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Finally, I just started walking. Back the way we’d driven into the foothills on Blacks Creek Road. I knew the way.
Dead or alive, I just wanted to go home to my mom.
I stayed on the crumbling shoulder of the narrow, two-lane highway that wound through the barren hills. I was pretty sure I could walk right down the middle of the road if I felt like it. I wasn’t confident what would happen to me if I were to get hit by one of the few cars that passed in the gathering dusk. Was there another level of death that I’d reach if I got squashed? Was death like a video game with different levels? If so, how many levels were there?
I wasn’t interested in any more surprises related to my mortality. So I stayed on the shoulder.
It was already late afternoon when I started out. Before long, the sun dipped down over the canyon walls. I kept walking.
At one point, a family of deer stepped out of the hills and into my path, in the semi-darkness. The big doe raised her head as I approached and stared through me, her long ears twisting forward and back as she listened. Her babies—a couple of yearlings with knobby knees—flanked her tightly on either side. I didn’t move through them, exactly. Not the way I might have expected, anyway. I sort of scattered around them, into the pockets of air between their flanks and legs.
They watched me do it. I swear they did. Then they went right back to picking through the patches of tender green blades poking through the thistly brown stalks along the road.
I kept walking, as the sun completely disappeared and it got difficult to see anything except the road in front of me.
I thought about my body, lying in the dirt near the shallow ravine, and felt guilty for leaving it behind so easily.
I thought about him. The sounds he made. The way he brushed his hands on his jeans as he hurried back to his car, away from the girl on the ground.
I thought about what I would find when I finally made it through the silent, endless hills. Had my mom called the police yet? Would Ken tell them about the single guy who came in without fail for his hot chocolate—and to flirt with me?
I wasn’t really sure how many miles I was from home. Maybe fifteen, if I had to guess. All I knew was that it would have taken me all night and probably into the next day to walk this far if I were alive.
Since I didn’t have to stop, or rest, or worry about staying hydrated or picked off by any of the glowing eyes I saw farther back in the hills, I found my way back to the main street in Kuna after what I guessed was just a few hours.
The streets were quiet in a way I’d never seen them before. A stray cat darted out in front of me as I crossed the shopping center parking lot and stood looking at the Daily Grind’s bay windows, dimly lit by the lights under the register. It didn’t look up when I called out.
In a few hours, Ken would be arriving to open up the store for the early risers, filling the quiet lobby with the sound of machines perking up and the smell of new espresso.
Part of me hadn’t wanted to leave my safe corner of the world. Even if it meant a small life in a small town, where I’d managed to graduate from high school never having even kissed a boy.
And now I never would.
The house was still and quiet when I finally made it home. The sight of the familiar front door, with the only porchlight still on, filled me to the brim with a mix of longing and despair.
I wasn’t sure how to get into the house at first. However, after a few minutes, I realized I could scatter through the cracked dryer vent, slipping through the narrow opening. It felt kind of like sneezing. Except I was the sneeze.
I found my mom asleep in my bedroom, in the same sweater she’d been wearing Thursday morning, the last time I saw her. Her ISU sweatshirt, a twin to the one she’d gotten me after I got my scholarship letter.
Her face was crumpled, like it was frozen on the verge of tears. Forehead furrowed. Eyes scrunched tightly shut. Mouth pressed into a thin line. But her breathing told me she was really and truly asleep.
I lay down beside her on my bed, wrapping one arm around her waist and burying my face in her hair. Then I closed my eyes and tried to recall the exact smell of her hair. The faint mix of spices from whatever dish she’d been cooking earlier. Ivory soap. And something I didn’t know how to describe. Just her.
She made a quiet moaning sound, and I could hear her teeth grinding.
“It’s okay, Mom,” I whispered.
The noise stopped.
The idea that maybe some part of her could hear me made the despair well up until it was so big it felt like I was made of it. “Don’t be sad. I’m still here. Te quiero,” I tried again. “Can you hear me?”
She jolted upward in bed with a scream, knocking the glass of water off my nightstand as she fumbled for her phone. I leaped up off the bed and moved into the corner of the room, where I stood frozen.
She stared at the blue glow of her cell for a few seconds, her face still tightly crumpled. Then she set the phone carefully back on the nightstand and lay back down on my bed, mumbling something in Spanish.
I took a few steps closer to the bed. “Mom?”
She stared at the ceiling for a few minutes. Even when I leaned in close enough to see the freckles on her wet cheeks.
