Page 66 of Reclaiming Adelaide

If I disappeared, everyone could get on with their lives and never have to worry about me again. But before I did that, I needed my parents to know how much I loved them, how sorry I was that I’d become such a shitty daughter and that I missed them so much.

Now, I wandered between rows of wrecked cars with my new laptop, burner phone, and two days’ worth of clothing. I’d even bought a blanket for the night before I walked into the junkyard.

I’d do things differently this time.

As I rounded a smashed car, I shifted my laptop bag over my shoulder. I’d bought a blanket for the night because if I went to a hotel like I did last time, they’d find me. It was just my luck.

The long night would give me plenty of time to plan out my mode of transportation, which consisted of hitch-hiking, sleeping under overpasses or junkyards, and praying I didn’t get swallowed up by a sicko with a fetish.

I squeezed past a blue Dodge Dakota with a busted window and smashed-in rear end, sitting next to a white Chevy truck, single cab, without an engine.

None of these would do.

One row away sat a white panel van, the ones everyone’s parents warned us about, with no windows and a sliding door on the one side.

I wandered between the two rows with abject defeat weighing me down, my feet heavy as I clambered inside the dusty, decrepit vehicle with a metal grate blocking the front seats.

The blue cloth bench seat looked rather clean for who knows how long it sat here, but that didn’t stop my skin from crawling as I sat down and dropped my backpack on one end where I laid my head.

Is this what my life had come to? Sleeping like a runaway teen?

I closed my eyes and frowned as I dug out my blanket and covered myself up. If I couldn’t see where I laid down, maybe it’d slip my mind and allow me to get a few hours of rest.

That was until metal scraped against metal as it fell…

I froze; my heart slugged against my chest like the man who sucker punched me in the club. Metal ground against a hard object, intermingled with the cricket’s stridulations, set me on edge.

I turned on my side and gripped my bag for comfort. Why didn’t I pick up a knife at the store? Safety should have been a priority, but it came in last when you were desperate.

A train’s horn blew in the distance as the movement crept closer—two long, one short, followed by another long.

Movement scampered across my periphery as I pulled my blanket close to my chin. My legs shook as the rhythmic hum from the train’s wheels traveled through the air, settling around me. The scent of rotting foliage, and God knows what else, stung my nose.

Please don’t let there be a dead body around here—or even someone alive, either.

“Ahh!”

I kicked my legs into the air, my blanket flying over my face, smothering me as if it had a mind of its own. I clawed at the possessed material in time to see a dirty orange cat rush after the white one whose tiny face had sat in the corner of the opened door like some ghostly peeping tom.

Their reverberating hisses and growls made them sound larger than life as they toppled under the vehicle, their bodies vibrating the floor beneath me as they wrestled.

Feral beings. What if they scratched me and I contracted rabies?

I sat up, grabbed the door, and slid it closed, leaving a gap for the gentle cool breeze to blow through.

Find a happy place.

I plopped back in place—the van swaying with the motion—and closed my eyes, letting my mind take me off to someplace sunny with smooth beaches and clear blue waters. I could sit on the beach with my laptop like Sandra Bullock in the movie The Net and work.

I rubbed my eyes with a heavy exhale.I will not cry.

That was the movie Jake and I would’ve watched if I hadn’t eaten so much ice cream and nearly puked all over his floor.

We’d never get those moments back. The trust we’d had could never get rebuilt, and he certainly hated me, which twisted my gut until it ached.

I sniffled and curled into a ball, letting the darkness take me.

19

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