The Outliers
Page 38

Dear God, Universe, Ma’am, Sir, Flying Spaghetti Monster,
I don’t know how to pray anymore. Actually, I don’t think I ever did. I was taught to always give you thanks and never ask for anything because you would provide me with everything I needed and to ask for more would be questioning your will.
A sin.
But since so much has been a lie I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that asking you for something I need, not want, is okay. Maybe just this once.
I’d start by saying thank you for all you’ve given me but there isn’t any time. I’m going to jump right in and offer you a bargain. Maybe it’s wrong, but I don’t want to ask you for something so big without offering you something in return.
But I have to try because I don’t just have something to lose.
I have everything to lose.
Please, I beg you, spare my mother, she’s been through so much. She’s endured the unthinkable. She deserves a chance to live her bliss. To be happy. I want her to know how it feels to live without fear and be loved unconditionally by someone who doesn’t expect anything in return. And for your generosity in sparing her, I offer you me. But only after the baby is born and safe in her father’s arms. Then I’ll go with you. Willingly and happily the second I know they are all safe and together.
Please let my family live and I’ll do anything you want.
Anything at all.
I repeated my prayer over and over again and at some point, I must have drifted off to sleep because I was dreaming of a blonde woman with a bright smile and a purple silk scarf wrapped around her neck walking toward me. But her feet weren’t touching the water, she was walking over it. Maybe I was just hallucinating. Or maybe I was already dead. I felt the panic. The very real panic shoot through my veins like a jolt of adrenaline.
If I was dead. It meant the baby was dead too.
“No! I can’t be dead. I can’t be dead.”
The woman crouched before me and smiled. Her white pants and blouse were unwrinkled, unstained. She smelled like fresh linen. She looked familiar but I couldn’t place her. “Don’t you worry. You’re not dead. Not yet anyway. Your baby is safe, but you have to listen to me very carefully.”
“Are you…God?”
The woman laughed and it sounded light and bright. Angelic. “Oh, darlin’, they wouldn’t want me running things. It would be like a two for one happy hour twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It would be a lot more college frat and a lot less holy afterlife. You catch my drift?”
“I think so,” I answered. “Who are you then?”
She clapped her hands together. “I’m someone who is here to help.”
“How?”
The woman thought for a moment, tapping a perfectly polished fingernail against her chin. “You know how when a bad situation comes up people tend to tell you to always look ahead and never look behind you, or something like that.”
“Sure, my mother used to say that all the time.”
“Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s all bullshit. It’s what’s behind you that counts. It’s what’s behind you that is going to save you. Don’t wait on your knight in shining armor to rescue you, as hot as they can be sometimes. BE your own knight. Rescue yourself. Finn might have rescued your heart, but the rest is up to you now.”
As fast as she appeared, and before I could ask her what exactly she meant, the woman in white was gone.
I opened my eyes and felt the water at my chin. Water was now splashing up into my eyes. I squinted over at my mother whose face was now only inches away from the rising water. I wished my dream were somehow real and what was behind me was really going to save me. The only thing behind me was the tree I was tied to and countless swamp animals waiting for me to shift from life to death so they could have at my carcass.
I wouldn’t give up.
I will never give up.
I felt a new resolve growing within me. A new kind of power, bravery. It was exactly what I needed to push on.
In a last attempt to free my hands I stretched my fingers under the water, searching for anything that I could use as a knife to cut through the rope. The water was flowing around us more like a river than a swamp so it was possible things underneath had shifted.
I touched something hard with my finger where moments ago there was nothing. It was at least six inches and broken or jagged at one end. I didn’t know if it was a pipe or broken piece of wood or rock, but I hoped it would do. I maneuvered it between the ropes and started sawing. I dropped it once and then once again before I could do any real damage to the rope. I growled out my frustrations into the rising water that had now reached my mouth. My thoughts were scrambled as I pressed my lips together tightly.
I didn’t dare look over to my mother knowing full well she had to be submerged by now. I couldn’t let anything distract me from the task at hand.
Both of our lives depended on it.
I had to hurry, but I knew rushing wouldn’t get me anywhere. I hummed the lullaby my mother used to sing to me during storms to ease my fears. And as my mind drifted over those times she gave me comfort when she had none of her own, I sawed away.
I took my last large gulf of air right as the water rose over my mouth and then my nose.
After reciting three verses of the lullaby in my head my lungs were burning, like they were on fire. With one last push of the restraints against the object, and one last underwater scream, something snapped and my hands broke free.
I emerged from the water, gasping for my first full breath of air in what seemed like forever. As my lungs took their fill it was as if everything stood still. The splash of each rain drop in the water. The leaves falling from the wind rustled trees. I could see everything now. Everything smelled stronger. Sounded louder. Appeared clearer.
My mind completely cleared. I felt calm. Peaceful.
It was as if I’d been baptized in the dirty water. Christened by the hurricane itself and delivered into the swamp reborn.
I was no longer Sawyer the girl running from her past. I was Sawyer, the girl from The Outskirts.
A True outlier just like the rest of them.
I remember reading an article for my religious study we’re a pastor from Alabama send that when God takes you into troubled waters it’s not to drown you, but to cleanse you.
Suddenly, it became clear what he meant.
I stood up and blew the water from my nose, leaping over to my mother, waiting through the thick water and underbrush. I lifted her head from the water with one hand and untied her strains with the other. I almost fell over with relief when she gasped for air. I put her arm around my shoulder and had only made it one step up the embankment when I lost my footing and together we slid back down into the water with a splash.