Ashley Cooper's Arc

Chapter 30 of 37

They drove until the town fell behind them. Ashley watched the road blur through the window. She had escaped the cell, but nothing felt like freedom. She was hunted now, hiding in her father's car, and every mile took her farther from any girl who might one day love her. She wanted a girlfriend. She could not walk into a school or a coffee shop. She could not even show her face. Danny pulled into a gas station lot and parked in the shadows. He turned off the engine and looked at her. His glasses had slid down his nose. The pens in his shirt pocket clicked when he shifted. "You need to keep moving," Danny said. "Not with me." Ashley stared at him. "What?" "They're looking for a girl and her father together." He pulled the car keys from the ignition and pressed them into her bone hand. "Take the car. Drive somewhere new. Somewhere nobody knows your name or your arm." "Dad, I'm not leaving you here." "You have to." Danny's round face was calm in a way she had never seen. "I'm staying." "Staying for what?" He looked back the way they had come. His ears went red, the same red they turned at the jail desk. "The guard," he said. "He let you walk out. He kissed me like he meant it. I haven't felt that in twenty years." Ashley opened her mouth and closed it again. Her boring father, the accountant who ironed his socks, was choosing a jail guard over safety. "He could go to prison for what he did," Danny said. "I'm not going to let him face it alone. I'm going back to him." "That's insane," Ashley said. But she heard her own voice shake. She had burned a mansion for a woman who didn't want her. She had no room to call anyone insane for chasing love. Danny took her face in both hands. "You told me who you are. A girl who likes girls. So go find her, Ashley. You can't do that in a cage next to me." Her throat closed. "I don't know how to find anyone. I can't even show people my arm." "You showed the whole school once," Danny said. "You survived it. Out there, nobody knows what you did or what you're hiding. You get to start over. That's the one gift left." Ashley looked at the keys in her skeletal fingers. He was right. As long as she stayed near home, near the fire, near her name, she was trapped and alone. A stranger, somewhere far, might see her whole and still want her. She slid over into the driver's seat. Danny stepped out into the gray light. He shut the door and put his hand flat on the window. Ashley started the engine. "I'll find her," she said. "I know you will." She pulled onto the road alone. In the mirror, her father grew small, walking back toward the guard. Ahead lay a place where nobody knew her face. For the first time, that felt like a chance.