“Take care of each other,” I’d begged my parents, knowing how hollow the words were. The outbacks didn’t allow for care. They barely allowed for survival. But what else could I say in those final seconds?
“We’ll find each other again,” my mother had whispered, the lie sweet between us. We all knew the truth. Families didn’t reunite after banishment. They simply learned to live with the ghosts.
“I love you both,” I’d managed before Ronald’s urgency cut short any more words. Now those three words felt insufficient. A lifetime of love compressed into a single phrase, thrown out like a life preserver to parents who were already drowning.
This is how families died, not all at once, but in pieces. First the physical separation. Then the slow fade of memory. Eventually, even grief became a luxury you couldn’t afford when survival took everything.
Ronald pulled into the rest stop, little more than a cleared area with rusted picnic tables. He worked quickly, swapping license plates with practiced efficiency. I watched the woods around us, every shadow potentially hiding threats. But we were alone except for the earliest birds starting their dawn chorus.
“Almost there,” he assured me, but I caught the worry in his voice. The bus station was still twenty minutes away, and the sky was brightening faster now. We were cutting it close.
Back on the road, Ronald pushed the sedan harder, risking attention for speed. The narrow routes gave way to actual roads as we neared the town. Not pack central, but close enough that early morning joggers might be out. Close enough that someone might recognize me despite the bandages and rough clothes.
“Where will you go?” Ronald asked as the bus station came into view.
“Away. Far as money takes me,” I said, unconsciously pressing a hand to my neck over the mark. I needed to put distance between him and me.
Each mile increased the chance I’ll never see home again. But home was already gone, wasn’t it? Carved away as surely as the mark on my neck. What I was driving toward wasn’t home but simply continued existence.
Ronald pulled into the back of the bus station lot, engine idling. Through grimy windows, I could see a few early travelers inside. The ticket counter was open, harsh fluorescent lights making everything look sickly and surreal.
“This is as far as I can take you,” he said unnecessarily. We both knew he’d already risked too much. “Your father would be proud. You’re surviving.”
But as I gathered my single bag and prepared to face whatever came next, I felt a strange flutter. Stronger than any I had feltbefore. My hand went to my abdomen as realization crashed over me like ice water.
My heat had never fully completed its cycle. The violence of the rejection, the trauma of the trial, had interrupted the natural process. Which meant...
“Thank you,” I managed to tell Ronald, not trusting my voice with more. He deserved better than my problems. Deserved to get home before anyone noticed his absence.
As Ronald’s car pulled away, leaving me alone in the graying dawn, I stood frozen by a new terror. An incomplete heat meant unpredictability. It could resurge at any time, without warning. And I was about to board a bus full of strangers, heading into unknown territories with no protection, no pack, no way to predict when my body might betray me again.
The sun’s first rays touched the horizon as I forced myself to walk toward the station entrance. Time had run out. Whatever came next, I’d face it alone, carrying secrets that could destroy what was left of my world.
11
— • —
Rhea
Three Months Later
Ninety-three days since Ronald’s taillights disappeared into pre-dawn darkness. I counted time differently now, before and after, when I had an identity, a role to play, versus when I became nobody. The bus had deposited me in Millbrook after a day’s journey through territories that blurred together. I’d chosen it for its insignificance, a town so forgotten even maps seemed reluctant to acknowledge it. Perfect for someone who needed to stop existing.
The bus ride itself had been twenty-two hours of careful anonymity. I’d kept my hood up, bandage hidden, sitting in the back where the overhead light had burned out. Every stop brought fresh anxiety as passengers boarded, but Millbrook drew no one. When the driver announced it, I’d been the onlyone to stand. The station was just a bench outside a closed diner, streetlights flickering like they’d given up trying.
The first motel had been a special kind of hell. The Sleepy Pines Motor Lodge squatted beside the highway like a fungal growth, all water-stained ceilings and carpet that crunched underfoot. Gary, the desk clerk, had taken my cash without questions, his eyes sliding over my bandaged neck with practiced blindness. In a place like this, everyone nursed wounds. The room key stuck, the shower ran brown before clearing, and roaches skittered in the walls at night. But it was a shelter, and I was too exhausted to care.
“Room 12. No visitors after ten,” Gary had said, sliding the key across scarred wood. His fingernails were bitten to the quick, cuticles raw. A fellow anxiety sufferer, perhaps. Or just someone else whom life had gnawed on.
I measured survival in hours then, each one a small victory. Six hours without crying. Twelve hours without checking my phone for messages that would never come. Twenty-four hours of keeping food down despite the nausea that plagued me. The motel room became my entire world, boundaries defined by nicotine-yellow walls and a door that didn’t quite close right.
The television had three channels, all static-laced. I had watched infomercials for products I’d never buy, letting the enthusiastic voices fill the silence. The couple next door fought nightly, their rage bleeding through thin walls. Sometimes I envied them. At least they had someone to rage at.
The rat I’d named Ferdinand had been my first companion, bold enough to share my off-brand crackers. He’d appeared on my third night, emerging from behind the radiator with theconfidence of a landlord checking on tenants. I’d watched him navigate the motel room with assurance I envied, making a kingdom from squalor. The metaphor felt too obvious, but I took lessons where I found them. Like Ferdinand, I learned the safe routes, which vending machines still worked, which ice machine didn’t smell like death, which rooms to avoid after dark.
He visited nightly after that, drawn by the crackers I left on the nightstand. We developed a routine. I’d eat my dollar store dinner, he’d emerge for dessert, and we’d exist in parallel silence. Ferdinand didn’t care about my past or my scars. He just wanted crackers and quiet company. Some nights, that felt like the most honest relationship I’d ever had.
Finding the studio apartment had taken two weeks of searching. Millbrook’s rental market consisted mainly of weekly motels and condemned buildings. But persistence paid off when I spotted the handwritten sign: “Studio for rent. Cash only.” The building hunched between a tax office and a shop that sold both wedding dresses and taxidermy, because Millbrook specialized in contradictions.
