get away

She left it all behind, the depression caused by her mother's constant barrage of words. The desert was the only place left for her to go. The shrieks of hate stopped here. The starry sky filled her with peace. The cold of the night made her shiver, yet she didn't feel cold. She wasn't afraid of hypothermia. She'd rather die out here than continue to die in her room. Her room smelled of lifelessness. Nothing in it comforted her like this desert. She forced thoughts of home out of her mind and trudged through the sand. Though it made her thighs and calves ache, she welcomed the pain. It made her feel alive.
"I'd rather feel the cold and the aching in my legs than feel the hate in people's words."
The lonely, far away cry of a coyote startled her, but this became less scary with each passing night in Death Valley.
This would be her home. No one would ever find her here. She had dumped her cell phone at the last arroyo she'd crossed yesterday. Why she'd carried it this far, she couldn't figure. "I guess maybe, . . . maybe I'm a little afraid of leaving everybody behind, but, there's no way to charge batteries out here."
"Guess I better hole up somewhere. Get outta the cold."
She spotted a clump of sagebrush 500 feet in the distance and decided she'd spend the night there. In the morning she'd decide whether to head for the Panamint Mountain Range and set up a permanent outpost there.
"Dehydrated food won't last long. I really don't want to kill any wildlife. I don't know what I'm gonna do to stay alive without food, but I'll have to figure it out soon enough."
She walked toward the clump of sagebrush and saw a light descending from the northeastern horizon. It resembled a quasar in brightness. "Can't be a meteor, any fool knows that. It's coming down too slow."
She changed her course to walk in the direction of its descent, anticipating it's impact, or landing.