Luckily for us, My mother and I had family across the country. When we were approached by the safehouse representatives saying that we posed a threat to ourselves and the others placed in the safehouse and they had to move us AS FAR AS POSSIBLE. The first place we were sent was Rochester, New York. We shared the basement in my grandmothers 3 bed, 2.5 bath house. The basement was quite spacious actually, spanning the entire length of the house. It was split into a makeshift bedroom/entertainment area a Large walk-in closet, a bar area, wood shop, sewing room, study and laundry room.

So that was it. The safehouse bought our greyhound tickets and drove us about 3 hours away to a large city, handed us our tickets and things and took off on us. So much for safety, looks like they were concerned with their own. Seeing as we had HOURS before our first bus took off and only had my mothers last minimum wage check and the money I had saved from school functions. Every friday the school would do half a day of classes and the remainder they would open up a candy cart, selling candy, popcorn and soda while playing a movie marathon. For months before we had left my mother would tell me "soon the fighting will stop, soon it will get better, you can ALWAYS replace things, never people." So I sat in class and watched the movies every friday, no soda, no candy, no popcorn. Just sitting for months. I saved hundreds. Actually more than my mom had saved. Then again, I had no bills to pay. We walked to a burgerking, I think it was. Maybe a Subway restaurant. It was somewhat close to where we were left at the station. Too scared to wander off in a town we didn't know. In a time before everyone had a cell phone or a gps. Not to mention, we were being "securely moved" (if that's what you would call leaving two small women on the side of the road in a large city with not even a map.) I remember getting out of the minivan that day and they handed us our protective order and our tickets.

Later, we would find out that our protective order, temporary custody, and other assorted paperwork didn't mean a thing legally. We get on the first bus and off we go, finally safe. Over night it got so cold that we began to dig through our carry on and put on everything we could find. Layers helped, especially AFTER the bus broke down. That was fun lol. We got to our layover in Dayton, Ohio and we saw something never seen in a small town before. First, as we tried to board my mother was dragged down by the weight of backpacks and a duffelbag. No one would help her up and I had to try, with all the extra weight on my 8 year old limbs, I couldn't manage. She was forced to sit everything down and reorganize afterwords. There was a group of quakers in line behind us, We had thought they were known for friendliness (I guess that's really just the guy on the oats can.) The man in the bus station refused to take the tickets out of the envelope, regardless of seeing both my mother and I struggling to stand upright, let alone dig through paperwork. It was the time of Anthrax but a 4'10 woman and her 8 year old daughter are NOT your threat buddy.

We finally boarded and it was off to New York at last.