AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Despite this, Karma always felt safe. That was because the one thing she never worried about in her life was her parents love for her. Stronger than gorilla glue. Just as their love was for each other. Their biggest regret in life was not being able to give Karma siblings.
As a child whenever, other children would tease her about her biracial status her response would always be the same “I am rubber you are glue whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you.”
Marianne, her childhood nemesis, had laughed uproariously at Karma the first time she ever said those words her. An evil little grin crossed Karma’s face as she remembered Marianne walking off calling her a dumb bunny. Marianne turned around to find herself stepping into a rabbit hole on the schoolyard playground, tripping and falling, and breaking her leg. She then spent the next six weeks in a cast precluding her from attending their elementary school end of the year field trip to the waterpark. That was the first case of cosmic karma that she had ever experienced. Over the years there were other cases of cosmic karma. So many in fact that people started calling her by her middle name, Karma, instead of her first name, Sabrina.
Karma sighed, staring at the engine for a second longer before she moved away from her car and walked out into the middle of the road. She pointed her cell phone skyward hoping to pick up a signal.
Thinking back to her drive, she tried to recall when the last time she had seen another car was. It had been at least thirty minutes. She didn’t know how well traveled this road was, but she didn’t relish spending the night out here in the mountains.
She’d learned in her travels that while warm in the daytime when the sun was up, as soon as the sun went down temperatures tended to drop, and hypothermia became a real problem even during the summer months, especially at higher elevations.
“Damn, nothing,” Karma dropped her arms.
She went over to her Betty Lou and pulled out her road atlas.
Her father, Jeffery, taught her how to read a map years ago as a child during their infamous cross-country family trips. It was thanks to him that she loved driving these smaller roads. Whenever he could be pulled out from behind his beloved computers, where he spent many hours creating new and exciting programs, he could be found on the open road in one of his beloved restored cars with the hood down, wind blowing through his thinning blonde hair, her mother’s brown eyes sparkling as she laughed trying to read the map to navigate on their trips.
To this day, Karma still loved the feel of the wind blowing through her hair. That’s why she kept her dark tresses long. Her naturally curly hair was a pain in the butt to take care of, but nothing could rival the feel of the air through an open window on a deserted highway, lifting each curl and blowing it in her face. It was freeing. All of her cares escaping with each brush of the wind. She was wallowing in that joy before her car decided to stop running.
“Where are we? Where are we?” She mumbled to herself as she flipped through the Atlas to Colorado. She remembered that she had picked up this obscure highway just outside of some little town “what was the name of that town?” she traced the map, looking through the mountains.
If this had been the winter months the traffic on this road would never be ending as people traveled to the ski resort located along this road, but during the summer months when the snow has all melted this road was practically a deserted island — one of the reasons why she’d decided to take it instead of the more popular Highway Twenty-Four. She wanted to see the beautiful leaves on the trees when they weren’t covered in snow. She just had no intention of spending the night on the side of this road.
“One-stop,” she said gleefully finger tapping on the town as soon as she located it. Seeing it, she recognized the name. She knew she had passed a sign for it. As she looked at the single dot on the map along highway twenty-two, she was pretty sure that this town was tinier than anything she’d ever seen before. Vaguely, she remembered seeing a small worn sign for Raleigh Mountain Ski Resort. She had thought Spring Stone ski resort at the end of Highway Twenty-Two was the only one out this way. Raleigh Mountain must have closed, but the town of One-stop was still around. Now she’s just needed to figure out the best way to get there. Because by the looks of it, she was going to have to put her Shoe-Baru's into effect since her vehicle was currently dead on the side of the road.
Karma glanced up from squinting at the map, noticing the sunlight fading away fast as the sun set. She put paid to her plan of leaving right away. She had done some stupid things in her life but trying to find her way out of a mountain pass on a deserted road at night was not at the top of the list. She knew she would be safer sleeping in her car tonight. When the sun rose, she would set off to find the town of One-stop and get some help.
She started shifting things from her backseat to the front seat so she could get comfortable. Who knew how long it would take her to walk back to One-stop? She wanted to be prepared. There was nothing much she could do in the dark and she wanted to preserve her cell phone battery, so sleeping seemed to be the best option.
She pulled sweatpants and a hoodie over her shorts and tank top. After having a light snack and doing her private business in a concealed area on the side of the road, she climbed into the backseat of her car and settled in. Tugging it from the back, she placed the baseball bat her father gave her for travel on the floor next to her for protection, just in case. Closing the back door, she was glad that her car was old enough to have manual windows instead of power ones. She was able to crack the window enough to let in a small breeze of fresh air.
Yeah, the last thing she wanted to do was wake up dead. She used the fob on her keychain to lock her doors. Snuggling down with her pillow and blanket, she was ready to get some sleep. The universe would ensure that everything turned out alright. After all she had only been putting good karma out.
She closed her eyes on the sounds of the mountain as she drifted off.
