Chapter Text
When I was little and my mama and I still lived in Sweden, she would wake me up every morning at five and we'd drive out of town and watch the sunrise. She would pack up cups of coffee and hot chocolate and we'd spend the 15 minute drive in out old Volvo talking about my days in Sunday school. My tiny five-year-old brain thought I was chasing the sun. Or maybe it was bringing itself to me, mile by mile. Either way it was metaphorical. Like it was saying anything was possible. We could live in Sweden forever, just me and Mama; happy. I could own the sun.
As I stand beside the windows at a dingy airport in New York, I realize that maybe the sun isn't coming to me. If anything it's getting farther away. It's just a speck of brightness on the horizon, peeking out from behind the wing of jetliner.
I glance down to my phone to check the time. 4:56 a.m. It hasn't left my hands since I left home. Nor has anything else that I have on me, which all together are a duffel bag and my old backpack from high school. They hold my last few possessions, and there's no way that I'm letting anyone steal them. Not now.
It's been 12 years since Sweden. My mama met a man at her job when I was seven, and by the time my eighth birthday had rolled around, they were already married and we were moving back to where he lived: America.
'It'll be beautiful my baby,' she would tell me every night leading up to the dreaded plane trip overseas.
Yeah mama, real beautiful. I think now, scuffing my shoe against the tiles of the floor.
My mama is widowed. But she doesn't know that yet. When she gets home later, after her night shift at the supermarket, she'll open the door and scream at the sight of her beloved husband's blood all over our kitchen floor. Or maybe Marco will have gotten home first.
He's my step-brother, but we could be twins. When his father married Mama, and I first met him, it was like looking in a mirror. We were the same age; his hair had parted down the center, and a splatter of freckles covered his nose and cheeks. Mama had no problem lying to the pastor at church about how we were related. Now he grows his hair out longer, and wears god awful guy-liner but that doesn't stop him from trying to be the best big brother he could be.
Marco visits on the weekends, and if he comes home early with donuts and orange juice, like he normally does, he'll see the body first. I know Marco enough to know that he won't panic, but he will text me. And then he'll call the cops. Marco knows what his father has done to me.
And last night.
It was almost eleven when he came home, drunk and probably loaded. The door slammed and he yelled out my name, and then there was the clinking of his belt buckle, and I swear. You would've thought that after ten years of this shit, I wouldn't be scared anymore, but when he drinks like that even Mama cries out of fear sometimes. He's never ever hit Mama.
I was in the kitchen faster than I could ever remember, and then he was screaming at me for god knows what reason, and there was the sound of his belt again and the zipper on his jeans, and no he was not doing this again. And then I panicked. The drawer with the knives in it was right next to me and I yanked it open, took the first one my hand touched. I tried to warn him.
Not anymore Papa. Please.
And then I remember him lying on the ground in front of the fridge, the front of his shirt soaked with blood. I remember washing my hands off in the bathroom sink, and then trying to shove everything I owned into my duffel and searching the house for enough money to get the fuck out of this state.
A plane's engine starts up and then takes off in the corner of the window. I wipe the back of my hand across my cheeks and check the time again. 5:01 a.m. My plane is supposed to leave at 6:00 for Dallas. Then Los Angeles from there. Hopefully Marco will find his father first and he'll leave me a little time before I become a wanted criminal.
I twist on my heels to see who else is in the airport. There are barely any people here and I don't expect there to be. It's not even daylight yet. A woman and her child sit in front of me, half asleep, and a middle-aged man charges his laptop in a far off chair, but other than that, no one. A girl makes her way to us from the hall way where the food court is holding a hot coffee. She's maybe sixteen, and chipper, with a slight bounce in her step as she walks toward us. Happier than the rest of us in here, who all look like we could kill a man for being up at this ungodly hour.
Well, another man.
But she seems friendly enough, and my legs are aching from being stood on for the last twenty minutes, so I decide to sit next to her. I leave a one chair gap between us.
