Billie and the Russian Beast - Theodora Taylor Page 0,46

Lost and stranded.

I look back to the quiet road. I know I passed a small town in the other direction. Maybe about ten to fifteen miles back. But after nearly a full day of driving and hours of walking, I don’t have it in me to hike that far.

I shift back to the sign. Ominous and forbidding. But at this point, I can’t see any other choice. The sun’s almost fully set, and I have no idea where my car is.

Teeth chattering against the freezing night wind, I make my way down the dirt road that the sign declared forbidden.

The sun sets behind me, and the moon rises in front of me as I walk down a path just wide enough for a car. But relief fills me when I finally reach a cabin. Relief and apprehension…

The house isn’t completely terrible; I admit after a few moments of observing it under the moonlight. It’s made of cute little logs and features a gabled front porch with a swing hanging down. It kind of has what I used to call cozy potential back when I would help my friends at Emory decorate their dorm rooms for free.

But other than those cute touches, everything else about the house is stark. Plain front door. No smoke coming out the chimney. No lights inviting weary travelers off the road. No sign whatsoever of who might live here.

The lack of personal effect combined with the cold Wisconsin night makes the cabin seem almost as ominous and forbidding as the sign at the end of its road.

But it’s not like I have a choice of places to spend the night.

Taking a deep breath, I walk up the three steps to the door and knock. My heart feels like it’s about to thunder straight out of my chest as I wait for whoever owns the cabin to come to the door.

But no answer.

Now my heart sinks. But I try again, this time knocking a little louder.

Still no answer.

I try the knob. Of course, it’s locked.

This is probably somebody’s summer vacation cabin. And unlike me, who left her car unlocked at the side of the road with the keys still inside it, most people aren’t idiots.

This can’t be happening. I barely made it through last night when I was sleeping in my car with a blanket. There’s no way I’ll survive a night in the woods. With whatever animals live out here in the middle of nowhere.

But the slim windows on either side of the door look old. So maybe…

I unzip my hoodie and wrap it around my wrist. Then, with a silent apology to whoever owns this place, I punch my fist through the left side window. It shatters on the first hit. Thank goodness. I carefully stick an arm through the now empty pane to unlock the door.

It’s a latch handle—another reason to send up some thanks. With just a little of maneuvering, I’m in.

I find a light switch on the wall, flip it on…and nothing.

This must really be a vacation cabin if the electricity’s turned off. I don’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. No electricity means no current occupants. But save for the shafts of moonlight shining through the windows, the cabin’s pitch black.

I’m not loving the thought of moving around this cabin in the complete dark, but the pinching hunger in my stomach reminds me to be brave. I have to find something to eat. For me and the life growing inside of me.

I touch my way across the room, knocking into what feels like big, heavy furniture and smooth wooden walls until I come to a swinging door.

Thankfully, the kitchen is smaller and brighter than the living room. I can easily make my way to the refrigerator with just the light streaming through its windows to guide me. And this time, I easily avoid the room’s primary piece of furniture, a circular round table. It has four chairs situated around it, so maybe this cabin belongs to a family.

It was always just me and my mom growing up in Atlanta, and most of my school friends were in the same single mom boat. But when I went to Emory, I’d met girls who did things like meet their families at vacation cabins on the weekends. Cabins that might have looked like this. Who knows, even though we were attending the same school, those nuclear family girls lived in a different world from me.

They weren’t former state beauty queens who had to