Running
There was nothing Nicole Haught hated more than winter.
Well, maybe that wasn’t true.
She really hated going to church, she despised her sister’s husband, and she wished her parents would just fall off the face of the Earth. They were probably sitting in the living room of their house, the fire roaring while they discussed their weekly plans or what was for dinner.
As if their youngest daughter wasn’t thousands of miles away from home.
Home.
What a strange thought.
See, as a kid, when Nicole would go over to her friends’ houses, their families seemed loving. They would always ask about how the kids were doing, what their day at school was like, and what they wanted for dinner. They would joke around together, and when Nicole had sleepovers, the parents of her friends always came into the room and said I love you before going to bed.
That was not what Nicole was experiencing at her own home.
Sure, her house was nice. Her parents weren’t exactly limited on their supply of money and the sheer size of her house showed it. However, her parents were very, very conservative. They were always preaching about the ways of God and how important it was that Nicole go to church with them on Sundays so she wouldn’t go to hell. Nicole never really got the purpose of church. She just wanted to go ride her bike or go to the playground with her friends. And even when she got home from church, she would be given a huge amount of chores to do while her brother, who was only younger by three years, would get to sit and do nothing.
Nicole never saw her parents kiss or hug or hold hands. She could probably count on one hand the amount of times they had said I love you to her, let alone each other. They lived mostly through the bible, so much so that when gay marriage was legalized in the United States, her mother cried for about a week straight. Nicole never really spoke up much about anything. She was quiet and did as she was told because it was the only thing she knew how to do. But on the inside, something felt a little different. It didn’t sit right with her how her parents viewed others who weren’t exactly like them.
She had always known that she was a little different from other girls her age. All they wanted to talk about was boy bands and the guys in her school who were the cutest, and for the longest time, Nicole didn’t know why she wasn’t interested in participating. At least, she told herself she didn’t know why. She blamed it on school, or on puberty, or on sports. Anything she could to avoid accepting the real reason why. But as she got older and got exposed to more media and more of the different ways of life, things started to click in her head. Suddenly her not finding any of the guys her friends were always gushing about attractive made complete sense.
Nicole didn’t tell anyone about her little secret. She didn’t trust her friends, her siblings were exactly like her parents, and she had no one else to turn to. It was a lot of stress to keep it all inside, so one day after school she went to the book store and purchased a journal. The second she got into the privacy of her own room she began to write down everything. It was relieving and lifted about a thousand pounds off of her shoulders. She kept it hidden in the very back of her closet, ironically, where she hoped her parents would never find it.
Yeah, it didn’t work out that way.
When Nicole returned from basketball practice one evening and found her parents in the living room with her diary in their hands, her heart dropped to her stomach. It was the most enraged she had ever seen her parents. Her mom sobbed while her dad screamed at her about how she was ruining the family by being sinful. Nicole just drowned him out after a while and watched emotionless as he tossed her journal into the fireplace. Things were never the same after that night.
Word spread fast in her small town, and soon everyone knew about the Haught’s “sick” daughter. The people she once considered her friends wouldn’t even look at her. People would go out of their way to avoid her in town. Her siblings were disgusted. Nicole was banned from attending church (which she was ok with, she wasn’t so sure she believed in God anyway). Then she was kicked off the basketball team for “unspecified reasons”. After months of living through the emotional trauma her parents put her through on a daily basis, she knew she had to get out of the suffocating town.
Nicole decided to leave the day her Christmas break started during senior year. She hid out in her room and waited until her parents and brother left for dinner with her sister and brother in law. Then, she got to work. She didn’t bother to leave a note, just threw all of her stuff together and fled. She remembered it all so clearly. The ringing in her ears from all the adrenaline while she packed her stuff. The way the tears blurred her vision as she got in her car because she was finally leaving, but nothing would ever be the same. The sinking feeling she got when she looked behind her and thought she saw the cops, then looked back and saw a deer in the road too late. The tires squealing. The slam of her skull against the steering wheel. The cool rain on her burning skin, urging her to stumble towards the woods.
Nicole wasn’t quite sure how she survived on her own those first few weeks. She was fairly certain she needed medical attention for the gash on the side of her face, and the way her head ached almost constantly told her she most likely had a concussion. But she couldn’t risk it, so after slapping on the biggest bandaid she had and downing 4 Advil, she was off on her way. She didn’t have a destination in mind. She didn’t have a car, she didn’t have a functioning phone, she didn’t have anybody. All she had was her getaway bag and a good sum of money she had stolen from her parents before leaving. She was all alone.
Yet, it was the most free she had ever felt. There was nobody to listen to, nobody to tell her what to do. She made her own rules.
