Chapter 1: Discovery

I am fundamentally not a brave person. For instance, I avoid horror movies because I don’t react well to them and the nightmares that I have last for weeks after. To counter my feelings of weakness, I have studied martial arts. I don’t need to be brave; I only need to repeat the steps in a kata or sparring with my friendly classmates, most of whom are much younger than I am; I’m thirty. I am also a fast runner – my best defense of all.

Thus, when I say that I was SCARED SHITLESS and lost all my faculties to even move, you can believe me. I’m embarrassed to admit that I almost wet my pants.

The start of my BIG SCARE and subsequent life-changing adventure took place Saturday at 7:30 a.m. in front of my house. I’d gone to my car in order to drive to the beach pavilion for a weekend morning meditation session, to be followed by some time on the sand if it wasn’t raining again practicing elements of my martial arts katas or even just some tai chi moves. After that, I needed to contend with groceries, dry cleaning, cleaning house, and such. Errands.

I got in the car and started the engine. From immediately behind me – IN THE CAR WITH ME – a young woman’s voice screamed, “OH, MY GOD. WHO ARE YOU?”

That was funny because when I realized the presence behind me, I yelled the same thing at her a millisecond later. “OH, MY GOD. WHO ARE YOU?”

My heart rate had spiked to about a thousand beats a minute as I looked into the back seat with eyes as large as saucers. My body was trembling and expecting sudden death. My hands had snapped up in front of my face in some ill-defined defensive move. I had enough adrenalin suddenly pumping in my body to replace all my blood. What little martial arts training I had made me wonder about how to conduct a fight for survival inside a vehicle. I felt sure an attack was imminent and that my last seconds were flashing before my eyes. I vowed to go out fighting in spite of being a devout coward.

My potential assailant leapt around in the backseat and cowered in the back corner of the rear seat as far away from me as she could get, looking as scared as I felt. A girl in shorts and a t-shirt. She was barefoot. She’d drawn her feet and knees up to protect her body and was holding her hands up as though I would strike her. She was trying to backpedal into the upholstery but there was nowhere to go. I didn’t have that long a reach unless I unbuckled and lunged at her – an unlikely move at that point. I had the steering wheel in the way to get any further away from her.

I repeated at an almost yell in a timorous tone, “Who are you? What are you doing in my car?”

She pleaded, “Please don’t hurt me. I’m unarmed. I’m ... I’m ... Wendy Hart. I needed to get out of the weather last night. Your car was unlocked. I’m so sorry. I’m really sorry for scaring you. I’m scared, too. I couldn’t keep walking in the heavy rain. I kept trying car doors, and...”

“Ugggh,” I loudly interrupted. I rarely locked my car. Car thefts in our neighborhood were nonexistent. I rarely locked the door to my house.

I looked more closely at the waif as she trembled in the back seat, “You’re still wet. It rained a lot last night.” The morning was gray but not wet.

My pulse was slowly returning to normal as I completed my threat assessment. There was really no threat. The girl seemed small and had no weapons. She had the remains of wet hair matted against her head, and her t-shirt clung in obvious wet spots to her upper body. She was wearing a bra and that must have been soaked, too.

The young girl said, “After I found shelter, I wrung out my clothes. I thought they’d dry faster if I wore them. I fell asleep. I’d been walking a good part of yesterday and part of last night. I was really tired. I’m sorry that I got your seat wet. I probably smell like a wet dog, too.”

My potential tormentor – a teenage girl – was pretty and cute, but, because of her fear of me and her tone of voice, I stopped feeling threatened. She seemed more threatened of me that the other way around.

I asked, “Why were you out last night in the rain?”

“I ... I ... I am running away from home. That’s not a good or a safe place for me. Who are you, sir?”

“My name is Matt Carter. Now, tell me about what you mean by ‘not a good or safe place’,” I insisted. I unbuckled and turned more in my seat to talk to her. The terrified edge to my voice was disappearing.

Instead of telling me, Wendy lifted her damp t-shirt carefully a few inches and showed me her left side below her bra. There was a huge dark bruise there – really nasty looking purple and blue and shades of dark red, and I could tell that it was fresh. Only then, did I also notice a bruise on one of her cheeks. Somebody had really lit into this girl.

