FOR YOU INDEED

By the end of the second week, what little money we had was nearly gone; we’d had nothing but soda and vending machine junk for days. We were hungry, our bodies starving for nutrients, and I was starting to feel desperate. We’d spent two nights in the car. When I managed to sleep, my dreams were wild, chaotic, punctuated by my mother screaming and the sound of gunfire, the smell of burning wood. The rest of the time, I moved through a kind of haze of fatigue, hunger, and fear. This is a nightmare, I’d tell myself. It isn’t happening.

I’d been in a kind of half sleep when we pulled up at the gas station. The clock on the dash read 2 A.M. I knew we didn’t have any money. I thought he was stopping to use the restroom. Then he pulled a gun from the duffel bag. 

“We need money,” Marlowe said.

I stared at the gun. Its shape seemed natural in his hand. “What are you going to do?” I said with a laugh. &ldq