When The Time Comes

Chapter 38; Liberty

1 month and twenty days later.

I eat from the last of mom's packed lunches. A small plastic cup of oats and blueberries I've been defrosting out of the freezer. I push the unwashed spoon into the oats and bite the berry that's turned sour. 

I'll need food. Very soon.

The thing about surviving your stag date and hiding from the cops is that, you don't really get a chance to plan things out. I didn't plan to survive this long. In a week, it'll be two months since I was supposed to die. Two months that I haven't seen my mom. Or talked to her. 

It's too dangerous to go by the house. If they won't kill me, the cops definitely will. I think it's pretty clear by now that I can't trust many people. 

The people who let me live here are decent. Private, quiet and respectful. I couldn't ask for more of my house mates. Mom's oats might have saved me from starving but they've been generous with their food too. Sausage. Leftover birthday cake- by far, my favorite. But I won't be able to keep taking from them like this. It's not sustainable. I'm already beginning to feel the after effects of having not showered for over a week and a half. I simply haven't found an opportunity.

The last time I showered, I barely made it out of the bathroom without being caught. I pick up the damp towel and wipe my chin with it, dropping it by the old washing machine. The one that doesn't work anymore. Tammy, the woman of the house, spent all of an hour looking for that towel before finally giving up. I can't make that mistake again. No more stealing cake, or taking their towels. I can't afford them finding me in their basement. The husband, Austin, has a gun in his study. It sits on a brass holder above his chair like a trophy piece.

I can't complain. This house has provided me with more shelter than I could have first imagined. Unfortunately, it's run its course and it's time for me to find a new place to crash. 

I pick up the silver chained watch from my make-shift bed of old camping gear and laundry pieces I salvaged from the garage from when I first arrived. Out of all these things, my watch and my phone are the only things that are mine. It's 2.30 am which means it's time to move.

I push the empty container at the back of the washing unit and dust my clothes off with my hands. Pulling the charger out of the wall, I look at the corner I've been living in as a silent farewell. It's surreal that this amount of time has passed. It hadn't been so easy when I first snuck in. I couldn't imagine living here for an hour let alone two months. Yet I pulled it off. I've been lucky in many ways. Above all, I was lucky that this basement doesn't directly open up into the main part of the house. It opens into the back of the kitchen. A kitchen that Tammy barely uses and Austin doesn't even know how to use. I was lucky. But luck runs out eventually.

Ben is dead. I found out through a social media post about a week after the shooting happened. Some guy hit up a local Walmart and ran into a nearby shopping plaza where he continued the attack. He was eventually caught from the neighboring county where he returned to his apartment. When the police came knocking, he was watching TV and eating dinner. 16 victims in total that day. And Ben had been one of them. The only person who survived was a store owner. The store Ben had died in. 

I don't think I've fully digested that. It helps to stay busy, trying to survive out here without a home to go back to. But in the odd hours of the night and afternoon, I think of him often. 

I'm not certain why I'm alive but I do believe that it's partly because of how hidden I've been. That's why I'm so terrified leaving Tammy's today. The safety her basement offered. I'm paranoid about things I don't even know. Like security cameras. Road cameras. Am I being watched? Will they find me the same way they found Stewart? Will I ever be free again in this country?