Seve Miles

Seven miles to the nearest town, that’s all she knew, seven more miles of walking, hiking and probably limping. She stood up, put her map and water bottle back in her frayed Jansport backpack, taking a deep breath in as if to mentally prepare herself for the trek ahead. “All right,” she said to herself, “you can do this,” and off she went. Walking in such a determined fashion that she could easily be mistaken for someone who actually knew what they were doing. That was her best talent after all, walking with purpose and conviction even when she was secretly a mess. She knew that much about herself, knew that she had a great Poker Face and that she could hide her emotions better than she could feel them. She walked through the woods back to the highway thinking about home, the quaint apartment she lived in with her mom back in San Francisco, she thought about her friends and school and the privileged life she once led. Looking back, just over a year since her graduation, she came to the sudden realization that she did not miss it at all. She had thought a lot about home since she left and she thought about the reasons why she had to leave, but she could never help but feel the deep ache of nostalgia that overcomes a person when they think back to “the good ol’ days” but this day was different. For once, she could see clearly that those were not the good ol’ days, they couldn’t be because she was living them now. With this newfound knowledge, she continued walking until she hit the highway and walked north alongside it until she came upon a big green sign that read KILLDEER 7 MILES and she smiled. Only seven more miles, she was so excited she wanted to run there, but she knew she could not run because she had not slept in almost two days and had not had a decent meal in about three. So she continued her sluggish pace for what seemed like hours until she felt she could absolutely not go on any longer, but she knew she couldn’t set up camp in the woods again. Not after what happened the night before with the hunters, they nearly found her crouched in the underbrush, she thought about the . she’d seen at the gas station in Rapids City, the one about the bodies found in the woods not far from where she was. There were suspicions of a group of hunters that were after more than just deer, and she was not taking any chances. She decided she’d rather take her chances hitching than spend another night by herself sleeping on the freezing forest ground. She stood with her thumb in the air for only a few minutes before a fairly old yellow Jeep stopped and the man inside reached over to unlock the passenger door. Anxiously she opened the door and hunched over slightly, “Where ya headed?” the man asked plainly “Killdeer, sir” “Why on earth would anyone ever want to go to Killdeer?” “Visiting family, sir” “I’m sure you are” he said “get in, it’s only about five miles north” She very cautiously moved the old food wrappers and empty beer cans from the seat and sat down, tense and apprehensive. Then she turned to the left to get a good look at the man, he was maybe fifty seven but he looked much older due to a white beard that came down to the collar of his dingy red Coca-Cola T-shirt. He had an old leather jacket draped over back of his seat and when she looked down at his feet she noticed that he had kicked off his shoes. That explains the smell she thought looking at his dirty socks that must have been white at some point. He caught her staring and quickly asked her where she was from, she lied and said Ohio. Of all the places she could be from, she always said Ohio because she had loved it there ever since she went to Cleveland with her father when she was eleven. She knew it would probably be the last vacation she'd ever take with him but she did not think it would be the last time she'd ever see him. Now every time someone asked her where she was from she always said Ohio. Probably because she so badly wanted to be from there, she always wished her dad had taken her with her when he moved but instead he left her in San Francisco with her mother who, not long after her father left, started to fall apart altogether. "I asked you a question" He said and she immediately snapped out of it. "Sorry, what was that?" "What's your name?" She looked at him and decided that for once, she should tell the truth. "Serena. My name's Serena." “Well, Serena, my name is Chip and I am not from Ohio.” “Then where are you from?” “Nowhere.” He said this so harshly that she decided she would not ask him anymore personal questions for the duration of the five miles she would be spending with him. She had met many people like this since she’d been on the road, people that did not care much for talking about themselves or the lives they led before they decided that they’d had enough. She learned the hard way that you cannot pry at these people and soon enough she became one of these people, she was no longer just a visitor in their world, and now she makes up so many lies about who she is and where she is from that she can’t even keep up with her deceptions anymore. She had so many names in the past year: Tammie, who lived on a farm or Erica, who lived in Cleveland with her father or Janie who lost both of her parents and decided to hit the road. That was the most honest lie she ever told, because in way, yes she did lose both of her parents, her dad bailed and her mom cracked, whether they were alive or not, they were rendered pretty useless to her. A couple minutes later, chip stopped the car in front of a beat up convenience store. “Thank you.” She said in a very small voice “I really appreciate it.” He looked at her with a somber gaze, almost like he wanted to cry. “Yeah, well take care” He turned and looked at the road ahead. She quickly got out of the car and gathered her belongings from the backseat and with a last glance at the mysterious man in the yellow Jeep, she started to walk away. “Serena!” his yell was muffled through the closed window. She turned to see him leaned over the passenger seat rolling down the dirty window. “Nebraska.” “Huh?” She asked “I’m from Nebraska. I left when I was seventeen, I’m fifty-eight. How old are you?” “Um nineteen.” “Go back.” “Excuse me?” “Listen little girl” he said “I’ve been on the road for over forty years and I can tell you firsthand, it ain’t as glamorous as it seems.” This made her angry, she