Miles To Go

Chapter One

I'm out of here.

I storm to the trailer door in about 3 seconds because our trailer is tiny-far too small for three adults to be living in. Layla, my mother, grabs my arm.

"You're not going anywhere," she snaps. Her eyes are bloodshot and hazy and I can smell the alcohol on her breath. Who knows what else she's been taking with the liquor. She tightens her hold on my arm and I snatch it out of her reach. She's too wasted to hold her balance.

I push open the door and I hear my mother's junkie boyfriend cackle. His long, greasy brown hair hangs limps at his shoulders and it matches his dark soulless eyes. I don't even want to look at him. He likes to wear my father's old clothes to get a rise out of me. Today is no different. I fight the urge to go over and rip the blue Hawaiian shirt off of him that's way too tight. The buttons are bulging and I'm amazed that he even got it fastened in the first place. We both know he doesn't deserve to even touch my father's things.

"If you walk out that door, you're never coming back," Richard threatens. He says this every time we fight. That's fine by me. I'd rather not live here. But I have nowhere else to be.

After my father died, my mother insisted on moving 300 miles away, to a tiny trailer park where she grew up. She was already drinking then but it was only after she met Richard that she started to hit me. Six months later, here we were. I've had enough. Things were not getting better. They were getting worse.

A week ago I started planning my permanent escape since it was clear that A) I'm not wanted and B) Not even my mother loves me anymore. I am alone.

Since we aren't close to a school district, I'd taken a job at a local gas station and had been homeschooling to try and earn my GED. I fell behind after my father died and I was close to graduating.

Over the last six months I've been saving up as much money as I can. It isn't easy to save money when your mother is constantly borrowing from you for "groceries," which I'm pretty certain is code for crack. I've even hidden a "Go-Bag" in the dense woods behind our trailer. I didn't have much in the first place-my mother got rid of most of our belongings when we moved. But the small, puke-green backpack was filled with clean clothes, mints, headphones, a broken picture frame with a picture of my dad and I, and my cheap pay-as-you-go cell phone. I kept my savings on me at all times since I didn't trust them. All $684 dollars of it.

"Go to hell," I snap at Richard and my mother.

With my heart hammering and my hands shaking, I stomp out of that trailer and let the door slam behind me.

I'm never going back. I can't. I am better off without them.