hoped Emily came soon, or her dad. They knew where she’d gone this afternoon. They would search for her when she didn’t return.
Her sister, Mika, would stay home with little Annie. At the thought of her daughter, every motherly instinct Aiyana possessed kicked in, glad that she hadn’t brought her with her today.
What if Aiyana died here tonight? What would happen to Annie?
Oh, cut the self-pity, Ai. You are not going to die. You are going to get out of this and go home to your daughter.
Slashing her arms across the ground, she gathered leaf mold against and around her until she was covered with it. Gross, maybe, but it provided warmth even as the ground beneath her chilled her back. As best she could with her good arm, she shoved her pack underneath her to lift her away from the damp earth. A lumpy bed, sure, but not as cold.
Darkness closed in around her. Creatures scurried. Her imagination bloomed and ran riot. The fear coursing through her veins was an old and too familiar enemy threatening to annihilate her common sense.
She wouldn’t die here. She would survive. Memories were funny things, though, with willpower of their own, crawling into her bones along with the cold.
She covered her face and breathed into her hands. She hummed a tuneless song. She counted backward from a hundred, by threes. Nothing helped. It was twelve years later, but the woods and the encroaching darkness brought back those desperate memories of her naive fifteen-year-old self.
They flooded her, barreling past every dam and barrier she erected.
“I don’t want to do this,” Aiyana said.
“Can’t you feel what you do to me, princess?” A part of Justin’s anatomy jutted hard against her thigh.
“Don’t call me princess.” Aiyana’s voice shook. “I don’t want you touching me there.”
“You said you wanted to be my girlfriend.”
“I do.”
“This is what dudes and girls do, Aiyana.”
“It’s too soon.” Cripes, this was only their first date and Justin hadn’t even taken her out for ice cream like he’d said he would. Instead, he’d brought her down here into the ravine.
Some small creature moved on the other side of the tarp behind her head. Aiyana shivered.
“Grow up.” Justin pulled his hand out of her pants with a hard flick, hurting her. She winced.
“I can’t believe how ungrateful you are.” He downed the rest of the beer. How many beers made a boy drunk? She didn’t know. She scrambled to put distance between them.
“I went to a lot of trouble to make this place for us.” Justin adjusted himself inside his pants. Justin’s place, his makeshift tent at the bottom of the ravine, didn’t feel safe, not to her, but more like a black hole in the dark woods.
“I want to go home.” Her fingers trembled when she pulled up her pant zipper, but shook too much to do up her button. She yanked her jacket down over it. “Don’t tell anyone about this,” she begged. “I don’t want people to think I’m easy.”
He thrust his fingers through his hair. Even mussed it looked good. What she could see of it. There was hardly any light left in the tent.
“Easy,” he scoffed. “That’s a laugh. Find your own damn way home.” With that, he bolted.
Aiyana sat stunned. How could Justin do this? He’d seemed so nice. He was the most popular boy in school, for Pete’s sake.
As though living a bad dream, she crawled out. The woods were dark and foreign. Hostile. Every rattling tree branch, every bush, was a monster coming to get her. Justin must have run up the hill because she couldn’t see or hear him. He’d left her alone in the ravine at nighttime. What kind of boy did that? Terrified, she ran up the hill.
When she was only halfway up, scrambling in the darkness toward the glimpses of street lamps flickering through the trees, the rain started. The bushes beside her rustled and she cried out, scrabbling to catch branches to help her up the steep incline.
Her feet slipped and slid in the muck.
Rain streamed down her face, ruining the makeup she’d applied so carefully to look good for Justin. At least the rain hid her tears.
She ran home, past their meeting place two houses down from hers. He’d refused to pick her up at her front door. Cripes, Aiyana, that should have been your first clue. You’ve been so dumb.
She rushed into the house, careful to close the door quietly, even though she ached to throw and break things.
She tiptoed along the hallway and into her room. Closing her bedroom door, she leaned against it and let her tears flow.
Justin hadn’t really wanted her. He’d just wanted an easy lay.
What made him think she would be? She didn’t go out with boys. She was quiet at school. Was it because of her heritage?
In her mirror, she saw the reflection of a fifteen-year-old girl with dark raccoon eyes due to her ruined mascara. She swiped it with tissues until it was all gone.
Her hair, usually midnight black and shiny, hung in wet strings. With the broad cheekbones she’d inherited from her dad, there was no mistaking her heritage.
Native American. Ute.
She hated her face and her name.
Would Justin have attacked her if her name had been Brittany? Or Madison? If she were white, would he have tried to make her drink beer and have sex?
She grasped the corners of the heavy blankets decorated with the symbols of her heritage and hauled them from her bed, wadding them into a ball and tossing them into the corner.
It took forever to get out of her wet clothes, to haul the clinging denim down her legs. She crammed them into her laundry basket. Dad would be mad that she hadn’t hung them to dry. So what? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
She curled into a ball on her plain white bedsheets and shivered.
She hadn’t thought about that incident in years, but here in the suffocating darkness, it came flooding back. She, and the whole town, had learned how truly indiscriminate Justin had been. He hadn’t tried to take advantage of Aiyana because of her heritage. He had targeted all kinds of girls at school, not just her.
They’d gotten their revenge, though.
Since then she had learned to handle and face down her fears, but here in the dark woods, reason and logic flew out the window. She had just fallen back into her nightmare full force.
She laughed without humor. Fallen. Literally. She shivered, and it had nothing to do with the chill creeping across the land.
Emily. Dad. Someone. Help.
Stop freaking out!
She fought her demons. She was no longer
