Page 8 of Soul to Possess (The Artmaker Trilogy #1)

The house felt smaller today. Like the walls had crept in overnight, heavy with memories that didn’t belong to me anymore.

The fridge still hummed like it had when I was seven.

The same uneven floorboard by the pantry still creaked.

And Maddie, my forever cheerleader stood in the doorway like she was trying to memorize me with her eyes.

“You packed the charger, right?” she asked, biting her thumbnail.

I held up my backpack. “Yes, Mom.”

Maddie rolled her eyes, but her smile was too tight to be amused. “You’re a brat.”

“And you’re going to cry as soon as I close the door.”

Maddie didn’t argue. She just looked at me the way only someone who’s known every version of you can—like she already missed me, even though I was still standing there.I glanced down at my sneakers.

Too white. Too clean. Like they hadn’t touched all the places I’ve been—gas station bathrooms, hallway carpet where I’d curled up after fights, bus stop pavement slick with old rain.

They looked new, but I wasn’t. I was worn in quiet places.

I was unraveling in a way no one could see.

And maybe that’s why I was scared. Not of leaving.

I’ve always known how to leave—how to shut the door gently, so no one hears the ache.

But, I was scared of arriving. Scared of stepping off the plane and not knowing who I’d be without the bruises.

Scared to be looked at by someone who might see all the parts I’ve hidden.

Because I want to believe that somewhere out there, I get to become someone new.

Someone that gets chosen. Kept. But belief is its own kind of dangerous.

And right now, I am nothing but a suitcase full of maybes and a heart that still hopes someone out there is waiting to say: There you are. I’ve been looking for you.

“What if this is a mistake?” I asked quietly. The words slipped out, my breath falling from my lips in a sigh. “What if I just… disappear?”

Maddie stepped closer, pressed her forehead against mine. “Then you write. You scream into the void. You come home. Or you don’t. Just—don’t freeze. Don’t turn around just because the unknown feels bigger than you.”

She pulled back, tears glassing her lashes now. “Gennie, you’ve lived your whole life trying to be small enough not to scare anyone. This? This is big. This is yours. Even if it doesn’t turn out how you thought.”

I hugged her. Hard. The kind of hug that pressed all the breath out of my chest. The kind that said goodbye without saying it.

Then I grabbed my bag, tucked the envelope with Marvin’s ticket and the $400 down deep where it couldn’t go mysteriously missing, and stepped out onto the porch.

The morning air was cool for September, giving me a chill as I wrapped my sweater tightly around my shoulders.I walked to the waiting Uber and slid inside.

The driver gave me a nod. I gave the house one last look. And then I was gone.

The Uber pulled away, tires crunching against the gravel like it was chewing through everything I was leaving behind.I didn’t look back again.

I told myself it was because I didn’t need to—but the truth was, I was afraid I’d see something in the window.

Something small and ordinary. A coffee mug.

A curtain twitch. A shadow. Something that would make me stay.

The part of me deep down that was begging to find any reason not to go – warred with the part of me who wanted more than anything to see what we could be. What South Dakota held in store for me.

Instead, I kept my eyes ahead, watching as the neighborhood blurred into something unrecognizable.

Trees, signs, intersections I’d memorized in childhood now looked foreign in motion, like the world was letting go of me the second I stepped outside the lines.

It felt right. And wrong. Like pulling off a bandage and realizing the wound underneath had grown teeth.

The driver didn’t talk. I was grateful for that.

I didn’t have the words to be anyone else yet.

Not the version of myself I was supposed to become once I landed.

Not the brave girl. Not the fresh start.

Instead, I pressed my forehead to the cool window and let the silence settle over me like a second skin.

What if no one was there on the other side?

What if Marvin’s offer was just a kindness he forgot he made?

What if this was the kind of choice girls like me didn’t survive?

I didn’t even realize I’d started to cry until a tear slid down my cheek and hit the collar of my sweater.

No sobbing. No drama. Just... quiet leaking.

