Page 111 of Frisco

Aly let me take the lead. Her and Harper weren’t the tough sorts like I was. I was rough and tumble, needed to be growing up with my sister, but we spent a good amount of time out in the woods and around the lake. I figured we had a while before Aly’s shock would really set in. Mine too, but I’d bear through mine. Been through worse shit than this, or, well… no. I’d never been kidnapped so no. This was the worst I’d been through, but spending time in Chicago where my dad worked and being biracial, yeah. There’d been some scary times there too. Nothing in Friendly. Thought the whole place was scared of getting on the bad side of Ruby and Claudia, which had me feeling a certain way about my mother and sister now that I was thinking on it.

What was I doing? I didn’t have time to suss this out, but that was me thinking. Keeping my brain busy so I didn’t have to focus on those guys coming back and finding us.

I kept moving forward. My plan had been to go up north, get on a hill over that road and then follow it down back to Manny’s. Or wait until we heard Harley engines roaring through the street and sprint as fast as I could down there to flag down Shane. So I wanted to be away from the road enough that if those guys came back, we could hide easily, but not too far where I’d miss the road if I heard Shane.

Did that make sense?

It made sense in my head.

…I think the shock was starting to set in.

We kept going. Branches tore at us.

I probably had a nest in my hair, but I kept going. Had to. Needed to.

Then I got to a stage where my head was fuzzy, and I stopped running.

I was getting confused. What was going on again?

I looked around.

I wasn’t alone, but I couldn’t see anyone.

Aly! Aly had been with me, but she wasn’t anymore.

I started to take a step back, but I came down on a log and my ankle went one way. My body went the other way.

Crack!

Oh, no. That didn’t sound good.

But I was down, and I lay there a minute. If I could’ve seen anything, I knew I would’ve witnessed birds flying around my head.

Crash.

Snap.

“Kali!”

I sat up, my head all woozy. That was Aly. She sounded so scared.

She saw me, just as we both saw headlights peaking over a hill.

A hill? I thought we’d gone up to the top of the hill?

I must’ve got that wrong.

I think I must’ve gotten a lot wrong.

Where was Shane?

“Kali!” Aly fell to her knees beside me. I heard her sniffling and she was touching my leg. “Oh no. What’d you do?”

I reached forward, grabbing her hand, and I fell back. I couldn’t hold myself anymore. Maybe those headlights wouldn't see us? We weren’t on the road. They should skip over us, easy-peasy.

“I fell down.”

She settled next to me, a heavy dense thud so I knew she landed hard on her ass. I doubted she felt it. She was probably in shock like me, and she leaned into me. “I’m pretty sure we’d only been running for a few minutes, but it feels like hours.”

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