wasn’t some irrelevant old drunk, she was nothing the scraggly waste of a man that stood before her. And with that thought, she walked closer to the car window and looked up at the man. “Yeah, well you don’t know anything about me, Chip.” she said this so finally that Chip could not even muster a response before Serena had turned around and walked away. She heard him yelling something at her but she could not decipher what he was saying over the ringing she heard in her ears, she kept walking in an unknown direction until she came upon a small park in what looked like a residential neighborhood. The houses were all small and old-looking, as was everything else in the minuscule little town called Killdeer. She suddenly understood what Chip meant about nobody ever wanting to go to Killdeer, she suddenly understood a lot about what he was talking about, and she knew deep down that he was right. She sat at the base of a nearby tree and began to cry. She hadn’t cried like this in a long time, it was the kind of cry that comes deep down from your soul and makes you remember every painful thing that has ever happened to you. She laid down, using her backpack as a pillow and cried like this for maybe an hour until she heard footsteps approaching. She looked up and saw only a small silhouette through the tears. She blinked a couple of times and it was gone, the child (she assumed) had completely vanished. It is a fairly well-known fact that hunger and sleep-deprivation can make a person hallucinate and Serena always considered herself to be reasonable but she still got up, leaving her backpack and sweater and meager amount of money on the ground behind her and went to find the imaginary child. She called out for him and caught a few very dirty looks from the passerbys but she didn’t even care. She just kept that illusion, she ran and ran until she practically fell out from exhaustion, snapping out of the hallucination. She looked around and saw that it was dark, very dark, the kind of dark one only finds in the country. She also realized that she was in the woods, again. As far as she could see, there were no lights that signified the town or any type of civilization. She paced around for a while, not wanting to go too far. For what? she thought, she’s already lost, in fact it doesn’t get much lost-er than this so, she started to walk ahead with absolutely no sense of direction. “Who knows” she said out loud “Maybe it’s my lucky day.” she said this so bitterly that it actually made her cringe. Or perhaps it was a shiver, she wasn’t sure. She had been so preoccupied with getting herself out of those damned woods that her brain had not even registered how cold her body was yet. She wore only a thin cardigan over her battered Guns N’ Roses T Shirt that, given other circumstances, might have been considered fashionable amongst the growing population of “Hipsters”. Yes, her whole shpeel would come off as a glamorous adventure and that’s exactly what she thought it would be like; running away from the city to explore the country and “find herself”. Only now did she know that she could not be more wrong, stranded and freezing and alone and scared. She gave up and sat down on the cold, wet dirt, her back against the trunk of a large tree. Then slowly, she fell asleep. She woke up to the sound of approaching footsteps and froze, recalling the story on the news. Then she heard their hushed murmurs, talking about following the tracks in the mud and as they neared, their voices got louder and she could feel them, they were close. She got up and started running as fast she could, tripping and falling but always getting back up. She looked back and saw that three men followed her at an alarmingly fast pace, she tried to keep running but she didn’t know if she could. Then suddenly, she saw the child, standing a few yards away waving at her frantically as if to follow him as he ran to the left, sh picked up the pace and followed him. He looked back as he ran with an eerie smile but she still followed him until all of a sudden he disappeared. And as his small body faded she realized that she was running directly towards the edge of a cliff, she couldn’t stop. She ran right off the side of the huge cliff, as she fell she saw only the eerie smile on the child’s face before she hit the water… She woke up in the woods, nestled in the underbrush of a tree, she was all sweaty and her mouth was as dry as chalk. Groggy and afraid she got up and retrieved her map. She was seven miles to the nearest town. She looked at the map, confused and scared. Without a second thought, she headed for the highway. She walked along the road, her thumb out. A dingy yellow Jeep stopped and the driver leaned over to open the passenger side door. “Where ya headed?” “San Francisco.” “Get in.”

West Egg, East Egg and Everybody Else

At east egg, you are considered to be more classy than those at west egg because you were born into your wealth. I think that this is ridiculous because the people that live in west egg have actually worked at earning what they have while the east eggers have had everything handed to them on a silver platter since the day they were born. everyone of those east egg families started out at west egg in some sense, they were all poor at some time and they all had to build their empire on their own (or "luck into it"). it is also aggravating that while people from east egg have so many hard opinions on those from west, they still find time to go to Gatsby's parties and marvel over everything he has. Meanwhile the everybody else in this scenario would kill to live at either of these "eggs", the other people who range from low to middle class and cannot understand the problems of the rich because they actually have to work to keep their meager homes and humble lifestyles. This book focuses mainly around the rich and their flashy lifestyles so it is easy to get caught up in the illusions that it was like this for everybody in the twenties but it was most certainly not, the twenties may have held a lot of opportunities but it was also a time of depression and financial struggle throughout the US. The only character in this book that can even slightly resonate with this is Nick because he is actually trying to be self-sufficient. All though he lives in West egg, Nick understands somewhat of the financial struggles that some people have to deal with.