Lucy

She understood why the bus stop was so far away. It technically supported the tiny community of Blackstone. But surely Crossroads Convenience made more sense as a drop-off point.

“Our friggin’ staff nearly outnumbers that little shithole, anyway,” Lucy said between wheezy breaths.

She was young but hardly an athlete. This long walk, especially when she was running late for her shift, always made her arrival a breathy, sweaty affair. She could drive, of course, but then she’d also have to drive to school, and who had the gas money for that many trips?

Kat didn’t show up like that. She always had her makeup perfectly applied, shining hair perfectly fussed into place.

Maybe that’s what Tom wanted. Someone who had their shit together.

Kat wasn’t the bitch Lucy had assumed she was, but it still wasn’t fair. How could she compete with someone like that?

A gentle mist was rolling onto the street. A trickle of clouds emanated from the hidden spaces between the birch trees to her side. It was picturesque, almost magical, to watch. Still, Lucy only gawked for a moment before a concern outweighed the whimsy.

She had to be careful. What if a car couldn’t see her?

There were about five more minutes of highway between her and the convenience store. That was five minutes of potential collisions.

People got hit out here all the time. Mostly at night and in the early morning, but still…

Lucy crossed her arms, wrapping her zip-up sweater tight across her body. The shivering was mostly due to the cold.

Mist thickened into fog, and what started as an amusing trickle turned into a bank of cover that crossed the entire highway.

She just had to keep going straight and stay on the shoulder of the road.

But that wasn’t as easy as it should have been.

Maybe it was the speed walking, maybe it was the anxiety, but Lucy could feel it coming over her. She was becoming lightheaded.

It wasn’t like being drunk. She had recently experienced that for the first time while hanging out with her older cousins. No, this was airier, more natural somehow.

It felt like she was walking into a dream. Like her feet were lighter and her perspective more malleable.

The mist was no longer full of potential cars; it was something more liminal. A space connecting her current life with the one she could have.

The one she could have, if she could only be…

Reality snapped back into focus with a jolt. It was hard to tell, but it felt more like her feet finally touching the ground with the sudden return of gravity. She was back to her anxiety and her sweat and her jealousy.

Almost like nothing had happened.

She could see the convenience store, looming out of the forest like her own personal penitentiary.

The feeling was fading, and soon she’d lose it entirely.

But something was wrong.

She wasn’t on the shoulder of the road anymore.

The blaring horn behind her made her jump to the side just in time to see a car scream past, speeding down the highway away from her.

Lucy looked around to see she was in the middle of the street. More accurately, she was in the middle of the intersection. The very crossroads the store was named after.

Her heart was racing, but she didn’t move. Instead, she gathered what remained of the dreamlike state and held onto it. She pressed it together in her mind like wet sand in a clenched fist.

Lucy knew she should have been frightened. She’d felt things like this before and knew they were dangerous.

But right there, in the middle of the street, smiling like an idiot, Lucy knew what it felt like.

It felt like options.

It felt like power.