Highway 1, Past Hope

SPRING 2025, SHORT STORY, 3400 WORDS

Layla rises like a breath in winter from the hollow beneath the black cottonwoods beside the river, shrugging off the blanket of dirt and leaves and centipedes she slept beneath. She should dissipate. She should waver and dissolve. She should ascend and alight. Instead, she starts gathering her bones.

Most of them are still in the hollow where he put her (clavicle, scapula, sternum). Some are scattered nearby, gnawed and cracked by teeth, beaks, claws (femur, tibia, humerus). A few are missing (rib, coccyx, metacarpals). The river has risen and receded many times since he left her here, its waters riffling through sediment and gravel, washing parts of her downstream, carrying them through the Fraser Canyon, underneath the bridges, past Surrey, New Westminster, and Richmond, maybe as far as the ocean. That’s all right. What matters is that she’s awake.

While Layla slept, dreams crawled and burrowed through her slumber, same as the worms and maggots burrowed through her flesh. Mostly, she dreamt about him. The smell of stale beer and pine air-freshener in his car. The smell of cigarettes and sweat. The taste of blood in her mouth. The way he held her. The way he held her down.

Layla knows only one thing could have stirred her from her sleep: he’s back, and he is close.

She fits her bones together as best she can. And if some of the bones aren’t exactly hers, if some of them are crow remnants, if there’s an old bear skull beneath an alder she can use instead of her own shattered cranium, if there’s a dog’s sacral vertebra to replace what the coyotes took, no one’s going to say anything about that. After all, the world is full of bones, forgotten, left behind, free for the taking.

By the time Layla is able to walk, the sun has almost gone down. Rocks and gravel crunch beneath her tarsals as she stalks away from the river. Crows caw as she passes, and a part of her, the part that’s made of crow bones, wants to join them, longing for the warmth of feathers and company, the ritual of preening and roosting, but Layla has no time for the social niceties of birds.

She waves, and her finger bones rustle, feather-like, but she keeps going.

Penni’s car runs out of gas westbound on Highway 1 just past Hope. She’s been driving half a day from Kamloops after visiting her kids at her parents’ place, and now it’s evening and November and already dark at 5:00 p.m., the leaden clouds heavy with rain that isn’t falling, yet. She feels like an idiot. The gas gauge is right there and probably the clunky old Ford’s warning light has been shining for a while, but she took no notice and now she’s here, pulled over on the shoulder with the Fraser River and the railroad tracks to her right, the mountains to her left, and home two hours ahead.

Joey’s been texting her since Friday, asking why the fuck she left when he told her not to go, asking when she’ll be back, and she hasn’t replied because she doesn’t want to get into it with him on the phone, but after a weekend of looking at her kids and pretending not to argue with her parents, she’s too tired to deal with this shit. She texts Joey back and says that maybe she should get out and walk to a gas station or something. Hope isn’t too far away after all. Or maybe she’ll call a tow truck though she really can’t afford it this month, what with the trip and all, or maybe she should just hitchhike the rest of the way to Surrey. Sure as shit she can’t wait for the cops to pull over and try to help, not with an expired license and no insurance on the car. Joey texts back and asks her where she is, tells her to stay put, says he’ll come get her. “Sit tight,” he says.

He doesn’t type “you dumb bitch,” but it’s there, spelled out between the lines.

Penni knows she should stay in the car and wait for him, but she doesn’t. She gets out in the weeds by the roadside, cold hands deep in her jacket pockets, shoulders drawn up against the wind. Highway 1 is dark and mostly empty, just a few stray cars and semis roaring by, headed for Vancouver and the suburbs, or eastbound for the Coquihalla and the interior. The air is cold and smells like frost, her breath wavering in the dark. There’s a smell in that cold air, beneath the frost, like dirt and wet leaves, like something rough and musty, dead or dying, threaded into the gathering darkness beneath.

