The Road Not Taken

Is the person we are meant to become predestined? Are our entire lives already written in the stars? Is it destiny that you are reading these very words at the exact moment you are? Maybe. But I like to think that everything I do will be a surprise. Maybe it will only be a surprise to the Earthians. Maybe the celestial beings already understand every aspect of my spontaneity. Maybe only you will. Reading my story.

Kitty Rutland read the words of her late great-aunt with indifference. It was characteristic of Charlotte to excuse the actions that tore their family apart, even in death. It was always another plane or man or city with her. She could never sit still; even when Kitty’s parents and grandparents died in a house-fire Kitty barely escaped.

At 15 years old, she couldn’t (legally) plan a funeral, and she certainly wasn’t in the emotional head space to take on such a challenge, but she was the only survivor, and Charlotte Rutland didn’t want to come home from Paris -- or was it Egypt -- to mourn the loss of her siblings, nephew and niece-in-law. Call after call after call went to voicemail, and eventually Kitty gave up. After the funeral, Charlotte would never have the ability to crawl her way into Kitty’s life, like she could with the rest of her family. That welcoming and sympathetic part of her died with her four closest relatives.

Embittered, Kitty got to work with the measly life insurance money, which covered just enough to pay for three coffins, one urn (her grandfather had been burnt to a crisp), and their respective headstones. There was no money leftover for Kitty. There wasn’t even a house left, obviously, it had burned in the fire. When (it was a when, not an if) Charlotte came crawling back after involving herself with god knows what, expecting Kitty to help her or save her, it wouldn’t happen. She was leaving for good.

Hitchhiking wasn’t fun. Dumpster-diving was even less fun. Kitty was never a stickler for putting her life at risk, yet she had to do it day in and night out for years. She never met a group that would protect her, so she rode with random truck drivers all around the continent. She was flirting with death and she knew it, so the day the big man in a big black suit with a big black briefcase found her, handed her a little black notebook and twenty thousand dollars in cash, it honestly came as a relief.

Kitty recognized that man all too well. He was the one who had told her only 3 years earlier that her parents and grandparents were declared dead, but all their belongings were to be seized under the government because Kitty was a minor. Truthfully, he had told her that day, all of their belongings were gone from the fire, so even after Kitty’s eighteenth birthday, she would receive nothing.

But the man had come to visit her on her eighteenth birthday -- in the dry cold of Montana -- so it could only mean one thing.

Charlotte Rutland was dead.

The man turned on his heels and walked back into the horizon, leaving Kitty on her own. Nervously, she looked around before tucking the money away into her backpack. She had watched way too many people get mugged for less than $20 dollars to be careless about this surprise inheritance.

Kitty really was in the middle of nowhere, Montana. Nothing except the flickering lights of the 7/11 she had just stolen from illuminated the darkening February skies. The grassy median she stood on gave her enough distance from said store that if anyone noticed a red gatorade and a pack of nutter-butters missing, she would have enough time to book it before anyone caught up to her.

The fingerless-mittens she wore had a moth hole in the palm, but for now, it was doing its job. Once the sun was fully set she would have to risk her life one way or another: going back into the 7/11, freezing to death outside, or hitchhiking, slowly making her way up to Canada.

Annoyed that the heirloom was derailing the plans Kitty had made for her birthday, but intrigued nonetheless, she opened the notebook to the first page.

Is the person we are meant to become predestined? Are our entire lives already written in the stars...

After reading it, she laughed. Of course Charlotte would say her reckless behavior was justified because of her desire to prove god wrong or something. Kitty scanned the book until she found a very familiar date.

Egypt was wonderful.

So it was Egypt!

My Kitty has left me almost one hundred and ten voicemails asking me to come back and help her plan the funeral. Poor girl. I can’t come back. Someday she’ll learn that death is not to be mourned; life is meant to be celebrated.

How ironic.

I met a man -- I forgot his name -- his skin was bronzed from the sun, brown as the cinnamon I sucked on in China. His lips were plump and juicy and even tasted like cinnamon. Oh my and his-

Kitty was tired of listening to her great-aunts ill-timed escapades, so she found a page littered with question marks like her first entry.

Did you know more than one hundred and fifty thousand people die every day? She’s still planning the funeral as diligently as I used to work in New York. What a shame. When will she learn? Mourning all of them would be exhausting, that’s why I don’t do it. When did she grow up to be like them? When will she grow up to be like me?

One person couldn’t bear the sorrow of losing 150,000 people. That’s why we keep our circles close and we love the people that love us back, Kitty answered the notebook. Even at 18 years old, she was wiser than her 60 year old great-aunt. Kitty turned to the next page.

I can’t get her out of my head. Her voicemails, they haunt me. I need to love her. I should have loved my siblings and been a better aunt, but travelling was what taught me this, even if it might have been selfish. I don’t regret it one bit. So I say, thank you Kitty. For teaching me to care. It’s time for me to come back. It’s time for me to be the family you needed me to be. I have so much to teach you.

Wait a minute. She understood. She learned. She was going to come back to help Kitty. Kitty wanted to find out more, but the entries ended.

She died trying to find Kitty.

Charlotte had it right all along. Kitty would take this money, fly to Europe, keep travelling, maybe work a little bit in a hostel or a restaurant, keep moving, maybe go to Asia and Africa, maybe even visit Antarctica. Just like her great-aunt, she would find love everywhere she went, and the rest of her life would be thrilling. She would learn the ways of the world.

The sun fell underneath the horizon and she grinned thinking about her future before waving down a pickup truck.

It pulled over to the median she stood on and she hopped into the passenger's seat. She waved to the two men in the backseat and quickly thanked the driver. She told him to drop her off at the international airport. He said sure, it was only 30 minutes away. She never made conversation with people she rode with before, but today was different. She was a changed person. Her aunt posthumously ignited that spark within her. She was finally going to live.

Kitty started to fiddle with the strap that held the notebook shut, and the driver handed her one of those half-pencils with no eraser, motioning for her to write something down. The pencil felt odd in her hand. It had been years since she wrote anything.

She opened the squishy cover of the black notebook and scribbled down a smiley face on the closest empty page to her great-aunts entries. Kitty thought that encapsulated her emotions better than any words could.

Suddenly, two strong hands wrapped around her neck. Kitty wildly kicked and clawed at them as her vision faded in and out of blackness, feeling tears she hadn’t meant to let go of drip down her face. The driver swerved, but kept the truck steady. He wasn’t going to help her. Once her breath turned shaky and her eyes closed, she heard the click of a gun and felt the jolting cold of a revolver rest on the side of her forehead. The tears came faster now -- there was no one to save her -- no family, no one left in the world that she loved. It was over.

The last thing she heard was a bang.

And as she drifted off into eternal sleep, she wondered: who would the big man give the little notebook to now?