Gold Rush

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

HOW LONG DID it take for a mattress to go cold? Ten minutes? Twenty? Surely no longer? I shuddered because that meant my intruder had left just before I got there. Was he still nearby?

I never normally swore—Momma had brought me up to be politer than that—but a string of expletives left my mouth.

Oh gosh, what to do? I scrabbled for my phone as I came to a decision—I’d call the detective who took my statement after the mugging. He’d said to contact him any time, right? And even if he thought I was mad, at least my fears would be on record somewhere if I turned up dead. Now, where did I put his card? I thought I’d tucked it into the front of To Kill a Mockingbird. Or was it Far from the Madding Crowd? I flicked through my meagre stack of books. Dammit! Where was it?

Perhaps I should call the station? What was the officer’s name? Jones? Johnson? Something like that—I couldn’t quite remember. I tugged at my hair so hard I must have loosened the roots.

For a brief moment, I considered calling 911 instead, but I soon discounted that. This was hardly an emergency. What would I say? Er, I think someone’s been sitting on my bed. Could you send a car out? They’d laugh at me for drinking too much wine and reading too much Goldilocks.

In the end, I jammed my dining chair under the door handle, and just for good measure, pushed the rickety table and chest of drawers up behind it. Would that hold? It would have to—apart from the bed and a tiny nightstand, that was all the furniture I had. I’d take a walk to the police station first thing in the morning. At least if I went in person, they couldn’t hang up on me.

When daylight dawned, I almost got cold feet. Venturing outside where he could be waiting was the last thing I wanted to do, but I forced myself to go. As I explained my story to the officer at the front desk, even I knew how crazy it sounded. He nodded and said “mmm-hmm” in all the right places, but he glanced at the big clock on the wall four times and didn’t bother writing down a word I said. His mind was probably on his next donut instead.

“So, let me get this straight,” he said when I’d run out of words. “You want to file a report that says you think you might have been followed on occasion, but you’re unable to give us a description. And last night your bed looked wrinkled and your apartment smelled funny?”

I nodded, already backing out the door.

“Without wanting to trivialise any of this, Ms. Reynolds, have you considered using Febreze?”

He definitely thought I was a few olives short of a pizza. And maybe I was? I was beginning to wonder myself, so I didn’t bother to continue with the report. Why put my mental breakdown on record?

After I left, a bad day only got worse. A detour to avoid a narrow alley that gave me the creeps made me fifteen minutes late for work, and my tardiness didn’t escape Buck’s notice. He made a show of looking at the clock as I hastily changed my shoes.

Then Becky arrived. Five feet eight of fake tan and push-up bra with another three inches of blonde hair piled on top of her head. Although she was pretty in a vacant sort of way, she struggled with the beer pump, and her nails were so long she couldn’t write the orders properly. By the time I’d done my work and half of hers, I was exhausted.

“Are you working here permanently?” I asked her.

She giggled. “Dunno. Buck said to have a chat with him after closing.”

A chat? Yeah, right.

A stranger came in and took a seat. Was that a pack of cigarettes on the table next to him? Dammit, he caught me looking. All I could do was nod as he mimed drinking from a bottle.

“You want me to take that over?” Becky asked. Another giggle. “That guy’s hot.”

“I’ll do it.” Was he wearing cologne?

I’d barely taken two steps in his direction when Buck yelled at me. “Lara, the barrel needs changing. Give that to Becky.”

I handed the drink to my unwanted sidekick, but I still felt the prickle of the man’s eyes on me as she teetered towards him. At the end of the shift, he was still there, drawing out a second beer that must have gone lukewarm by now. Could he be my stalker? Should I try talking to him?

I got out a cloth and started wiping things down. Closer and closer I got, until I was two tables away. I inhaled, and… Nothing. I needed to get nearer.

But Buck interrupted with a tap on my shoulder. “Here.”

He handed me an envelope.

“What’s this? Payday isn’t until Friday?”

