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A little background, very important :)

Leaves brushed against my face as I ran through the woods. My little plaid dress kept catching on the leafy twigs that outstretched towards me. Raindrops that collected in little pockets in the brush slapped my face, but it was refreshing in a way. I heard my brother behind me, but his voice gradually became more distant. I just laughed, chanting “you can’t catch me!” over and over again to urge him on. His response would be a laugh or a retort along the lines of “yes I can!”. Soon, however, I only heard the sounds of the forest.

I turned around, seeing only green leaves and graying-brown bark behind me. While it was beautiful, I also started to panic. Everywhere I went I only found more trees, more bushes, more indecipherable plants. I started hyperventilating, freaking out. I was running in circles, trying to escape the woodsy labyrinth that I thought would imprison me forever. “Sam!” I’d yell, but I’d only get a rustle in the branches around me or a strange bird call in return. Horrifying yet childish thoughts plagued my mind, things like me becoming a monkey and having to live in the trees, that Mommy and Daddy would never find me and they would just buy a new daughter to replace me.

As I ran, following natural foot trails left by the local animal population, I stumbled into a web, it’s sticky string wrapping over my face, suffocating me. I screamed and danced around, trying to pry the strings off of my cheeks and pick them out of my hair. During this ordeal, I failed to notice the heavy footsteps behind me, though I did feel a slight shift in the air. When I could open my eyes again, I felt something or behind me. I took a deep breath and whipped myself around, expecting a deer or even a bear. The sight of a man, especially a man like this, greatly surprised me. I screamed once again, but could not force myself to look away. He had a wrinkly face that sprouted bushy peppered eyebrows and an equally bushy beard, that had more white than gray. His clothes were tattered, as though he’d lived in the woods his entire life.

“Hey!” he grunted at me. “Are you Priscilla White?” His tone scared me, and the fact that he knew my name was even more haunting. Rather than answer him, I decided to run. I darted through the trees, not focusing on my intended endpoint, but just getting away from this stranger. I ran and ran, pushing my muscles to the limit, but his leaping footsteps were getting closer and closer with every stride he made. Finding no other option, I cut a corner of dense growth and into a tree that divided itself into two trunks. I climbed up the trunk that leaned more to the right, scooting myself upwards, scraping my hands and knees on the rough bark. Soon I was nearly twelve or so feet up, looking down at the trail.

My breathing was loud and heavy, so I put a shaky hand over my mouth to make it less audible. I could hear the ogre of a man approaching, and my heart felt as though it would pound out of my chest. As he walked under the very branch where I laid, I prayed that he wouldn’t look up. It seemed that God heard me, and he kept walking. I relaxed a little, and sighed in relief. But then I heard him approaching once more, this time staring directly at the ground. He stopped right below me, and before our eyes could meet I shut mine in terror.

I felt his gaze upon me, and I refused to open my eyes because I knew that they would meet. I took the moment to think about strangers I have encountered before. There were none. Everyone I knew now I had met when I was born. The closest thing to a stranger I had ever met was a character in a book. Mommy told me stories about people I’ve never met, but they weren’t true, just like the books.

Now here he was, a real, live stranger, and he wanted to get me. I heard him jumping, his large frame continuously crashing into the ground while faint grunts escaped his lips. I opened my mouth to scream but I couldn’t hear a sound. I could make out the crunching of leaves underneath his feet and his faint grunts from the effort he was making. After what seemed like a century I felt rough fingertips graze my arm, and my eyes shot open in surprise. I wish they hadn’t. His face was red, and was starting to sweat. The only other red face I’d seen was daddy’s when I opened all of his important letters and drew pictures on them for him. He yelled at me. I cried.

This man’s eyes weren’t angry though. They were crazy. And determined. He was determined to get me, possibly even kill me. I just tried to pull myself back as far away from him as possible, and hoped that daddy would come and get me.

I never really thought about Sam. It was pretty selfish of me to leave him alone in the woods. He was only five, and I was seven. I was big sister, and I was supposed to protect him, to lead him. Daddy told me so. But I never even thought of him, not once. I never asked him if he saw the man, either. Or what it was like to be alone.

I heard daddy’s voice, but I couldn’t make out what he said. The man jumped higher than should have been possible for someone of his size. His fingers coiled around my arm, and before I could regain my grip I was falling. I shut my eyes again from fear, but I could imagine seeing the branch I was on get smaller, the twirling leaves and other twigs all swirling around as I plundered down. Though my imagination said otherwise, I really landed on my back, not my belly. My one arm felt squished like Jell-O, and my face stung. I expected grizzly hands to pick me up and carry me off, but instead I just heard him run. As leaves to my left crunched quieter and quieter, the crunching to my right increased in volume. I didn’t cry when I fell, or when he picked me up, but when I looked into his eyes and knew that he saved me I started to bawl. Daddy told me it was okay, that I was going to be okay. I don’t think he knew that I wasn’t crying because I was scared; I cried because I thought he was disappointed in me. So I cried and cried, and he carried me back home. I cried to the leaves, and the dew, and the grayish-brown bark of all the twisted trees. He carried me through the brush and overgrowth of plants. He opened the back gate that me and Sam thoughtlessly climbed over, and shut and locked it behind him. I remember the next day going outside to find guards standing there.

We went inside, and Sam was there crying too. He ran up to me and cried my name, so I cried his in response. Daddy didn’t say anything. He did put me in a chair at the table, and Dr. Juniper was there waiting for me. He had sad eyes that made me want to cry even more, but his voice was happy and encouraged me to stop. He said hello. I said hello back. He picked rocks and twigs out of the left side of my face, and told me that my arm was broken. I said that it felt like Jell-O. He made a joke.

“Well you broke your left arm, but you’re a righty, so it doesn’t even matter!”

I didn’t really get it. I don’t think Daddy did either, because he still didn’t say anything. I laughed though because I didn’t want Dr. Juniper to be sad.

While he was mixing plaster for my cast, Mommy was mixing cookie dough. I smelled cookies that were fresh, and the oven dinged just as the plaster was ready. They were M&M, my favorite. She brought them out to me and Sam, and I was happy. I ate two with my right hand, because my right arm was fine.