North Star

Chapter Three: Caralye

I didn't know where I was going. Not really. This bus would take us to Vancouver, and from then, we'd take a train to Seattle. Supposedly, my Soul Mark would grow the closer I got to my Person, but it hadn't done anything so far.

I spent most of the 36 hour bus ride staring aimlessly out the window, trying to get a sense for where I might need to go, but had come up with nothing.

Even though I wasn't alone, I was lonely. Ever since I'd woken up from that first dream, I'd felt more alone than usual. I didn't know if it was psychosomatic, or an actual thing, but I felt like half a person. It was a weird, especially when, just yesterday, I had felt like a whole one—or, at least, as whole as I had ever felt.

My knee ached and I sighed. After all these years, it still ached every now and again. Like the half-feeling, I didn't know if the pain was real, or just something I associating with feelings of emptiness, abandonment and loneliness. 

It had been thirteen years since the accident, eleven since my parents decided that they couldn't afford to have a kid anymore. They had paid for their seven year old daughter to have her knee reconstructed, but didn't stick around to see if she woke up.

They hadn't been there through the years of physical therapy, to see her walk for the first time without crutches since the car crash two years prior. 

They hadn't been there for anything.

I didn't have any photographs of them, and my memories were hazy with age. I knew that I had my mother's velvety black hair and porcelain skin, but she had been tall strong; I was tiny and fine boned. It had taken years for my subtle curves to make an appearance.

I used to hate them. I don't think I hate them as people anymore, just what they did to me, making me emotionally and guarded, insecure and unable to be alone.

Annoyed at myself for being stupid and whiny and dwelling on the past, I pushed the thoughts from my head, and focused on the music playing from my headphones—a band I had discovered shortly before I had left. Spencer had pirated me their latest album as an early birthday present a couple days ago, and I hadn't had a chance to listen to it until now.

I closed my eyes and put the album on repeat, listening to it until I knew all the words to all the songs, and drifted into a dreamless sleep, the wind and snow peppering the side of the bus.

By the time we made it to a bus station just outside Vancouver, the wind was strong enough that the bus was leaning on an angle, like an old lady with a limp. The snow pelted the windows so hard I wondered if they might crack.

The driver hurried us out of the bus and into the station, screaming in order to be heard above the storm.

The blizzard was a particularly bad one; worse than any of the one we'd had up north. Just when you thought it was going to let up, the wind blew faster, and the snow came down harder. There were seventeen of us in the bus station, and we had enough food to last a month if we were stingy. There had been a TV to watch for a little while, but the only thing that was showing was the extreme weather warnings, advising people to stock up on food and water, and not to go outside. Eventually, the storm blew the antenna away and we were left with nothing.

Days passed slowly. I sketched and played cards with Spencer—he'd had the foresight to pack a deck. Spencer's eighteenth birthday came and went, although it took a few days for him to have his first dream. His first dream had been far better than mine in terms of helpfulness; he had seen his Soulmate, up close, not just from across a field, and actually talked to her.