Chapter 5B

When I was little, I had a nanny. Her name was Johanna and she was from Louisiana. She always cared for me since Daddy was never around, and it was in those months when I was 4 years old, right after my mother had died. She had a tired, worn face, but her smile made her so beautiful. I loved her so much, she was like the mother I never had. And I don’t want to get all sentimental, but she was my everything. And then Daddy fired her because she had a sick sister in Louisiana and she couldn’t work full time anymore. And Daddy wasn’t this heartless person…he just didn’t understand. But Johanna used to always tell me, ‘there’s always a way out, if there’s a way in.’ And I wouldn’t really listen, just laugh and ask silly questions. I don’t know why it mattered so much, but at that moment all I could think about Johanna and what she would do. And she would find a way. There had got to be a way. The universe couldn’t just kill me off now, not let me live my life or fix what I’ve done. What kind of crappy novel would that me? Spoiled popular girl gets killed by mobster slave traders. A real best seller.
And so I turned to see the rest of the room, if there was another door or something, but there wasn’t. Just chairs. Otherwise it was empty. I only had one option. I raced and picked up a chair, and holding it over my head, I brought it down with a crash though the glass of the window. It shattered beneath the chair. And flinging the chair aside, I stepped through the window and ran towards the forest.

I had only stopped running when I could feel the cold sticks and grass beneath my bare feet, the dense woodland surrounding me, and the sky behind a mass of green leaves. Hopefully they couldn’t find me here. I felt like I had been running for hours, even days, circling back and making twists and turns so that my trail would be to complicated to follow. But I was still worried, still terrified, that they would come and just kill me this time instead of bothering with some other alternative.
I realized, then, that I was starving, too, and the immense pain in my stomach wasn’t helping anything. I had no idea what I was supposed to eat out here in the middle of the woods, so I decided I would try to make my way through them, and perhaps there would be civilization on the other side.
Wow, it really was frigid out there. As time passed, my feet felt numb from the cold air. I had to sit down. So I found a little patch of sunlight and sat there, bundling my feet into the huge sweater, wishing I’d had the decency to put shoes on.