“Too old for it now, I guess.”
“I guess.” But my agreement is a lie. It’s not that I’m too old for it. It’s that I know the end will make me cry, and I can’t have that. A new trailer-load of training horses arrived today. The business is taking off, Regionals are next week, and I need to win to keep the clients coming. At our last youth group meeting we read the part of Corinthians where it talks about putting away childish things. I’m thirteen. It’s time for the childish things to go away. It’s time to stop believing in fairy tales.
I’ve managed to prop myself up against a tree. How long I’ve been resting against it, I have no idea. I’m proud of myself though. I promised to never fall down again, and I managed to avoid that by resting against this tree. Even so, it’s worrying that the drifting-away thing happened again. It’s getting so hard to stay. There’s something important, though. Something I need to remember.
My head lolls back against my will.
“No. Wake up.” Snapping back upright, I say, “What is it?”
Inside, I answer, I don’t know.
But there was something. There was definitely something.
The light. I’m walking toward a light. It’s not ahead of me anymore. It’s strange, though. Everything seems a little lighter. The mist diffuses the light, so it’s not easy to say if this is morning or what. Looking around, I find the bright light to my left. Striking off toward it, I decide it’s brighter than before, but not by much. During my drifting off I think I veered away from the light. Hard to say. I was visiting another memory from the far-distant past.
I won my first Worlds title five years ago. Feels like a thousand lifetimes. Feels like I’ve been Ruth Carver, show beast from hell, my whole life, that there was never a time before it. But there was a time. A little window of time where I caught fireflies and built forts and watched The Black Stallion. Why did I stop all that? Why did I turn off all the switches inside? Was that necessary?
I have no idea. All I know is, I put myself into a box. In that box I could have Becca and Courtney, but them not even very much, and Caleb, in the weird way I had Caleb. That was my box. That’s what I got. Everything else was for the greater glory of the Carver name. But there wasn’t much joy in it. It was a mission to be -accomplished.
As much as I love my mother, as much as I want to hug her and tell her how much I’ve missed her, as I think about my box and how little was inside it, resentment flares up within me. I’ve carried an awful lot for a long, long time. More than a teenage girl should.
I’ve carried an awful lot these last few days. More than anyone ever should.
But the light is there. It is real. I’m walking toward it, and the world is a lighter shade of gray than it was before. I have no idea how I’m walking at all. I can only think that I’m not the one responsible, that God is guiding me to the place I’m supposed to go.
Something flashes to my right, a moving strobe light through the trees. In a second it is gone, but I realize what it was. A car driving down a road on the other side of the forest. I pause for a second, debating. Should I veer toward the road or keep going toward the light? Pain insists I pick quickly, and I stay on the path toward the light. The road isn’t safe, and Wolfman is out there.
The thought of him sparks a new energy. I’m able to stay in the pain and in my body without drifting away. I’m able to focus on what’s ahead. It’s some sort of man-made light. A cluster of them, high up off the ground.
Fighting the drift away, I stare at the ground, picking my way with care, trying to make things easier on my broken body. When I look up again, I recognize what I’m walking toward. It’s a gas station. A great big, newly built gas station. It’s probably two football fields away.
Another set of headlights strobes its way through the trees. The road must lead to the gas station. The road is closer to me than it was before. Much closer. I don’t like that. I don’t want to be near roads anymore.
The headlights turn around, blinding me for a second. I watch as they bounce up and down as the truck pulls over to the side of the road. The truck goes dark as the driver turns off the headlights, but I can make out the shape of the truck as it heads into the trees.
I can think of only one reason why someone driving a truck, upon spotting me, would turn off their headlights and go off--roading in my direction.
I attempt to run. It isn’t a run. It’s a broken shuffle. But I broken shuffle as best I can. I glance back once. The truck is parked. He’s pulling some kind of long stick thing out of the bed. After that, no more glancing back. Just broken shuffling and pulling in a giant lungful of air so I can yell “Help!”
It doesn’t sound like much.
I keep trying.