Chapter 2 - The Edge of the Highway
The cold didn’t just hurt; it erased things. First, it took the feeling in my ears, turning the biting wind into a strange, muffled roar. Then it crept into my fingertips. I tried to ball my hands inside the sleeves of my soaked hoodie, but the cotton was drenched, freezing against my wrists like wet concrete.
My breathing came in jagged, shallow gasps. Pennsylvania back roads don’t have sidewalks, only steep gravel shoulders that drop off into drainage ditches choked with weeds and autumn runoff. Every few steps, my soaked sneakers slipped on wet oak leaves, threatening to pitch me headfirst into the freezing mud.
“Just keep walking,” I whispered to myself, though my lips were so stiff the words came out like broken mumbles. “Just make it to the junction. There’s a twenty-four-hour diner at the junction.”
The diner was three miles away. In good weather, on a sunny afternoon, that walk took forty-five minutes. In freezing sleet, with water pooling in my shoes and hypothermia quietly taking the wheel of my brain, three miles might as well have been the moon.
By mile two, the shivering became violent. My jaw clattered so hard my teeth ached, and my muscles jerked involuntarily with every step. My mind began playing tricks on me. I thought I saw Mom standing near a stand of pine trees by the fence line, wearing her yellow raincoat, waving me over. I blinked hard through the stinging rain, wiping my eyes with a soggy sleeve, only to realize it was just a rusted metal road sign reflecting someone’s far-off porch light.
I checked behind me again. The dark highway stretched back toward our house, empty and indifferent. Dad hadn't come. He was probably sitting on the worn living room sofa right now, listening to Karen explain how tough love was the only way to save a rebellious daughter. Karen had always been obsessed with control. Ever since Mom died, any affection or attention Dad had left was a finite resource Karen guarded like a snarling dog. If I was a criminal in Dad’s eyes, Karen was the saint who bore the burden.
Mile three was where my body simply refused to obey my brain anymore. The violent shivering abruptly stopped, which my sluggish thoughts vaguely recognized as a very bad sign. A strange, heavy warmth began to settle into my chest, though my skin felt like ice. My knees wobbled, buckling beneath me like damp cardboard.
I caught myself against a rusted guardrail, the cold metal sticking to the palms of my bare hands. When I pulled away, tiny flecks of skin tore free, but I didn't feel any pain. I couldn't feel my feet at all; I was walking on wooden stumps.
“Just a few more minutes,” I muttered.
Then my left ankle rolled on a loose chunk of gravel. I didn’t even have the reflexes to throw my hands out. I hit the gravel shoulder hard, my hip taking the brunt of the impact, my backpack thudding heavily against my spine. Water from the drainage ditch seeped instantly through my jeans, icy and thick with silt.
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I tried to push myself up. My forearms shook, gave out, and collapsed back into the wet stones. The freezing rain drummed against the back of my neck, but strangely, it didn't feel cold anymore. It felt heavy, like a sodden blanket someone had laid over me to help me sleep. I turned my cheek into the gravel, staring at the white painted line on the edge of the road.
Through the blur of the storm, two faint amber circles appeared in the distance, cutting through the sheets of downpour. They were moving slowly, humming against the pavement. I watched them drift closer, unable to lift my chin or call out. As the vehicle began to slow, its tires crunching onto the shoulder just twenty feet away, the dark edges of my vision rushed inward, and the world went entirely black.
