Page 22 of The First Hunt (The Final Hunt)
REBECCA
R ebecca smiled at the woman leaving Albertson’s as she stepped through the automatic doors, even though she felt like crying. She’d had a lot of practice pretending she was happy. On autopilot, she grabbed a shopping basket and wandered around the grocery store in a fog.
She’d told Neil they were out of milk, but really, she just needed to get out of their apartment.
He’d offered to drive her tonight, but she assured him she was perfectly happy taking the bus.
She wandered the aisles, thinking of her boyfriend at home, watching Married with Children, waiting for her return.
He had no idea his girlfriend was having a mid-life crisis while she meandered through a grocery store like a sleepwalker, half-lost in thought, and half-lost in general.
Can you even have a mid-life crisis at twenty-five?
Rebecca turned down the frozen food aisle, wondering if she should bring back some ice cream.
She scanned the freezers of ice cream, guilt pooling in her stomach for wanting more than the life she was living.
Even though her pay at the hair salon wasn’t a lot, it was steady.
Her boyfriend was sweet to her, if boring at times.
He worked hard and treated her well. So what if Neil doesn’t laugh at all my jokes and doesn’t want to go out as much I do? He was loyal and kind.
Her mother’s voice rang in her ears. What more could you want? She dropped a pint of H?agen-Dazs into her basket and made for the check-out line.
When she reached the front of the store, she spotted a copy of Vanity Fair with Kathleen Turner wearing a white dress on the cover .
Rebecca looked away, feeling her throat swell with regret.
When she’d graduated from beauty school, she’d planned to stay in Tacoma for only a year or so until she saved up enough to move to LA and pursue her dream of acting.
But here she was, five years later, working at Supercuts and dating Neil, who had no desire to move to California.
She didn’t even like doing hair, but she hadn’t planned on it being her lifelong career.
Rebecca added a roll of Mentos to her basket in the check-out aisle before paying, thinking it was probably already too late for her to get her start in acting. She should’ve moved to Hollywood right after high school, despite her parents encouraging her to stay in Tacoma and “get a real job.”
She trudged through the parking lot in the rain to wait for the bus to take her home.
She sat on the bus-stop bench, rain pattering against the shelter’s roof, and pulled a Mento out of the roll.
A bus sped by on the opposite side of the street with an advertisement for Ghost on the side, “Coming to Theaters This Summer.”
She chewed the mint as the bus sped away. If I’d gone to LA instead of taking my parents’ advice, that might’ve been me wrapped in Patrick Swayze’s arms on the side of that bus, not Demi Moore. But now she’d never know.
I’ve got to stop blaming my parents for what my life has become. If she wanted to be a Hollywood actress, there was only one person stopping her: herself.
Rebecca shivered and zipped her jacket to the top of her neck as a car pulled out of the Albertson’s parking lot. Suddenly, she didn’t want to go home. The idea of walking back into her apartment felt like she would be giving up on her dream all over again.
Rebecca checked her watch in the dim light from the streetlamp. The bus came about every twenty minutes. She’d been sitting here for at least five, so it shouldn’t have been too much longer.
Headlights slowed coming toward her on the street, but they were too low to be a bus. The car came to a stop in front of her, its tire rolling into a puddle beside the curb. The passenger window rolled down, revealing the shadowy figure of a man behind the wheel.
“You need a ride?” he asked.
Rebecca shook her head. “I’m just waiting for the bus.”
“Looks wet out there.”
She glanced at the roof over her head. “I’m all right.”
The man made no attempt to pull away. Rebecca felt a flicker of fear stab at her chest, thinking of the Green River Killer still at large. Then she remembered he only killed prostitutes, not hairdressers waiting at a bus stop.
“Okay. Well, I’m heading up to Everett. I could drop you off anywhere between here and there if you need a ride.”
Rebecca thought of her friend Barbara from high school, a free spirit and artist who lived on Whidbey Island across the Sound from Everett. Unlike Rebecca, Barbara was doing what she loved and had a gallery on the island where she sold her paintings.
Her bus arrived and pulled to the curb in front of the car with the same ad for Ghost on its side. Am I really going to spend the rest of my life with Neil, living in this city and doing hair?
Growing up, she’d told herself she wasn’t going to live a typical ordinary life like her parents, like most people. Not that there was anything wrong with that, it just wasn’t for her.
The man in the car started to roll up the window as the bus doors opened with a whoosh.
“Wait.” Rebecca stood from the bench and grabbed her grocery bag. She stepped toward the car. “Can you take me to the Mukilteo ferry? I’m going to see a friend on Whidbey Island.” She needed to get away, clear her head, rethink her life. Barbara would understand better than anyone else.
“Sure,” the man said through the half-opened window. “Hop in.”