"You can't even remember the general location of a single payphone?"
"Uh... n-no?"
Jesse sighed, "Well, that's fine. We'll find one eventually. This place isn't that big. But I was kinda hoping that you'd remember after living here for... what was it? Fourteen years?"
"Y-yeah, I thought that too... but now th-that I'm actually here, I'm j-j-just drawing blanks..."
Why couldn't Elizabeth remember?
Sure, she had been avoiding the town for seven years. She avoided thinking about it, she avoided speaking about it, and she avoided going into it whenever they stopped at it, but, despite that, it had too big of an impact on her life to not be permanently burned into her brain.
She remembered it vividly, even if she didn't want to.
She remembered the small wood covered bridge that ran over the creek. The inside of it was completely covered in things that people had carved into it. Obscenities, quotes, people's names or initials...
On the day that she left, she carved her own initials into the bridge.
She felt that it'd be the only reminder to people that she existed within the town's borders at some point.
When she and Jesse passed through, Elizabeth rather easily spotted the markings in the sea of various others.
It was very close to one of the corners, and about level with her elbows.
'E.B.J'
'Oct. 1973 - 1986'
Looking back, it almost seemed like something that you'd put on a gravestone. Her name (sort of), alongside her date of birth and date of death.
Except she didn't die. Well, not in the literal sense, anyway.
There was the grocery store that still looked like it was stuck in the fifties. It was an off-white with rather large windows in the front, allowing a view of the black and white checkered floors and short shelves. The store's name was painted onto the front in red, using a rather basic sans serif font.
One night, her father had her go down to get him something. Nick and Gar happened to be there at the same time, purchasing six cartons of eggs.
They were probably intending to use them for something else, but, upon spotting the redhead leaving the store, decided to instead throw them at her instead.
She never did manage to get the egg out of her clothes...
There was the restaurant that her father owned. It was a small place with a dim, flickering, purple neon sign hanging above the door.
Or at least, there used to be a sign. It had been taken down. Evidently, the restaurant had closed down sometime after she left.
She didn't feel any type of way about it, really. She hardly ever visited it because her father didn't want her to embarrass him.
She did recall trying to wave at him once, just as she passed by the window, and he definitely saw her, but he ignored her.
"There's a phone." Jesse nodded towards the sidewalk that was opposite of them, where a hooded payphone stood somewhat crookedly next to a trash can.
They crossed the street, only to find that somebody had ripped the receiver straight off of the cord.
"Oh. Nevermind."
"F-figures."
There was a small little gas station on the corner. It was always rather sad looking. It only had two gas pumps and large tufts of grass poked out of the multiple cracks in the concrete.
One time, Elizabeth was outside and ran into Nick, who was in the middle of tripping some kid from her math class. She tried to walk away before he spotted her but wasn't quick enough.
He beat the shit out of her for what was probably the fifteenth time that month.
She managed to get away from him, though.
She ran over to that gas station and went around back to the bathrooms.
At some point, you would've had to ask for a key to get into in, but the lock broke quite a while ago. As a result, it was rather easy for her to throw the door open and hide inside.
It was completely empty inside. And it reeked of weed.
Elizabeth stood inside for a good fifteen minutes, trying to catch her breath and to force herself to stop coughing.
She stared at the busted lip and bloody nose that was reflected back at her in the grimy mirror.
She was angry back then.
She was angry at other people, but not as angry as she was at herself.
And she turned all of that anger inward, forcing it as deep down as it would go.
But in that moment, for some reason, she couldn't keep it in any longer.
She let out a painful scream, one that forced itself out before she could stop it, every single negative emotion she had ever felt bubbling out alongside it.
It sounded more like a wounded animal than a person, really.
She screamed, she pulled her own hair out, and she punched the flimsy mirror in front of her. A large number of cracks spread out across it like spiderwebs, distorting her reflection slightly.
Her knuckles bled and they eventually bruised, turning sickly shades of purple.
A couple of bits of glass fell into the sink.
After that, she figured that she ought to find a way to let off steam that was less intense...
"There's another phone way over there. You see it?"
"Y-yeah."
Jesse and Elizabeth picked up their pace.
They passed by the back of the two buildings that the redhead used to go in between during her walks home from school. A liquor store and a nameless building.
It seemed that, after all the years that the nameless building had been abandoned, it was finally being restored.
About ten or twelve construction workers were leaving, but one was turning around and heading back inside.
Elizabeth accidentally locked eyes with the guy.
She recognized the brown, almost reddish-brown eyes instantly.
The jet black hair, crooked nose, and strong jaw were familiar too.
Nick smiled at her in a way that was almost sinister, giving a small wave.
She quickly broke eye contact, instead choosing to look to her left, where Jesse should've been.
Should've been.
"Jesse?"
She wasn't there anymore.
"J-jesse?"
"'Xcuse me."
Elizabeth immediately flinched away at the unfamiliar voice. It was a bit on the deeper side with a slight huskiness clinging to it, and the tone didn't convey anything even slightly aggressive. But she still flinched.
She couldn't help but perceive everyone and everything as some sort of threat to her.
She always shrank away, putting up some sort of shield from whatever it was. Though they served as no actual form of protection, they made her feel like there was a barrier of some kind there, whether it was just her arms crossed in front of her chest, or her overlong bangs falling into her eyes after she had brushed them out of the way for the eightieth time.
Quickly stepping aside, Elizabeth spared a nervous glance at the individual.
They were a girl, maybe three or four years older than her with messy ginger hair and sharp gray eyes, eyes that seemed to unintentionally drill into hers when she caught their gaze for half a second.
The girl offered her a lopsided smile before pinning a flyer onto the pole that Elizabeth had been half leaning on moments before.
She looked up at the flyer that the girl had just pinned.
"Y-you work f-for a circus?" she blurted out.
"Yeah," she said.
Yet again, Elizabeth spoke without thinking.
"Are y-y-you guys looking for any kn-knife throwers?".
"Yeah, actually. Ours quit earlier today. You throw?"
Elizabeth nodded.
The girl reached into her pocket and pulled out what Elizabeth recognized as a pocket knife, holding it out towards her.
"Care to demonstrate your skills for me?"