She was smart. She knew exactly what to do to keep herself safe at night, and hidden during the day. It’s what got her through the first months of being on her own. Nicole really wasn’t sure where she was going to end up. She was hoping she would be able to wander for as long as she wanted, then find some place that would call out to her. After almost 2 years on the run, she had yet to find it. But she was committed, and wasn’t giving up.
During those 24 or so months, she had travelled far. Nicole had seen more in that time than she ever thought she would. She always pictured herself travelling the world, going on adventures, and meeting new people, but her family had always crushed her dreams. Her mom told her that she would never make it in life because of how “sick” she was. Nicole knew that they were wrong, and she wasn’t sick, but the little voice in the back of her head constantly told her she was never getting out. She had to admit, it got fairly lonely during her travels. She never stayed in one place for too long, and could never interact with that many people in fear of being recognized and sent back to her hometown.
Her feet ached horribly as she walked along the same beaten dirt path she had been trekking for miles. It was only October, but wherever she was, they had already experienced pretty significant snowfall. Luckily it looked like cars had shaved down a lot of the snow on the road, but Nicole hadn’t seen a car in at least an hour. Whenever one did pass her, they just kept on driving as if she wasn’t there. The slushy mess made odd sounds beneath her worn out boots as she pushed forward. The sun was starting to set over the snowy horizon, rays of orange and yellow reaching out as far as the eye could see. The scenery created the painful reminder that she hated winter and hated everything that was associated with it. A wolf howling from deep in the forest knocked her out of her thoughts. She would have to find a place to stay for the night or face whatever night creatures were lurking.
After what felt like another year of walking, she finally approached a large sign. “Welcome to Purgatory!” was painted big and cheery, with a picture depicting a happy family directly below it. Nicole scowled at the sign. What happiness could a town called Purgatory possibly bring? A large gust of wind blew tiny particles of snow towards her, and she shivered. She had to keep walking before she froze to death outside. So onward she went, shoving her freezing hands into her pockets, moving a bit faster now than she was before.
Darkness had swept the landscape by the time she made it into the town. Even in the dark, she could see it didn’t have much to offer. There was a fairly large sized police station (which urged Nicole to keep moving), and a few other random shops and stores that seemed to be closed for the evening. The only place showing signs of life was a building advertised as, “Shorty’s Saloon”. She could hear yelling, laughing, and drunken singing from a good distance away. She scanned the remaining stores and finally located what looked to be a convenience store. Pulling her jacket hood tightly over her head, she went in.
Nicole had changed a lot since running away. Her once short hair had now grown out long again, and it was a slightly darker red than before, thanks to a failed attempt at dying it in the beginning. Her wound from the accident had healed up ok, but she was now sporting a decent sized scar on the right side of her face. She was still recognizable, but not at first glance, and hopefully not to anyone this far away. Nicole always worried about being recognized when she went into public places, though she was fairly certain her parents had probably bribed the police to not search for her. Still, the thought thoroughly freaked her out.
One of the very first things she decided when she ran away was that she was going to go by her middle name. Her full name was Elizabeth Nicole, and her parents had originally shared a conjoined last name. So when Nicole ran off, she dropped Elizabeth and half of the last name, and became Nicole Haught. She had always liked her middle name more, and the original last name was too clunky for her liking. Doing that felt freeing, and it was one of the things that pushed her to keep going.
As she opened the door to the store, a bell chimed, signalling a customer. Nicole ducked her head and headed towards the granola bars. It wasn’t going to be nearly enough to fill her up, but money was scarce after so long on the run. It would just have to be enough for the time being. She picked up a water bottle and paid for the items as quickly as she could before heading back out into the freezing night air. She wasn’t seeing a lot of houses, so she kept walking through the town in hopes of locating an abandoned shed or an empty store. She walked and walked and walked until the town was just barely visible on the winding road she had taken. Finally, she came upon a small side road and hoped it would lead to somewhere good.
She quietly crept down the path, hearing only her boots crunching the snow and the wind rustling the brittle corn stalks. Nicole eventually reached the end of and rejoiced silently. There was an old rundown house and a big barn. The house looked like it hadn’t been home to anybody in centuries, and there were no cars in sight. It was perfect. She would sneak into their barn, sleep for a few hours, and slip away before they even knew what happened, if there was even anybody there. Carefully, Nicole made her way into the barn, relishing in the protection it gave her from the wind. When she saw that there was already a bed set up in the barn, she briefly panicked and conducted a thorough yet quick search of the space that yielded nothing.
As quickly as she could, she inhaled the granola bar and washed it down with the water, chugging all of it in two gulps. After triple checking her surroundings and arming herself with a piece of pipe she found on the floor, she climbed onto the bed. It was nice. She couldn’t remember the last time she actually slept in a bed. Usually it was just hay bales or dirt, or the ground. The comforting environment of the bed relaxed her, and before she knew it, she was out like a light.