Fighting with Fire #2 ✔

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟐 - 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐨

I spent about two weeks longer in Bismarck, hanging around my motel, trying (and failing) to come up with a plan about what the hell to do about finding my pack.

Sure, I was glad that Storm got through to me — but she hadn't exactly given me much advice. Maybe the fact that she was being tortured was slightly distracting to her.

Sat at the edge of the bed, I stared at my phone in my hand, watching her contact like I was looking right at her.

Should I call her? Should I call her to tell her that Storm had finally got a message to me... Should I call her to tell her that the dreamcatcher she gave me had been blocking me off?

No, I decided; calling her would only complicate things further. If I couldn't even handle her name alone, how would I've handled a conversation with her?

Anyway, it was 10:30 in the morning where I was, so it had to have been late in the evening where she was — that's a good enough excuse.

It wasn't like she was gonna show up in the States anytime soon.

Throwing my clothes, Abi's pendant and even the tattered dreamcatcher into my duffel bag, I swung it over my shoulder. And after one last look around the room, I was ready to leave. I dropped my key card off at the front desk and paid the total amount for how many nights I'd stayed.

Damn, money disappears fast. I mean, by now I'd spent about three and a half months in the States. I'd tried to use Lis's money as sparingly as possible but that wasn't enough, and I was running low again. After Christmas in Iowa, I'd found some money by temporarily working as a dishwasher in a diner in a town called Ames, which was conveniently right next to the interstate.

But I knew I'd need to get a job quickly when I got back home. There were always plenty of jobs in diners around Montana, and they're fairly easy jobs to get into as well — prove that you don't have too serious a criminal record and that you know how to deliver dishes without dropping them, and you're pretty much hired.

I caught a bus from Bismarck across to Medora, a tiny town about half an hour's drive from the border of Montana.

From a hasty search on my phone, I figured out that there was one electrical station not far from Medora, and I guessed that it would be a good place for one last look before I crossed the border.

Keeping my head down as I was waiting for the bus, I just hoped that I wouldn't see Fern again before I left. What happened with her had been a disaster, and I never wanted to see her again after that. But I reckoned that the chances of that were highly unlikely.

Medora kind of freaked me out — not that it was a freaky town, in particular — but because it looked exactly like the set of an Old Western movie. There aren't tons of differences between North Dakota and Montana. But there, in Medora, it was hard to tell whether I'd accidentally crossed the border or not.

To start with, I couldn't even see the electrical station that there was supposed to be there, but a few more minutes of scoping out the area from a high vantage point revealed that the town had hidden their source of electricity behind a small hill — obviously not to take away from the rustic appearance of the town that tourists most likely came there for.

Finally making my way over to the station, I saw that it wasn't in a much better state than the rest of the town. Rust ran down the long-neglected metalwork like tears, begging for long-needed attention.

The electrical room itself was around the back of the power station. And as I stepped towards it, sand and stone crunching beneath my feet, I made sure that I was aware of everything going on; it could've been a trap. I'd been the same with every electrical station I'd checked out — wary, cautious, ready for anything and everything.