Page 10 of Hunted

I remember thinking eighteen was the beginning of everything. That adulthood would unfold like a red carpet. That the future would come eager and generous and wide open.

Instead, nineteen arrived in silence, shrouded in terror.

I was walking past a narrow restaurant just off Canal Street when I saw them through the window. A family gathered around a table. A girl a few years younger than me with balloons tied to her chair, her face alight as a cake was carried out glowing with candles.

Sweet Sixteen.

Laughter and love and off-key singing as a mother leaned in to kiss her daughter’s cheek.

I froze mid-step, watching in surprise, then in stark, agonising heartache as the glass showed me something else.

My reflection.

Thinner. Harder. Eyes too sharp for my age.

Nineteen had come and gone while I was watching train stations, counting exits and sleeping with a chair wedged beneath a doorknob.

No cake or candles or velvet box. No father raising a glass in my honour.

Just another day of running and hiding.

I pressed my palm briefly to the cold glass and wondered if anyone had remembered. If Aunt Fiona had called. If my friends had asked where I was. Or if my father had been too drunk, too distracted, too busy negotiating my future to notice the date at all.

My heart cracked in two right there on the pavement.

And I walked away before anyone inside could see me break.

Now I carry on walking through New Orleans’ humidity and brazen beauty.

The city is loud and alive in ways that make it easier to disappear. Music spills from open doors. Sweat sticks to skin. People mind their own business unless money is involved. I chose it because it smells of rot and sugar and history. Because creatures older than memory hide in plain sight here. Because if you’re running from one monster, sometimes the safest place to land is among others.

I arrived with one backpack and a velvet pouch of my mother’s jewellery stitched into the lining of my coat.

That pouch is the only reason I’m still alive.

In the first month after I fled New York and my father’s house, I learned what desperation looks like to other people.

Prey.

A girl alone on a train platform, clutching a bag too tightly, who hasn’t slept properly in weeks.

I was robbed in Memphis. Pinned against a brick wall in Birmingham by a man who smelled of cigarettes, stale beer and very depraved intentions.

In my less horrific nightmares, I still remember the scrape of his teeth near my ear before I drove my knee up hard enough to break something important and ran until my lungs felt flayed raw.

I’ve lost weight without trying because apparently stress carves flesh faster than starvation. My cheeks are hollowed, my hips sharpened. My breasts have shrunk enough that men have stopped looking thrice, which I count as a blessing.

But the worst part isn’t any of the things I’ve endured since fleeing home.

The worst part remains my father’s face the night I confronted him.

I’d hoped I’d misunderstood and hoped for contrition.

I received neither.

‘You sold me,’ I said, hands shaking so hard I could barely form the words. ‘You offered me like I was cattle.’

He had been drunk, but not enough to hide the calculation in his eyes.