A semitruck passes by so close it almost knocks Penni over, but after that the night goes silent, as if the rest of the world has receded and left her all alone. In that silence she hears the rustle of small lives moving through the blackberry brambles, hears the river whispering.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket. Maybe it’s her parents or the kids, checking if she got home okay. Maybe it’s Joey. She doesn’t care anymore. It’s too much, all of it. Them, her, him. Everything is too heavy to carry. The weight of her parents, of leaving her kids with them. The weight of knowing they’ve always been better off without her. The weight of Joey coming to get her, of knowing that she’ll go home with him, again, no matter how foul his mood is by the time he gets here. It would be so much easier, wouldn’t it, to shed all that weight, to go down to the river, and let the water carry her.

Penni opens the car door and puts her phone on the passenger seat. She takes a step into the bracken. The road is already far away.

Layla finds the new girl he brought to the river beneath a thin spread of leaves a ways downstream from the black cottonwoods. He isn’t there. She was too slow, gathering her bones, and he’s already been and gone, already did what he came here for. The girl’s makeup is smudged, just like Layla’s was the last time she had a face, and what’s left of the girl’s warmth is seeping into gravel and dirt. One part of Layla, the part of her that’s a dog’s vertebra, wants to stay and sniff the girl’s hair and clothes, wants to nudge her with nose and paws, but Layla has no time for the rituals of dogs, no time to linger. Besides, what good would it do? Whenever this girl wakes, she’ll have to gather her bones and find her own way out of here.

Layla isn’t fast anymore, not like she used to be back when she could run faster than anyone else at school, but she increases her pace, striding up the steep slope to the wilting grass and flowers beside the roadway. Once she reaches the highway, the smell of asphalt and diesel and roadkill bring back more memories. She remembers a bar, her body steaming with sweat on the cramped dance floor, the music playing loud. That song she liked. The one she liked to dance to with her best friend. Arms in the air, eyes closed, the bass and drums a heartbeat, keeping her alive while they sang along, together. Too loud, off-key, perfect.

Layla remembers the rasp and rattle of her last breath. She remembers the way he put his hands on her. The way he put himself inside her.

A drift of rain slides down the mountainside as Layla lopes along the highway and in the glow from the passing headlights, she glistens. She whispers as she goes, her voice nothing like it used to be, her brassy girl’s voice turned into the grinding, dry sound of wind through bones and teeth. She whispers the last words she remembers hearing and speaking: don’t hurt me leave me alone, fuck you fuck you fuck you no no no.

It’s a rough go for Penni, getting to the river. Beneath the dense underbrush the slope from the highway gives too easily beneath her runners, and there are rocks and pits and chunks of garbage hidden beneath the dead leaves and grass. Penni falls and scratches up her hands and knees. Her pants and shoes are soaked through by the time she crosses the train tracks and reaches the water.

In the deepening night, the river keeps its own light, a faint and shivering reflection of the cloudy night sky mirrored and rippling in dark water, ever moving, ever whispering. Penni crouches, dips her hand in the stream. It’s cold. Colder than the darkness. Stronger too. Perhaps strong enough to carry her. She’s been crying all day, ever since she left her parents’ house, but she isn’t crying anymore. The water moves past on its way to the coast and the ocean and all the other worlds beyond, places she has never seen and can never reach, and she just wants to find out what it’s like to float for a while. To shed everything. To weigh nothing at all.

She doesn’t see the man until she steps into the water.

He is standing at the river’s edge downstream, a looming silhouette without face or features. She watches as he crouches, sits down on his haunches, hands moving in the water as if he’s washing them, rinsing them clean in the current. In the dark, it’s hard to gauge how far away he is, but Penni is close enough to hear him breathe. She can smell him too, and it’s an all-too-familiar scent. Old sweat and stale beer. Cigarettes and booze.

Blood.

Penni doesn’t know why she does what she does next. Maybe it’s the shock of his presence, or maybe it’s because she’s just a fucking mess, but she blurts out a name, says it out loud, says, Joey?, even though she knows it can’t be him. Her voice sounds brittle in the darkness, and the river’s murmur is almost strong enough to cover it. Almost.

