I thanked him and moved down the aisle of the near-empty bus until I made it halfway and settled into one of the seats.
As the bus slowly filled, so did my anxiety.
Dry mouth, thudding heart, and my sweaty palms were all I could focus on as I watched the clock.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, the bus pulled out of the station.
Settling in, I kept my eyes on the road until we passed the‘You are now leaving New Hampshire’sign. Only then did I let out a sigh of relief.
I’d made it out. Now I just needed to keep going.
Two
“Five hundred, five-fifty, six-hundred…” the greasy orc mechanic in front of me said as he counted out the crumpled bills that I’d handed him.
He was just one of many supernatural creatures that I’d seen on my journey across the United States. I’d never seen an orc in real life before as they tended to live in the West where there were less restrictions on monster kind.
Even at UMass, my pretty liberal university, monsters had been few and far in between. Though, we did have a few fae and a couple of other species staying in our dorm.
I fought off a yawn as I watched, wishing he’d hurry up. It had been two very long days since I’d left New Hampshire.
Every time we stopped for gas or for food, I was terrified to get off for fear that Mike had somehow figured out where I was going.
We’d made it to Omaha this morning and I checked into a motel for the night before calling Wendy.
My first task in Omaha was to buy a car. I could have probably taken the bus all the way to California, but I didn’t want my route to be tracked on bus routes if Mike ever caught on to where I was going.
Wendy had looked on Craigslist and found the mechanic in front of me selling an old VW bug. The car had seen better days, the hood and doors dented and the yellow paint was chipping, but it ran and it was cheap.
Well, sort of.
“Eight hundred even, thank you for your business,” the mechanic seemed smug as he whipped out the transfer of title.
Eight hundred dollars was at the top of my budget for a car, so I would need to be frugal for the last sixteen hundred miles of my journey.
“This carwillget me to California, right?” I asked as I signed my new name. It was still strange for people to call me Daphne, but I needed to get used to it. Mina had died in New Hampshire and it was time to be reborn as someone who wouldn’t let their husband push them around.
The man grabbed a nearby plastic water bottle filled with dark green muck and spit more into it. “It should. Keep an eye on the engine heat, put water in it if it gets too hot.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, but the keys were in my hand now so there was no going back.
The next twenty minutes were spent getting used to the sticky clutch on the car. I hadn’t driven a manual transmission since high school when my mom taught me how to drive one of her old hobby cars.
There was nothing my mom liked more than spending a Saturday afternoon covered in grease as she worked on one of her babies. She didn’t get a lot of time to do it with how busy she usually was, but some of my earliest memories were of watching her roll under her cars and asking me to hand her tools.
It was a trait that I, unfortunately, did not share.
“Come on, please behave,” I begged the bug as I finally managed to get the car into gear and moving down the road back to the motel.
By the time I pulled into the motel parking lot, I had a better handle on the vehicle. I hadn’t driven often during my marriage, just to the store or to pick up whatever Mike needed for work.
A sense of freedom filled my chest as I parked the car. For the first time since my mom died, my chest felt light.
“It’s all going to be okay,” I muttered to myself and to the car, giving the wheel an affectionate pat before getting out.
Glancing down at the fading yellow paint, I ran a hand along the top. “I think I’m going to call you Peep.”
With my car named and a lighter heart, I hurried up to my motel room for the next phase of my plan.
