Callie slammed the car door shut, placed the key in the ignition, and zoomed off at 45 miles per hour in a 20 miles per hour zone. The noon sun was shining directly above the small car, and had Callie been outside she would have quickly felt sweat drip down her pale forehead, and smelled the earth, frogs, and manure that make up the Florida swamps.

But Callie was not outside. Callie was sitting on the ripped leather seat of her stolen and rusted car, windows shut and air conditioner on full blast. She turned up the radio, drowning out any chance of hearing a car pass by—that is in the event one would even drive on this unwell known road. Her mahogany hair stuck to her wet cheeks and her vision was soon blurred as saltwater welled up in her mint colored eyes. Callie gripped the wheel tighter, hoping that just maybe despite her inability to see clearly she would be able to control the vehicle.

Callie’s tears dried when the sun seemed to be beating down more than usual so that she felt its heat through the car, and she brought the car to an immediate halt. This is what she'd been waiting for. Tap tap tap. The pitter patter of the first drops of rain broke the humidity and landed on her car. The sprinkle quickly turned into giant splatters mirroring the war zone of the city she once called home.

Oh no she could never go back there. The city was too perfect. The grey, rectangular buildings, all 240 feet, stood tall over the people. And the trees, lush yet plastic looking, were all 15 feet tall. Her caretakers—the people every child is given to from birth—worked in one of the many grey buildings. Jim and Lucy, as Callie called them, woke up at six A.M. every morning, and went to bed at eight P.M. sharp. Callie was supposed to do the same, and as she listened to the rain fall on her car she remembered a glimpse from when she was four years old. She'd been staring out into the city lights from the living room of Jim and Lucy's third floor apartment well past eight o’clock. White flakes were falling and Callie watched in awe as the flakes stuck to the fire escape, fusing with one another into a cohesive sheet of cold yet soft snow. Creak! Someone pulled down the ladder of the fire escape. Crunch! Heavy stomps muddied the snow. And then, the ghostly male face was right there against the window, screaming at the four year old girl, “Callie let me in you fool let me in! You don't belong here. They don't know you, they don't know your blood!” Callie was about to scream when she saw a Dalmatian puppy next to the man, and the terrified look in its eyes. Slowly Callie opened the window and the man let out a cackle as he pointed a gun at Callie's head. “You don't belong here Callie. You don't belong anywhere.”

BANG!

The man collapsed on the fire escape and the Dalmatian puppy shot off after whimpering. Jim held a gun in his hand and soon set to work removing the dead man’s body. She'd just almost been killed, and watched a stranger be killed, and all Lucy had the nerve to say was, “this is why we don't stay up past eight P.M.” A simple hug would have been nice, but the job of a caretaker was to prepare the youth for society, not to comfort them. So Callie cried herself to sleep the night of the strange man in the window. She wasn't thinking of how his body went limp in the tiniest fraction of a second, and she most certainly wasn't thinking of how the white dog with black spots ran away into the cold night. Instead she thought about the man’s words, and shivered at the idea they have some truth.

Fourteen years later, Callie realized the man was right, at least partially. Callie didn't belong there, trapped in an apartment worrying about the dangers of life after eight. Callie didn't belong with Jim and Lucy, whose vacant expressions sometimes appeared happy because that is how the government tells them to act as caretakers. But Callie did belong right where she was standing, in the middle of a road in what she overheard the radio shout as turning into a hurricane. She must’ve stood there an hour, just letting her fair skin absorb the downpour. A warm wind surrounded Callie from all angles, and she grinned at the insanity of it all. For eighteen years she had been mimicking the lives of all other people her age, just as all the caretakers directed them too. To suddenly be all alone and out in the open made her release a nervous chortle that only a ridiculous plan can foment.

Callie waited until about one hour before sunset. She then popped the trunk of the car and picked up the green sheet, along with the heavy items it contained. Callie carried it into the depths of the swamp, which now held water up to the middle of her thigh. When Callie found a relatively dry spot she carefully placed down what she had been holding. She unwrapped just one part of the sheet so as to get the shovel. She dug and dug and dug and dug as it rained and rained and rained and rained. For every heap of dirt Callie scooped, an equal amount of water seemed to fill the new divot in a matter of seconds. After 45 minutes of strenuous work, the hole was big enough. Callie gently placed the sheet into the hole and began to throw the dirt onto it, ditching the shovel for her bare hands. A smile swept across Callie’s face as she realized part one of her plan was almost complete. She skipped back to her car, too happy to notice the white paw with black spots that stuck out from the hole she had tried to cover up. She got into the car, turned the radio up, and sped off as the blood orange sky became all that she could see, while the supposed hurricane faded into a mist.