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She hadn’t the slightest clue where she would go.  It all began happening too quickly, and she needed out.  So she left, and she just kept going in one direction.  It being nighttime, she didn’t know which direction.  All around her were strange sounds, wind whistling through the branches of leafless trees, toppling cymbal-sounding trash cans, distant car alarms and engine revs. 

She hugged her coat more tightly around her.  Fall chills were the worst, and this October was no different from the many Octobers before.  There were vivid memories of arguments with her mother.  A third-grade ballerina, forced to wear a burly overcoat to go out trick-or-treating.  “Mom, no one will see my costume!”  Of course, she always gave in, because it was either bundle up and go out, or stay at home with no candy.

Things were calmer then.  It seems things were always calmer in the past.  Rose tint comes easy to the elderly and the grief-stricken alike.  Were things really better?  Were they just different?  Do people long for the past?  Or just familiarity?  For everyone knows the past.  They were there.  Everyone knows the present, but it’s constantly out of reach, for it bleeds straight into the future.  The tragedy lies in not knowing what the future has in store.  Even if you could make a pretty good guess.

She ran from the house because of the shouting, the screaming.  All her friends, her teachers, her counselors, they all said that it was a good sign that they were yelling.  Vocalizing what was wrong, they said, was far healthier than keeping it bottled up.  When they stop yelling, they said, that’s when it’s time to worry.  All well and good until you consider that the yelling has been coupled with hurled dishes, knocked over tables, thrown silverware.  Vocalizing helps, yes, but not when the words form accusations of infidelity, of laziness and ineptitude, of impotence and apathy.  Threats of violence, to oneself, to each other.

They made it very, very clear to her that it wasn’t her fault.  She was a planned child.  They’d had only one, they said, because it is impossible to improve upon perfection.  They said they would never hurt her.  But they did, and do.  Apathy is scar tissue on the soul.  It’s easier not to feel at all.

But her soul is young, and she feels everything.  She loves her parents, but they don’t love her.  They don’t love each other.  They don’t hate, they don’t dislike.  They don’t feel anything but anger.  The emotion, like a hypodermic needle, the only sensation that can penetrate to their hearts.  The only thing they feel.  They cling to it, unwittingly, because the only thing left for their spirits to do is die.

She left, running at first, but slowing to a walk when she realized she didn’t know where she was going.   All she knew is that she felt the cold, and she could see by the light of the moon.  It was dark, and cold, and it took some convincing, but she finally believed that no matter where she stopped, the sun would shine the next day.  So she smiled.  Because she felt like smiling.