After the first mile, I couldn’t stop shivering.
It wasn’t regular shivering. It was the kind that starts in your stomach and spreads outward, so your whole body jerks. My teeth chattered so hard I bit my tongue and tasted blood.
After the second mile, my fingers started going numb. They felt thick and clumsy, like I was wearing invisible oven mitts. I tried to stuff my hands under my armpits, but my armpits were wet too, and the shaking only got worse.
Thunder rolled over the trees. The wind pushed the rain sideways across the empty road, straight into my face, so I had to walk with my head down.
“Just keep walking,” I whispered.
My voice sounded tiny. The storm swallowed it whole.
The road went on and on. There were no sidewalks. No streetlights after the first mile. Just a narrow gravel shoulder and a ditch on the side, full of rushing water, and on the other side of the ditch, dark fields and patches of woods.
No houses with their lights on. No businesses. No shelter.
Somewhere in the third mile, my thoughts started slipping.
I couldn’t remember if I’d passed the same mailbox twice. There was a mailbox shaped like a fish, I think, and then later I saw it again. Or maybe it was a different fish. I kept looking for road signs, but they blurred in the rain and I couldn’t read them.
At one point, I saw our kitchen window. I swear I did. It was glowing yellow through the trees on my left, warm and bright, with the blue curtains Mom sewed. I could even smell Dad’s coffee, the cheap Folgers kind he made every morning.
Then I blinked. And there was nothing there. Just black trees and rain.
My knees started trembling. My chest hurt, a tight squeezing pain right in the middle, like someone was standing on it.
And then something strange happened.
I stopped feeling cold.
I was so cold that suddenly I didn’t feel cold enough anymore. I felt almost warm. I had the strangest urge to take off my sweatshirt, because it felt too heavy and too hot.
That frightened me more than anything else that night. Because even in my foggy brain, I knew that was wrong. We’d learned about it in health class, in the unit on outdoor safety. When you stop feeling cold, it means your body is giving up.
I remember thinking about my backpack. How stupid it was. I’d grabbed my algebra homework, and I hadn’t grabbed my coat.
Number fourteen. Two lines. Find where they cross.
Then my right knee buckled.
I stumbled sideways onto the gravel shoulder. My hands hit the ground, and I didn’t even feel the rocks.
“Get up,” I told myself. “Get up.”
I pushed against the ground. My arms shook so violently I could barely lift myself. I got one foot under me. Then the other. I managed one step.
Then my left knee gave out.
My cheek hit the wet gravel. I felt it, distantly, like it was happening to someone else.
Somewhere nearby, tires hissed along the road. A car. I tried to yell. I opened my mouth and nothing came out. Not a word. Not a sound.
The car kept going.
My backpack had slipped around under my chest. I curled around it the way you’d curl around a pillow. I pressed my numb hands against the wet green fabric.
Rain washed across my face. It got in my eyes and I couldn’t close them fast enough.
I thought about the porch light going off.
About Karen staring at the carpet.
About Dad turning the lock.
Click.
And then the world just went away.
Chapter Four: The Phone Call
Everything I’m about to tell you, I learned later. From Officer Daniels. From the doctors. From the woman who found me. From my father, a long time afterward, when he could finally say it out loud.
I wasn’t there for any of it. Not really.
