Finding Home

Chapter One

"Hey, you coming? I want to go before it gets dark." I text my best friend, Savannah, who is meeting me at my house so we can walk our dogs together. Every month we get together and walk the dogs, then have a movie marathon and eat everything in the house, and this month it was my turn to host.

"Be there in ten." She texts back a few minutes later. I turn off the TV and get changed from lounge shorts into a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt to go under my snowsuit. 

Rose is a two-year-old husky mix that I picked up in a Wal-mart parking lot. The old man told me that if there were any puppies left at the end of the day, he would drown them. So, I took the six that were left. They were only five weeks old. I kept Rose, gave one to Sav, one to my sister May, two to my cousin Lexi, and Sav gave one to her relative. 

As I start putting on my snow gear, Rose starts to jump around like she usually does when she sees me get ready.

"If you don't stop I'm not going to be ready when Sav comes," I say, scratching behind her ear. She runs quickly to the door and sits down, awaiting our departure and wagging her tail impatiently. A few minutes later, the door opens and in walks Sav and her pick of the litter, Dixie.

"What's up bitch!" She says, slamming the door shut. I look up, smiling, and see that she's already all dress up in her snowsuit. I pull on my hat and gloves and head out the door with Sav and the two huskies close behind.

As we walk, we talk about work. We both are fresh out of college, we both majored in English, while she also minored in art. I finished before her, and got a job at the library and a part-time job at an animal shelter. After she finished, she got a job at an art gallery.

We're saving up right now to move to London, where I want to open a bookstore and pursue my dream of writing. And Sav wants to also write and sell her artwork. But for now, we're stuck in KellyLake, Minnesota. We met in high school in our freshman year and quickly became friends. At the time she lived a few towns over, but we both went to the same school in a nearby town. Then when high school was over, she moved in with me in the house I grew up in, and eventually, before college, she got a small house for cheap on the other side of town. We went to college in the same town that we went to high school in.

"So how's the gallery?" I ask, watching the dogs chase each other.

"Pretty well. Emily is thinking about expanding and perhaps making an area for kids so that they can craft and draw." She says, throwing a stick for the dogs to chase.

"Emily is your boss, right?" I ask, grabbing the stick from Dixie and throwing it again.

"Yeah. Co-boss, really. She pretty much wants the gallery to be more family-friendly, but Ali wants it to be more strict."

"Yeah. I understand that Ali wants it to be more of a traditional, but it'd be nice if you guys could hold crafting classes as well."

"True but- Hey get back here!" She suddenly shouts, and I look to see both of the dogs running into the more wooded area. We run after them as quickly as we can (considering that the snow is about two feet in some spots and that we're wearing big snow pants and jackets.), but we lose them in the dense brush. 

"Rose! Dixie! Leave it!" I shout, stumbling as I try to run. We follow the prints as quickly as we can and eventually catch up to the dogs, who are now digging in the snow for something. I grab Rose by her collar and try to drag her away, as does Sav with Dixie. When we finally get them to calm down, we just sit in the snow, laughing.

"I bet we were a sight to see," Sav says in between laughs. "Chasing two huskies, completely geared up and tripping over ourselves." She says, taking a handful of snow and eating some.

"Yeah. If only someone had a camera out." I say, throwing a handful of soft snow at her. "We could have been the new viral video," I say as Rose comes and tackles me, licking my face. After I push her off, I sit up and just sit in silence with Sav for a while.

"It's getting late." She says, trying to get up. "We should head home." She says and puts out her hand to help me up. I grab and she hauls me up. "Trish? Where's our tracks?" She says, looking around. I start to look for them as well but see nothing.

"How could they have just disappeared?" I say, before turning to my dog. "Rose, find home." I say, trying to get her to lead us. She sniffs around for a bit before sitting down and whining. The sun is just about setting now, and if we didn't get home soon, we'd freeze to death. "Well, the sun sets in the west so all we need to do is figure out which way we came from, and then we can get back home by following the sun!" I say, looking around to see what's familiar.

"That'd be a great idea if we were paying attention while we were running after the dogs." She says with her usual sass.

"whatever. Just help me." I say with an eye roll. As we look, Rose and Dixie continue to play in the snow. Suddenly they stop in their tracks, staring at the same spot. "Rose? Dixie? What you looking at?" I say, slowly inching towards them. They don't budge. "Sav!" I yell out, hoping she could help. They're both bearing their teeth at the invisible object, looking ready to attack.

"Yeah? Did you find something?" She says, trudging through the snow. Then she stops. "What are they-" She starts, but is cut off by Dixie barking and growling.

"Dixie! What the hell?" She yells, grabbing her and Rose by the collar and trying to pull them away. My skin begins to crawl, and it feels like someone is poking me over and over again with a needle. My ears begin to ring and my vision goes blurry before everything goes black. 

(Revised May 21st, 2020)