Tia
Tia sucked in an open-mouthed breath, the gasp deafening to her ears. The sound seemed to echo across the unfamiliar, mist-shrouded farmland surrounding her. Eerie fog blanketed the field where she’d paused, needing to rest for as long as she dared. The stillness of the predawn hour made her movement seem clumsy and loud, as if she’d been crashing through the stubble and brush instead of doing her best to move quietly and leave no trace of her passing.
Her wrist ached, making it hard for her to run, to keep her body moving, while she hugged her injured arm close to her chest. But she had to, had to keep moving, or they’d find her and punish her. Again. Tia couldn’t take much more abuse—her body was too thin and worn—none of them could. And the threadbare t-shirt and ill-fitting jeans she wore did little to protect her from the elements, hot or cold.
It was cold tonight. The kind of cold that crept deep into a person’s bones, made their skin feel cracked and fragile. The too-big sneakers flopped around on Tia’s feet, shoes she’d been tempted to kick off when she first started to run, but the cold and wet had her keeping them on. She’d been tempted again after she’d tripped over tree roots and fallen awkwardly, but if she cut the bottoms of her feet she wouldn’t be able to run at all.
The dark had seemed like a good thing when she’d gathered up the courage to steal away from the scrap of blanket that was hers. But now that same dark was working against her and she had lost all sense of direction.
If she was being followed—and Tia suspected they’d realized she was gone by now, even though she couldn’t hear them yet—the pitch-dark night was to her benefit. But it meant Tia hadn’t been able to see where she was going, either, and was blindly heading in the direction where she thought the closest town was, based on secondhand information gleaned from listening to people talking—who probably shouldn’t have been. As far as she knew, she could have been hiking in circles for hours.
The moon, which until that moment had been hidden behind a thick layer of clouds, abruptly appeared, casting its yellow glow upon the countryside. Tia stopped in her tracks, then took a step backward and dragged another breath in through her nose, trying hard not to gasp or pant.
The sound would carry.
A dog barked in the distance and Tia stopped breathing entirely for a moment. Was it a hunting dog or a pet whose owner had let it out for a pee?
Her heart, which had slowed to a reasonable thump, crashed wildly against her ribs again. Tia panicked, she couldn’t think. Which direction should she go? Should she keep moving or stay in the relative safety of the tree? She couldn’t breathe, her lungs refused to open and draw in air. Forcing herself to move, she stumbled forward through the scrubby undergrowth, knowing somewhere in the back of her brain that she was broadcasting her location to whoever they’d sent after her.
Seconds later, Tia tripped and fell forward, instinctively using her hands to brace herself and involuntarily crying out when her injured wrist banged against pavement. She lay there for a long moment, her cheek resting against the rough asphalt, tears leaking from her eyes as she worked to draw oxygen into her lungs.
Pavement meant a road.
Carefully lifting her head, Tia looked one way and then the other. Where was she? Was the rumored town she’d heard about close by? She saw nothing, no glowing arrow to show her the way to safety. Peering into the dark, she thought maybe she saw shadowy structures, but she couldn’t tell for sure. Houses, she prayed, or maybe a barn where she could find shelter for a little while. Without warning, the moon disappeared again, leaving her alone in the dark once more.
A strange sound caught her attention. A footfall? The rumble of a faraway engine? She couldn’t tell but she wasn’t giving up now. Scrambling to her feet again, Tia cradled her wrist against her chest and stumbled toward where she’d seen the buildings. She needed to hide, she needed to find cover, she needed to stop crying so she could see where she was going.
An uncountable number of heartbeats later, she closed in on the first building and paused in front of an overgrown hedge. Behind it hid a rundown house set back from the road. Sky-high poplars, cottonwood, and gnarly ancient maple trees huddled close to the house, and Tia wondered both how she’d been able to see it from where she’d burst out onto the road and how she could get inside it now. Maybe the moon had been doing her a favor.
The sound of the barking dog seemed closer, making her heart pound again. Tia didn’t know anything about tracker dogs, but it didn’t sound like the baying of dogs she’d heard on crime shows. She was just a teenager who was supposed to be taking math and convincing her mom to let her go to the anime convention in town with her bestie, not worrying about escaping guard dogs.
There was a river nearby; she hadn’t seen it, but she’d heard people mention it. She briefly debated trying to find it, to try swimming across it, instead of trying to figure out where the house was.
Tia kept walking—she hadn’t come this far to drown. The knee she’d banged on the pavement throbbed, adding to the pain radiating from her wrist, but she kept moving along the side of the road, trying to blend into the night.
The moon kept showing her glimpses of the house on the other side of the scraggly overgrown hedge she’d been inching along. The foliage hadn’t been trimmed in ages, and thick branches stretched high over Tia’s head. Its leaves were black against the now gray sky that signaled dawn was coming soon. If they hadn’t discovered her missing, if there wasn’t anyone already following her, her only chance for freedom was to find somewhere to hide for the coming day. Maybe they’d stop looking for her.
But she doubted it.
What Tia had thought was a natural break in the overgrown shrub turned out to be a narrow path that hadn’t been used in quite a while. Slipping between the mildewy, spidery, grasping branches, she popped out into an equally overgrown yard and hesitated. Crossing through the dewy knee-high grass would leave an obvious trace. Turning to the left instead, Tia kept to the hedge line, making her way around the perimeter of the yard until she came to a spot under a maple tree where grass didn’t grow.
She was either going to die here or the house would hide her. Taking a shuddering breath, Tia stepped away from the natural sentry, the musty dark protection of the foliage, and toward the timeworn farmhouse. The dog barked again. Close or near, she still didn’t know.