Rosalind Read Online Free PDF Page A

over and found it—the picture of the woman with the bright yellow dress. She crumpled it in her hands and made her way back to the doorway. The flames had now taken hold of the most of the hallway, and she knew from now on that anything else she left here would be lost forever. She didn't care, she had everything that ever meant anything to her.
    She jumped back down onto the ground, this time, rolling on her side to save her ankle. The fire from the living room had broken through the roof of the trailer and the reflections of the flames danced across the metal lining of the suitcase. She hobbled back over to the red monstrosity, grabbed it, picked it up and hobbled as fast as she could away from the inferno.
    When she knew she was a safe distance away, she set the suitcase down and sat on it. The fire had reached about forty feet by the time she made it out, and all she could do was watch it burn. She didn't cry. She promised herself she wouldn't cry. Rosalind Stump was thirteen-years-old, but she was old enough to know that inside of that fiery hell, her mother, her brother, and her father were dead. She picked up the suitcase and started walking to State Road 60 which was less than a mile away.
     
    ***
    The suitcase grew heavier with each step. She was within sight of State Road 6 0, so she pressed on, trying her best to forget about the death of her family and the only life she'd ever known.
    What would she do now?
    Where would she go?
    Since she had never attended school, her education on the matters of money were non-existent, but she sensed that the twenty-three dollars her mother had left her in the suitcase wouldn't get her too far . Her blistering heels irritated her, but that wasn't the worst of her problems. She had run from the burning trailer without a jacket. She shivered, but mostly from the thought that she was now completely alone.
    The road was as dark as the trip there. She looked in both directions , but saw no headlights from either direction. She flipped open the suitcase to look for something—anything—to cover her exposed arms. To her relief, her mother had packed her a small jacket, so she put it on and closed the suitcase. The blisters worsened. Sighing with relief, she unlatched the back of her shiny, black shoes and pushed them off. The cold weather didn't seem to bother her for ten minutes or so, but the cold numbed her feet, so she opened the suitcase and looked for a pair of socks. She didn't find any, but she did find six pairs of panties and some hose that had several runs in them. She pulled the hose from the suitcase and slipped them on. Little comfort from the cold, the panty hose were still better than nothing.
    An owl nestled somewhere in the trees on the other side of State Road 6 0 began to hoot, and it scared her at first. But after a while, she began to enjoy his chatter, so she started hooting back. For the next ten minutes they traded calls but then, when the owl finally decided that Rosalind was too big to eat, his cooing stopped and Rosalind heard the flittering of wings trail off into the woods in search of dinner. Rosalind knew about things like that. In this world there were predators and there was prey, but she never knew that she was the latter. She never knew that what her father had been doing was wrong, really. There was something off about it, sure. But she had only ever known what her parents taught her and her mother's neglect left her dependent on her father's good intentions, of which there were none. She folded her arms and hooted once more, but there was no answer.
    Her neck was getting cold. Her jacket, which was a size too small, didn't have a hood. She carefully pulled the yarn from each oily, ratted ponytail and let her hair over her shoulders and neck. She felt little comfort from it.
    Rosalind wasn't sure exactly when she nodded off, and even less sure how she could have done it without falling off of the suitcas e, but she had, and the beat-up 1939