It was a windy, dark night when I walked out of the old couple’s sloping house. I left with much more than I came with.

​

She had sunk her willowy self into the passenger seat of the white truck I drove. I slid in the driver’s seat, starting the car up. I threw the money bag and the book her father, William, wrote about his grown daughter he just sold away, into the glove compartment. I had to reach across her. She stared down at my arm and only looked at me when I asked her a question.

​

“Do you have anywhere you want to go?” Maybe there was more family she could go live with.

​

“Where are you going?” she asked in a flat tone and looked up at me with bored eyes.

​

“I don’t know yet,” I told her. I really had no destination; I just needed to keep moving. I didn’t know what I’d do if I stopped anywhere; there was nowhere for me to go.

​

I’d only stopped in that town to get away from the highway patrol car that was driving behind me for longer than I liked. It would have been just my luck that they ran the truck’s plates. I was three states over from where I picked it up, but I was sure it had been reported by then.

​

Luckily I saw the exit to pull into that town. What I didn’t see was the glass in the road before it was too late. William found me and offered to fix my flat tire for free and give me dinner. I didn’t know dinner would end with William and his wife pleading for me to take their daughter.

​

“Miss, please.” William had begged, “We’ll give you twenty-thousand if you just take her with you.” When I’d asked why they wanted her gone, they told me she wasn’t normal. With the money, they gave me the black notebook with handwritten notes about how she was different.

​

Truthfully, I didn’t care what their reasoning was; I needed that money. I had ten dollars to my name, and their daughter wasn’t a child. She didn’t oppose, so I agreed.

​

We didn’t even know each other’s names, but it wasn’t needed to drive away from her house and her parents that were eager to rid themselves of her.

The daughter offered up no more words; instead, she fiddled with the dial to change the radio station. I nodded my head once and pulled away from her old house and the town, soon back on the highway.

​

She stopped at one station for longer than the rest.

​

“The manhunt for twenty-five-year-old Kacey Johnson continues after the tragic incident involving --” I nudged her icy hand off the dial and switched the station, cutting off the grainy-voiced radio host. Low country music played.

​

She pulled her hands into her lap and moved her attention to the road.

​

“Did they deserve it?” I could have pretended to not hear her, she didn’t look at me when she asked, and she said nothing after. But I felt something had to be said, not a real explanation since I couldn’t even give that to myself. But just something to sit in the air between us.

​

“Don’t they always?” From the corner of my eye, I saw her mouth twitch up in the slightest smirk. Then it was gone. And so were we.

​

We were both drifters then, drifters with more money than I knew what to do with. But it was alright. I wouldn’t have to be alone anymore or worry about buying things for a while. And she wouldn’t have to be around people who were clearly terrified of her. I knew how that felt. It took a toll, no matter how justified it might have been. She and I weren’t so different—two halves of a whole driving into the night.

---

I came to find everything William wrote in that little black book was true.

​

On a page with shakier handwriting than the rest, he wrote that I should never let her touch me for too long. He said her touch brought nothing but pain. I confirmed that the morning after we left her house and settled into an almost vacant, dingy motel for the night.

​

Apprehensive then, I didn’t cross the invisible barrier I placed between our beds. She moved about freely, though, while I sat in my bed reading her father’s words. Her steps were soundless as she padded around the room, inspecting things. I watched her dig her bare feet into the dirty carpet whenever she stopped in place.

​

She can go too long without food. I don’t know how, but she doesn’t need food like we do. I’ve seen her eat things . . . unnatural things.

I wondered what William counted as unnatural.

​

“Are you hungry?” I asked her, setting the book under the bed next to where I put the money.

​

“I think you know I am not.” She said this with her even voice and indifferent expression, turning to face me.

​

“I don’t know what I know, yet.” I stood up and put on my boots.

​

“Where are we going?” she tilted her head.

​

“To get snacks if you’d put your shoes on.” She did what I asked.

​

I was a step out of the door when she quickly grabbed my left wrist. Her bony fingers wrapped loosely around me, but it felt like a death grip. I tried to suppress a groan of pain as it felt like she was decomposing me with her touch. I whipped my head around to look at her, breathing too fast. She stared back, her eyebrow slightly raised. It was like she watched me to see what I could take. Was I going to cry? Would I pull myself out of her grasp? She’d made her move and was waiting on me to make mine.

