Rain, sleet, hail, or snow it didn't matter to her because she didn't care about being cold. To her being cold was nearly equal to having no feeling for anything. In the cold and dark of the night, that's all that mattered.

She didn't have to worry about hurting someone or someone hurting her because she was all by herself, standing silently underneath the branches of an old pine tree far back out in the Michigan woodlands well away from any kind of society.

She could stand there all day and not care how damp or wet her clothing became. How cold she got because that's all she had. Sure her family loved her and they supported her through pretty much everything but one thing only a handful of them did- her sexual preference or orientation.

Only a small portion of her family was okay with her being bisexual and liking other women but not all of them were. Her own parents didn't care about that and it was because of them that she was out here in the chilly bitter cold late in the evening. But, like she had told people before she left home, she didn't care.

Her toes and fingertips had turned purple but still she didn't care. At least nature was upfront about things: death, animals hating one another, etc. Nature didn't lie. It always bared the hard, cold truth. It showed a person how life should be and that in life nothing should be taken for granted because one never knows when it'll be their final breath. That if you make one single mistake out in the woods, you're forever changed because of it.

Reaching into the pocket of her jeans, her fingers touched something that was sharp. For a moment she hesitated, Katie's words ringing in her eardrums, "If you ever feel like that ever again, I want you to call me."

Raindrops ran down the hood of her jacket that she wore and dripped into her eyes. She blinked and then felt her eyes stinging as though they had salt in them.