They wouldn’t change. No matter how much I pleaded and begged they wouldn’t leave their toxic cycle. They wouldn’t leave their trail of blood. I always felt like an outsider. The one person who didn’t belong in this town.

And now here I am feeling just like a lured in tourist. Like them, this town has left me out of breath. But not because my life is ceasing no, it’s about to start anew. I’m scared. Even with the fire of freedom burning within me I feel a cower inside. On paper, leaving everything I ever knew made sense but the pain of reality was hitting me. My family wasn’t coming along as they were too ingrained. My friends…were a lost cause too. So here I am, in my car, ditching this town on my own. Earlier, I didn’t let it sink in that this morning at breakfast was the last I’d ever see of them.

It was the last time I’d hear my sister giggle and my mom sip her cup of coffee. I’ll never hear my dad drop a mug of coffee at exactly eight am like clockwork again. There was still uneaten cake in the fridge from my birthday last night. Eighteen. The age of freedom and escape. I come from a town the locals call secrets because of how many are tied to us at birth. They wear the burden of secrets like a badge but I always felt like it was a curse. To outsiders, our small little town was called Jackson Springs named after the man who discovered the local hot spring that was our tourist attraction. He was also the man who started this all. And he was our leader, superior, and giver of judgement.

Yes, he’s been around for a long time. During the gold rush he had discovered a hot spring along with his friend that had an unfortunate end. But before that, Jackson had played hero, diving in after his friend but it was too late. His friend had died but the springs ended up rewarding Jackson for his courage with youth. He went from forty to a youthful twenty-five. No one in town but Jackson knows how the hot springs really works. But when people come of a chosen age they go there with a tourist sacrifice of their choosing and earn the hot spring’s gift for themselves.

There was even an annual festival celebrating it called The Town’s life jubilee. At this festival, kids would play apple bobbing without the apples holding other children’s heads in the water as they laughed. The kid’s being held were labeled as a tourist and once a certain amount of time passed they would lift their heads up and say, “I can’t wait for my reward when I grow up.”

A promise of almost immortality to the smiling youth always brought pride to their parent’s faces. But looking back, I didn’t understand how anyone wasn’t repulsed by the way kids glamorized murder. A couple years ago, I googled one of the tourists who came here. I found a missing person’s post their family had made. He had a granddaughter who made him a macaroni necklace that he always wore. I remember seeing it before…is it wrong to feel grief for people I’d never tried to save? Even now, I’m not rescuing anyone, no, I’m just running away.

I start my car, my bags all packed in my trunk. My future unwritten but my past forever soiled.