Chapter 1

I never thought I would be fighting to die. I always figured I'd lead an average life, die an average death and people's lives would go on.

It's amazing how quickly circumstances can change.

If someone had told me a year ago that I would be where I am today, I'd have told them to get back on their meds or turn the idea into a story.

I stared death in the eye and greeted her with a smirk on my face, knowing that my original assumption was wrong. And I don't regret it, though the pain was beyond imagining.

The dappled sunlight that permeated the countryside played havoc with my eyesight as I tried to lose myself in one of my favorite books, propped in the corner or my father's truck as he drove down the two-lane highway somewhere north of where I wanted to be.

My name is Patricia St. Marks and, for the majority of my seventeen years, I called Oklahoma home. I lived with my dad, spending a month every summer with my aunt in Montana.

My father, Bobby, was a manager at an electronics store for ten years when he was offered the opportunity to make general manager. He got the position and I was so happy for him. Except there was more to the promotion than a pay raise.

His training would take him six months to complete, during which time he would be sent to different stores all over the country. After he was through, he would be given his own district.

What this meant for me was that I had to move to another home, another state and another school in January, pretty much the middle of the school year.

Imagine my excitement.

"Are you okay with this, Trish?" Bobby asked for the umpteenth time, using my nickname to show his concern.

"No," I answered honestly, taking a deep breath and blowing it out noisily, "but it's the easiest solution."

My mother died when I was little and her sister was my closest living relative; there was no way my dad was going to leave me at home, by myself, with nobody nearby if anything happened to me.

"I'm sorry Patricia." He only used my actual name as an introduction or when he was upset; I could tell that this bothered him.

"Dad, it's not your fault. I'm happy for you, really." He loved his job a lot, something to do with the concept of men and electronic toys. I laid my book down and touched his arm, the fabric of his flannel shirt soft and worn.

"You're doing the best that you can and I understand that. I'm not going to be my usual happy-go-lucky self for a while," we both smiled, "but I will manage. Just come back and rescue me before I turn into a snow maiden." He laughed, as I'd intended, and went back to his silent vigil of the road, some of the tension leaving his shoulders.

My father wasn't very big, just under six feet with a small middle-age belly, a receding hairline that I helped keep buzzed close but still in shape enough to play sports with me. I loved my father but that still didn't change the situation.

I really didn't want to go.

My aunt, Claire, is a nice enough person, but I hadn't spent more than a few weeks with her at a time. She was the older sibling and chose to stay close to home rather than roam the country like my mother. She took over the family business, the town's grocery store, shortly before my grandparents died, only a couple of years before my mother Sarah died; I never met them. She always let me earn a little spending money by helping out in the store; I would probably have a job there soon.

It might have been easier to fly to Montana than drive, but I had a fair amount of stuff and Dad wanted to spend as much time with me as he could. He also hates flying and rental cars.

So here we were, winding our way farther north, away from the warmth and sunshine, the shorts and tank tops and sandals and into the land of bitter cold. It was very depressing.

One of the few bright spots was the prospect of a car; if it became too unbearable, I could leave. Christmas was less than two weeks past and Dad gave me the contents of my car savings so that I could pick my own vehicle when I got there. We figured it would be better to have Claire's advice on a car that could handle the northern conditions.

It wasn't actually as bad as I was making it out to be. Once I knew I was leaving, I took the time to research my new home. I'd already known that it wasn't so bad in the summer, if a little cooler than I was used to, but it wasn't a total ice cap. I had a folder of notes that contained things I'd discovered on the internet, making me think I'd judged Montana too harshly.

What I'd seen of the landscape on our journey north was actually quite amazing and very different than the flat grasslands I was used to. The Rocky Mountains had suddenly loomed large once we crossed into Wyoming, a blurred shape stretching across the sky in the distance, the tree line forming a dark smudge along the bottom.

We bypassed the cities, getting gas, directions and food from the smaller towns, taking turns driving the truck. It was a few fun but exhausting days until we finally got there.

"There" was the town of Harpers Roe, somewhere north of Yellowstone National Park, with a meager population of around fifteen hundred people, less than my old high school. It was a nice change of pace to get away from the busy, hot city in summer but now it would be odd not to be surrounded by people.

I gazed at the houses and businesses dusted with snow and shivered, though it was quite warm in the truck. It hardly dropped below freezing back home, now I'd have to get used to it on a daily basis.

We passed the school buildings, elementary through high school, all clustered together around an empty parking lot, the swing-set turned white with snow. The roads were clear, meaning the snow was probably a couple of days old; when it snowed several inches at a time all winter, every year, the townsfolk got good at keeping their streets safe.

We turned down Main Street, passing the restaurant and pub on the left, now full of people who didn't feel like cooking or preferred some company. I could remember eating ice cream there when I was little, the adults putting me to work when I was bored.

A clothes shop and car garage/ gas station were also on the left side of the road, convenient for bored husbands who's wives wanted to chat in the clothing store.

On the right side were a hardware store, my aunt's grocery store, the bank and the pharmacy. There were a few other stores and shops in town with a feed store closer to the highway. It was a perfectly peaceful, boring little town, despite the occasional wolf or grizzly sighting by hunters near one of the island mountains this country was riddled with.

"Did you hear me, Trish?" My father's tone suggested that he'd been talking for a few minutes and it wasn't the first time he'd asked.

"Sorry, Dad, I was thinking."

"I was telling you," he began, "that I packed an extra charger for your phone and laptop, so you shouldn't have a problem staying in touch. Claire already took care of registering you at the high school. But you already know all of this." He carefully backed into a driveway a few blocks away from Main Street as the sun dipped behind the trees, plunging everything into darkness.