SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD Elaine Tate was not asleep. She was tucked under her sheets with her eyes closed but she was not sleeping. She had spent the majority of the time she was pretending to be asleep listening to her parents.
She listened to their movements around the apartment, their conversation, their drunken fight, and the way Elaine's father smashed yet another glass. She listened to it all.
It's been half an hour since she heard anything from them at all and she was starting to think the coast would be clear. The brunette girl sat up, kicking her feet over the side of her bed and lightly bringing them to the ground.
Elaine waited a moment, screaming with all she could muster in her mind for the board under her left foot not to squeak. She put more of her weight on it and she let out her held breath.
She tiptoed as lightly as a ballerina over to the wall her room shared with her parents. She stuck the left side of her head to the drywall and once again held her breath. The girl putting her lifeguard training to the test.
She could hear the light snores she associated with her mother's drunken sleep and the soft hum from the fan her dad turned on to air out the room after spending the last half an hour before bed getting high.
She pulled her head from the wall and moved swiftly across her room. She pulled the duffle bag from the closet and grabbed what she thought would fit. Stuffing the old tattered bag with the lightest layers she could find. It was hot where she was going.
Elaine was prepared for this. She had been prepared for as long as she could remember. Her life was going to come down to this. If I got caught, she shook her head and pushed the thoughts from her mind.
Elaine grabbed the longboard next, placing it by the now zipped duffle bag. She then got her pocket knife from the window sill and moved to her bed. She lifted the mattress as quietly as she could and cut along the seam.
Inside was enough money to get her to her destination and some to hold her over just in case. She wasn't originally going to have the extra money but things just happened, and these were things that no matter how much Elaine had wanted to control and change, she couldn't.
The cash-stuffed envelope was tucked in its spot in her bag and she had one last thing to do. There was a spot behind her desk that she had taken apart to be able to hide stuff in there. She pulled the desk from the wall and used her knife to slice along the backing.
When she got it popped off she reached in and grabbed the contents. She brought them to her bag and put them inside, placing her phone on top and moving to put everything in the room back to normal.
Eliane's eyes scanned the room, mentally checking off from the list in her head. She let out a quiet sigh and picked up her bag, tucking the board under her arm and slipping into the hallway.
She made her way to the front door as quietly as she could and as she shut the door a feeling washed through her body. Relief.
Her eyes barely left her phone as she made her way through the apartment complex. The woman who had the night shift in the lobby was a fucking idiot and Eliane knew that getting past her would be the easiest part.
She got by unnoticed and when she finally made it to the end of the street she knew it was time to get rid of her phone. She did one last thing on the phone and kissed the screen quickly before taking a deep breath and whipping the object full force at the pavement. The way the phone shattered made a comforting feeling settle in her stomach.
She made one last stop before getting to the bus station. Four thirty a.m and she was on her way. She didn't take any detours, her path was clear. She needed to get to the island as quickly as she could and she couldn't afford anything getting in the way of that.
Elaine bussed from Phoenix into Tucson and spent a night there. Got onto a plane to Jacksonville, North Carolina with a ridiculous amount of long layovers, spent the night in Jacksonville and got back onto another bus to Cedar Island. She also had to sleep there the next night because she arrived just after the last ferry left. The morning ferry would take her the rest of the way.
Overall, between everything the trip took her about a few days time.
When it came time to taxi from the bus station to the ferry dock, things were settling in Elaine's mind. She sat alone on the ferry, clutching a letter to her chest, a letter she had read a hundred times over. She wasn't even sure if her brother still lived in Outer Banks, the letter he sent was from years ago, the only one he would ever send.
She could still remember the feeling of peeling the letter out of the already opened envelope, courtesy of her mother who probably read over the letter several times before giving it to the young girl. Inspecting it for anything she could use against her son.
Sam did everything he could to keep his location secret, even coding his letter in a made-up language only the siblings could understand. He wrote his location in secret hints, and to his mother, it looked like he was only telling his sister how much he loved her. And as intended only Elaine could ever know where he was.
She wondered if they knew she'd try to find her brother, although it didn't faze her, they wouldn't know where to look. Hell, they wouldn't even know where to start.
The letter was now laid out, open on her lap, her eyes once again scanning each line. Her stomach began to feel sick, anxiously awaiting her arrival on the island.
If her brother wasn't there, she probably would never find him. The thought burrowed in her head. The biggest thing causing the nausea.
Elaine had been planning to leave Arizona for quite some time, saving up money over the last year. Slowly stealing and hiding more and more from her parents, gaining enough to finally get out, enough to leave and never look back. This idea of running away was the only thing that had given her hope and willingness to continue.
Her bag was sitting in the empty spot between her seat and the window and the longboard was leaning against the wall. She tried to push down one of the peeling sticks. They were placed by her brother over six years ago, the board had after all been his.