I wiped it away before it had the chance to mean anything.

My phone buzzed in my lap. A text from Maddie.

Don’t shrink to fit into places you’ve outgrown. And don’t forget—you promised me you’d write.

I let out a breath that shook a little too much and typed back:

If I disappear, tell my story loud enough that someone might remember how it ends.

No one’s forgetting you, Gen. No one ever could.

I turned off my phone after that. Not because I didn’t want to hear more. But because I wanted the quiet to be mine. I needed to prepare myself for the coming journey. And somewhere—miles ahead, in a place I’d never been—someone else was waiting. That someone might lead to something… more…

***

The plane lifted with a groan, metal wings carving through low clouds like it was forcing its way into a sky that didn’t want to let go. I didn’t open the shade at first. I hadn’t ever been on a plane like this before, and my tense body told of an apprehension I hadn’t realized I would have.

There was something sacred about pretending I was nowhere.

Not grounded. Not in transit. Just suspended.

Between the life I’d known and the life I hadn’t lived yet.

I imagined the clouds outside like cotton wrapped around the bruises of the world.

Like maybe the sky could protect me from the gravity of becoming someone new.

But eventually, curiosity won out. I cracked the window and looked down.

Houses blurred into stitched fields and highways that unraveled like veins across the skin of the country.

It was dizzying, how small everything became when you left it behind.

All the places that used to define me now looked like scribbles from this height.

Like a past someone else had written. The woman beside me was asleep.

Her mouth hung open slightly, her head tilted back like she trusted the sky to hold her.

I didn’t trust anything to hold me. I folded my sweater tighter around myself and leaned into the hum of the engine. It reminded me of a lullaby—one sung in a language I didn’t know. One that promised change, but not safety. Beneath the white noise, my thoughts returned to one of Marvin’s letters.

"Middlecross could be a fresh start, if you’re ready. Things move slow here. People ask questions, but they don’t press. I’ve got work if you want it. Room if you need it. Just say yes, and I’ll make space for you."

It sounded simple. Soft. A breath after drowning for so many years in the pain of being forgotten.

But I knew better. Nothing was ever that clean.

Especially not for girls like me —the ones who left behind quiet damage and carried invisible scars in their carry-ons.

Girls who smiled in mirrors but flinched at kindness.

Girls who said yes to second chances because first ones had teeth.

A crackle of turbulence pulled me back. Just a jolt. Nothing serious. But enough to make the overhead bins groan. Enough to make my stomach tighten with dread.

Somewhere down there—between Sioux Falls and a town I couldn’t yet imagine—was a man I’d never met, who might already be wondering if I was the one.

It was a strange, haunting kind of hope.

Not romantic. Not even safe. Just… magnetic.

Like something I couldn’t name was already circling me. Drawing closer with every mile.

I pressed my palm to the glass.

“Please,” I whispered, to no one in particular. “Let me be more than what I’ve survived.” The clouds outside didn’t answer. But I swear—for half a second—I felt the plane tilt. Like maybe something out there heard me, and was listening in.

***

The Sioux Falls bus depot was colder than I expected.

Not metaphorically cold—though it had that too, in the sterile lighting and echoing ceilings—but physically cold.

A sharp, dry chill that bit through my sweater the moment I stepped inside.

My fingers tingled, stiff from gripping the handle of my suitcase as I dragged it over the chipped linoleum.

Virginia in September still held onto summer with both hands, even though it had been chilly when I left yesterday.

Here, the air already smelled like frost. Like brittle leaves and something older beneath them.

Something sleeping under the dirt. Or trying to.

I paused near a vending machine that looked like it hadn’t worked since 2006 and fumbled with my phone.

No bars. No Wi-Fi. Just a “Welcome to South Dakota” banner crookedly hanging over a peeling wall.

Underneath, someone had graffitied “Land of God, Guns, and Ghosts.”

Charming. Not. I was starting to get a good idea on why Marvin had to take out an ad in a newspaper of all places.

This place looked like it had been pulled straight out of 1999.

