With friends like these, who needs enemies?

My new adventure with Marie began the minute after we left her “friends” in a dingy motel room in Jacksonville. Taking a step towards normalcy, we headed for the home of my friend who has three white dogs that Emily loves.

It would be a six-hour drive, and I was already exhausted from worry and stress. Because it was nighttime and money was extremely limited, we stopped at an ever-present Walmart and purchased two sleeping bags and pillows. Because of the way that Florida toll roads work, the rental car was not allowed to go on them.

The GPS took us on lesser-traveled roads where pitch-blackness was around every corner. Other cars were non-existent, but huge tractor-trailer trucks often passed me (as if going 70 miles an hour wasn’t fast enough.)

Looking for a place to pull over for the night, I learned the joys of a “travel stop,” generally designed for the trucks to spend the night. Parking next to many other cars, most with sleeping occupants, Marie and I went inside to get something to drink. Imagine my astonishment walking into a “travel mall” of sorts. Elegant, spotlessly clean rest rooms awaited us, with a similarly clean laundry unit adjoining. Hot showers were advertised, and there was a casual room for resting, talking or using one’s computer with free Wi-Fi. It sold everything a traveler could need: hats, sunglasses, car parts, batteries, oil, travel blankets and travel pillows, and many single serve containers of freshly cooked food. Marie spotted macaroni and cheese and asked if she could get it. When I nodded in the affirmative, she gleefully skipped over to the microwave and put her treasured food in to be heated. (It was only later that I found out that she had barely eaten since she had been with her “friends” and generally it was only Saltine crackers and water.) And so it was that our adventure started with a new experience, sleeping in the car at a truck stop.

Driving towards my friend’s house, the scenery all began to look the same and my lack of knowledge amazed me. Cows were everywhere, as if we were magically transported to Texas. (Okay, this again points to my naiveté, as I am sure there are many other states where these creatures exist and multiply.) Pecan stands were by the wayside, as were small stores advertising orange juice. The number of churches seemed to exceed the number of houses, with most of them being quaint and inviting. Alligator farms were advertised with huge alligators looming on big billboards, most of them with faded paint. During the day there was quite a bit of traffic, mostly trucks and RVs, necessitating a large number of campgrounds and “travel stops.” As we drove closer to town, there were familiar Cracker Barrel signs, along with Golden Corrals. (Hubby has often lamented the fact that Golden Corral restaurants are advertised on local TV, but there are none nearby. He feels it is cruel to display scrumptious looking shrimp and steak that is out of our reach.)

Arriving at my friend’s house, I was exhausted from driving, so she made me a cup of tea and I sat in their massage chair that almost fully engulfed my body. Marie was laughing extravagantly as she lay on the floor and the dogs crawled all over her and licked her face.

After this tension releasing activity, Marie finally began to talk about what her experience with her “friends” had been like. Awaking at 7 a.m., they were driven to a nearby location and tasked with begging for money. Marie was familiar with this activity, as she had spent many years of her young life doing so. Because she has difficulty counting money, she could not relay how much was collected, but indicated it was “piles and piles.”

They would eat once a day, the aforementioned crackers and water. She insisted this was not a problem because she was trying to lose weight anyway. After the habitual commuters in the community headed home for the day, the group would head to another inexpensive hotel, staying one step away from the police. The four men and four women would share the hotel room that had two double beds. Marie would not recount the sleeping arrangements, insisting she “didn’t remember.” The next morning they would wake at 7 a.m. and start another day of begging for money. They had taken her ID, changed her name, stolen all of her money and took away the iPhone she used for communication, yet Marie kept calling them her “friends,” as though only that explanation would make such behavior forgivable. Throughout the next few days, we had many conversations about her experience, but she could never understand that they were not her friends. Many more conversations lay ahead.