Paris: The Memoir(42)
After a while, we came to a small group of old mobile homes scattered around a cluttered field of junked cars and rusted machinery. We crept through the clutter, peeking in windows. Inside one of the trailers, a woman sat by herself, reading a thick book in the lamplight. She had a long, thick braid over her shoulder, jet black and steel gray, and a big dog curled up at her feet. A dog person. I thought maybe we could trust her.
When I knocked on the door, she opened it, not looking particularly surprised or curious. I babbled some made-up story in my baby-girl voice.
“I’m so sorry to bother you. Me and my friend were camping with some boys, and they’re really drunk and tried to rape us, and we don’t have anywhere to go,” and on and on. I don’t know if she believed us or not, but she didn’t ask questions, so either she accepted the story on face value, or she knew the truth was something too terrible to tell.
“You must be freezing,” she said. “Come in, come in.”
She brought us inside, wrapped us in blankets, gave us water, grilled cheese sandwiches, and hot chocolate. She let us use her wonderful little bathroom with a real toilet and sink. When I stepped out of the private heaven of a hot shower, I found that she’d left clean clothes for me on the bed.
On the bathroom countertop, there was a little plastic basket with a basic assortment of moisturizers and makeup. I dabbed balm on my cracked lips and touched my lashes with black mascara. Looking in the mirror for the first time in several months, I hardly recognized my own face. Hardness. Sadness. You can see it if you compare photographs of me before and after all this happened.
When Tess came out of the shower, the sun was coming up.
“They’ll know we’re gone,” I whispered. “We need to leave.”
The lady let me use her phone to make a few long-distance calls to my friends in LA. One of my guy friends bought us train tickets, and our fairy godmother gave us a ride to the station.
“Good luck.” She gave me a hug and drove away.
I still can’t understand why she did this for us, but I’m eternally grateful. It’s so rare to see someone just help without judgment. We tend to second-guess people when they’re down. What did that girl do to make her boyfriend beat her? Why doesn’t that junkie just get a job? Maybe that’s how we reassure ourselves that we’ll never be in that situation. Looking back, I see this woman acting on pure instinct. No hesitation. Just plain human kindness. Words can’t express how much it meant to me. When I lose faith in people—when love feels impossible and it seems like anyone who isn’t paid is going to abandon me—I think about that lady, and I know there’s goodness in the world.
Tess and I stayed low, waiting for our train. This wasn’t a busy station like London or Paris, where you can blend in with the crowd; this was a tiny little depot next to a bunch of hay bales. Maybe half a dozen other people around. The ticket agent kept glancing our way. Finally, our train came, and we hurried out to get on, but two crew-cut Ascent goons blocked us on the platform.
So, forget about goodness in the world. The world fucking sucks.
I gripped Tess’s hand, and we were both trembling.
Back at the camp, they made everyone sit on logs. Strip search. Cavity examination. One of the guys who always watched me during soap and bucket time said, “Now you’re gonna see what happens when you run away.”
The creepy way he was smiling, I thought he was going to rape me right there in front of everyone.
Thank God, he just beat the shit out of us.
11
I don’t know what happened to Tess, but I spent the next several weeks pretending I was suuuuuper, super sorry for running. I told Camo Goon that his beatdown really made me think about myself, and now, more than anything, all I wanted was to experience the life-changing awesomeness of Track/Trek. And I wasn’t saying that because I thought I’d have another chance to run. They kept telling me I could go home after Track/Trek. They said that was how you “graduated” from Ascent, and I believed it, because kids who went on the Track/Trek that Tess and I ran away from—they were gone.
“It’s a beautiful moment,” Burly said. “You run that last bit, and when you get to the trailhead, your parents are there to celebrate with you.”
I latched on to that image—the moment when I’d see Mom and Dad. At CEDU, I thought constantly about home, about Nicky and my little brothers, and how wonderful it was at the Waldorf. Now I blocked all that out. It made me too sad. I worked my ass off for another shot at Track/Trek.
When it was time, I slayed the three-week hiking marathon, up and down snow-covered mountains, carrying my eighty-pound backpack. (Not exaggerating. They told us every day, “It’s an eighty-pound pack, so use your legs when you lift.”) We reached our encampment and built a sweat lodge—big branches lashed together into a roundhouse frame covered with canvas—and then the camo-squad led us in some bastardized version of a supposedly Native American ritual.
This vision quest thing lasted for days. We sat in a circle around a fire, allowed to leave the sweat lodge only to go to the bathroom—except we never had to go to the bathroom because we were given virtually no food or water and were sweating so profusely. We weren’t allowed to sleep for seventy-two hours. If a kid passed out, we dragged them out in the snow to be revived and then trudged back in. It was our only breath of cool air, so I sat there praying for someone to keel over, even if it was me.