Away.
I was away. I’d escaped to the street. Cold snow and ice had me sliding, but I caught myself. Shaking and scared, with my heart thundering so fast in my chest, I didn’t stop.
I couldn’t.
It almost seemed too easy.
Too simple.
To rush out when they were drunk.
Too soon, the extremes of the world caught up to me.
I was no longer the captive woman in a windowless room. I was now a free person, in the real world where normal things could happen.
I was no longer the sheltered bride tortured to bow. I was now the scared individual with no clue where to go or how to hide.
I’d lost them. Erik and Yusef weren’t chasing me any longer.
All that followed me was the drifting snow still falling. The icy precipitation that stung my cheeks.
Power through it.
Keep going.
Pain stabbed at my soles, making my run nothing more than a limping jog. Then a stilted walk. I had to keep moving, to put more distance between me and my brother. I had to keep searching, desperate to find a phone.
If Raisa was the only family I had left, if she could be my lifeline, I had to find a phone and call her.
And pray.
I had to hang on to the hope that she was alive and free to hear me. Because I neededsomeoneto count on other than myself. At this rate, my experience of being free would be short-lived. I wouldn’t make it like this, coatless, shoeless, with nothing of value but my virginity.
Pigeons swooped and dipped, soaring close then taking off higher. I couldn’t help but look up at them, drawn to the ease of their smooth movements when I was so jerky to take another step. In awe of their superiority, free to fly, I stared up and didn’t look where I was going.
Crashing into someone startled me.
But the haggard-looking woman who hunched over under blankets and plastic tarps frowned.
“Oh, sugar honey,” she drawled with a strange lisp like she was a whimsical fairy or drunken siren. “You shiver so.”
I swallowed, unused to speaking toanyone.
Only one word came to mind.
“Help.”
She nodded, not judging or asking questions. Bobbing her head like it was a dance to which only she heard the music to, she draped a blanket over me and guided me to follow her.
I didn’t have the strength to protest.
I couldn’t find the energy to move away from her. The faint warmth of her smelly blanket soothed me, and the huge mismatched boots she pulled from her shopping cart nearby helped the breath-stealing pain of my cold feet.
“Help. Help. Help.” She chanted it, almost like a song to the pigeons that cooed and strutted around her near a lamppost that held a sign labeling this area as part of Central Park.
“Help. Help. Help.” She wove and slanted, guided me toward her bags of trash. From within one she extracted a phone.
Hope soared within me, but I couldn’t move my fingers to touch the buttons.