He shifted on his feet and leaned back against the bar, which creaked ominously under his weight. “Yeah, about that. I can’t give you any shifts for a while. You haven’t been the picture of happiness lately, so I decided to try Becky instead.”

“You’re firing me? Just like that?”

Buck looked down at his feet like a toddler who knew he’d done wrong. “Not exactly. It’s more that I’m giving you a break for a while. You look as if you need it.”

Which translated as, “I’ll see how the younger, prettier girl does, and if she messes up completely, I’ll give you a call.”

I bit my lip to keep from crying in front of Buck and the few patrons still finishing their drinks. Almost a year I’d worked there without missing a shift, and this was what he did?

Thanks for nothing.

And worse, I glanced over at the stranger’s table and found an empty seat.

My eyes stung as I tugged on my coat. I needed to get out of there, and quickly. Buck could have fun cleaning up and explaining to Becky, for the tenth time, how to work the darn register.

As soon as my feet hit the pavement, I started running. Why try to act normally anymore? I obviously wasn’t fooling anybody. I sprinted all the way home, ignoring the slap, slap, slap of shoes on the sidewalk I swore I heard echoing along behind me.

Back in my apartment, I took in the scene. The zip of the laundry bag was open, a T-shirt poking out, and the book I’d left open at page fifty had skipped a couple of chapters.

“Why me?” I yelled at empty air.

The upstairs neighbour pounded on the ceiling, banging the final nail in the coffin for my sanity. Sheesh, couldn’t I even have a breakdown without upsetting someone?

Dragging the chest of drawers in front of the door took the last of my strength, and when I’d piled the chair and table behind it, I crawled into bed and fell into a restless sleep.

If only I didn’t have to wake up in the morning.

When the sun showed its face through a haze of clouds, I took a long, hard look at my life. I was closer to thirty than twenty, and what had I accomplished? I’d lost my job, and if I didn’t find another one fast, I’d lose my home. I needed a hug, but Missy would be working, and the only other friend I could count on lived in another country.

A hysterical bubble of laughter escaped. Maybe I could ask my stalker for help? What would he do if I left a note begging for spare cash? I thumped my head against the pillow, because that was hardly a solution, was it?

No, things needed to change.

Heck, everything needed to change.

Until now, change was something that happened to me. I’d never tried to effect it for myself. Where should I start? Apart from Tori and Missy, there wasn’t a single thing I liked about my life. If I never saw my apartment, or NoHo, or even Baysville again, it would be a blessing.

In a moment of clarity, it came to me. What was keeping me here other than memories of Momma and a fear of the unknown?

I may have called Baysville home my whole life, but the town hadn’t been kind to me. If I stayed, what would I be doing in ten years’ time? Working to stay alive but not to live?

And those memories of my momma, they weren’t all good. She’d spent years battling cancer and even thought she’d beaten it once, but as I’d been packing for my return to college, a return that was long overdue after an unwelcome break, we got the news that the tumour was back.

“You should still go to Brown,” Momma said. “I’ll manage.”

Yeah, right. How could I leave her? She’d aged a decade since we got home from the hospital.

We fought together, one round of chemo after another, radiotherapy, and even a double mastectomy. When her hair fell out, she was devastated, and I learned how to pencil in her eyebrows and glue on false eyelashes so she could hold her head high at her weekly book club.

Staying positive was hard. I’d plaster on a smile every morning then cry alone at night, and I knew she did too. I heard her quiet sobs and felt the dampness on her pillow. I’d been so desperate for her to try a new experimental drug treatment, I borrowed everything I could to fund it, only it didn’t work. Before my eyes, she wasted away to a shadow, and a week before my twenty-fifth birthday, she slipped away in the hospital.

I’d never forget her last words to me, whispered so softly I had to put my ear to her lips to make them out.

“Be happy, Lara. Promise me you won’t waste your life. We only get one try each, and it’s far too short.”

“I will, Momma. I promise.”

