CHAPTER 2 – The Map Drawer

  Fleta first saw the map on a Wednesday—the kind of Wednesday that drags its feet, heavy and gray, like it wishes it had been born a Friday instead. School let out just after three, and the hot Kansas sun pressed down on the playground while kids scattered toward home. Fleta walked slower than most. She always did. Home wasn’t something to hurry toward.

  She cut through the gravel lot behind the hardware store, past the dumpsters where people sometimes left things too broken to fix. She always checked, just in case. Once she’d found a nearly new thermos. Another time, a rain jacket with a missing zipper. Little pieces of her future, she told herself. Things that belonged to her someday life.

  Today, the dumpsters held nothing but cardboard and the sharp smell of old paint. Fleta adjusted her backpack and kept walking.

  The library was only five blocks from school—five blessedly quiet blocks—and she slipped inside as soon as she saw the brick building rise behind the trees. The air?conditioning hit her skin like a new beginning. It always did.

  Mrs. Hinkley, the librarian, glanced up from the front desk.

  “Afternoon, Fleta,” she said, her voice gentle in that way adults rarely used around her.

  “Hi,” Fleta murmured, giving a small nod before heading toward the back corner.

  The travel section was her sanctuary. She liked that nobody else used it much. Shelves of forgotten guidebooks, atlases, and memoirs waited there like old friends. Today she wasn’t looking for a book, though. She was looking for the map drawer.

  Mrs. Hinkley had told her about it once, months ago—a drawer stuffed with oversized maps that didn’t fit anywhere else. Fleta had been thinking about it lately, wondering if there might be something there she could use.

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  She found the drawer at the bottom of a cabinet near the globe with the peeling equator line. The handle groaned as she pulled, and the whole thing slid open slowly, filled with folded sheets of terrain and highways.

  State maps. City maps. Weathered national park maps with little tears in the corners.

  But one caught her breath.

  A full?length map of the Appalachian Trail, over five feet long, still crisp and detailed. The ridges were printed in faint greens and browns, the path marked in a steady, confident white all the way from Georgia to Maine.

  She touched the paper lightly, like it might vanish.

  It was real.

  The trail she had only seen on tiny book diagrams was now stretched out in front of her, almost too big to take in.

  She crouched on the carpet, spreading the map as flat as she could. From where she sat, she could follow the whole route with her eyes—curving through the Smokies, skimming the edge of Virginia, weaving through Vermont. She imagined being one of those tiny white blazes painted on trees, guiding her forward step by step.

  She didn’t hear Mrs. Hinkley walk up.

  “That one’s been in there for years,” the librarian said quietly. “No one ever looks at it.”

  “I do,” Fleta said before she could stop herself.

  Mrs. Hinkley smiled, soft but knowing.

  “You can take it home if you want. We have a spare.”

  Fleta’s heart lurched. She shook her head quickly. “I might mess it up.”

  “That’s what maps are for,” the librarian said. “Being used.”

  The words felt like a permission she didn’t know she was waiting for.

  She rolled the map carefully, held it tight to her chest, and checked it out like it was the most delicate object in the world. When she stepped back into the afternoon heat, her backpack felt heavier—but her steps felt lighter.

  On the walk home, she imagined taping the map to her wall, tracing the trail night after night. Planning. Learning. Getting ready.

  She also imagined her stepfather finding it. Crumpling it. Throwing it away without understanding what it meant to her.

  She clutched the roll tighter.

  No one could take this from her. Not this.

  As she reached the corner of Maple Street, the house came into view—small, sagging, and loud even when silent.

  Fleta exhaled slowly.

  The map stayed hidden in her backpack, warm against her spine, like a secret heartbeat.

  Someday suddenly felt closer than ever.