The Great Alone

But was she supposed to be trapped forever by her mother’s choice and her father’s rage?

He slipped a necklace around her throat, fumbled to clasp it in the dark. “I carved it,” he said.

She felt it, a heart made of bone, hanging on a metal chain as thin as cobweb.

“Come to college with me, Len,” he said.

She touched his face, felt how different his skin was from hers, rougher, whiskery here and there.

He pressed his body to hers, hip to hip. They kissed; she felt his breathing turn ragged.

She hadn’t known until now how love could erupt into existence like the big bang theory and change everything in you and everything in the world. She believed in Matthew suddenly, in the possibility of him, of them. The way she believed in gravity or that the earth was round. It was crazy. Crazy. When he kissed her, she glimpsed a whole new world, a new Leni.

She drew back. The depth of this new feeling was terrifying. Real love grew slowly, didn’t it? It couldn’t be this fast, like a crashing together of planets.

Yearning. She knew what it felt like now. Yearning. An old word, from Jane Eyre’s world, and as new to Leni as this second.

“Leni! Leni!”

Her father’s voice. Yelling.

Leni jackknifed up. Oh, God. “Stay here.” She scrambled up and ran for the weathered steps. She rushed up their zigzagged path, her down vest flapping open, her boots clomping on the chicken-wire-covered steps. “Here I am, Dad,” she yelled, out of breath, waving her arms.

“Thank God,” he said. “I got up to take a leak and saw that your boots were gone.”

Boots. That was her mistake. Such a small thing.

She pointed skyward. Did he notice how hard she was breathing? Could he hear the thud of her heart? “Look at the sky. It’s so beautiful.”

“Ah.”

She stood beside him, trying to calm down. He put an arm around her shoulders. She felt claimed by the hold. “Summer is magical, isn’t it?”

The grassy hillside hid the beach from view, thank God. Leni couldn’t see the curl of pebbled stone and crushed shells, or the blanket Matthew had carried over. Nor could she see Matthew. He was well below the crest of the hill between the cabin and the beach.

She clasped the bone heart around her neck, felt its sharp point burrow into her palm.

“Don’t do that again, Red. You know better. The bears are dangerous this time of year. I almost grabbed my gun and came looking for you.”

PERSONAL STATEMENT

by Lenora Allbright

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

If you knew me, you wouldn’t be surprised at all that I start my college essay off with a quote from Tolkien. Books are the mile markers of my life. Some people have family photos or home movies to record their past. I’ve got books. Characters. For as long as I can remember, books have been my safe place. I read about places I can barely imagine and lose myself in journeys to foreign lands to save girls who didn’t know they were really princesses.

Only recently have I learned why I needed those faraway worlds.

I was taught by my father to be afraid of the world, and some of the lessons stuck. I read about Patty Hearst and the Zodiac Killer and the massacre at the Munich Olympics and Charles Manson, and I knew the world was a terrifying place. He said it all of the time, reminded me that mountains could blow up and kill people in their sleep. Governments were corrupt. A flu could come out of nowhere and kill millions. A nuclear bomb could fall at any second, obliterating everything.

I learned to shoot the head off of a paper target while on the run. I have a bug-out bag full of survival supplies by my front door. I can start a fire with flint and put a gun together blindfolded. I know how to adjust a gas mask for the perfect fit. I have grown up preparing for a war or anarchy or worldwide tragedy.

But none of it is true. Or it’s true but not the truth, which is the kind of distinction adults make.

My parents left Washington State when I was thirteen. We came to Alaska and forged a subsistence life in the bush. I love it. I do. I love the harsh, uncompromising beauty of Alaska. I love the women most of all, women like my neighbor, Large Marge, who used to be a lawyer and now runs a grocery store. I love how tough she is and how compassionate. I love how my mom, who is as fragile as a fern frond, has still managed to survive out here in a climate designed to destroy her.

I love all of it, and I love this state that has given me a place to belong, a home, but it’s time for me to leave the homestead and make my own way, to learn about the real world.