It was the sharp contrast between the taste of shattered glass and screaming within the cramped apartment and the immensity of the night without that convinced me I had to leave.
The apartment house had been getting closer and more suffocating ever since I'd had to take on more room-mates to cover the utility bill. Things were fine before, but when Sarah left in January for Toronto without saying a word and without paying her share of the rent, I knew I wouldn't be able to keep on by myself. Jackandmarlene, they came as an unhappy package, he squandered her money from tips to feed his cocaine habit and even though they tried to be discreet I could hear her broken sobs through the paper-thin dividers that separated rooms after they'd had a fight, and her makeup was insufficient to cover the bruises.
This was not my battle and I don't know why it affected me so, but I couldn't take his sullen moods and her sad and desperate martyrdom any longer. Now I am the irresponsible one and I haven't got enough to get me as far enough as I feel like I have to be away from here, but now it doesn't matter anyway.
Early this morning, I silently gathered up what little I could carry in my worn backpack, and left before either of them woke up. It is my turn for irrationality.
Walking, it takes me three hours to get far enough outside the town that I can breathe. Determined to hitch-hike to the west, that's where there's supposed to be promise and freedom and I can't follow Sarah to the east because it wouldn't feel right.
I sit down, tired of walking, and I wait. The morning is warm, and the line of the horizon stands out in relief against the clear blue sky. The highway is empty.
After some time a battered Volkswagen comes into view, from the northeast. I can see it slowing, it slows to a stop on the shoulder next to where I am in the ditch, and a window rolls down.
A woman's voice: "You know, you shouldn't be doing that. It's really danger --"
I know what she is going to tell me, so I say it for her.
"-- dangerous, I know. I don't mind, though."
She makes no move to open the door, so I smile what I hope is a reassuring smile. It confuses me sometimes, that people who give rides are often more afraid of the people who accept the offers. Mistrust is almost instinctual, now.
"So, you gonna give me a ride or what?"
She doesn't say anything but she reaches across and opens the passenger-side door. I toss my bag into the back seat and climb in. The floor is littered with empty Styrofoam cups, and the woman's purse is on the floor next to my feet.
"Er, where are you going?" An inevitable question.
"Oh, you know. Away. Probably further than you. Where are you going?"
"Swift Current."
"Maybe I'll go there. Swift Current. Stop and drift down the river..." It is an appealing thought. I've never been west of Moose Jaw, maybe there would be one of those riverside campgrounds, they have cheap rates in the off-season and I could afford to stay for a while.
She laughs and I get the feeling that she's mocking me as she says, "Good luck. There aren't any rivers big enough to drift down in Swift Current."
"I'm sure I'll find one. There are rivers everywhere, if you know how to look." I feel dishevelled, I didn't shower this morning, I imagine I look worse and talking nonsense like this probably isn't helping any.
I change my tactic.
"So, what's your name?"
She looks at me oddly.
"My name?"
"If you don't want to tell me, that's alright. I'm Cassandra."
I think about telling her more about myself and why I am going, but I don't need her sympathy. Instead I watch the barbed wire and sagebrush flashing past.
I don't remember falling asleep but I must have, because I wake in a gas station lot with a cramp in my neck. The woman who didn't tell me her name is nowhere.
Suddenly I am stricken with the gravity of what I am doing, of my own mortality. I haven't got a plan, I haven't got enough money to see me through to anywhere. My eyes fill with tears and I struggle out of my seatbelt, out of the car grabbing my backpack from the backseat as I go. An unbidden memory: I hear the laughter of Sarah, beautiful Sarah who was mine once but isn't anymore, from long ago when our smiles were genuine. She'd told me then that I could be beautiful, I could be free, before she left to pursue it herself.
Lies. I am across the median now on the other side of the highway, facing west but moving east. I see the woman without a name looking around, confused; she has noticed that I am gone without a trace, and then a semi truck slows to a halt in front of me and I climb into the cab and am going back to where the lies and disappointment are easier. There is no freedom.