Collegiate Times

She slipped out of the crowded bar through the back door, shutting it softly behind her. Her hushed giggle floated out across the vast desert, whose only inhabitants were the saguaros, old sentinels on the skyline daring her to disturb them.

There was no need for silence in her escape. The sounds of the bar drowned out any noise that the old door may have made. But the slyness of her exit amused her, allowing another giggle to pour out over her glossed lips.

She slid her feet out of her sandals, unhooking the straps that bound her thin ankles to the soles of her shoes. Her right foot ventured off the shoe, grazing the surface of the sand, skimming across the grains, just barely moving them out of their places. The granules stuck to her feet, hanging onto them as if they were only an extension of her body.

She shook her foot, watching each one fall off back into the sand, creating a miniature rain of sand onto the ground underneath her. Her other foot followed its partner's journey off the shoes and onto the cool desert floor. It too created a footprint in the undisturbed sand. Wiggling her toes into the sand, she closed her eyes, tilted her head back, spread her arms and let the night envelop her whole being.

She breathed in the air; a mixture of oxygen, sand, the sounds of the Mexican city that lay behind her and the silence of the desert, which lay ahead of her.

She seemed to be taking in two places at once, hanging in the most beautiful of purgatories. The city and the desert swirled together in her lungs, creating an intoxicating mixture.

She opened her eyes to gaze at the stunning sky above her. Suspended in the air were multitudes of stars, tossed out across the sky. It was as if a child had spilled a glass full of the marvelous orbs and hadn't bothered to pick them up yet.

She looked back at that city, the lights that were beginning to blur together, the sound that had fallen to a dull monotonous roar, and the people that once were hers. No longer did it call to her as it once did. She wasn't the girl that arrived a few months ago. No. She was a different person altogether. They wouldn't come looking for her; they would come looking for a girl that she didn't know anymore. But they wouldn't be able to find that girl.

That girl had been lost somewhere in the winding alleys of Guadalajara. She'd been lost in the vibrant colors, musical beats of the Latin streets, and would never be found. Taking one last glance at the city, she turned her back on all that had once been familiar and turned to face the unknown.

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