What About After?

I'm On My Way.

Author's Note: I want this beginning chapter to be perfect, so expect some changes to it before I progress to the next one. Aggressive criticism is encouraged. Tear it to shreds if you want. Every opinion helps structure this better!

The past few months have been rough. My mom has been stressed out and won't stop complaining about my every little move. I love her to death, but recently she had been hard to tolerate. On Friday, I bought my first truck. Paid for it myself. But she doesn't like the idea of a truck.

"How do you expect me to support this?!" Mom said. "For all we know, the truck could collapse by next week! It is a death trap, and I don't want you driving it!" She hated trucks. I lost my Dad in a car accident 8 years ago, and she believed it could have been prevented if it wasn't a truck. The other driver was proven to be drunk driving, but the airbags didn't go off for my Dad.

"The car passed inspection 2 months ago. Uncle Dan even had a look at it and said it was is good condition!" I yelled back at her. But it wouldn't matter. Uncle Dan was my dads brother. He tried his best to help me when needed, but would shy away from anything else. "If Uncle Dan says it's safe, then why is there even a problem here?!" I asked.

"Trucks can't be trusted. Especially one as old as this one!" Mom argued. "Why do you even need a truck? That money could have bought a nice, safer, more fuel efficient sedan!"

I just gave up. She did have a valid argument, but any car I could have bought with my money would be at those risks. This truck was 17 years old, with some wear on the body and some rust on the frame. It was the only truck in my price range too. I didn't really need it, but I could use it during the summer to tow Dads old boat and go fishing. If Mom didn't like it, she just had to deal with it.

Sunday night, I got home to silence. Usually the TV in the living room has the news on, and the air conditioner would be on. It was late, but Mom normally tries to catch the news at 10 before bed. I had to go see if she was home or not.

The kitchen was dirty as usual. Dishes filled the sink and the counters were full of food and other useless junk that was left to be forgotten. Passing through it was always sort of depressing. Neither one of us had time to maintain the house, and it would just keep getting worse and worse until we found the time. Because Mom worked 2 jobs to try and pay the bills, she never had time to worry about neatness.

Going up the stairs, I saw that Moms room was open. The thoughts and worries running through my head made me go a little faster than normal. Her door is never opened. She always has to be isolated from the world in her room. Even when she leaves, she always has it shut. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach.

No one was there. Her bed was a mess, the bathroom light was left on, and the ceiling fan was still spinning. She never turned anything off anyways, so I figured she just went out to maybe get a pack of cigarettes or to go see one of her friends. She had been stressed out this weekend, so I wouldn't have been surprised if she went out to drink either. For the rest of the night, I didn't let it bother me. I finished some school work, watched some TV, and went off to bed.

You ever wake up in the morning, and you just feel that nothing was going to go right? That was me on this day. I woke up, looked at the alarm clock and immediately felt anxiety take over. School starts pretty early, and I had woke up just as the first class was about to end. Mom was going to kill me.

I threw on some clothes, brushed my teeth, grabbed my keys and flew out the door. It couldn't have been any worse for me either. As I walked out the door, I'm faced with a wall of rain a few feet away. My front porch was protecting me for the moment, but I had to go through that to get to my truck?! "Fuck it," I said to myself, and ran through the thick rain.