So Many Thousands of Feet Off the Ground

She remained quiet, her blue jean-covered legs held tightly, closely to her nearly flat chest. If she made any noise, any motion, she wouldn’t be able to cling onto the small amount of strength she’d managed to salvage. Her head rested tiredly, languidly on the back of the seat that she was fortunate enough to share with no one.

Her indigo eyes, glassy and bloodshot, rested on the foggy window. She managed to stare blankly out in front of her, tracing the patterns the crystalline rain drops left as they glided down the foggy glass, barely paying attention as all of the picturesque scenes passed her by.

She closed her eyes, tears pressing against her eyelids, the saltiness burning her eyes. The blood rushed to her cheeks, turning them the color of cherry tomatoes, like the ones she used to pick from her mother's garden. She bit down on her lip in an attempt to silence the cry of desperation forming in her throat. It seemed the attempt would be futile, but it wasn't. She bit down until she drew blood, leaving the imprint of her perfect white teeth in her pale bottom lip, cringing at the taste of her own blood.

The stuffy old Greyhound Bus had become quiet. It was nearing two in the morning and most passengers had already found solace in sleep. Sleep still managed to escape Savanya, every time she dozed off, she was awoken by a bump in the long, pothole ridden road or a baby crying, or something of that nature. She felt as if sleep remained just out of her grasp. It hid in a place slightly above where she was, which didn't really say much since she felt as if she were absolute scum right now.

Aside from the random, desperate attempts at comforting herself, she was nearly lifeless—almost entirely inanimate. Her body was rigid, her actions and movements sporadic and mechanical. Her body was squished and folded together; compacted to fit in a place only a fraction of the size of the space she had to herself. The words lingered on her lips; the phrases that she’d wished so terribly that she had the nerve; the courage to say. The cries threw themselves against the protective barriers of her teeth and her lips, hoping to break through and break her down. But the courage wasn’t there; the barriers were standing, staying put, because they just couldn’t break. If they broke she would have to say everything she’d managed to hold inside of her for the last several months. All of her lies, all of her half truths, all of the bullshit she fed them to get them off her case, they would all come spilling out like word vomit.

But she couldn’t let it happen. She couldn’t be broken down. She couldn’t let them break her down. So she left.

The words continued to fly against her lips, fighting; battling and struggling to escape. She wasn’t coming back. She was never going to come back. She had done, she was doing quite possibly the worst, most terrible thing she could ever have done.

Savanya wasn’t coming back. No, this sleepy, broken in, musty Greyhound bus was taking her away from the place she had called home, the only place she had known, for the last eighteen years.

But you’d expect that from me, slipped past her chapped, bleeding lips. It came out as a broken whisper. The line sounded desperate, like a final plea for help. It sounded like a dying breath, and she almost wished it was. It was the truth. This is exactly what he would expect from her. Just like she would expect him to come after her. The second she locked the door and scrawled her goodbye across the dry erase board on the refrigerator, she knew he would follow her.

That’s why she was going there—to the last place anyone would ever try to find her. It was precisely why she had wasted nearly all of her savings and decided to board a bus to her least favorite place on the planet.

For all she knew, it had changed. She certainly had.