest of deserts, the water who had escaped the Colorado River from which it sprung…and be me, the girl who wasn’t supposed to be in the desert, the desert from which I had escaped from the place in which the people I’d sprung…had sent me. We’d be somebody and nobody together at the same time…the lake and I.