I nodded, “Sorry. Does that hurt? Anything broken inside?”

She displayed a little irritation and opened up from her defensive position, “Yes, it fucking hurts a lot. I think I’ll live, and I can’t tell if anything is broken. I can breathe all right. There are other bruises. He really went wild on me this time – fists and feet. No mercy. He’s a fucking animal.”

“When did you run away? Are people looking for you – the police?”

“I ran yesterday around lunch time just after his rage. I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday breakfast. They probably didn’t notice I was missing until dinner time. I’m starved, and yeah, there might be people looking for me around Sarasota. I don’t know whether they’d call the police; my guess is not. Jack doesn’t like the police – or me.”

At least she seemed to be telling the truth and volunteering valuable data. Maybe I actually looked trustworthy to her.

“Do you want some food and some pain killers?” I gestured to my house. “Or we could go to a fast-food place about two miles from here? I’ll buy.”

“I don’t want to be out in public. Here, please. I’ll help. I promise that I’m not a threat to you or anybody. Just, don’t hurt me, please.” She then choked up and fought to hold back tears. Her eyes got all glassy at my implied kindness.

I turned off the car and got out of the car and waited for this Wendy person to emerge from the backseat. She came out carrying a bulging backpack that she hefted over her shoulder with an obvious bit of pain from its weight on some bruise. Water dripped from the bulk; it too had gotten soaked in the rain. I reached over and took it from her.

I asked, “You live near here?” I glanced around my neighborhood.

“No. I took several buses around the city, used my ATM card, and did a few other things to get videoed and make it look like I was traveling far and leaving town. Then, I took the local bus that I knew traveled all the way down here. I used large dark glasses and my hat with my hair tucked under it to try to disguise myself on the last bus. The heavy rain started just as I got off the bus down here.”

‘Down here’ was Venice, Florida, where I lived in a ranch house that I had been in the process of renovating for the past year with the hope of flipping it someday soon. I glanced around the neighborhood. The homes weren’t particularly close together, but some of them did have a view of the others, including the front doors or the garages.

I led Wendy to my kitchen – one of the last rooms to be completed in my home makeover. Wendy gaped, “Wow! This is really nice.” She looked out the back, “And you have a pool with a mosquito cage around it. Cool.”

I explained about renovating the entire house. Some tarps and furniture dust covers testified that I was still in process in the living and dining rooms and on one side of the kitchen. The bedrooms had been repainted months earlier and I’d gotten new carpeting and drapes; I considered those rooms complete. I’d redone the ensuite baths, too. The neutral topic seemed to help both of us calm down from the fright we’d felt in the car.

I set down a bottle of ibuprofen and glass of water in front of the teen. Wendy took two pills with the glass of water I got her.

I asked in a curious tone, “Who are you running away from?”

I pointed at her side where she’d shown me the huge bruise there; the size of my palm if I spread my fingers apart.”

“My ‘pretend’ step-father, only he never really married my mom. If you turn me in, they’ll just send me back there. I’ve done this before, so I have experience. This time I studied about how to make it look like I was traveling a great distance. I even left clues at the house. They’ll think that I’m headed for Denver.”

“How old are you? What’s your full name?”

“I’m just sixteen, and you can call me Wendy – Wendy Hart. Are you going to rat me out? If you are, please give me a head start so I can get going someplace else and hide. I just can’t go back. I’ll go somewhere else.”

“Go where?” I started to have concern about the well-being of this young girl.

She hesitated, “I’m ... I have no real place to go where they won’t look for me. I’ll just need to keep moving so that no one finds me.”

I said, “A lone female attracts attention. You’ll get noticed by people – good and bad people.”

She nodded, “They’re all bad – except my BFF. I told her I was leaving. The bad ones will want to do things to me, and the good ones will turn me in and I’ll end up back home with the bad ones.”

I claimed, “Child Protective Services should be able to do something to protect you.” I’d heard of them on television several times on various news broadcasts.

Wendy laughed. “They’re a joke and to be avoided by someone like me. The last two times, they took me right home to the bastard and my mother and I got beat up five minutes after they left. One time I think I had a concussion where he threw me against a wall. No, I’m not going back. Keep me away from them.”

“You in school?”