We Carried On

There was something in the cold air that made Anna pause. She was walking home from a horrible date she had just walked out on. The boy who had invited her, yet attractive and had played the sweet and caring role well enough for her to accept ended up being a total pervert who needed to control his hands. Anna refused his offer to drive her home because Anna didn’t want to be in a confined space with him ever again, but the fact that her house was a little less than a mile away allowed her to accept the frost and chilling weather as she trudged through it in her now soaked flats.

She promised herself a hot bath when she were to get home with peppermint scented bubbles, relaxing music and candles being the only light for her to bathe in. She imagined the warmth, helping her mentally get through the cold, and felt the ticket in her coat pocket, stroking it with the pads of her fingers as it helped create friction to keep her a little warmer, but also kept reminding her of the way Justin’s hand had felt against her leg.

But then, out of the cold, there raised a certain feeling, a certain sensation that stopped Anna in her tracks. She didn’t know the feeling, or understand it, but stayed still, almost halfway home already on the sidewalk in hopes to somehow interpret the feeling. The wind blew, and the snow stayed still in a night of the most silent hush of the darkness. The movie had started late, and Anna’s parents, watching over her two three siblings James, Brooke and Kyle, now 12, 7,and 2 allowed her to stay out a bit later than her normal curfew. Anna hoped that her parents would be asleep by the time she came home, as she knew how her parents would probably assume more had happened than she lead on and her dad would go out and look for the repulsive boy. She hoped they would be asleep so that when she hoped in the bath, no one would need to use the bathroom as it was the only one in their small but cozy house.