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Amber Carter mopped at her sweaty face with the bottom of her baggy T-shirt. Her shoulder-length mocha waves tied into a careless bun that lopped to the side every time she bent down to pack another box. Baffled at the amount of stuff she accumulated in the three short years after college. And disturbed that it all managed to fit into the tiny space, trying its damnedest to be a one-bedroom apartment. Her practical and neat as a pin father would have a lot to say about it, and it was for that reason alone she had no choice but to decline his help to pack up her apartment. She loved Frank Carter in the way only a girl could love her father. Utterly and without condition. But sometimes a girl just needed to stand on her own two feet and not hear a lecture about quality over quantity.

With winged arms tucked into her hips, grinning like a fool, she stood like a smug superhero overlooking the city she just saved from peril. To the left, a small lump of boxes rose on top of the bubble-wrapped, dark cherry wood dresser. To the right was a mountain of boxes piled on a sagging single bed marked for charity - with new beginnings, some of the old had to go. Besides, it gave her more space for the new queen-sized bed her dad sent over this morning as a house-warming present. With it, came a machine that would be the major attraction to their new apartment. A proper coffee maker. It was all shiny chrome with a range of fancy features.

Their apartment, she thought again and smiled like a crackbrained clod even as the muscles in her cheeks ached and nerves twitched. She was just so damn happy. Tina Young, her best friend since the first day of college, was moving to Seattle with her. Right out of a three-year internship with Environ, twenty-five and fresh as a daisy, she snagged an assistant position at the Seattle office. She will report to Joe Clark, one of the fore leading specialists in environmental sciences. Amber would die happy if she could make even the smallest impact in the fight to save the world from humanity. Of course, her duties, for now, would be more administrative than actual research, or way up there–implementation, but the opportunity itself was beyond her wildest imagination.

Amber had come dangerously close to rejecting the opportunity because she was uneasy to move to Seattle on her own. Anxious might be a humble report. It petrified her to the point of a complete mental breakdown. Turning this down would have been the worst decision she had ever made and this coming from the same girl who shaved off her eyebrows in middle school because she was sure she’d do a better job of them with black eyeliner and an unsteady hand. She still had low-level nightmares about her perpetually startled appearance for more than a month before it finally grew back. Just as perfect, her dad assured her, as they were before the horrific incident.

The buzzer pulled from her visions of teenage horrors. The movers, already loaded up with Tina’s possessions, quickly stacked her Seattle boxes, new bed, and coffeemaker in the truck. She waved them off with all that remained now was to hand the keys to the landlord, get her chump change of a security deposit back and wait for Tina to pick her up for the three-hour drive to Seattle.

Mr. and Mrs. Young would hover over their daughter to the point of insanity right about now. Their little girl was leaving the nest, and neither Tina nor Amber would dare to mention the fact that they would never see a twenty-fifth birthday again. Having already made peace with the fact that it could easily take another hour before Tina’s parents released her into the world, Amber locked up the apartment and took her time closing all windows. Because knowing them, Tina was probably suffering through a profuse amount of YouTube videos on self-defense Tina would need in the ‘Big Wicked City’–their new nickname for Seattle. Amber rolled her eyes at the thought. They would have perished from abject terror if the girls moved to New York instead of Seattle. Seattle, where, she constantly reminded them, the population and danger factor are not that much higher than Portland.

But in all honesty, she didn’t mind their overprotectiveness all that much, God knows her best friend needed it. Tina was a bit of a wild child. She developed a little powder dependence during college. After Amber threatened her with anger and bodily harm with no result, she eventfully turned to pleading and tears and Tina begrudgingly agreed to slow it down to the occasional party favor here and there - Amber still wasn’t happy about it but she took her wins where she got them. She locked the door to her old life and jogged down the four flights of stairs to hand over the keys and get her deposit. The landlord couldn’t have been less interested in Amber’s new adventure and shut the door in her face mid-sentence after plucking the keys out of her hand and replacing them with a white envelope of what she could only consider pretty cash.

“Rude,” she muttered as she turned away from the hostile door. Shoving the envelope into her bag, she pulled out her phone and texted Tina to pick her up from the bakery on the corner. Might as well stock up for the drive while she waited.

She said goodbye to her dad over dinner last night. She made him promise to come and visit in October, as he made her promise that she would be home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Both their birthdays were in July, so they still had plenty of time to argue about that later. Sitting at a small round table, watching the morning swirl into the afternoon, she took a sip of the iced coffee and sighed, tenderly gazing at what has been home for her entire life. And at what will soon be a very fond memory. It was time to move on, to explore the other.

All these years that passed in her hometown without ‘the spark’ was another reason for Amber to embrace the change of scenery. Maybe the distance from Portland and its constant reminders was just what she needed. Her thoughts would turn dark with accusations, ugly with guilt. Girls who killed their mothers didn’t deserve to have love. God, it stabbed through her like a white-hot poker. In the far corners of her essence, she knew it wasn’t truly her fault, but having to live with the fact she was to blame for Diana Carter’s death left Amber with staggering feelings of guilt. Especially since her dad never once looked at her with even a single slither of blame.

Before the road into darkness could summon her to step in all the way, it saved her from tragic thoughts when Tina pulled up to the curb in the red, trim Toyota. With all the windows rolled down and the iconic song Queen sang about, breaking free pierced the surrounding air. Laughing, Amber shook her head, picked up the brown paper bag, and joined her friend on the road to freedom.