4
I used to be named Willow Sawyer.
I grew up in the middle of nowhere, out West,
in a really poor little town.
How poor? When I was a kid, my family couldn’t afford rice. My mom would pick through the trash for leftover noodles, wash the maggots off, and cook them for us.
I was seventeen when we got hit with a huge blizzard.
When the snow had closed the roads, I found
Hunter at the edge of town.
He was sitting there, spaced out, staring into
nothing.
I walked up to him. “Hey, what’s your name?”
“Hunt… Hunt…‘
ו
He couldn’t even get the words out. The guy
was out of his mind.
I wanted to walk away, but he grabbed me,
looking desperate.
“Cold… hungry…”
く
In this weather, he wouldn’t make it through
the night.
People freeze to death every winter in my
town–drunks, passed out in the snow, their
bodies stiff the next day.
I didn’t really want to deal with him.
But I couldn’t just leave him to die.
I took him home.
That day, walking into the house through the snow, I had no idea how long our lives would be tangled together.
