Jessie shifts her bag around as she climbs off the train, fidgeting with the strap, and looks around for a taxi. Her new home in Solace is supposed to be pretty close to Anchor. Which is good since Anchor is the last stop for the train. She has done enough traveling to last her a lifetime. The mountains seem so much bigger up close. She wonders if Solace is in the mountains. After living in the south for so long the idea of this cold weather isn’t appealing. October has just started and already she can see her breath.

She looks around. A few taxies idle near the bus stop. Jessie grabs her suitcase, wheeling it towards the taxies. Picking out the least creepy driver. This is the part of the journey she isn’t looking forward to. Why couldn’t all of this happen once she was sixteen and could drive herself? It’s less than two months out. Just once she wishes life would give her a small break.

Lights start to flip off. She dashes towards the taxies. No way is she getting stuck here overnight. They start driving away as she approaches. She taps on the window of one of the remaining taxis. Peering in. Time seems to stop as the window slides down.

“What do you want?”

“I need a ride to Solace. Sir.”

“We don’t go up the mountain. Try one of the guys on the street over there.”

“Thank you.”

Jessie gathers up her stuff and walks towards the street he pointed at. She waits for the buses to fly by. The calm she had getting off the train is disappearing with each passing moment. Why does she have to deal with transportation? Her parents should be here. At least wait to abandon her until she is sixteen and able to drive. She knows they dislike her episodes, especially her mother, but they always move with her. But this time her mother said they aren’t coming. It isn’t ‘fair’ for their life to be disrupted. She wonders how her parents are able to support two houses. They must be getting paid better than she thought. In that case, ignore the doctor and let her stay in Wayport. It is less stressful than this nonsense. They hadn’t even taken her to the train station in Wayport or said their goodbyes.

Jessie notices an empty taxi driving by and tries to wave it down. The cab driver pulls over. She runs up to the passenger side hoping that he is one of the taxis that would go to Solace. The window slides down. She ignores the moldy smell coming from the inside.

“Excuse me, do you go to Solace?”

“Depends how far in to town you need to go. Some dirt roads up there have washed out. Never got fixed.”

“Here’s the address.” Jessie passes the address to the young driver, hoping she is able to even get to this house.

“Should be fine. As long as the road back has been maintained. What kind of road goes to your house?”

“I’m not sure. My parents didn’t want me to miss school during the move so I came first.”

The man shrugs. “I’ll try it. Climb in.”

Jessie slides into the backseat of the taxi. This whole situation is making her more uneasy with each passing minute. She squeezes an imaginary stress ball trying to stay calm. The reality of the whole situation is finally setting in. Her anger is turning into depression and anxiety. If something goes wrong she has no parents and no guardian looking out for her. Everyone has tossed her away.

The taxi darts off zipping in and out of lanes. Cars blare their horns. It is much scarier when a stranger is behind the wheel. Jessie tries to stare out the window and ignore the erratic driving. She is stressed enough already. Looking back on the whole situation that landed her here, it is kind of odd. What kind of doctor picks out which town -- hell even which house -- his patients should move to? Maybe she should ask to stop at a hardware store. A couple extra locks on the house might not be a bad idea. She does not want a late night visit from some half-crazed doctors. She is keeping her visitors strictly to the dead, thank you. At least the ghosts have never been able to harm her physically.

As the taxi gets close to the edge of town it stops moving. She peeks through the windshield to notice that traffic seems to have stopped. Red and blue lights blur past the taxi. There must be some kind of accident ahead. All she needs. Another delay to starting over. She just wants to crash on her bed, and be in her new home already. The taxi crawls forward. The police clear the road of debris and gawkers. It is hard to tell if the gawkers or the accident is the cause of the traffic jam. Jessie glances away, not wanting to take chances on seeing any ghosts from the accident. No reason to risk ruining her luck now. It has been an odd sense of calm not seeing any ghosts the past couple weeks. On one hand she loves it but the other part of her worries about not seeing any ghosts. Seeing them is a reminder that she is still in her reality. That the ghosts haven’t sucked her into their world.

