But it was hard. Already I was growing wearing from a long day’s walk, and I knew that nightfall approached. And I was cold, so very cold. It was almost as if I could feel the temperature drop every degree, every degree that made so much of a difference when the snow leaked through the worn holes in my old sneakers and wet my frozen blue jeans.

Every instinct in my body screamed at me to turn back, to head towards civilization and the village where I belonged. I had nearly forgotten what it was like to be warm, to have a full stomach. I wanted so much to turn back, but I couldn’t. I knew I couldn’t. I was an outcast now. I had chosen my path and everyone else whom I had grown up with, all of my childhood friends and my family, even – they had chosen theirs.

As I walked, I thought. I knew it was obvious where the allegiances’ of my former friends lay, and it was not with I. After the way they had cast me out, I felt lucky to have survived so far. At the same time I felt guilty for stealing, as I had took some food and water from the storage house and an old sweatshirt from my neighbour’s clothesline. But they had banished me from my home, so it was only fair that I, a mere seventeen-year-old girl, have a spitting chance at survival in a life alone.

And was it not the middle of winter, and nightfall to boot when they had sent me into an unforgiving exile? Involuntarily I shuddered – whether the chill that danced along my spine was a result of the cold, or the memory, I knew not.

And so I kept on, with Jason, my dead brother, constantly in my thoughts, as well as my almost-boyfriend, Sean. With my head raised high, I kept walking, making my way down the long road to the light at the end of the tunnel.