Faith woke to light slicing through her bedroom doorway at an angle that suggested it was later than she'd intended to sleep. She didn't remember leaving the door open. The blanket wrapped around her shoulders felt inadequate against the morning chill, which didn't make sense given the season. Something about the quality of silence in the house made her skin prickle beneath the thin cotton of her nightshirt.
She shuffled down the hallway, blanket dragging behind her like a child's comfort object. The thermostat's digital display mocked her: 53°F, despite being set to 74°F. Faith pressed her finger against the small plastic buttons, but the temperature remained unchanged. Heat should have been flowing through the vents; instead, the house seemed to breathe cold air from someplace deep within its walls.
The kitchen promised warmth. Faith shuffled toward the stove, her gaze briefly flicking to the backdoor, which stood slightly ajar. A small smile of approval tugged at her lips before she moved directly to the stove. The small blue flames beneath the cast iron pan provided meager comfort as she cracked two eggs, which immediately began to sizzle and bubble at the edges.
Faith rubbed her upper arms with her free hand. The chill felt unnatural, invasive, as though the house had been submerged in something colder than mere air. The house had always been drafty in certain places, but this was different. This felt deliberate.
Behind her, a chair screeched across the linoleum floor—the sound like fingernails dragging across the inside of Faith's skull. She turned to see Madison already halfway the door, her daughter's movements controlled and deliberate in a way that made Faith's stomach tighten.
Faith turned back to the stove. ”Sit down. Your breakfast is—.“
The slam that followed punctuated Madison's exit with unnecessary force. Faith flinched at the sound. A mother shouldn't flinch at the actions of her own child, she thought. Yet here she was.
"Maddy!" Faith called out, anger and concern competing in her voice.
She turned off the burner with a quick twist of her wrist and moved toward the door. The eggs continued to cook in the residual heat, their edges crisping to brown. Faith stood at the threshold, peering into the yard, but Madison had already disappeared beyond the tree line.
Something was wrong with Madison. Had been wrong for weeks now. Faith had tried talking, then bargaining, then threatening. Nothing reached her daughter anymore. It was as though Madison had been hollowed out and something else—something with her daughter's face but none of her warmth—had crawled inside.
Faith shook her head and left the door slightly open as she returned to the stove. The small act of leaving the door ajar was both surrender and hope—an acknowledgment that Madison would return on her own terms, and a prayer that she would return at all.
The Great Plains stretched out before Madison like a vast, inescapable prison yard. Endless fields rippled with wind-combed grasses, the distant horizon a hard line dividing earth from sky. No trees, no buildings, no shelter from the sun or from thoughts. Just emptiness that somehow felt both liberating and suffocating.
Madison pressed her cell phone against her ear, the small rectangle of plastic and glass her only connection to a world beyond this barren landscape.
"Fuck my life," she said, her voice swallowed by the open space. "I have to walk so damn far."
She spun in a complete circle, her body a lone pillar in an ocean of grass and sky. The motion made her slightly dizzy, but the vertigo felt good—a physical manifestation of the constant disorientation inside her head.
"At least there's no one around for miles," she said. "People suck."
The words hung in the air, witnessed only by insects and dust motes. Madison reached into her backpack and withdrew a soda can. The aluminum felt cool against her fingers. She popped it open, took a single, performative sip, then poured the rest out onto the dirt road. The dark liquid splashed and seeped into the earth, disappearing within seconds. Madison watched it vanish with something like envy.
***
A red Cadillac cut through the landscape like a blade. The outside world blurred past the windows, rendered meaningless by speed and chemical alteration. Erik's knuckles were white as he gripped the steering wheel with one hand. In his other hand, he held a glass pizzo pipe, its bulb already scorched from repeated use. His cell phone sat on speaker mode beside him, a tinny voice emerging from its small speaker.
"I barely hear from ya anymore," Erik said, the words thick in his mouth. "Yet, here I am, doin' this after ya keep duckin' me."
The car drifted slightly over the center line before Erik corrected its path with a casual twist of his wrist. The movement seemed almost instinctual, as though the car were an extension of his body.
***
Madison cradled her phone with her shoulder, freeing both hands to work the aluminum can. Her fingers moved with practiced precision, punching holes, folding edges, reshaping the mundane object into something useful, something that looked like a rudimentary smoking pipe. The transformation was swift and automatic, a skill acquired through repetition.
"Really? I'm not avoiding you," she said, her tone deliberately casual. "Faith broke the phone, and I have no computer. So, I only—"
***
In the Cadillac, Erik steadied the wheel with his knee while he placed a chunk of white powder into the bulb of the pizzo. The substance looked innocuous in the daylight—like salt or sugar, everyday items turned sinister through context. He could hear Madison's voice continuing through the speaker.
"—have so much time I can use my cell to connect with my friends."
Erik's laugh was a dry, humorless sound. "Don't confuse followers with friends. They ain't the same."
***
Madison placed the roach of a joint into the can pipe, her movements economical and precise. The makeshift device looked pathetic compared to Erik's glass pipe, but it would serve its purpose. Function over form.
"Don't be a hater," she said. "I get mad love. My followers care about what I'm doing and what I have to say. That sounds like friendship to me."
The lie tasted metallic in her mouth, like blood or pennies. She knew the difference between real connection and digital validation. She wasn't stupid. But the fiction was comforting, and comfort was in short supply these days.
