CHAPTER 24 – The Bridge at Springfield

  The bus rolled into Springfield just before noon, the sun climbing high and hot overhead. Traffic thickened around them—cars honking, engines growling, people rushing in every direction. It felt nothing like Chetopa. Nothing like the quiet fields she’d walked past at dawn.

  It felt too big.

  And she felt too small.

  Still, she pressed her face to the window as the bus pulled into the terminal—a squat concrete building with cracked paint and faded signs. People crowded around the entrance: travelers with suitcases, kids tugging at parents, a man carrying a guitar case wrapped in duct tape.

  The driver called, “Springfield! Twenty?minute stop. Next bus boards at 12:35!”

  Twenty minutes.

  Just enough time to breathe.

  Just enough time to doubt.

  Just enough time to keep going.

  Fleta stepped off the bus and felt the city stretch out around her, loud and alive. Her backpack felt heavier now, not physically—emotionally. She tugged the straps tighter and scanned the terminal for someplace quiet.

  A narrow walkway led out back toward a pedestrian bridge arching over a busy road. It was nearly empty—just a few stray leaves blowing along the concrete.

  Perfect.

  She climbed the steps to the bridge and leaned against the railing. Below her, cars rushed past in noisy waves. Above her, the sky shimmered with heat. In front of her, the city sprawled out endlessly.

  She felt suspended—between Kansas and everywhere else, between childhood and something that looked like survival.

  She pulled Connor’s carved wooden hiker from her pocket and held it tightly.

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  “You’d think this was cool,” she whispered.

  Connor would have liked the bridge—the structure of it, the rhythm of the traffic, the way the whole city moved like one massive pattern. He would’ve stood beside her, naming car models and calculating traffic flow with perfect precision.

  She blinked hard, fighting the ache that rose in her chest.

  “Hope the world’s gentle with you,” Connor had said.

  Funny.

  Funnier still—she wasn’t gentle with herself.

  A voice startled her.

  “You headed far?”

  She spun around.

  A man stood a few steps away—not old, maybe thirty, with a backpack of his own slung over one arm. His clothes were worn and dusty, the kind travelers wore when they’d been on the road a long time.

  She gripped her pack straps instinctively. “Just traveling.”

  “Me too,” he said. “Trail, actually.”

  Her pulse jumped. “Trail?”

  “Appalachian,” he said casually. “I’ve been chasing it for years. Doing sections when I can.”

  She stared. “Really?”

  “Really,” he said with a half smile. “You know it?”

  Her heart beat fast. “A little.”

  He nodded toward her backpack. “Looks like you’re carrying light. That’s good. Most new hikers pack too much and give up by mile fifty.”

  She forced a shrug. “I’m just… going somewhere.”

  He didn’t press. “Well, if you are thinking about the AT someday, it’ll change you. Hardest thing you’ll ever love.”

  Fleta swallowed. “Was it scary?”

  He thought for a moment. “Sometimes. But mostly it makes everything else less scary.”

  She looked down at the cars rushing beneath the bridge. She thought about home—storm-shattered rooms, her mother’s tired eyes, her stepfather’s boots thundering across the kitchen floor. She thought about how scared she was even now.

  She whispered, “That would be nice.”

  He glanced at the terminal clock. “Bus boards in five. Better grab a seat.”

  She nodded and started back down the steps, but he called softly after her:

  “Hey.”

  She turned.

  “You’ve got that look,” he said.

  “What look?”

  “The look of someone climbing their first real mountain.”

  She didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything. She just tightened her grip on her wooden hiker and hurried back into the terminal.

  The next bus was already boarding.

  Memphis.

  Then Atlanta.

  Then Georgia.

  Then the trail.

  One step at a time.

  She handed the driver her ticket money, climbed aboard, and found a window seat near the back.

  As the bus pulled away from the station, she watched Springfield shrink behind her.

  Then she looked forward.

  Toward the road.

  Toward the ridges.

  Toward the long, winding path waiting for her feet.

  Fleta whispered to herself, steady and certain:

  “I’m getting closer.”