DEAR DIARY,
I wish I could say that writing this down is making me feel better, but it isn't. I already know these things happened, and describing them to someone else isn't making any of it go away. I'm sorry, and I'll keep doing it because I have to. I just wish this worked, is all.
I guess I left off just after I hid my dad's car and slept next to a state highway, so I'll pick up from there.
I think I woke up around noon, but I didn't know because I didn't have a watch. I hid right where I was, looking up and down the road for traffic. I figured I'd have to get a ride from someone, but I didn't really know how I was going to do it.
So I stuck out my thumb when I only saw one car coming, trying to turn my body so the driver couldn't see the blood that had caked all along my side, trying to catch a glimpse of the driver's mind so I would know whether to relax or to run and hide. It was an old man, maybe in his fifties, and he was thinking first about how he doesn't pick up hitchhikers and then about how strange I looked and then that he should call the police because I must have been in an accident.
He was reaching for his phone when I made him stop.
I made him stop, I made him get into the passenger seat, and I made him stay quiet while I drove for the next six hours and pulled into a little town. I made him give me his jacket, and I made him give me his money. And then I made him sleep in the passenger seat, while I went out and looked for a store I could get some shoes and some real clothes from.
And for a while, that was really all I would do, is steal a car or maybe just pick a driver and make them give me what I needed to get me to the next town. Sometimes I'd make a cashier give me all the money in her drawer, or ring up forty dollars' worth of groceries as four bucks instead. I didn't really have any plan in mind, I was just getting as far away from Denver and what I'd done as I could.
I read the papers and I knew that Dad had survived both the gun and the fire, and that he was in critical condition at the hospital. I didn't know how to feel about that. On the one hand, I was angry because he was still alive. On the other hand, ...well, I don't know. Back then I guess I was still thinking there was a chance everything could be fixed.
I kept moving. Then Dad's condition was upgraded, and suddenly the news stories were more about the daughter who'd tried to murder him with her mutant powers. It was also around this time that I noticed that when my side and my hip healed up, they left some really ugly scars behind.
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"I lost control of a passenger..." |
This is the part of the story that the FBI has a thick file on. They know more about where I was and when than I remember, I'm sure. Mostly what I remember are little things; getting stuck in Provo, Utah for two days due to flooded roads and having to force someone to rent a motel room for me, and the TV only had two channels. The smell of fresh bread and coffee at a little church in Wyoming. A lady in a pickup truck who didn't recognize me when I hitched a ride with her all the way to Phoenix, and gave me a hundred dollars to go see a doctor because I "looked like I was coming down with something."
There are a few big things I remember, too. I stole a car from an apartment complex in New Mexico, fell asleep while driving, and rammed it straight into a ditch. I lost control over a passenger while pulling into a gas station: he punched me over and over until I could get my seatbelt off and crawl out of the car, then he slid behind the wheel and ran me over. Those things healed fast, but like the time Dad shot me, they left some pretty bad scars.
I really didn't realize how bad I was starting to look until I tried to go into a mall in Bakersfield, and this old woman looked right at me and fainted. I only got a brief glimpse of what she was thinking, but it was enough to make me run out into the parking lot and look at myself in someone's side mirror. I was 17 by then, and at some point in that year my eyes had filmed over so they looked like they do today. My skin was looking pretty bad, too. It scared me, almost as much as what happened with Dad scared me. Almost as much as that old woman was scared when she saw me.
That sort of thing, people looking at me and freaking out, just kept happening more and more. It got to the point where I just had to make people do anything I needed done, because I couldn't go shopping or take a bus or talk to anyone without everyone realizing what I was and calling the cops.
And around that time I stopped settling for taking just what I needed, and I started taking what I wanted instead. I'd pick rich-looking houses, break in, and steal things or make them let me stay there. I'd take cars because I liked them, not just because I needed some way of driving to another city. I know that was wrong, but I did it anyway. I don't know why, it was just the way I was feeling. Like if I couldn't fit in with normal people, if Dad wanted to kill me, if I had to look like this, then maybe I wasn't going to ever get to have anything unless I took it for myself. I know that's not how people are supposed to act, and I guess I knew that then, too, but it wasn't something I really gave myself any time to think about.
I hope that's the kind of insight you're looking for, dear diary, or Doctor Preston, or whoever it is who's reading this. I don't really know why I did anything. I didn't think about it, because I kind of wanted it to just keep happening because I didn't know what else I was going to do. I guess that's not much of an excuse.