A Worn Backpack Part 1

Her stringy hair clung to her face as she walked down the black paved road. This was her first time away from home, but it was worth it. She had walked maybe 25 miles since she left the previous night. It was mid morning now and the summer heat poured down her soul as she treaded the ground. The summer she decided to take this journey was an unusually hot and humid Arizona summer, but she felt there was no other way out.

“Where’s Catherine?” a middle-aged woman with curly brown hair and a short build called.

“I don‘t know. She probably went to school to work on that stupid fundraiser again,” grunted a slightly older man, bald, and with a heavy build.

The woman nodded in confirmation, showing the frequent signs of worry on her face, as she continued to busy herself with chores around the house. The day passed on until 6 P.M. Catherine still hadn’t returned, when the phone rang.

“Where’s Catherine?” now the man hollered at the woman.

“She’s not home yet? It’s already 6! What if something happened; what if her car broke down and she’s stranded somewhere?”

“Her car’s in the driveway. Is she upstairs? Go to her room and tell her Molly is calling.”

The woman rushed upstairs, but to her surprise, Catherine wasn’t in her room. Catherine was nowhere in the house. She came back downstairs and asked her husband for the phone.

“Molly, Catherine isn’t home right now. She’ll probably be back later. Why don’t you call in a few hours?” She hurriedly hung up the phone before any questions could be asked.

Molly was Catherine’s best friend from childhood. Catherine had always felt lucky to have Molly there for her. Time and time again she heard so many stories from her other friends in high school about sad childhoods, lost memories, and lonely experiences. She felt special from among them because Molly had always been there. She felt as if Molly was the twin she never had, and if she would have told anyone about her plans, it would have been her. But she couldn’t tell her. She couldn’t tell anyone.

The previous night her parents had fought again. They always fight, but that didn’t bother Catherine so much. She knew that as long as they were still fighting, they would stay together. This didn’t really make much sense, but somehow she felt it was true. Every time she read about another divorce story, or heard someone else’s parents were splitting up, she would recall how perfect everything seemed before hand. No fights. No arguments. Nothing. And then it’d all come out at once. Her parents weren’t like that. They always fought. This wasn’t what drove her away. But this was how she knew it was the perfect opportunity to leave. Everyone was so distracted after a fight, they wouldn’t even notice her missing.

She didn’t have much money with her. All she took was her sketch book, a few pencils, and an empty water bottle, all crammed into her worn backpack. Around 2 she stopped at a gas station, realizing, finally, how hungry she was as she smelled the corn chips some kids walking out of the station were eating. She had no means to buy food though. Her wallet, her license, her credit cards, everything she had was left sitting on a bed in a home she would never return to. As she snuck out of the house in the blackness of the night, the heart-wrenching grip that held fast to her soul, tightened the pit in her stomach, threw in her face the illusion that she’d never go hungry enough to actually desire food.

She sat on the corner of the station, watching the kids she saw enter a car, and drive away. The entire place was deserted. They had been the only sign of humanity within a 10 mile radius, excluding the few poor souls working their lives away at the convenience store within the gas station.

When she was younger, she remembered taking road trips with her family. Every now and again they would stop at a rest stop and she’d see people handing out free food from behind a cart, and accepting donations. As the gnawing pain in her stomach grew stronger, she wondered if these people still existed. It had been at least 10 years since she saw them last.

She got up and walked into the station. Salvation. There was a drinking fountain. She drank to her heart’s content, and filling her water bottle, left the station and continued down the road with a sketchbook, a few pencils, a filled water bottle, and a gnawing hunger eating her from inside, all crammed into her worn backpack.