Jessie catches sight of a fuzzy outline the size of a child on the other side of the street. It is staring towards the wreck. Her stomach turns. She watches the girl walk towards the wreck. Ignoring the living world as she walks through the cars. As she passes near the taxi something seems off. It is like the girl couldn’t sense her. And Jessie isn’t getting the usual vibe from the child. Why isn’t she totally in focus? That is also something new. She forces herself to look away and stare at the floorboards. That is safe. Something about seeing the fuzzy ghost is more unsettling than seeing no ghosts at all. Like her powers are shifting. Changing. Reacting to something. She forces herself to focus on something else. This line of thinking is bound to drive her insane.

Snow starts to dust the ground about halfway up the mountain. So Solace is pretty far up after all. It’s making sense why most taxis won’t come up here. This trip started twenty minutes ago and is showing no signs of getting close. This far up she is going to have to go buy winter clothes sooner rather than later. Her winter clothes from Arkansas are not going to go far up here.

The road narrows revealing a steep drop off. Jessie prays that no other cars come from the other direction. She isn’t sure there’s enough road left for this to still be a two-lane road and she really doesn’t want to find out. The taxi lurches to the right onto a winding side road. It slides back and forth along the road for a few feet, narrowly missing the rock walls on either side. Jessie relaxes as the ride smoothes out, finding the road. She wonders who carved out the road into the mountain. It seems like it’s not natural since it is smooth and big enough to fit a semi. But like the main road, this one is narrow as well. It’s like the roads were never adjusted for modern cars.

Jessie leans towards the window wanting to catch sight of Solace. She’s curious to see if it really is as small a town as her doctor made it out to be. The road ends turning into a small driveway. That means Solace is further up the mountain. Great. Unable to drive and not in a town. Hopefully Solace isn’t much further up the mountain. She starts digging through her bag looking for the runaway wallet. It always seems to make its way to the bottom and under something. She pulls it out and passes the fee to the taxi driver. Before she can slide out of the back he passes her a card.

“No transportation up here. If you need ride back into Anchor just call the office there.”

“Thanks.”

She climbs out of the taxi taking it all in. It feels like something straight out of a picture book. The small meadow the house sits in didn’t show in the picture. She wonders if there are trails to walk in the woods. A nice hike through nature could really help her stress levels. For the first time Jessie feels like this move might not be so bad after all. She rubs the key to the house as she approaches the door. Unsure of what will be there, if anything, when the door opens. As far as she knows her parents never came out here and she hadn’t been home long enough to pack anything from the house. She remembers her uncle briefly asking her parents about it the first, and only, night she had been home. They had blown him off much the way she had been.

The taxi driver sits there waiting for her to enter the house. Jessie unlocks the door and takes a deep breath. She flings the door open. Boxes are all over the house forming neat stacks towards the ceiling. Some of the piles are taller than her. Now a bigger question forms of who has moved all this in? Is it someone from her family or a moving company who’s been given an extra key? She pulls her phone out her pocket. She leaves her finger on the emergency button just in case it is the second option. Plus there had been the odd doctor. She should have gotten the extra locks before coming out here. It is eerie being alone in the middle of nowhere.

First stop is the kitchen off to her left where she is able to drop her bags. The kitchen seems unpacked or at least isn’t full of boxes. Just to make sure, Jessie opens a few cabinets to find neatly stacked dishes. On the fridge is a note from her uncle. At least someone cares. She reads the note as she checks out the rest of the tiny house. Apparently her uncle is the one to thank for a furnished house. At the back of the house are a bathroom and her bedroom. A sun room is attached off a back door. Since there isn’t a second floor it seems like her parents have no intention of ever moving up here with her. What nice parents she has.

She finds another piece of paper in her bedroom. This one seems to be a map and instructions on how to get to town. Three miles further up the mountain sits Solace. Somewhere there is a shed that holds a new bike that her uncle bought. He promises to come visit her in the next month or so for her birthday. At least one family member still cares for her. Jessie flops onto her new bed exhausted. She dozes off as she is studying her uncle’s hand drawn map to Solace.