The Forrest

         She stood at the edge of what appeared to be the largest, darkest, most terrifying forrest she had ever seen.  Her seven-year old frame seemed insignificant compared to the massive tree she faced.  She could have been a small branch or a twig.  Her large brown eyes scanned the edge of the forrest as she picked up her red backpack and slid it over her shoulders.  Looking left and right, her eyes burned from the tears.  No one was with her.  Not mom.  Not dad.  Not her brother or little sister.  She was alone.  She should have brought her little sister, she thought, but this was better.
         
         Taylor had heard about the scary forrest with it’s mammoth trees and large trucks and branches that touched the ground and then swooped back up high into the sky.  If her brother was here, he would have already run into the forrest and climbed the first tree he saw, yelling at her to follow him.  He was adventurous and unafraid.  And strong.  And wise.  She wondered why he wasn’t there.  Taylor jumped when she heard a loud crashing thunder and saw lightening. 

         Her mom had just come home from work.  Headlights from the station wagon lit up the room as Taylor put her sister into bed, covering her with a blanket and brushing her hair with her hand.  She was humming a song she’d made up.  Humming always made her young sister fall asleep.  She didn’t know why, but it was some kind of magical power she possessed. 

         Mama entered the room with the smell of alcohol wrapped around her; it was a thick, sticky and smokey haze that was three feet thick.  Wherever Mama went, so did the haze and as she turned on the night light next to Taylor’s bed and began to make her way to the crib, Taylor smelled it.  She rubbered her nose and stopped humming, then stared at the door.

         The bedroom wasn’t large; it was the smallest of all of the bedrooms and situated at the very back of the trailer.  The only way in or out was the bedroom door or the windows that didn’t open all of the way.  Past the bedroom door was a hallway with door to the backyard.  Bean, her brother, stood behind her and starred.  There was no way Taylor could grab her little sister and make it outside. 

         Their step-father stood in the doorway, his massive frame blocking their escape route and much of the light coming from the hallway.  No one could leave.  They could only stand and watch.  He, too, had the thick, sticky, smokey haze around him.  Between the two of them, the room seemed to cloud up like someone had lit a fire to the clothes on the floor.  The red and orange and brown shag carpet even seemed to know that something was wrong as Taylor watched each strand of fiber stand up straight as though it was called to attention.  She wanted to reach out and touch the long, exhausted strands to see if they were real, but she couldn’t move.  Everything in her body felt frozen except her heart.

         She silently screamed at her heart and told it to stop pounding, but it didn’t listen.  Instead, the more she tried to make it stop, the harder it seemed to pound.  The sound was so loud she thought her heart was no longer inside her body, but staring her in the face to get her attention, telling her to do something, anything.  Taylor couldn’t decipher the beats.  She hadn’t learned in school what it mean when heart beats stretched outside of her body.  She made a mental note to ask her teacher the next time she saw her.

         Taylor looked past her beating heart when something shiny caught her eye, a reflection of that shimmered and danced around the room like the reflections of a broken disco ball.  She watched a tiny light dance across one wall and then disappear until it popped up on the wall next to her desk.  And then it was gone again.  She searched for the dancing light until it appeared on Mama’s face.

         Mama stood frozen, too.  Her eyes were wide and filled with water.  For a moment, Taylor watched her mom’s face and held her breath, waiting to see if the water would spill over on her cheeks and make a tear, but they didn’t.  The haze that mama had brought into the room had disappeared and Taylor wondered if the broken disco ball was the reason.  She waited for mama to do something and was glad that she had turned on the light. 

         Bean stood behind her.  She could hear him breathing.  In and out.  In and out.  Quiet, tiny little breaths, only audible if you were standing right in front of him like she was.  Taylor wondered what his eyes were doing, if they were watching the broken disco ball bounce around on the walls.  It was like the butterfly she couldn’t catch earlier that day, but this was no butterfly.  The butterflies were sleeping.

         She followed the lights back to the doorway.  Her stepfather was holding something shiny.  The pounding in her heart was louder, screaming at her to hide or run, but her body stood was incapable of movement.  She watched her step-father’s chest heave as he attempted to catch his breath and wondered what he had done that made it so he couldn’t breath.  She carefully glanced back to Mama to see her eyes widen.  She’d never seen that before; how wide they got.  Taylor had seen a lot of things, but never this.  A tear slipped out of Mama’s eye and onto her cheek.

         “This is what you want?”  He screamed.  Taylor’s gaze was jolted away from her mother and back to her step-father.  “This?” he screamed as he stretched out his arm, holding the broken disco ball in the air.  Taylor stared at it as it shined even brighter from the hallway lights.  It was like a mirror.  Maybe if she looked hard enough, she could see herself in it. 

         “Greg...” Mama whispered, but he didn’t hear her.  The haze probably made it difficult to hear, but then again, maybe it didn’t.  Taylor hardly heard her, too, and she turn her attention away from the man in the doorway to find out. 
         “Watch this!” he screamed.  “Watch this!”  Taylor shifted her eyes back to her step-father and watched him lift the shiny mirror above his head like it was an axe.  With a swift, decisive and violent swing, the stainless steel mirror cut through the air and into his arm.  She watched him do it again and again and again and...
         
         Taylor stood at edge the magical forrest with it’s mammoth trees and large trucks and branches that touched the ground and then swooped high into the sky.  She stood quietly and took a deep breath before taking her first step.  She held the shoulder straps of her backpack with both hands.  She had everything she needed: a flashlight and extra batteries, a candle and canned food and waterproof matches she had stolen from her stepfather’s gear, a small blanket that smelled like her sister, string, her brother’s swiss army knife, her teacher’s note, a jacket and a baseball hat. 

         As Taylor took her first step into the forest, she reached out and touched the base of a tree with her hand.  It was rough and hard and scratchy.  She swallowed and took another step.  In front of her was a large branch and strange twigs that shot up from the ground.  She carefully climbed over the branch and weaved her way in and out of the twigs.  Another step.  And another.  She kept putting one foot in front of the other until she was deep into the forrest and surrounded a darkness she never knew existed. 

         She stopped and took off her backpack when she came across the largest tree she had ever seen.  At the base was a hole, big enough for her to climb into and feel safe.  As she rummaged through her backpack, searching for her flashlight, she pulled out a piece of paper.  It was a note from her favorite teacher.  She remembered the calmness in her teacher’s voice as though she were sitting in class and listening to a story.  Taylor didn’t need the flashlight to read the note.  She had read it so many times, she knew it by heart. You are never alone.  I am always here.  Everything will be okay....

         Suddenly, the door in the hallway swung open and Greg was running outside.

         “Go get your grandma!” Mama screamed at Bean.  His eyes were as wide as Taylor’s had been as he ran out the door, down the hallway and out the front door and then up grandmas long driveway.  Mama screamed at Greg and then ran out the hallway door into the backyard.  The baby wasn’t crying.  Taylor stood where she had been, her hand on the crib, staring out the bedroom door into the hallway and out the hallway door into the backyard and past the backyard into the woods. 
         
      Taylor bent down and fixed the covers on her sister and began stroking her hair, humming a new song she had just made up.  You are never alone.  I am always here.  Everything will be okay....