Love Under Glasse

by Kristina Meister

  Riley looked at the check’s memo bar. It read “Housekeeping.” Her muscles shivered with rage-induced chemicals, but she moved not a bit.

  The woman took something small from a pocket and held it out. It was an ATM card. “This is Elyrra’s. She drained the account and left the card when she ran. The PIN is our address. Every day, I will deposit two . . . oh . . . let’s say two hundred eighty into the account. You can use the card to buy anything else you need, or make hotel reservations. Every day, you can remove the cash on your end.”

  Riley gave the card a stern look. Just like this house and everything in it, the sparkly plastic was a jeweled restraint. This woman would be waiting to see the transaction records. She’d track Riley’s movements and know precisely where she was. Which meant that if Riley wanted to obscure her location, she’d have to stop using the account. On the other hand, if she did stop using it, Mama would know.

  This was going to make things a little more difficult.

  With a deep breath, Riley reached out her hand, only to grasp at empty air.

  The woman tucked the card to her breast as if reading her mind. “If you stop taking the money outta the account . . . if I don’t hear from you . . . I will march my prim little butt into the police department and report that you stole this card along with several other valuables, while you were here cleaning my house, and that I know you have gone across state lines with my property. Do you understand me, sugar?”

  A jeweled leash . . . ending in a choke chain.

  Riley held out her hand. “Whatever you say, lady.”

  The card was bestowed. Mama brought her machines to life and triggered the printer. As it hummed and whispered, Riley watched the austere face. It remained emotionless. Either the woman was a Class-A psychopath, or she was highly medicated, and Riley couldn’t decide which was the more palatable option.

  “I want a progress call every single day.”

  “Uh, I don’t even call my dad that often.”

  “We aren’t family, honey,” came the sarcastic reply. “This is work. You’re a professional, now.”

  “A professional what? Housekeeper?” She feigned a chuckle. “Seductress? Enchantress?”

  There was an easy hitch of one shoulder. “Huntress.”

  Riley looked down. Her phone screen was still glowing. It had only been a few minutes, but it felt like she’d been standing there for ages. El had lived in this for almost eighteen years. The thought sickened Riley. No wonder the poor girl had always looked as if she’d go airborne if someone made too loud a noise.

  “Fine. One call per day to give you my progress.”

  “And the first group to find Elyrra gets a bonus.”

  “You mean you’re keeping those jackasses? Did you have to bail them out or could they do that on their own?” That was another problem. A serious problem, because if they were private detectives, they were probably former 5-0, and packing. Then again, they’d already been evaded by a scared girl with no driver’s license. “Don’t you think they’ve kinda lost the contract?”

  “Competition will keep you sharp. Let’s say five grand to the winner. That’s enough for you to buy a pretty new bike, or a new dye job for that mop, or a coat made outta real leather, at least.”

  It was a goad, to see what she’d do. Criminals fought for status and respect. Angry teenagers wanted acceptance. It didn’t matter that the money wasn’t important, and Riley didn’t give a shit, she’d have to react with the proper amount of ire. All this, Riley calculated in an instant, and lifted her eyebrow.

  “Bitch . . . this is real leather. It was my mother’s coat. And my bike cost about five times that. If I win this, I’m gonna use the money to move back to New York.”

  “Uh-huh . . . whateva’ you say.” Mama smiled then, as if she were holding a plate of super thick fudge and ice-cold juleps. Instead, it was a newly printed NDA with Riley’s name on it. “You’re an adult right, sugar?”

  “As of today, Mama,” she murmured. “As of this very moment.”

  “Well, then just put your little old initials on all the lines, and sign the last page!”

  The saccharine quality of that voice was damn near intolerable, like being boiled alive in honey. Riley flicked the pen across the paper a dozen or so times and counted the seconds until she could get the hell out.

  The bargain struck, Mama reclined on her black throne and smiled. “When do you leave, sugar?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  The chair swiveled in dismissal. “You know the way out, I’m sure.”

  “Nearest place with public wi-fi’s probably the library, but it’s closed now. This town is so sleepy it might as well never open its eyes.” The cashier executed a blink so long, she seemed as if she’d dozed off.

  El’s heart sank in front of the window and watched the kerfuffle across the river. The police had shown up and called the Troopers. Lights were flashing into the fiery sky. All four of her pursuers had been detained, which meant her escape from the train might have been too hasty, but she told herself it was still justified, because there was no way to know what those men would have done, or whether or not the State Troopers would believe them and search the train too. The SUV had been shoved from the tracks by a group of large men and it appeared that no one had noticed the window pane missing from the last car. Whatever levity there was in seeing that vanished as she realized she had no idea what to do next.

  Letting out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, El looked around herself, searching for answers. She couldn’t afford to spend one more penny on travel than what she’d budgeted—not if she wanted to get to California with enough money to . . . well, to do whatever it was she was going to do.

  Her eyes burned. Tears dropped. When she rubbed them away, her fingers were smudged with black mascara.

  The clerk yawned. “Why do you need it?”

  El looked around in surprise. “What?”

