Page 2 of Real Shadows
Because no one lived in goddamn North Dakota.
Well, that’s not entirely true, I suppose. Lots of people lived in North Dakota. But they lived in the ‘big’ towns of Fargo and Grand Forks. My destination was a little nowhere town called Brant. Imagine any small town surrounded by farmlands, with only one high school, maybe two grocery stores, and one auto shop that could charge you an arm and leg but didn’t because the owner is your baseball coach.
That was Brant, North Dakota.
Ideally, it wasn’t a place you wanted to move to if your goal was to be invisible, but I’ve been trying that method for over six years and it hasn’t worked for me. After calling my landlord to give him my thirty-day notice, calling all necessary utility companies, packing my few belongings, and withdrawing every cent I had from the bank, I had purchased a burner phone, called the only person in the world I still kept in contact with, and headed towards North Dakota.
I had grown up in foster care after losing my parents when I was seven. And while it had been rough to lose my parents the way I did, foster care hadn’t been as horrible as it could have been. Oh, I was familiar with neglect and abuse, but I never endured anything I couldn’t come back from.
I had been a shy child, and the fact that I had been scrawny hadn’t helped me much. I had been easily picked on and bullied, but I had thought of it more as picking my battles rather than bowing down. Besides, every kid in foster care had been doing the same thing that I had been doing.
We had all just been trying to survive.
My dreams of being adopted by a loving family had been dashed early on and, like most foster kids, I had grown up quickly after that. I might have still been picked on, but I had been independent, depending on no one, since I was around eleven-years-old. Once the reality of life slapped me across the face, my singular focus had been to make sure I had a plan when I fostered out of care. The hopping around from home to home hadn’t bothered me so much as it had saddened me constantly. No matter how many times I tried to fight against the feeling of rejection, it had always hit me hard.
There had been a couple of homes that wanted to keep me but, without outright adopting me, they couldn’t because foster care was all about supply and demand. They shuffled us around like pawns on a chessboard making room for the newly deserted or rejected.
No longer wanting to be at the mercy of anyone, I had started working after school as soon as I had been old enough. Little had I know that that life choice would make me a perfect candidate to reside in the orphanage instead of an actual home. Homes were for the children still in need; the babies, the helpless, the mentally challenged. They were the ones who needed loving care. The fifteen-years-olds who could work and go to school themselves hadn’t required such things as love and guidance.
I had spent the last three years in foster care going to school and working my ass off with part-time after-school jobs. I had wanted to work, but I knew I needed my high school diploma more if I was ever going to amount to anything in my life.
The only thing I’d had of any sentimental value, during those younger years, had been a ratted, torn, grey bunny rabbit that had either been given to me my first day in foster care, or had been a toy from the time in my life where I’d had a family; a time before my parents had been killed by a drunk driver.
That rabbit had been named Silver, and he had withstood years and years of house shuffling, bullying, neglect, and abuse. I had held on to that piece of…consistency all my life until he came up missing one day when I had just turned sixteen-years-old. I remember tearing up the entire orphanage looking for him, but I never did find him. And everyone I had asked had claimed not to have known what happened to him.
But one of them had lied.
I wouldn’t know that until six years later, when I had walked into my one-bedroom apartment after working the closing shift as a bartender at Drink This, a local college bar in northern California. I hadn’t been able to swing college no matter how good my grades had been, so I opted at being happy to just be able to hold down a good job that could support me without the need for government assistance. I’d never been proud, but I had wanted more in life than what foster care had showed me. However, I’ll never forget walking into my apartment and heading towards my bedroom to see the grey, worn, stuffed bunny rabbit sitting proudly in the middle of my bed.
For months, before the rabbit had appeared on my bed, I had thought my mind was playing tricks on me. I had thought I was under adult-life stress or something. I’d come home to small items being misplaced or slightly skewed in one way or another. It had been small things that had made me think, oh, hey, I must have forgotten to put it back.
It had never been anything huge or obvious. There were times I’d get in my car and the seat was slightly pushed back, or a window rolled down; stuff like that. It had all been minor incidences that could easily be explained away by carelessness or just not thinking. It had never occurred to me that it might be something more until I had seen that rabbit on my bed.
Myrabbit.
The shock of seeing it had rendered me immobile for a few incomprehensive minutes before I did what we all yell at the stupid girl in the movie for. Instead of calling the police and making sure I didn’t touch anything, I had snapped out of my shock, walked towards my bed, and had picked up the rabbit to verify if it was, indeed, the one from my childhood.
Holding the rabbit in my hand had brought on real feelings of fright and violation. Never having had experienced anything like a stalker before, the knowledge that this hadn’t just any old stalker, but someone from my past and was still fixated on me all these years later, had been numbing.
And like every time since then, I had called the police. And while they had taken my fright seriously, they hadn’t taken the crime seriously. I had gotten a whole bunch of nothing. They had taken the rabbit as ‘evidence’, but politely reminded me that there was nothing they could do without proof of something more.
I had remained in that apartment for two more months before the paranoia had pushed me to the edge of insanity. I had moved, and I’ve been moving every time he’s found me. Or, hell, it could be a she for all I knew.
Over the years, some officers have been compassionate, and some have been assholes. An invisible stalker was not high on their priority list. And I got it. I really did. This was a personal crime that only affected me and, so far, I hadn’t been harmed physically. Police officers had real crime they had to deal with every day. There were murders, rapes, robberies, and shootings they had to deal with. My random intruder, who liked to misplace my ceramic rabbit, was hardly a national tragedy.
But my fear?
That was real.
I had done everything, short of changing my name, to escape this…person. I’ve changed so many jobs and cities and appearances over the years, I no longer knew what there was left to do. So, I had called the only person I could remotely consider a friend, Karla Craig, and had told her everything. She was the only person I considered a friend because I never stayed in a place long enough to make friends. I had kept to myself. I also hadn’t been ready to explain my crazy to anyone because that’s how I felt sometimes.
I felt crazy.
Karla and I had grown up in foster care together, but when she was around sixteen, she had been claimed by a long-lost relative, and he had taken her to live with him and his family. I had been happy for her but devastated by the loss. Friends-true friends-were hard to come by in foster care. We stayed in touch, but our lives were definitely polar opposites.
After telling Karla everything, she had insisted I move to North Dakota and start fresh. She made living in Small Town, USA sound so wonderful and safe. She also pointed out that it was a far cry from California and, where a stranger wouldn’t stand out in the busy streets of California, a stranger would definitely stand out in Brant, North Dakota.
So, I had packed up everything I owned, pulled out every cent I had in the bank, filled up my gas tank, and had taken off the next day, after taking care of my work, rental, and utilities obligations.
