Sitting in the desert, I admitted the truth.
I hated how they treated me.
More painfully, I hated the person I had become while trying to please them.
Then I remembered that Kyle had borrowed an old phone earlier that morning and placed it in my jacket pocket. It had almost no battery, but one message appeared before the screen went dark.
Don’t be angry. It’s only a prank for the channel. We’ll come back later. Relax.
His brothers ran an online prank channel and were desperate to become famous. Kyle wanted their approval badly enough to turn his wife into entertainment.
I made my decision before the phone died completely.
I would not wait for them.
I would disappear.
A minivan pulled into the station. A tired woman stepped out while two children argued in the back seat. I approached carefully.
“Excuse me. Are you traveling north?”
She looked at me with concern.
“I can take you to the state line. Are you in danger?”
“I need to get away from here.”
Her name was Marcy. She let me ride with her for four hours without demanding an explanation. During a stop, she bought me water and a sandwich. Before leaving me at a bus station, she handed me ten dollars and a phone charger.
“Whatever you’re leaving,” she said, “don’t return simply because being alone feels frightening. I stayed too long once.”
“You saved me today.”
Marcy gave me a tired smile.
“No. You saved yourself. I only gave you a ride.”
Inside the station, I charged the borrowed phone long enough to email my mother’s sister, Aunt May. I had not spoken to her in three years because Kyle had convinced me that she was controlling.
Can I stay with you? I have nowhere else to go.
Her response came almost immediately.
The key is under the mat. You can always come home.
I bought a one-way bus ticket with Marcy’s money, destroyed the phone’s SIM card, and threw it away.
Fourteen hours later, I arrived in Aunt May’s small coastal town at sunrise. She waited beside an old blue pickup, her silver hair pulled into a braid.
When she saw me step from the bus with no luggage, she did not ask questions. She simply wrapped her arms around me.
“Let’s take you home.”
I slept for nearly two days.