When he left, he left everything. She wasn't sure how he even made it to the island. Not even her parents could figure it out.
Sam loved his skateboard, which is what made Elaine love it. Other than the singular letter, it was all she had from him.
She wanted nothing to do with the couple from Arizona, nothing to ever tie her to them again. Her relationship with them or lack, thereof, was always pretty bad, or at least for as long as she could remember. She wasn't sure why they even had children or why they hadn't given her or her brother up. Maybe they just liked having control over someone.
Her father always told her she was weak and he would surely laugh at the tear that slipped down her face when she thought about how miserable her life truly is. Maybe he'd even spit out some harsh words, it seemed his words were always laced with venom. They cut into her skin and scarred her, she carried each thing he said to her around, a heavy package weighing her down.
Elaine vowed to herself then that she would never let his words cut her again, vowed to no longer give him power over her. Although she did wonder what they were thinking right now, probably that their daughter was in her room asleep. She laughed slightly to herself, getting a few stares from others, but she didn't care. She had gotten one up on her parents. She began wondering what they would do when they found out she was gone. Would they look for her?
She laid her head peacefully onto the top of her seat, her eyes scanning out the window. The ferry was almost to the island and Elaine was starting to grow nervous, what if he had moved? What if he didn't want anything to do with her? She reached her hand up to her face, biting her fingernail. A habit she obtained from her anxiety, a nasty one at that.
Her thoughts were drowned out when the ferry reached the dock and stopped, several passengers got up and made their way to the exit. Elaine had a hard time taking a breath, her nerves getting the better of her. She waited a moment, allowing everyone else to get off before her. And finally, when the ferry was empty, she stood.
Her steps felt foreign, she tried to wrap her head around the fact that she left, and she would never have to go back. She was a new person, and all she wanted to do was show her brother just how new she was.
Her bag felt heavy on her shoulder which for some odd reason made her smile. She breathed in the air and it calmed her, everything about the moment just made her want to run around and scream at the top of her lungs, in the very best way.
The girl dropped her bag beside her, pulling out the letter from her pocket and examining it again. At the bottom of the page was a scribbled address, the one she had uncoded from the letter but she had no clue where anything on the island was.
Her eyes once again scanned the area around her, this time looking for someone to help her out. She felt so lost but so found at the same time. Like she was meant to be here, even if it sort of felt like she wasn't.
"Excuse me?" Elaine spoke, approaching a stranger hoping he would help her out. He spun around and she smiled at him."Do you happen to know how I can get to this address?" She asked, showing him the bottom of the letter. And when she looked at him her heart skipped a few beats, she couldn't tell if it were from how nervous she was or how good-looking he was.
His golden eyes flickered over the page, reading the address and thinking. When he looked back up at her, she felt her face flush hot. And she wondered if he could tell.
"so you just want to go up that way, straight all the way down until you find this number on one of the houses." He told her, his hand touching her wrist as he handed the letter back. And air couldn't seem to fill her lungs once again, his skin feeling like hot hot sun and his touch felt like being sunstruck.
She couldn't even explain to herself how she felt, or why, or even why she got so upset when he pulled his hand away from her. She smiled at him once again, "thank you" Her voice sounded angelic to him, like fresh air when you can't breathe. He returned her smile and turned to walk away, the girl watching his steps.
She looked down at the letter once he had vanished from her sight, letting out a sigh and looking back up to the road the boy told her to take. She picked her bag up and started walking.
She welcomed the cool breeze that felt like whispers against her skin. Her nerves for some reason were being washed away, she felt sure of every decision she made. Things becoming ever so clear to her now.
The walk was admittedly quite long even though she boarded for some of it but by the time she finally got to the house, everything felt so blank. Like this was her first moment in life.
She looked up at the number on the house and down at the letter a few times, triple-checking that everything was right. She once again brought her hand to her mouth nervously biting her nails.
She could honestly stand out there for hours preparing herself for whatever came next. But after a moment she took a deep breath and walked up the steps.
Her small hand knocked on the door and then stepped back, her heart pounding in her chest while she waited. She could hear footsteps coming from inside the house and she looked around, the house was not quite like some that she could see in this distance from the ferry. Those houses were huge, this one however looked a bit rundown but it was still nice. There was a dock behind the house and a small boat there, the water looking so inviting.
She imagined this moment a thousand times. Her dreams filled with this exact moment and she couldn't wait.
If for some reason he had left, and this wasn't his house she just knew she'd be okay. She would do what she did best, adapt. Figure it out. Move on.
Once, only once in her dreams, the person who opened the door wasn't Sam. And it felt okay because every time the door opened the person on the other side saved her. They kept her safe, away from the couple in Arizona.
When the door began to open, every thought in her body was washed away, vanishing from reality. And when the door was fully open, there he stood, the man from her dreams. The one who saved her almost every night.
"Elaine?"