Fleta waited until the house fell into its usual uneasy stillness before she dared touch the map again.
Her mother had retreated to the bedroom with a headache. Her stepfather had left half an hour earlier, slamming the door behind him as though the sound itself were a message he wanted the neighbors to hear. The television muttered to itself in the living room, casting flickers of blue light into the hallway.
Fleta knew this lull—this brief pocket of time where everything in the house sagged instead of snapped. It wouldn’t last long.
She closed her bedroom door gently, clicked on her small desk lamp, and knelt beside the loose floorboard. The wood gave under her fingers the way it always did, lifting just enough for her to slip her hand in and pull out her stash: the hiking journal, the packing list, a pen she’d stolen from the gas station counter when the cashier wasn’t looking.
Tonight she added the map.
She unrolled it on the bed, smoothing the edges carefully. It looked enormous in her tiny room—stretching over her pillow and halfway to the foot of the bed. The white trail line cut through the mountains like a promise.
Her hand hovered over Georgia, where the path began near Springer Mountain. She whispered, “Start here.”
Then she traced north.
She had read about every section a hundred times, but seeing it like this—big enough to cover her whole body—made the trail feel less like a dream and more like a direction she could point herself in.
She pulled the notebook paper toward her and added a new heading:
PREP LIST – REAL VERSION
Underneath she began writing:
- Backpack
- Sleeping bag
- Trail shoes
- Warm clothes
- Water filter
- Food you don’t have to cook
- Money—any amount
- Ride out of Kansas
She paused at the last one.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
A ride. That was the part she hadn’t figured out.
It wasn’t like she could just walk out of Chetopa and keep walking east for a thousand miles until she hit Georgia—not without every adult in town spotting her. And buses cost money. And asking anyone for help was dangerous in a whole different way.
She tapped her pen against the paper.
There was one possibility. A reckless one.
Mr. Brower, the janitor at school, sometimes gave older kids rides to the next town when their parents forgot them. He drove a dented green truck with a toolbox chained in the back and never seemed in a hurry to be anywhere. Once, when Fleta had stayed late to finish a book report, he’d offered her a lift home. She had said no. She always said no.
But she’d noticed something that day: he didn’t ask questions.
That counted for more than she liked admitting.
She shook her head. Asking him was a last resort. A desperate one. She needed other options.
She flipped to a new page and wrote:
HOW TO GET TO GEORGIA?
Then she wrote everything she could think of, no matter how unlikely:
- Save money from lunch leftovers
- Sell the thermos?
- Ask older kids about rides
- Hitchhike? (Too dangerous?)
- Walk partway and hide at night
- Find a bus with no ID check
Her handwriting slanted as she wrote the last line. She knew it wasn’t that simple. Nothing was.
A floorboard creaked in the hallway.
Fleta froze.
The footsteps paused. Then continued toward the kitchen.
She exhaled and forced her shoulders to relax, though her heartbeat stayed wild and thudding.
Tonight wasn’t the night to plan everything. Tonight was the night to think one step ahead—just one.
She rolled up the map, returned it to the hiding space, and tucked the list inside the journal. When the floorboard settled back in place, the room felt smaller again. Quieter. Almost normal.
She crawled into bed and turned off the lamp.
The dark pressed in around her like a familiar blanket. But this time, she didn’t feel trapped under it. Not fully. The trail was waiting, stretched across her bedroom in invisible lines.
Tomorrow she’d start gathering things. Tomorrow she’d look for opportunities instead of excuses. Tomorrow she’d take one small step toward the mountains.
She whispered to the ceiling again—soft, steady, certain:
“Soon.”