I pulled out my coat from the top of my rolling duffel and shrugged it on awkwardly.

. Necessary and insufficient at the same time.

A voice crackled through the loudspeaker.

Indistinct. Probably important. The few other passengers scattered across the depot benches didn’t react.

They just stared straight ahead like they’d been waiting since the last ice age.

I made my way toward the small glass door that led out to the buses.

A man was standing near a paper sign taped to a column—“Route 22B — Middlecross.” He was tall, heavyset, dressed in layers like he’d prepared for the apocalypse.

His face was half-obscured by a thick beard and a faded green cap, but his eyes caught mine immediately.

Sharp. Too alert for someone doing a routine job.

“You Gennie?” he asked, stepping forward.

His voice was gravel. Not harsh, but aged and rubbed down to its essentials. It carried the kind of authority that didn’t need volume.

“Yes,” I said. “Genevieve, but—yeah. Gennie’s fine.”

He gave a short nod, like he already knew that. “Name’s Harry, I drive that bus over there. You’re the one headed to Marvin’s?”

“That’s right.”

Another nod. Like it wasn’t strange at all for a girl to hop a plane and a bus and land in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a coat and a ‘maybe’ waiting for her.

Not to mention the weirdness about him knowing exactly who she was.

Marvin had mentioned that everyone knew everyone down in Middlecross, and the bus driver had been the same for the past twenty odd years, but it still seemed odd.

“You’re cutting it close,” he said, glancing out the narrow depot window. “They’re calling for snow tonight. Early season blizzard, if you can believe it.”

I blinked. “Snow? Already?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Harry muttered. “Happened back in ’92. Killed hundreds of head of cattle. Power out for days. You wouldn’t think the land could turn on you that fast, but out here, the land’s got moods.”

I tried to smile, but it felt like my skin didn’t remember how. “Good thing I brought the big coat, then.”

He didn’t smile back. Instead, he turned and gestured toward the far end of the depot, where a single bus waited. It was older than the others, with flaking paint and a slightly off-kilter license plate. The windows were so fogged over I couldn’t see inside.

“Go ahead and get settled,” Harry said. “Not a full ride today. Just you and a few others headed north. We’ll be stopping through South Haven before Middlecross.

Should be there before nightfall—weather willing.

” South Haven. The name pinged something strange in my chest. An unexpected flash of nerves.

Like someone brushing their hand too close to a burn you’d forgotten was there.

I tried to shrug it off, but the feeling lingered.

“Thanks,” I said, gripping the handle of my suitcase tighter.

I hauled it toward the bus, boots crunching on the grit-covered pavement, every step feeling heavier than the one before.

There was something about this moment—this small, transitional silence—that made my heart beat too loud in my ears.

I could feel the change coming, the shift.

Like the air itself was waiting for something to begin.

Harry held the door of the bus open, watching me with a look I couldn’t quite place.

Not interested. Not disinterested either. Just… aware . It gave me goosebumps, and I wished I had thought to bring some bear spray. Not for the bears, for the men in these parts looking at me with a sense of awareness that I didn’t like.

“Middle seat’s warmer,” he said as I climbed the steps. “Engine heat doesn’t reach the back.”

“Good to know,” I replied, taking a careful step past him making sure not to get anywhere near him. Heebie-jeebies activate.

The interior smelled like old coffee and older secrets.

A woman sat near the front, bundled in scarves and muttering to herself.

A teenage boy was slumped in the back row with headphones in, barely more than a shadow.

I chose the third row, middle seat, just like he suggested.

Close to the front. Close to the door. If the heater didn’t reach the back, I didn’t care to be frozen to death.

The suitcase sat beside me like a second body, heavy and full of every version of myself I could take with me.

I pressed my forehead to the cool window and watched as Harry climbed back into the driver’s seat, adjusting the mirrors with surgical precision.

The door hissed closed. The engine growled.

And the bus began to move—slowly, surely—toward the first of many towns I’d never meant to know.