The space was dark, and with everything having shuffled around, mud flowing into the open window to add to the claustrophobia, the pressure mounted. The van that had been their house, their transportation, and the storage for everything the two of them owned was now their coffin. There was barely any light, and at times it didn’t feel like there was enough air; his head would buzz with a headache and he felt like he could nod off into a miserable sleep he would never wake from.

He could feel the breeze through the damaged window, almost ice cold when the rest of him was hot and prickly with sweat. Kelly, trapped where she lay in a position lower in the van than he was, didn’t seem to get that breeze.

“Shawn. I can’t take her with me. You can’t make me.”

“How would I make you?”

“Don’t make me spell it out,” the words were a plea.

He wasn’t used to her being the rock or being the one with the plan, but she was the one who had kept it together after… after whatever had happened. He found himself walking himself through the known, to get to this thing that Kelly seemed to think he should know. He’d been emancipated from his parents at sixteen. She’d simply run away. They’d found each other.

It hadn’t been easy. They had their individual neuroses and traumas to get over before they meshed properly. Kelly heard voices. She didn’t see things, she just heard the voices, and she didn’t hate the voices. That didn’t mean they were always the best thing for her, but she didn’t hate them. She’d always talked about how people with schizophrenia in other areas of the world tended to hear happy voices, or supportive voices. She blamed culture and she blamed society for the fact that people in ‘the West’ heard negative or paranoia-inducing voices. She wanted to reject that society. Most of all, she wanted to reject the medicines, the institutions, and her parents making every decision for her, when her parents were something she couldn’t talk about without going to a dark place.

Figuring out whether he should trust her on that had been a task, and a long series of compromises. He’d been sixteen when he met her and admittedly not the best when it came to judgment calls. The last few months had seen her spiral out, then rein herself in. He’d gotten her to talk regularly with someone who knew better than he did, got her to agree to try medications if she had another bad patch.

But given circumstances, he’d felt it was his duty to give her what she needed, and she wanted to get away from society, focus on the simpler things.