The Autumn Leaf

CHAPTER ONE

It was a great day to become a teenage runway. As a trailer park resident, the statistics were believable. The police would look around locally; they may even throw up some flyers for good measure. It would end shortly, and they would assure my father that this was normal and that I would come back. I'd seen it happen, but he knew differently.

Where is it? Panic punched through my body as I searched my room.

I ripped a drawer open, frantically. My anxiety was out to play, and she was an ugly bitch. He knew. He had to know. Why did I come back here? It was a trap. Twirling around the room, I brought my hands to my head.

"WHERE IS IT?" I demanded. Only this time, I heard movement. I actually said it. Crouching down like an animal ready to attack, I waited. I'll fight back this time.

Sunlight bathed through the cracked, broken blinds and my safe gleamed brilliantly. Of course. I crept over and twisted the combination. There it was, under the silver revolver. I grabbed the picture, shoving it into my back pocket, and hesitated.

I didn't know who I was when I bought the pistol. I wasn't a violent person. My fight or flight instinct had kicked in the day I went underground and purchased the numberless gun. I closed the safe, securing it before I left. I had no need for it now. No one would hurt me in the way I had been hurt my whole life. I wouldn't allow it.

"Autumn," he slurred.

I tensed. Every fiber of my being revolted as I thought of him getting in the way of this. I threw my backpack on, only looking back to see that the door was locked. I opened the window, climbed on top of my table and vaulted myself from the musty room.

I ran. I didn't even stop when I reached the edge of the woods. I kept on, branches slapping me in my face, and twigs threatening my feet. I ran past my hiding place where I went as a child. When I was eight years old, I watched Forrest Gump with my brother. My parents had left us alone for the night, and it was the only thing we had.

After the movie, I found a meadow. I didn't know who God was, and he didn't turn Jenny into a bird, but I got on my knees and asked him to. After three times without anything happening, I gave up on the whole idea, although, I still hid in the meadow after that day. But I never flew off as a bird.

I busted through the forest on the opposite side of town. Looking at the busy road, I decided to keep walking by the tree line. My heart was pounding in my chest, but I tried to look as calm as possible. I didn't want anyone to see a frantic girl, running beside the road. The last thing I ever needed is to be taken back to that place again.

Thunder clapped above me, I looked up, seeing the distant rain clouds. I could make it to the bus station before I hit. I picked up my pace, crunching on the dead leaves below me, spotting red ones in the mix.

When I was a girl, there were some happy times. My mother told me on the first day of fall, she had a dream about a girl with hair the color of autumn leaves. She was strong and confident. She believed it was a premonition telling her everything would be okay. I became her Autumn. Though the leaves fall, I will rise.

I wasn't superstitious. I didn't believe in anything. Hell, I didn't even believe in myself most days, but something about my fierce red hair and the season I was born, made me want to believe that I was destined to be more than I was born into.

I saw the familiar building ahead. I had passed by it too many times to count, wondering when I would finally buy a one way ticket out of here. The parking lot was peppered with cars and buses. Just as I opened the door, the bottom fell out of the sky.