"Nice day to take a trip out, huh?"
She has a slight accent, of maybe it's a lisp. It's cute.
"Oh, uh yeah. The sunrise is real pretty." The sun has rose up a bit more, painting the sky bright purple.
"Of course. It's always pretty at this time. Oh I'm sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Krista." She stretches an arm across the seat between and a piece of her blonde hair hits my wrist. I notice that her hair is so long compared to mine, which barely reaches my shoulders.
"Ymir." Her fingers slip against mine perfectly as we shake hands, and I try to give her the best smile I can muster up. It's probably more like a grimace.
"That's different. What is it, Finnish? Swedish?"
"Norse, actually. But I'm from Sweden. My brother calls me Freckleface."
She lets out a soft laugh, something that sounds like winter bells.
"It's beautiful."
Fuck. I've known Krista for less than five minutes and I think I'm already in love with the girl. Ymir you stupid lesbian.
We sit there and talk the entire time while I wait for my plane to arrive. Krista has a teeny-tiny wild streak in her, something that makes me think that she probably dyed her hair blue in the eighth grade, when she dares me to mess with the old guy on his computer. I tell her I can't do it, so she does instead. It's 5:45 when she finally asks me what flight I’m taking, still giggling over her schoolgirl prank.
"So where you headed to, Ymir?"
I panic for half a second. What do I tell her? Oh, you know, I'm moving half way across the country because I just killed my step-father. No big deal.
"I'm visiting family in L.A."
I'm pretty sure I have a cousin whose name I never bothered learning who lives in that area. He's super tall, with a super hot girlfriend and a degree for movie making. And besides, in ten minutes, I'll on a plane to Dallas, and I'll probably never see Krista again, so I'm sure he won't mind if I use him for a tiny little lie.
"Oh wow!" Oh no. "Are you catching the 6 o'clock Dallas plane?"
Oh no. NO. This isn't happening.
My phone buzzes in my pocket and I check to see who it is. A text from Marco.
I know what happened Mimi. Get out of here.
My thumbs scramble across the screen to type out a respond
I'm so sorry
Oh thank god. Thank god Marco found him, and not Mama. Tiny, fragile Mama who couldn't cook our first thanksgiving dinner in America because the dead turkey made her too upset.
"Um, yeah I am. But I'm not-I have to get out of here." Okay, I have to be a little honest.
Something snaps a little in Krista. When I look back from my phone to her, she's aged at least ten years. And I don't even know how old she is. Maybe she knows what I've done.
"Are you okay?" She asks. God, my face must show something, because she's talking to me like a little kid.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. I had a rough night, 's all."
"Listen you're-" Krista takes a shaky breathe and scans the floor with her eyes. "You're going to think I'm crazy. Like complete psycho crazy, but I'm kind of in trouble. And I think you are too."
No. No Krista. I'm not listening to you now. You were nice and cute and funny, but I don't need your pity parade.
"I have my Buick in the back. And it's not too late to refund our tickets. Do you want to leave with me?"
What the fuck.
This girl is insane.
My mind races with all of the ways this could go so wrong, but honestly all I can think about is how I just sat down an hour ago to talk to some girl in the middle of an airport and all she wanted to do is talk to me about the sunrise.
And she feels a bit like Sweden, and home. As creepy as that is.
I glance around the room, to the windows, then to Krista, and then slowly I nod. Okay, I am so down with being stowaways. Runaways. Whatever. As long as it's with her.
With a ton more confidence and energy I could ever have on a morning like this Krista gets up from her seat and puts a hand out for me.
"C'mon. We'll be like partners in crime. I'll tell you why later." I grab her hand and my duffel bag and we make our way toward the exit doors. "But really, Ymir, I've gotta get out of here too. And preferably before sunrise.
My phone buzzes one more time once we're in the parking lot. Marco again. If only I could tell him what kind of adventure I'm going on. I check his message just before my phone tells me it's about to die.
I'm not telling anyone, Mimi