​

I took a deep breath and started walking to the convenience store across the street. The dizzying discomfort on my wrist was consistent as she held onto me the entire time. I pushed through it. Slowly but surely, I made my way around the store, grabbing food with my good arm, only vaguely paying attention to what it was.

​

She gently applied the weakest bit of pressure to my wrist, but it almost made my legs buck from under me. I caught myself on one of the stocked shelves while her deep ache spread to my entire left side. It took me many breaths that time before I could move again. But I did it without pushing her away from me or begging. I wasn’t going to forfeit whatever game she started.

​

“Just how much can you endure?” she asked me.

​

“More than you can give,” I mumbled and moved towards the tired-looking cashier paying us no mind, ready to get out of there.

​

“Hm,” she hummed. She let go of my wrist and looped her fingers through my own. I expected whatever she was doing to me to increase ten-fold, but it fizzled away, leaving me feeling strangely empty but relieved. I gave her hand a squeeze.

​

“Ten-thirty-two,” The cashier said after ringing everything up. He watched us both as I rummaged through my wallet for the right bills. He narrowed his jaundiced eyes, studying her then me.

​

“You look familiar,” he said, stuffing my food in a plastic bag.

​

“No I don’t,” I gave him the bills, snatched the bag from the counter, and we left the store and cashier behind.

​

---

​

She hugged me one day. We had gotten a new motel room and just got in.

​

“Do you want a hug?” That question in her eternally cold voice threw me off guard. She watched me set my duffle bag down and face her, cautious. She never asked me that before. But there she stood, with her arms outstretched, waiting for me to step into her trap. I knew what was coming. She knew I knew. But we both knew I wasn’t going to say no. The words in William’s book went ignored.

​

Don’t let her touch you . . .

​

I tried to steel myself, but nothing could have prepared me for the full-bodied shock that ran through me. That was the first time I really felt like I might not be able to handle it.

​

She could tell; I felt her loosening her arms after some time. I tightened mine.

​

“Oh . . .” she trailed off. I think I actually caught her off guard. I showed her I wasn’t like the rest.

​

---

​

Sometimes she stops breathing.

​

I started watching her to see what William meant. Often, I saw her stop the rising and falling of her small chest. I couldn’t find a pattern in it; it was sporadic. I tried to copy her. Just to see if I could go past my limits to be on her level. She’d stare me down whenever I held my breath, and I’d stare back. That was another thing William wrote in the black book.

​

Don’t look her in the eye. She does something to your mind with her eyes. You won’t be able to snap out of it until she lets you.

​

I wasn’t scared of her like her parents were; I didn’t feel the need to heed their warnings. So her eyes enticed me rather than repel me. When she looked back at me, it felt like I was holding my breath for hours. But as soon as she looked away, her chest still motionless, I would be forced to take a breath.

​

---

​

I never saw her sleep. That was in the book too.

​

I tried to stay up with her, just to see if William got something wrong. But, I could never stay awake as long. I’d trick myself into believing I wasn’t tired, that I was perfectly alert to stay awake for whatever event it seemed like she was waiting for. I’d awake the next moment, though, from a slumber I didn’t know I entered. The world would come back to me, and her eyes would be the first thing I’d see.

​

---

​

I read William’s black book from cover to cover. I wanted to learn everything I could about her, and I did. Day after day, she confirmed what was in the book with her actions. There was something on the last pages that wasn’t an observation. It was directions. Ones I’d never follow. I tore those pages from the book and handed them to her one afternoon when we got into the truck, leaving another motel behind.

​

I didn’t speak as we left the street and drove down another indistinguishable highway.

​

She took the pages but made no move to read them.

​

“Why are you so confident that you are safe with me?” her bland voice sounded closer to bells in my ears.

​

“I don’t think I’m safe anywhere,” I told her, focusing on the familiar rumbling of the truck.

​

“You might find yourself regretting this one day.”

​

“Maybe,” I said, tapping the steering wheel, “But not now.”

​

She rolled her window down and extended her arm, holding the papers out of the moving car. She turned to look at me, not yet letting them go.

I looked at her too, uncaring that my eyes stayed off the road for too long.

​

She opened her hand and the pages scattered in the wind. I kept driving. I turned back to the road, leaving the pages behind. It was just us, her parent’s money, and the little black book, heading down a road to nowhere. No destination. We left everything behind but each other.

​

“I do not understand you,” she told me; that time she actually smiled—the first smile since we started that aimless trip.

​

“Actually,” I said, “You’re the only one who does.”