It was dark out. Cold. Our breath hung in the air. Two tufts of white suspended midair, they were the same. I tried not to look at her eyes. Red, swollen, from crying. Deep set. she had the most beautiful green eyes. I wondered why I didn't inherit her eyes. People could never believe we were related. Her with her long voluptuous red hair, her green eyes, her womanly curves. I was nothing like her. Pale, sickly, thin. I was a stick with plane hair, an awful shade of brown. But she was my mother, and I loved her just the same. No matter how many times she screamed or hit me, no matter how much booze she drank, cigarettes she smoked, men she slept with. I loved her just the same.

All I had ever wanted was to be close to her. While most teenage girls had fretted over clothes, boys, hair, and what not, I had never been like them. My life had never been secure enough to worry about small little things like that. I never knew where my home would be tomorrow. The only thing I had to hang onto was my mother, and I did, like a toddler hangs onto an old blanket. I was scared to let her out of my sight. I admired her, adored her. I watched her while she slept. Watched the way she carried herself, held a cigarrette, looked at men.

I never once complained. When we had to sleep in the car on an icy winter night and wake up numb and bitter, I never blamed her. When she moved me from the only place I had felt at home. Away from the first friends I'd been able to make, I didn't get angry. When she moved me across country, when she left me alone for days on end, when she desserted me for men, when she ignored me. I never complained.

And now she had brought us here. The woods next to a throughway in some state I could not identify. We had been walking for hours. My feet were tired, the damp from the snow had seeped into my worn out shoes within moments. My entire body was frozen. My mind was worn out. She did all the talking. I stayed silent. I heard about her life, her childhood. Her father molesting her. How she ran away. How she sold herself every day on the streets, how she cried herself to sleep. It all made me love her more. How I was an accident, but she loved me too much to kill me even before I was ever born. "I really did love you. I always loved you." she said.

Hours had past. I knew her better than I ever had before. We were deep into the woods. She stopped. I stopped too, watched her, wondering what she would do next. She took off her pack. Unfolded a sleeping bag. "There's food and water in this pack. A flashlight, a blanket, some other stuff. Now go to sleep." She sat on a rock and watched over me. I got in the sleeping bag, pulled it up to my chin. Warm, finally. I felt so safe with my mother, sober for once, watching over me. She stroked my face lightly with her hand. Played with my hair a bit. I closed my eyes, and she whispered "I love you" a murmur over and over, as I drifted into sleep.

I woke up. At first I did not know where I was, just that I was very cold. I could not move my legs. I used my elbows to pull myself into a sitting position. Pain shot up my arms. I cried out in pain. The cry echoed into the woods. I was in the woods still. The ground was frozen and snow covered. I was more cold than I had ever been in my entire life. I looked around. My mother was nowhere in sight. My worst fear had come true.

I was alone.