text: It stops here, today. Freya doesn't want to follow in her mother's footsteps. The only thing they'll share is those blue eyes and a name, because her mother was narcissistic enough to name her child after herself. She claims they're named after the goddess of love and fertility, who she prayed to when she struggled to get pregnant. Said that God wasn't taking her requests. Did she ever bother to consider him saying no was his way of responding? That maybe she wasn't cut out for parenting? She didn't want a child, she wanted a puppet. A clone. Freya, junior, fills the last box and tapes it shut. Her mother thinks she is packing her things to keep them safe as she repaints her room the same shade of white that it has been for eighteen years. She didn't even argue this time about wanting to paint it purple like when she was six, and twelve, because her mother insists it'll throw off the theme of the house (which evidentially is white and boring) and it's not like she's really going to paint anyway. The rain starts, just like the weatherman predicted. Which is great, because she had been banking on that, so that it'd be too wet to open the windows to let the paint fumes out. Looks like they'll have to wait until the sun comes out tomorrow. She'll be gone by sun up tomorrow. She sits through another dinner of overcooked porkchops. It's the last time, she promises herself, so tonight she clears her plate and excuses herself to go over her plan one final time. Her mother goes to bed at ten every night. By ten ten she is fast asleep, and by ten fifteen Freya will be packing up the back of her car until ten thirty, when the neighbor comes home from work. Then she'll pull away once the driveway is out of their line of sight, and drive until the sun comes up. Moving the boxes downstairs to the front hallway, she fibs saying that it'll give her more room to move around tomorrow. Her mother buys it. She even volunteers to help, and claps excitedly about how they'll get to bond all day tomorrow, putting her room back together. As if they don't spend every waking moment together. Having graduated last month, she hasn't had school to keep her occupied. She wanted to get a job, but her mother insisted that she stay home before starting community college in the fall. The college that she wasn't going to, because she was going to try working and writing at night. There were so many ideas, idling in her head, waiting for a moment to escape. Tonight is her moment. She drives, a thermos of coffee in her cupholder. She stops every hour to refill it, and relieve herself, but otherwise it's a straight shoot until sunrise when she arrives in town. Checking into the airbnb, she checks the time. Her mother will be waking up in twenty minutes, like clockwork. Then in twenty five minutes she will notice the missing boxes, and in twenty eight minutes, her phone will get tracked. It'll say she's in a trash can about twenty minutes from home, in a convenience store parking lot. It won't however, say that she's bought a flip phone and transferred her contacts. It won't say that she got a new number yesterday when she went to 'buy paint,' and it definitely won't say that she made the ringtone that song her mom hates, because it has that one word that she's not supposed to say in it. The phone rings, and she sings along to her tone, too giddy to pick up immediately. It goes to voicemail, and she scrambles to call back. "Elias, sorry, hi." Her heart beats faster that it's supposed to, and picks up speed when he responds. "It's funny, I always thought your voice would be higher." They've only ever emailed, in a secret account that she's kept hidden from her mother. His voice sounds identical to what she pictured, and she wonders what other assumptions she has made about him are true. She stifles a yawn. "I'm tired. This is my tired voice. I haven't slept since Tuesday." "Rest up, and then meet me at the diner at three when I get off. Do you still have the address?" He had sent it to her a few weeks back while laying out the plan for her move. Come to Erie, move in to his spare room, get a job at the diner (his boss had already said she could start once settled in) and avoid all things Indiana for the rest of forever. She could finally be Freya the free. None of this Freya Junior nonsense. She could make her own choices, do and be what she wanted instead of some idealized doll modeled after the shambles of an overcontrolling narcissist. They meet, and he's even cuter in person that the picture he sent. She checks for a pulse to make sure she is still alive, and that this isn't some sort of post mortem fantasy. Thump thump, heart's beating. He wraps her in a hug. This time she doesn't have to search for a pulse. It's blaringly obvious. That afternoon he helps her move in. She hardly has anything, he points out. Her whole life fits into a car. "I left behind some things. Boxes of decor my mother picked out, clothes she insisted I wear. Which reminds me. Is there a second hand store around here? I have enough clothes to last maybe two weeks, if I'm lucky." She's saved money for the past few years, and while she has a sum in her account, that she removed her mother from Monday when she went to her dentist appointment, she doesn't want to go broke. Elias pulls out his phone and dials instead of responding. He exchanges a few words with someone on the other end. "My sister Hayley is donating a bunch of old clothes that she outgrew. She says you can take what you want, and take the rest to the thrift store. Which I will happily take you to, tomorrow. They close in half an hour, and that is not enough time to fix all of this." He gestures to her outfit. She hasn't changed since yesterday. The outfit reeks of her mother's taste, and body odor. She spends the next morning learning the ropes at the diner. It's her first job, but she wants to come off as confident, and does so, until she trips over a child playing on the floor and a plate of sunny side up eggs land on a customer's lap. "I guess they're sunny side down eggs now, huh?" The