Even before the man turns, Penni knows she ought to run, knows it’s too late, too, that there’s nowhere to go except into the water or into the darkness. A dead end, either way.

Layla finds his SUV parked near a creek that hurries down the mountainside, passing underneath the highway through a cylinder of corrugated metal. It’s the same car as when he drove her to the cottonwoods, but with a new pine air-freshener dangling from the rearview mirror.

He isn’t there, but Layla knows he’s close. She could wait for him here, by the road, or inside his car if she wanted to, but every part of Layla—girl, bear, crow, dog—is impatient, every bone she gathered is cracking with intent and purpose as she follows his trail along the creek, into the shadows, toward the river.

When the man turns toward Penni, he seems to grow larger, his shadowy shape bleeding into the night. Backing away, Penni feels the shallow current move around her ankles, her shoes sinking deeper into the loose sediment and smooth pebbles the river has gathered at its edges. The man straightens his back as he turns, as he sees her. Maybe he says something. Maybe she says, “my boyfriend’s coming to get me,” a useless incantation at the best of times, but especially in a place like this. Maybe he takes a step closer. Maybe he’s coming for her, fast and heavy. Maybe there’s something in his hand now, metal, edge, sharp, maybe it’s a knife, maybe it was a knife he was cleaning in the water, or maybe it’s all just shadows and water, maybe the entire world is a hollow space to hold the shape of him, the shape of her, in the darkness, forever. Penni isn’t sure what she sees and then she sees nothing at all because something strong and fast knocks her off her feet from behind. She lands hard, flat on her back in the water, nothing to break her fall except spine and skull, and there is a shape in the water, rushing past her, a bear or dog, maybe, or something else her brain can’t make sense of. There’s a scream that might be hers or might be someone else’s and then she’s gone, under water, under the rocks, under the surface of the world.

When Layla first awoke, she couldn’t name the feeling that stirred her from her sleep. It was like the tip of a knife, like steel jiggling through skin and flesh, ever closer to the marrow, the warmth of it gushing gushing gushing like blood, if she’d still had flesh to pierce and blood to spill.

Layla knows the name of the feeling that overcomes her when she finds him by the river, and the name of that feeling is joy.

The last time they were together, she didn’t understand what he wanted. Now, she knows. Now, she can show him all the things he showed her, can do all the things he likes to do. Tearing down the slope, knocking aside branches and shadows, splashing through the water, she doesn’t stop until she’s close enough to touch him. For the glimmer of a second, she stops and pulls herself together, her bones rattling and clacking, rustling and chittering as she rises to her full height, facing him.

That part of Layla that is a bear’s skull, with a bear’s teeth and jaws, roars. It roars the words he said to her back at him, all the words Layla dreamt of since he left her beneath the cottonwoods. Shut up shut up shut your fucking face I’ll kill you I’ll fucking kill you. Bitch do you like it bitch. And then she does what she has been longing for, dreaming of, she does to him what he did to her, all those things he likes, all those things he wants, she puts herself inside him, the way he likes to do, her bones and teeth cutting through him, into him, ripping him open. She puts herself inside him, pushing herself into the holes and hollows of his body, and the skull of a bear that is Layla’s skull now, keeps roaring the words he said, the words he hissed into her ear as she bled out, and she knows he loves it because he screams and screams as she puts her hands on him, as she puts her hands inside him, dislodging his bones and organs, taking him apart, and he must like it, but then he stops screaming and now he’s quiet and now he’s gone.

The river takes what’s left of him and washes Layla clean. It washes away the pieces clinging to her phalanges and metacarpals, to her mandible and manubrium. The river flows into her and through her and keeps on going to the ocean. That’s all right. She’s still here.

