Page 36 of Into the Woods

The meetings—drops, really—became much more involved after that one. They went from scary, back alley exchanges that my father sent me to all alone, to being accompanied by one of his most trusted men. The only part of it that made me feel remotely safer was that they happened behind the closed doors of a select few high-class hotels and mostly during daylight hours.

Looking at the whole thing objectively, was it really any better to meet strange men in hotel suites? It was hard to say, but the change mattered to me.

Tru didn’t like it, though. She didn’t like that she went from having my back and manning the getaway car, to being relegated to the sidelines.

We fought about the whole thing more than once. Shit, we fought about it a lot. Tru didn’t trust my dad to put my safety first, rightfully so, but it scared me when she started following me.

At first, I just felt like I was being watched, I didn’t know it was Tru. I never thought for a minute that she was all that sneaky, but I felt eyes on me way before I eventually saw her parked across the street of the hotel downtown.

After that, the little hairs on the back of my neck prickled with awareness. And each time I had another meeting, those prickles got spicier, my shoulders filled with more and more tension.

When she disappeared, I expected the feeling to stop, but it never did. That prickly, itchy awareness became so familiar, it gave me a certain amount of peace. Security.

But Tru was gone. She disappeared without a trace.

Her father acted like nothing happened. He just waved me off with a mumbled proclamation that she was probably with her mother.

There wasn’t an ounce of truth in his claims, though. My best friend wouldn’t leave without me. We had a plan. We were leaving together…

I peeled the shiny polyester graduation robe from my sweaty skin and folded it as neatly as I could. It had to be returned to the school office because I didn’t have the extra cash to cover the outrageous fee. Sure, other parents foot the bill for their kids who were posing for pictures with their besties, making plans for college. They’d be the ones party hopping later that night, going from house to house and celebrating as high school grads do.

Not me, though. I handed in my graduation gown and started my lonely walk home.

Not home…to the woods.

Even after all the time that had passed, it was still my safe space. And every time I turned the corner on the trail to our tree, I couldn’t help but look for Christophe.

He was never there.

He’d disappeared from my life just like Tru. Little by little, piece by piece, everyone took off leaving me in their rearview mirror. Everyone except my parents. They just used me to make their lives easier.

I settled on the fallen log, deep in the woods that separated my house from Christophe’s. Really, the woods separated our worlds.

How many times had he invited me to his house? How many times had he invited me into his world? To meet his mother?To have my wounds bandaged, my emotions soothed? To experience what life entailed on the other side of the tree line?

And I never went.

Fear controlled me, keeping me from experiencing the world. And it wasn’t always fear of getting in trouble or fear for my safety—even as a little kid, I knew safety wasn’t something I had at home. No, it was the dread of finding out that life was better literally anywhere else. At six-, ten-…even twelve years old,thatwas too scary. Far too intimidating a thought to process.

Now though, at eighteen, I would jump at the chance. I quite literally had nothing and no one left here. If it weren’t for the constant, low key feeling of dread that simmered around all thoughts of Tru, I’d run. I’d go all the way around the world—to the exact spot where one step further would become a single step back in this direction.

My shoulders drooped under the weight of all the unknowns hanging over my head. I had a shit past, absolutely no plans for my future, not without Tru. I was depending on her. I needed her to get away, she was an integral part of our plan.

She took care of me.

She kept me sane

And now, I was completely alone.

I pushed myself up off the log, drawn to the large oak that held all of my dreams. The rough point of the heart I’d carved around my initials and Christophe’s points to a small opening in the trunk that cradled my journal and the cash Tru and I managed to save. It wasn’t nearly enough but even that small amount had been hard for us to come by—no one in town was willing to hire me.

Not even the diner wanted to give me a job waiting tables. I’d been in tears and almost crashed into a tall red-headed man in a suit as I left, feeling overwhelmed and utterly defeated. I still don’t know why the owner changed his mind, but whenhe caught up to me at the end of the block and told me he’d reconsidered, the tears flowed just the same, but my relief was very real.

Still, getting out of here didn’t look quite the same.

With nothing else to do, I opened my journal and quickly counted our cash.

I counted it again.

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