Total pages in book: 22
Estimated words: 20619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 103(@200wpm)___ 82(@250wpm)___ 69(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 20619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 103(@200wpm)___ 82(@250wpm)___ 69(@300wpm)
I’m nineteen. I’ve been working full time since I was still in high school. All to help my dad. All to try to get him to that next job. I should be in college, but we need the money now. I should be out doing anything, instead of trying to help someone who is nearly fifty years old to pay his bills.
All he does is make my life miserable, taking whatever little joys I have left.
“No,” I say, my teeth gritted. “I’m not giving you fifty dollars, Dad.”
“Huh? Why? You surely have that in tip money, sweetie.”
Something in me cracks. It’s not from this, but all the weight, all the trauma, everything, all of it finally breaks through the walls of my fragile psyche and knocks it down.
I head for the door.
“Where the fuck are you going?” he calls out, making a grab for my arm to stop me, but I’m too quick for him.
“Somewhere. Somewhere that’s not here.”
“You tell me where you’re going, young lady.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything. So I’m not, Dad. I’m a grown woman and I can make my own way.”
He stamps his feet like a child. “You’re not going anywhere. I gave you permission to use my car for work, not for joy-riding.”
He’s technically right. It is his car.
But I don’t care.
I need to not be here. If I have to keep looking at him, I’m only going to get angrier. And I know where all our sharp knives are. For his sake, and more for mine, I have to leave.
The rain has already started to come down, the storm in full swing. So much for dodging it.
I hop into the car. Dad follows me out, screaming at me. “Savannah Lynn Summers, you get back here right now!”
If it was Mom saying that, I would have stopped. But Dad had finally lost the last bit of any respect I had for him. I kick the old Ford into reverse, pull out, and drive out of the parking lot, hitting the road with no clear goal.
Maybe I should have just gotten food or something. Maybe that would have calmed me down.
But through the pouring rain, and the flashes of lightning, I just drive. Nothing else matters. I need to get away from all of this, and the farther I am from my useless wretch of a father, the better off I know I’ll be.
The rain is intense. Common sense tells me I shouldn’t be driving through this: the windshield wipers unable to keep up, the winds strong, the thunder roaring louder and louder. I think I’m heading right into the storm, but I keep going. If a tornado touches down and flings this car out into the countryside, at least it’d help me be even farther away from my problems.
It’s an hour before I realize how far from the city I’ve gotten. The rain doesn’t relent, not one bit. But in my anger, my sadness, whatever is the primary emotion driving me away, I didn’t once look at the fuel gauge. I’d been planning on getting a refill on it tomorrow morning before work, but obviously I wasn’t thinking.
Not until it was well under the E part of the tank.
I swing the car around and start heading back to town. I have no idea where I am, but I’m sure I saw a gas station not too far back. I cling on to one of the things told to me by my aunt when she taught me to drive, that the fuel gauge is often simply a suggestion at best, and a goddamn liar at worst.
In this case—the gauge is telling the truth. The car sputters, and I’m losing acceleration. Not wanting to strand the thing in the middle of a dark road where no one can see it, I pull off onto the shoulder. The car barely makes it before the engine coughs and wheezes its final death.
Are you kidding me?
I have no idea where I am. My phone’s service is dead, this far out into the boonies, which understandably adds to my fear.
So not only am I tired, hungry, angry, and aching, I’m terrified and alone, out in the middle of nowhere, in the heart of an endless thunderstorm.
I shiver, the car’s heater dying with its lack of gasoline. Add cold to the list of my miseries.
So this is how it ends, huh? Stranded in my dad’s crappy car, in the sticks, freezing to death during an electrical storm.
Do I get out and try to walk it? I didn’t even bring an umbrella. I look to the woods, and I hate my father even more for not letting me join the Girl Scouts all those years ago. Said the fees were too much and we couldn’t afford it, all while carrying a bottle of some expensive scotch. Sure, Dad. We couldn’t possibly afford it.