***
"People these days, they don't understand the true meanin' of the word 'friend,'" Erik said as he held a flame under the pizzo’s bulb. The powder liquefied and produced a stream of smoke that coiled like a living thing. "They wouldn't care if your account was gone or if somethin' happened to you. But me, I actually wonder where ya been and why ya avoidin' me."
Erik inhaled slowly, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs. His pupils dilated immediately, black holes expanding to swallow the colored iris around them.
***
Madison lit up the can pipe and took a hit. The smoke was harsh and metallic, tainted by the aluminum. She didn't care. The effect was what mattered, not the delivery method.
"I swear, no excuses," Erik's voice floated from the phone. "I'm cool with your little social-media-star dream life, but I'm over these excuses."
Madison watched as a cloud of smoke rose from her lungs, curling into the air before it dissipated, fading like a memory. The visual metaphor lingered in her mind, striking her as strangely profound in her altered state.
"I see the effort you're putting into this," she said, her voice dropping to a practiced seductive tone. "I'll see you soon, and you'll see the effort I put in on your cock."
The words were empty, transactional. A currency she'd learned to spend when necessary.
"Drop the tease act," Erik replied, his voice hardening. "I'll buy the family crisis story, and for now... I'll be cool, but you best not take it for granted."
Madison grinned, but the expression didn't reach her eyes. Victory, however small, was still victory.
"I've been walking so long—" she started, then turned to look back down the road. "I can't even see my..."
The words died in her throat. A distance down the road, Faith's car approached, the familiar shape growing larger with each passing second.
Madison felt a surge of adrenaline cut through her high.
"Oh, God!"
She dropped the can with clumsy, panicked hands and kicked it off the road. It tumbled into the ditch, landing among dried weeds where it glinted accusingly in the sunlight.
"What's up?" Erik's voice seemed to come from another dimension.
"I gotta go."
Madison fumbled to put her phone away, looking around wildly as if a hiding place might materialize from the barren landscape. She retrieved a perfume bottle and sprayed herself liberally, the artificial floral scent momentarily overwhelming the smell of smoke.
"Like there's anywhere to go!" she muttered, a note of hysteria creeping into her voice.
Erik's voice, muffled now from inside her pocket, continued: "Mad? Don't hang up on me!"
A metallic rattling grew louder as Faith's car approached. Madison quickened her pace, as if additional speed might somehow render her invisible to the very person who had raised her, who knew her every gesture and expression.
"Damn. Damn. Damn."
Madison shoved the perfume bottle into her pocket and rummaged around, fingers seeking anything that might serve as a distraction or alibi.
Erik's voice continued from the fabric prison of her pocket: "Madison! I'm so done with—"
The driver's side door of Faith's car was slightly open and intermittently rattled—a detail Madison registered with the hyperawareness of the guilty. The car pulled up behind her and matched her exact pace, like a predator stalking prey.
Two short honks. Madison's eyes remained fixed on the ground as she walked.
A longer, more insistent honk followed. The driver's side of the car rolled alongside Madison. The window creaked down with painful slowness, revealing Faith behind the wheel. Madison could feel her mother's gaze like a physical weight.
"Madison," Faith said, her voice deceptively neutral.
"What?" Madison didn't look up.
"Are you okay?"
Madison scratched at the scab on her arm, a nervous habit that left tiny crescents of blood under her fingernails. She never noticed she was doing it until it was too late, until the skin was already broken and weeping.
"Yeah, just peachy." She forced a wide smile, a grotesque parody of happiness that stretched her face unnaturally.
Faith's expression didn't change. "And the Oscar goes to..." She mimicked a crowd's cheer, the sound devoid of any actual mirth.
Madison kept her pace steady, neither slowing nor acknowledging the mockery.
"I meant, is your ear hurt?" Faith continued. "As I was driving up, I noticed you were messing with it."
Madison's hand moved reflexively to her ear, fingers probing the shell of cartilage as if to verify its existence. Her mind raced through possible explanations.
"Oh. No... I thought I felt a bug."
The lie was simple, plausible. Faith seemed to consider it for a moment.
"I'll give you a ride. Get in."
"No, thank you." Madison infused the polite words with venom. "I've had enough harassment for today."
"Stop being so dramatic," Faith said, her patience visibly thinning. "It's not like I beat you..." A pause, then with calculated lightness: "But I will if you don't get into this car."
Faith smirked, the expression a challenge. Madison recognized the tactic—humor as disguise for threat, threat disguised as humor. The perfect construction: if Madison objected, she was being too sensitive; if she didn't, she was accepting the underlying truth.
"There are all kinds of abuse, not just physical," Madison said, the words practiced, memorized from late-night internet research. "And you know what? Stop labeling me as a bad person just because I'm upset!"
"Come on now!?" Faith's voice rose in pitch. "I don't abuse you or think you're a bad person. Lord knows I'm looking out for your best interests. The path you're on, it's one of negativity and shame. You're opening the door and letting Satan into our house."
Madison continued walking, each step a small rebellion. Faith's invocation of Satan might have been laughable if Madison hadn't grown up with such talk. In Faith's worldview, teenage rebellion wasn't just disobedience—it was spiritual warfare.
"Lord Almighty, get in the car, Maddy. Now!"
Faith's final command hung in the air between them. Madison kept walking, but she already knew how this confrontation would end. In the vast emptiness of the Great Plains, with nowhere to hide and nowhere to run, escape was merely an illusion.