Cody's Come Home. Mary Sullivan

not a victim,” she muttered, when what she really wanted was to shout to the world, to scream at the monster with no face who had chased her here, “Never again.”

      I will never be a victim again.

      But, of course, she didn’t scream. She might be defiant, but she wasn’t stupid.

      A squirrel argued with her from a tree ten feet up the hill. Otherwise the woods were silent.

      She lay on her back, panting.

      Okay. Calm down, Aiyana. How bad is it? Take stock of your injuries.

      Why did her chest hurt so much? She touched herself with her good hand.

      Her camera had twisted around her neck in the fall and she’d landed directly on it, the lens jammed against her breast.

      She took if off and studied it. Her body had sustained damage, but not the camera. She placed it on top of her knapsack.

      Alone at the bottom of a mountain—okay, a very long hill—injured and stuck, she would have to pry herself loose and crawl back up. Tentatively, she sat up, but the motion torqued her leg and ankle awkwardly, increasing the pain by a quantum leap. She had to ignore the agony and get that foot unstuck. She had to do something. Dusk settled over the valley like a damp blanket. With it, a chill seeped into her bones. She wanted to be back up that hill and on her way home before darkness fell.

      No, that wasn’t true. What she really wanted was to call the police to send someone here to get her unstuck and to arrest whoever was chasing her.

      She reached for her phone, but her hand came up empty. What...? Where...? She distinctly remembered clutching it when she’d started her fall.

      Her heart sank. She must have lost it on the way down. Somewhere between here and the top of the ridge lay her only lifeline to the outside world.

      Panic clawed at her.

      You can cope, Ai. You’ve learned powerful lessons. You will do whatever needs to be done to survive. You’re strong.

      She would get herself out of here.

      Fury wrapped around her like a shawl, powerful and dark, and she cursed the man who’d put her here. Rage gave her strength.

      Reaching for the boulders trapping her foot, she pushed. She pulled. She prodded. They didn’t budge.

      Refusing to be beaten, she snagged a heavy branch and pulled it to her, then nudged the end between the soil and one of the rocks. She leaned her weight onto it with her good arm, prying the rock, straining until sweat bloomed on her forehead.

      “Nnnnggggg.” The boulder moved a fraction of an inch. Yes! Then the branch snapped.

      “Nooooo!” She cursed long and creatively. The squirrel scolded.

      “Be quiet,” she yelled, and threw the stump of the branch as far as she could. Angered beyond bearing, she cared less and less if that guy was still here. She needed this night settled, one way or another.

      Up on the ridge, the sun cast its last remaining rays over the treetops, almost horizontal now. In the valley below, dusk roared in with a vengeance, changing the light from mauve to purple to black too quickly.

      The damp mustiness of the woods around her was familiar in a threatening way. She’d been here before. Not in this ravine, but here in her fear-ravaged psyche.

      Get a grip, Ai. This won’t kill you.

      No, not in fact, but it felt like it would.

      She picked up a clod of earth and threw it with all of her strength, choking on her frustration.

      Retrieving a cotton handkerchief, she wiped her face. Sweat chilled her as the temperature dipped.

      She called for help, screaming for all she was worth. She waited. Silence mocked her. Whoever had been chasing her was gone. She was alone.

      “No panicking allowed, Aiyana. Take stock.”

      The squirrel complained again and Aiyana shot back, “I’m not talking to you.”

      She looked through her bag for every speck of extra clothing she had brought with her. She tried to get out of her jacket to put on her wool sweater, but her shoulder hurt too much.

      She’d have to use her good arm to lay the sweater over herself and tuck it around her sides as best she could.

      Done. Next she took stock of her provisions. One protein bar and half a bottle of water. She unwrapped the bar and bit off a small portion, chewing slowly, making it last. She ate only half of it and took only two sips of water.

      She lay back down on the undergrowth, studiously ignoring whatever creepy-crawlies might be hidden under the redolent leaf mold. It smelled of death. Maybe by October all the insects had gone into hibernation, or whatever they did for the winter.

      A nerd who loved science and all things natural, Aiyana’s stepmom, Emily, would know for sure, but she wasn’t here to advise Aiyana, or to help her.

      She hoped Emily came soon, or her dad. They knew where she’d gone this afternoon. They would search for her when she didn’t return.

      Her sister, Mika, would stay home with little Annie. At the thought of her daughter, every motherly instinct Aiyana possessed kicked in, glad that she hadn’t brought her with her today.

      What if Aiyana died here tonight? What would happen to Annie?

      Oh, cut the self-pity, Ai. You are not going to die. You are going to get out of this and go home to your daughter.

      Slashing her arms across the ground, she gathered leaf mold against and around her until she was covered with it. Gross, maybe, but it provided warmth even as the ground beneath her chilled her back. As best she could with her good arm, she shoved her pack underneath her to lift her away from the damp earth. A lumpy bed, sure, but not as cold.

      Darkness closed in around her. Creatures scurried. Her imagination bloomed and ran riot. The fear coursing through her veins was an old and too familiar enemy threatening to annihilate her common sense.

      She wouldn’t die here. She would survive. Memories were funny things, though, with willpower of their own, crawling into her bones along with the cold.

      She covered her face and breathed into her hands. She hummed a tuneless song. She counted backward from a hundred, by threes. Nothing helped. It was twelve years later, but the woods and the encroaching darkness brought back those desperate memories of her naive fifteen-year-old self.

      They flooded her, barreling past every dam and barrier she erected.

      “I don’t want to do this,” Aiyana said.

      “Can’t you feel what you do to me, princess?” A part of Justin’s anatomy jutted hard against her thigh.

      “Don’t call me princess.” Aiyana’s voice shook. “I don’t want you touching me there.”

      “You said you wanted to be my girlfriend.”

      “I do.”

      “This is what dudes and girls do, Aiyana.”

      “It’s too soon.” Cripes, this was only their first date and Justin hadn’t even taken her out for ice cream like he’d said he would. Instead, he’d brought her down here into the ravine.

      Some small creature moved on the other side of the tarp behind her head. Aiyana shivered.

      “Grow up.” Justin pulled his hand out of her pants with a hard flick, hurting her. She winced.

      “I can’t believe how ungrateful you are.” He downed the rest of the beer. How many beers made a boy drunk? She didn’t know. She scrambled to put distance between them.

      “I went to a lot of trouble to make this place for us.” Justin adjusted himself inside his pants. Justin’s place, his makeshift tent at the bottom