  “The wi-fi.”

  “To message a friend so they don’t worry.”

  The woman cast her bored gaze outside at all the flashing lights. The train let out a whistle. It was getting underway again. As the clerk turned back to El, she wore a knowing expression beneath her dropping lids.

  “If you buy something, I’ll let you use the wi-fi.”

  Blinking furiously, El couldn’t help a smile. Normally, she’d refuse help and try to work it through herself, but it was life or death now. She didn’t have that option. “Thank you.”

  She paced the several tiny aisles, looking for something to stock up on. She hadn’t eaten since the sandwich at the Walmart, almost a full day ago, but the idea of putting anything in her stomach sounded disgusting. El knew she needed to eat to keep up her strength, but she was queasy with nervous exhaustion.

  Dispassionately picking out a package of beef jerky and some trail mix, El returned to the counter, wiping her smudged makeup on her sleeve.

  The clerk checked her items in slow motion and took her preloaded visa, never making eye contact. “You okay?”

  “Honestly, no,” El murmured.

  The bathroom key was pushed across the counter, attached to a set of streamers. Without a word, El took a moment to clean herself up. In the bad lighting and cracked mirror, she looked exactly as she felt: small and terrified. Nowhere to sleep, no transportation, no money for either, in a town too small to have a bus depot. She could hitchhike. The very idea of climbing into a stranger’s car horrified her, but it was the only way, unless she planned to . . .

  El frowned at herself.

  Walk. All the way to Chicago? That was hundreds of miles, but she’d intended to switch to Greyhound when she got there. Perhaps there was a city a bit closer that was large enough to have a bus depot with routes toward the west coast. If so, it might be as close as fifty or sixty miles away. El did a swift calculation based on her PE class fitness markers. She knew she could walk three miles an hour. If she walked all day, say twelve hours, that was thirty-si
x miles a day. West Virginia, Kentucky, southern Ohio . . . they were all wildernesses, and she had enough camping gear in her pack to make spending the night in the woods completely feasible.

  But she’d never camped in her life. Mama had the RV, of course, and they’d go out to the lake occasionally to show it off, but that was like having a slightly smaller house containing the same, and even some extra, amenities. Riley would scoff at such luxury and poke fun at her, El was sure, and there was no argument she could make against her “glamping” past. El Glasse had no experience with the Great Outdoors.

  Maybe it was time to improve her skills.

  Who was the girl in the mirror? What sort of person was she? The sort who was going to learn constantly, work hard, do everything the tough way if that was how it was going to be. She could do that, because she had already done it. Besides, everything was frightening the first time, and if she didn’t mess up, then she’d never needed to learn it in the first place.

  El was going to be journeyman.

  When she returned to the register, the clerk had written down a password on a sticky note. She appeared to be napping as she handed it off without opening an eye. “Feeling better?”

  “Much. Thank you. May I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you know what’s the nearest town that has a Greyhound station?”

  “Hmm.” The clerk chewed a bright pink lip, still leaning partway over the counter. “Beckley, I think.”

  El couldn’t keep logging into cell towers just to calculate her location and screen capturing a map seemed too inaccurate. There were too many possible routes and too much potential for error. Then again . . . the train had only one path, and much of it was sheltered from other kinds of traffic.

  “Is Beckley along the train route?”

  “Nope. Highway. Fifty miles or so. Nearest along the train is probably Charleston.”

  “And how far away is that?”

  “’Bout a hundred miles.”

  One hundred miles. For an instant, that felt insurmountable, but El knew that if she pushed herself, she could do it in three to four days. That wasn’t so bad at all, she told herself. The tracks dropped into a number of tiny towns she could use to restock, it kept her along a clear route, but shielded from observation from the road. If it was good enough to travel in the locomotive, it was good enough on foot.

  “Thanks. I think I might buy a few more things before I go.”

  “I’m here all night. In fact . . . I’m here almost every night. I don’t sleep, except on the job.”

  El logged into the wi-fi, wondering what she could say that wouldn’t worry Oscar. All she could think to do was outline the story briefly and give him her plan of action.

  His reply was immediate. WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING? ARE YOU CRAZY?

  There’s no other way. I cannot afford another ticket to Chicago, and now that they know I’ve taken a train, they’ll be on the trains looking. They already knew I changed my hair!

  He sent a series of emojis. But how will I know you’re safe?

  El thought swiftly. Her phone had a prepaid amount of data, texts, and cell minutes, but the amounts were so small, she could not afford to use them unless there was an emergency. At all other times, the cell data was turned off, and the phone was unusable unless it was logged into wi-fi.

  I’ll text you every few hours. Let’s do 8 a.m., 12, 4 and 9 p.m. Does that work?

  OMG You’re going to give me a heart attack. I swear if you’re one fucking minute late, I am calling the National Guard.

  El couldn’t help but giggle gratefully, imagining him pacing through his tiny shared apartment, watching the seconds tick by on his clock.

  Thanks for caring, O. It means so much to me.

  No prob, Snowy. Text me tonight at 9 p.m. your time.

  Will do.

