She stubbed a toe early on and kept re-stubbing it for miles afterward, wincing each time she did so. She peeled dried blood from her lips, picked a clot of blood from one nostril, squinted into the night with gritty eyes. She’d already been tired when she started and now she was more tired still, following a road she didn’t know to another road she didn’t know. She would do anything to see her mother’s car, to be bundled into its comfort and whisked home. In truth, however, had she seen her mother’s car, she’d have hidden. How could she explain what had happened? To imagine everything about her life being suddenly laid open, suddenly exposed, was an injury greater than the cuts, the bruises, the pounding head, the hurt feet. At last she saw lampposts, appearing like candles of light ahead, and what appeared to be a shopping mall, set between vacant slopes of abandoned farmland. It was a new build, still white with fresh plaster, planted with saplings clothed in wire to protect them from deer.