Well, so far I’d done a sterling job of keeping that promise, hadn’t I? Alone and unemployed, residing in the worst part of town—how could I be happy? I didn’t hold out much hope for the future, either. The last time I dared to open the statement, the total I owed for Momma’s medical bills stood at $153,278.27.

In the year since she passed, I’d managed to pay off just over two thousand dollars. At that rate, it would take me another seventy-six years to be debt free, which basically meant never.

As I lay there, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling, I came to the realisation that I didn’t want to spend the time I had left in Baysville. Yesterday, I’d thought my life was ending, but at the dawn of a new day, it began again. Buck had gifted me with freedom. Nothing was keeping me here except my own fears.

I’d never been impulsive, but years of planning and organising hadn’t gotten me very far, had they? It was time to open myself up to new possibilities. And as an added bonus, perhaps I could leave my stalker behind too?

Before I changed my mind, I levered myself out of bed and grabbed my suitcase, the one I’d bought years ago in preparation for my return to Brown. A thick layer of dust covered the fabric, and I blew it away. It took me just over an hour to pack up my life. More than two-and-a-half decades on this planet, and everything of value that I owned fitted into a thirty by twenty-inch space.

Looking down at my possessions, my feet felt decidedly chilly. Was I doing the right thing? Baysville was all I’d ever known, and what about Missy? What would she say?

I slumped onto my chair and dialled her number.

“What’s up? Are you crying?” she asked.

“No,” I sniffed. “I’m worried I’m about to do something really crazy.”

“Are you finally gonna tell Buck he’s an asshole?”

A laugh escaped through my tears. “No, but I wish I could. He fired me. I’m thinking of leaving Baysville for a while.”

“Wait, wait. Back up a bit. He fired you? Why the heck would he do that?”

I told her the whole sorry story, ending with my stalker sleeping in my bed, and it sounded even worse out loud. “So that’s why I want to leave. These walls are closing in on me.”

Not to mention some sick freak.

Missy paused for a few seconds. “You know what? Go. When I was nineteen, I did the same thing. That year I spent in Florida was an impulse move, although I’ll admit too many cosmopolitans had something to do with it.” She giggled. “I learned a lot about myself and life while I was away.”

“You really think I should?”

“A break would do you good. After…you know, everything. You’d sure as heck better come back for my wedding though.”

“Nothing would keep me away from that.” Except maybe the thought of the bridesmaid dress she’d choose. Missy and fashion made an interesting mix.

“Wherever you go, you’ll have a great time,” she said, sounding more confident than I felt.

“I’ll call you, I promise.”

A flicker of fear ran through me. I was really going! Into the unknown, whatever it may bring.

I stuffed some money and a note into an envelope for the landlord and dropped it through his mailbox on the first floor before I left. Baysville was coming to life as I walked along my street for the last time. Normally a creature of habit, I rarely saw this side of the town since I slept late after work, and in the daylight, it wasn’t so scary. As I reached downtown at 8 a.m., the sun burned through the clouds, bathing me in bright light. Was it an omen? Would it shine on my new life?

At the bus station on Main Street, I stood in front of a confusing array of screens. Years had passed since I’d been past the town limits, but now the world was my oyster. Or at least the bus network was—my finances wouldn’t stretch overseas.

Where should I go? New York? I could disappear among the thousands of other lost souls who flocked to the city in search of a new life. But I wouldn’t even be able to afford the rent on a closet. The West Coast? Land of surf, sun, and beautiful people? No, I wouldn’t fit in there. What about Minnesota? Snow was pretty, but also cold. Texas? Atlanta? Florida?

Scientific reasoning wasn’t helping here. If I thought about this logically, I’d spend so long weighing up the pros and cons that I’d never leave. Instead, I closed my eyes then spun around and pointed, ignoring the crowd of strangers staring at me as if I’d gone mad.

My heartbeat sped up as I followed my finger. Where would life take me?

The block letters on the front of the bus jumped out in all their neon glory. Virginia.

I was going to Virginia.