Layla is still half-submerged in the river’s whirlpools and eddies when she sees the woman in the water. She is face-down, sinking, brown hair floating in the current. Layla grabs hold of her, turns her over in the water, and all the parts of Layla that was a girl, all those parts of her that liked to sing too loud, off-key, with a best friend who couldn’t help her in the end, all those parts of Layla know exactly what to do.

Penni wakes near the top of the slope by the highway, her soaking-wet jacket and jeans tangled in blackberry brambles. She is freezing cold, teeth chattering, her throat and chest aching like she’s been puking her guts out, and her head hurts like a motherfucker. Probing her skull with numb fingers she finds a lump behind her ear, maybe a cut or fracture, and it wouldn’t be the first time someone cracked her skull, but at least she can move, at least she can stand.

Her eyes aren’t working properly, her vision’s muddled from river water or tears or maybe from passing out. The man she saw by the river is gone, and whatever knocked her down is gone too. Somehow she got herself out of the water, across the train tracks, and up the slope. She doesn’t know how. It’s all a muddle of cold and darkness, but the car is where she left it, pulled over on the shoulder, and behind it, lit up from inside, Joey’s car.

Even though her vision is still gauzy, she sees Joey throw his car door open and stride toward her. She knows that gait, that swing of the arms, that tilt of his head, knows what it means, knows what’s coming even before he grabs her arm and smacks her in the face. Open hand, not the fist at least. The pain of it, layered on top of all the other pain in her body, barely registers, but she stumbles to her knees before he hauls her up and drags her to his car.

She isn’t sure if he hits her again before she gets into her seat, and she might have tried to tell him what happened, might have asked him if he saw the man with the knife or maybe he didn’t have a knife at all, and maybe there was a dog or a bear, but there is no space for her words right now because Joey is shouting at her, all the usual things he says when he’s disappointed in her.

As they drive away, leaving her car stranded on the roadside because Joey doesn’t have time for this fucking bullshit right now, Penni puts her hand in her pocket, looking for her phone. It isn’t there because it’s where she left it, on the seat of her car, maybe still buzzing, the kids wondering where she is, if she made it home, but what would she say if she could answer? What would she tell them this time? Penni thinks about them, on the porch, watching her drive away. She didn’t want to leave them. She didn’t want to come back here. Why did she?

The phone isn’t there, but tucked into the pocket’s lining Penni finds something else. A small, uneven object. To her fingers, it feels at first like a pebble from the river, but when she looks at it in the glow from the dashboard, as her fingers travel over its ridges and divots, she realizes it’s a small piece of bone.

Penni closes her eyes and lets her fingers worry at the bone while Joey keeps shouting at her. There’s a smell in the car, or maybe the smell is coming from her, a smell of leaves and dirt and water, and she might have said something about it, but Joey isn’t listening and maybe it doesn’t matter. She tastes blood in her mouth, feels the bruises coming where he grabbed her, and something stirs inside her, then, a feeling she can’t name, not yet. But it’s there, like the tip of a knife, like steel jiggling through skin and flesh, gushing gushing gushing like blood.

It’s the dog part of Layla, that single sacral vertebra, that makes her get into the car while the man is busy shouting. The dog remembers car rides and sticking his head out the window and Layla, well, she doesn’t mind a car ride, not anymore. The crow and bear parts of her would rather have stayed by the river, beneath the trees, but they can wait. Layla can always find her way back to the canyon, to the river, to the black cottonwoods.

She could dissipate. She could waver and dissolve. She could ascend and alight. Instead, her bones are tucked in neatly on the floor behind the passenger seat while the man drives down the highway. Layla likes to listen to him. She wants to know the kinds of things he likes to say, the kinds of things he likes to do. She wants to know everything about him.

Gathering herself together on the car floor, Layla flexes her right hand, bones rustling quietly like wings, like crows coming home to roost. There’s a missing distal phalanx on that hand, but that’s all right. The world is full of bones, forgotten, left behind, free for the taking. Enough for Layla. Enough for anyone else who might stir in her wake.

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