Biting back a smile, I stuck my head out of the window and wondered if breaking a leg would be worth trying to escape.
It was a long way down.
“Go,” she whispered into my ear.
Taking a deep breath, I pulled myself out of the window and started crawling down the lower section of the roof. When I reached the edge, I sighed in relief, it wasn’t as high up as I’d originally thought. I turned and lowered my body, until I was hanging from the edge. I then dropped down onto the porch, followed by Marie, who was now sporting a pair of sunglasses.
“Come on,” she said, pulling me forward.
As we started running, I could hear Darnell screaming from the bathroom window.
“Bye, suckers!” laughed Marie as we ran away from the house and towards the fields.
“What about the others?” I hollered, looking back. “We can’t just leave them!”
“We have to. We’ll get help… send someone to rescue them. Come on, before it’s too late!”
We ran as fast as we could away from the house, next to the dirt road leading away from the farm. It seemed to go on for miles and as I looked ahead, I knew we’d be caught if we didn’t get away from the open road.
“We need to go into the woods,” I pointed towards the trees up ahead. “Otherwise, they’ll catch us for sure.”
“Okay,” she huffed.
Just as we made it to the cover of the trees, we heard an engine in the distance.
“Keep going, Marie!” I prodded.
“Wait!” she gasped, as she was lagging farther behind.
I glanced back.
She held her side. “I should have never started smoking!”
“Just keep running and don’t look back,” I hollered, as we headed deeper into the woods.
“Yeah… sure… where are we going?” she gasped out.
“I’m not sure,” I yelled back, leaping over a large branch. “But we have to keep moving!”
“Wait!” cried Marie.
Groaning, I stopped and turned around.
She was bent over with her hands on her knees, panting. “Yeah… I just have to… catch my breath.”
I stared past her towards the direction of the road, expecting Darnell to come barreling through the trees.
“Do you think he saw us?” she asked.
“Probably. We really need to keep moving.”
She straightened up. “Okay.”
We started running again, going even deeper into the woods. Once I thought we were fairly safe, I stopped to rest.
“Where are we?” she asked, leaning her palm against a birch tree.
“I don’t know,” I replied, looking around. It was hard to see anything with so many tall trees. I couldn’t even tell if we were headed towards the mountains.
She frowned. “Great, we’re lost.”
“Well, it’s certainly better than being a prisoner.”
She closed her eyes and touched the bridge of her nose. “God, my dad is going to flip out.”
“Would you quit worrying about him?” I said. “He’s the least of your worries right now.”
“Oh, if you knew him, you’d say differently. He can be a real monster.”
“Come on. Let’s just get moving.”
“What if we’re heading farther into the wilderness? We could get really lost.”
I bit my lower lip.
She was right. The deeper we went, the higher our risk of bumping into something a lot scarier than our captors – bears, mountain lion, even moose. There was no way we’d be able to defend ourselves against them.
“Maybe we should wait here for a while and then head back the way we came before sunset. When it’s dark, we can follow the dirt road to the nearest town,” said Marie.
“Wherever that may be. Something tells me I’m a long way from home.”
“Where are you from?” she asked.
“Missoula.”
“I’m from Polson.”
“I wonder where we are?”
“I’m not sure,” she replied with a smirk. “I left my map at home.”
I grunted.
“You okay?” she asked.
“I’m just so thirsty. What about you?”
“Me too,” she replied.
I wiped the sweat from my forehead. “We need to find water.”
“Even if we do, it’s probably not safe to drink anything not bottled or out of a tap.”
She was probably right. “Maybe, but we need to stay hydrated.”
It was warm, in the eighties, we hadn’t drunk anything for hours, and we’d just run what felt like a marathon. I needed to find something to drink – and soon.
I wiped more sweat from my face and noticed that I was feeling dizzy. “I don’t feel well.”