Growing up isn’t easy, especially when it’s in Bumfuck, Nebraska. Valentine was definitely your small, farming town stereotype: young men dressed like old men, farmer’s riding tractors into town; residents so well-versed in the town’s founding as if they were born knowing it. Any blander and John Hughes could have written it. It’s the kinda town that’s nice to drive through, but you’d never really think of moving there.

Growing up isn’t easy, especially when your father disappears suddenly. When you’re a 13 year-old girl and you don’t know why dad’s stopped coming home at night. When the only thing that makes something good is being able to tell him about it; but, since he’s not there, it’s not good. And every time you ask your mother where daddy is, she gets that look on her face and says In your heart, sweetest in that strange voice. She sounds different, not the strong, lively woman who raised you; a tired, almost sorry new person, whose voice is somehow coming through your strong, lively mother.

Then, she hugs you, kisses your forehead and goes back to tucking you in, setting the table for dinner, washing clothes or whatever she has to do to busy herself.

Growing up isn’t easy when you go to school and the kids tease you because you don’t have a father. For your mousy brown hair and your overall awkwardness. When your teacher constantly chastises you for drawing on textbooks rather than listen to her bullshit history lesson. She’s always trying to give you detention, arrange meetings with your mother. “Concerned” for your “development”.

It’s not as if you don’t like history, it’s just that A) it’s suspect to you and B) her make-up is so garish you can’t concentrate anyway. Her mouth is as red as a deep pool of blood, her mouth resembling a horrible gash falling and closing open.

A gash your father could have; laying in a ditch somewhere, ripped like a flimsy trash bag and spilling shiny, red garbage. Soaking the dirt and staining the grass.

Too many comic books and B-movies.

But, she needed something to take her mind away, numb its constant coursing. From this dusty town, those awful kids. Her father.

Eventually, they weren’t enough any more. It’s like when insects develop tolerances toward insecticide; you’ve got to find new ways of liquefying them. Then, she found her new way. She was tired of movies and wanted to move.

But, how? Runaway? No, that’s quitting. Besides, she’d never forgive herself if she broke her mother’s heart. The parts still intact, anyway.

She found a simple solution in drawing, creating characters to live through. Who, unlike her, could escape without obligations to anyone, truly live.

One day, she found her solution, a clearing she found in the forests just outside of town. The dirt was too hard to farm on and no animals worth hunting lived there. The sun was not too harsh under the trees and the grass was cool and soft, tickling almost. She’d lie on it staring into the clear blue above, losing track of time and consciousness. She’d wake up while the sky was still rusty, and race back home in time enough before her mother to open her bedroom door. Sometimes, she woke up a little after she’d fallen asleep and in her moments before cognizance think herself to be in heaven. Realizing she wasn’t, she’d wait a few minutes, hoping God would reach down and pluck her from earth.

But that was a selfish thought.

It was strange though, once in her post-sleep fog, through the cages of her eyelashes, she could’ve sworn to have seen a face hovering above her, almost entirely hidden in shade. After recovering, she bolted upright, searching frantically for the image. Heat bursts in her chest and spreads like fingers.

After racing home and pussy-footing into the bathroom, she splashes some water on her face. She gives a snapshot look at the mirror before wiping her face and notices something there that shouldn’t be. Right under her left eye, in tiny, tight scrawl reads the word: know and it’s smudging.

She inspects it, then hurriedly wipes it away, tries to dismiss it.

In class the next day, she turns the page as instructed to page 103. But this isn’t the lesson. Across the page in big, tight letters reads: I KNOW and on the next line YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE ALONE.

Fear materializes, ricochets, and amplifies in feedback.

I know