Aria had run away from home.
CHAPTER 3
The air outside was biting. Aria was caught up in the rush of having made the decision to leave them before they abandoned her. It made her feel like she was finally part of the outside world. She was out in it, instead of looking at it through a pane of glass. The darkness swallowed her up and she welcomed it. She felt a stronger sense of belonging in the shadowy spaces, between where the light from the street lamps could reach, than she had ever felt in the façade of that cinnamon-smelling shitshow called a home.
She let the fury of her rejection of that life fuel her movements forward. It seemed to allow her to run further and faster than normal. It was empowering. But beneath the fever of that empowerment, Aria was terrified. She was terrified of the feeling of arriving wherever it was that she was going. She knew that once she got there, there would be nothing but silence and nothing but stillness. There would be nothing but space to second-guess herself.
A few times Aria stopped to check on Clifford, whose still demeanor beneath her coat owed more to his state of confusion than it did to pleasure. She felt guilty that he was along for the ride to suit her best interests rather than to suit his own. “It’s OK,” she said down to him, cradling him closer in an attempt to soothe away the anxiety, which was so obviously telegraphed by the agitated swivel of his ears.
Aria had run away without a specific destination in mind and that no longer made sense. No matter how hard she tried to search for a great idea, the corridors of her mind would only offer up a slideshow of familiar places. She decided on the one she felt most suited the current situation: the bleachers flanking her high school football field. She had spent time there on several occasions while skipping school, feeling exactly like she did now, like a fugitive. A fugitive intent on biding as much time as possible before making the next move.
The school looked menacing at nighttime, like a sophisticated modern megalith that seemed to be sleeping. As she walked to the edge of its grounds, Aria felt as if the building itself might wake, like a guard dog. Though it was spring, the grass under her feet had not been graced by the impulse of the season. It seemed dead, or dormant at least, and colorless. Making sure to draw no attention to herself, she found her familiar place underneath the bleachers. She was used to them during the daytime, when the sun had warmed them so deeply that they were soothing to the touch. This was different. At nighttime, the metal was like silver ice. She felt judged by them. And just as she’d been afraid of, a few minutes after she crouched down, the stillness and silence set in. The unfamiliar nature of this well-known place made her begin to doubt herself.
Clifford was unsettled by the stillness too. As soon as her body settled, the cat began squirming. He tried to jump up and out of the collar of her coat. “No,” she said, “stay here.” Trying to keep his movements hushed but to no avail, eventually she resorted to using one hand to untie the worn laces of one of her high-top sneakers and pull it out. She tied the shoelace to Clifford’s collar, like a leash, and watched, saying nothing, as he contended with it for a few minutes before lying down in the dust in a state of defeat. His tail was swishing. His ears were half pinned back. He had a look on his face of so much chagrin; Aria thought to herself that he almost looked human. She felt guilty, but, in her own state of distress, could conjure nothing within herself to remedy it.
Aria’s mind tried to distract her by running frantically through every possible scenario for how things could play out. She thought about going back home. She thought about being captured by the police. She thought about hitchhiking to another part of the country. She thought about running into the wilderness and creating a life for herself in nature. For a second, she decided to go back home, but then, as if snapping out of a daze, she remembered the conversation she had overheard between Mr and Mrs Johnson. They had already made up their mind to hand her back over to the state. If she went back home, she wouldn’t get there until dawn had already broken. Having them find out that she’d spent the night out of the house was like putting the signature on her eviction notice from their lives. It wasn’t an option.
That realization no longer was just a mental one. Her expendability hit her chest and stomach with the force of a semi truck. She unzipped her backpack to find her blankie. Holding it, she pulled Clifford close to her, as if the closer she held them both, the higher the chance was that the agony would go away. But it didn’t. Instead, that despair eventually lulled her into a cold, restless, dreamless sleep.
Panic woke her after just a few hours, panic that robbed the peaceful transition between sleeping and awake; panic that reminded her of the reality of her life in that moment before her eyes had even opened. The light that was slowly brightening before the sun had risen issued a warning. A warning of being found out.
Aria collected Clifford under her coat again, pulled her backpack over