customer gives a big belly laugh. Turns out he's a regular, and he takes her by the shoulders in for a hug. The egg falls to the floor, and yolk smears everywhere. She doesn't care. She needs this hug. Running away to start over is freaking terrifying, and she sniffles into his shirt. He squeezes her harder before letting go. The rest of her shift goes fine. Not great, and while she is still upright, she vetoes clothes shopping for another day so she can collapse into the couch. It takes a few days of work until things become second nature. She learns to balance the tray, like how she learned to balance on her toes in ballet class years ago. She stops looking over her shoulder, thinking her mother is going to show up. There had been a few close calls. A lot of women had that God awful haircut. She looks in the mirror. A haircut, of course. Her long locks had been a choice of her mother. "You have such gorgeous hair, Freya. It'd be a terrible shame to cut it." They'd trim off an inch, for dead ends sake. The weight pulled at her neck. "Elias, is there a beauty shop nearby?" The hairdresser pulls her hair into a ponytail. In four snips, it's over. Her head feels so light and free. He hands her the ponytail. "You're going to make some little princess very happy, darling." He shapes her bob up and demands that she closes her eyes before spinning her around to the mirror. When they open, she has to force them closed and open again to make sure she isn't dreaming. "You look beautiful, Freya." Well, if the blinking wasn't any indication, her pulse sure is. They take a photo, and she's beaming so wide that he doesn't even have to prompt her to say cheese. Elias asks for him to text him a copy, and suddenly it's his phone wallpaper, her holding onto one of the remnants of her past. She wants to cut more things. They return home, and she plops in front of the sacks of clothes, pawing through them with a sense of purpose. She digs out her sewing kit and makes a few adjustments. Her mother would say that hemline was a bit too short. Please, as if the male population won't know she has thighs if her dress hits her knees. She pulls the dress over her head, and Elias walks in to find her in just her underwear. He blushes beet red and hurries back out. From the doorway, he calls to her. "We have off tomorrow. Did you still want to go to the thrift store?" "Sure. If it's not too much trouble, could we stop by the nature preserve? Hiking has been on my to do list since before I got here." Her mother would never let her go, because she was afraid that bears would get her. Heck, she didn't even want her walking around the neighborhood when she was a teenager, because she could get lost, so it wasn't like she'd let her loose in the woods. They do both, and she's glad that she went shopping first, because she is pretty sure she can't feel her legs after five miles of trails. She's pretty sure she absolutely loves it. She goes back on her next day off to figure it out. She's alone this time, in a pair of leggings that she had picked up for a dollar. Her mother never let her wear skin tight clothes. A jogger passes, and she looks around to see if anyone is watching. They aren't, and she tries her hand at it. Her lungs hurt. She stops to walk, until the urge rises again, and she finds her stride quickening into something akin to a light jog. She loves it. Every morning after, she's waking up early to run to the diner. She's flying through her shifts, and nothing can take her down. It's been two and a half weeks of becoming who she wants to be. Curiosity gets the better of her, and she pulls up her mother's social media accounts. She's had her blocked, but her account is public, so she uses Elias' account to snoop. There's pictures of her, pleas for her safe return. She says she has no clue why Freya would leave. The pain hits her, hard. How can she not know how she has destroyed a life? How can she feel no guilt for making someone start over nearly two decades too late to make something of themselves? He spins her chair around and kisses the top of her head. "Don't waste more tears over her. It's her turn to cry." He dries her eyes with his thumb, kissing the lids. When he pulls back, he finds an expression on her face that he can't place. She leans forward and kisses him. It's a bold move. She's never kissed a boy before, and she's definitely never let one kiss her back, or slid her hands around a guy's neck, but it's her metamorphosis, and she wants the guy. Judging by the thing his teeth are doing, she thinks it is mutual. She buys her first bit of makeup that afternoon. Concealer, because her hair can't quite cover it. It's been twenty two days since she fled. She has so much that she thought she could never have, and it's a bit intoxicating. She's gone from no choice, to all of them, and sometimes she can't tell left from right. Hayley helps teach her what it's meant to be a woman. "Your mother never gave you the sex talk?" "We did. It went don't ever sleep with anyone until you're married, or you'll never make it into Heaven ." Freya's fingers trail over the ring on her lip. If her mother could see her, she'd tell her to take it out. She hated facial piercings, calling them tacky. Hayley pushes her hand away. "Don't fiddle with it. We don't need you snake bite getting infected. I don't think Elias would find that too attractive." "Should you really be giving me the sex talk about your brother?" "Would you rather find out what he likes from the girl that had to overhear it in her bedroom, or trust the internet to tell you what to do?" Five days later, she takes her advice. Girl knew what she was talking about. And yes, her other assumptions were correct, thank God. Three days pass. She's been free for a month, and she pulls out an old ragged checklist she had made the night before she left. I want to like the way I look. I want to feel loved. Both she could say were a raging success. She takes one last look at the last line, grinning like a fool as she shoves it away and laces up her running shoes. I want to be free.