  She glanced up at the clerk. The woman was dozing on her stool, her head propped against a display case. El logged into her blog app and checked her contacts. There were about fifty messages from different readers and to her surprise, about twenty questions asked of her. There was the usual nonsense of anonymous people being rude, the friendly well-wishes espousing hopes for her relationship with R, but one ask caught her eye.

  If R is the person you say she is, it sounds like she’d be the type to give your mama a run for her money and enjoy it. So my question is, why won’t you let her? You say you worry about her safety, but could it be that you worry you’re not worth it? That is a lie your mama taught you to believe. I hope someday when you look in the mirror, you see a woman looking back who is worth every single struggle or fight R might meet. Have faith in this person you admire so much—she might see something inside you that you can’t and want to come along for the ride.

  Be safe.

  Strangely unsettled, El leaned against the freezer unit, reviewing the message again and again. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something about it was uncanny. It was provocative while still being constructive, oddly knowing, but it could all be in how she was reading it. It felt like a warning, but that was probably just because she was so anxious. She hadn’t yet told her readers about her escape, so none of them could possibly be commenting on anything current.

  El’s first instinct was always to suspect her mother of subterfuge, but this person gave their username willingly. She tracked it back to the blog, scrolling for a few pages of her own posts that had been recycled. The description of the user was bland. The only thing on the blog that appeared to be original was a series of motivational quotes.

  “There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth . . . not going all the way, and not starting,” she read aloud in a soft voice.

  It was oddly applicable, but that could all be a coincidence.

  Perhaps it was a real user, and this @hellonaunicycle was just some side-blog used to track her story. She hoped it was, because more than any other question she’d received in recent weeks, this one caught her attention. El followed the blog and tapped the Notification button, so that she’d receive an alert whenever @hellonaunicycle posted anything.

  She couldn’t answer the question just yet, but it did give her something to think about. There were miles yet to walk before dark, and nothing else to do.

  A few more items were added to her pack and after a last goodbye to Oscar, El set out.

  Waiting to cross the river again until she was well past the train depot, El dropped back onto the tracks with a swift survey of the surrounding yards and street. There didn’t appear to be anyone interested in stopping her, and no signs warning her off the rails. The only difficulty she encountered was a southward ninety-degree turn just outside of town that took her practically the opposite direction of her destination. It occurred to her then that the railroad might meander, tracking the river’s natural path rather than a direct route. That sort of thing would add time to her trek, but when she considered deviating, it was still preferable to being the target of some maniac with a car or the group of men her mother had apparently hired.

  El adjusted her pack, clasping every cross belt to redistribute the weight. Her shoulders were unbearably sore already, but there wasn’t time to worry about it. It might be summer, and the sunsets long and late, but that didn’t mean anything if she didn’t make any progress. She had about three hours before pitch dark descended, and the animals started to circle. In that time, she could make it ten miles, but that meant pushing herself hard.

  At first, her eyes would obsessively scan the land for threats, but by the end of the first hour, she had fixed her blurry gaze on the rails. The pack wasn’t really that heavy, but it felt like it weighed as much as a car, its unweathered edges abrasive. Her new boots were rubbing against the back of her heels. Her knees were aching in a way she’d never felt.

  The town blended into a rail yard outside of what looked to be a prison—high walls, watch towers, razor wire fences—El stopped at the base of the great retainer
wall and contemplated life within.

  El could already feel her recently acquired self-assurance waning. She was tired, sore. The worse it got, the less her own justifications would matter. At some point, she’d get too hungry, too tired, and she’d be tempted to pick up a phone and call for help. Everything had to be set into perspective and held there. Her convictions had to be absolute.

  She needed a mantra.

  At home, El had worn what Mama told her to—a drab and unflattering uniform of girlhood. El ate what was made—her portions controlled by a woman so afraid of weight gain that she starved her daughter. El slept and rose when instructed—seven hours per night with no naps. There were even bars on El’s windows, because her mother had once suspected she was sneaking out at night, simply because some items had supposedly been moved around in her car. Constant abuse, neglect, silence, or vitriol. Put-downs, insults, and religious dogma shoved down her throat. Prison was probably just like that. It wasn’t too much of a stretch, or too naive of El to think of that house in a similar way.

  “Mama needs a victim. Mama will keep you there forever if she can. You are escaping.” She repeated this again and again and left the prison in her dust.

  But no amount of emotional buoyancy could keep her head up. She began to sag with the sun, her feet to shuffle, her pace too slow. Yet, the wilderness she’d been counting on had yet to appear. Alderson apparently abutted several smaller towns that clung to the tracks like debris cast to the sides during its construction. There was nowhere to rest.

  With the sky a pale lavender, El knew a decision had to be made. If she didn’t stop and use what daylight she had left to set up a camp, there would be less guarantee of safety. Just as she was sure she’d reached her limit and would have to sleep in a ditch, the ground around her vanished. It took her fully a minute to realize that she had stepped out onto a trestle bridge.

  El gave a sleepy blink and then gasped as both the danger and potential benefits of her position hit her simultaneously.