A Hazzard Kind of Life

A Fresh Start

It was unusual to have such a storm in the Nevada desert.

The sky was blocked from view by dark, angry looking clouds that made the world appear gloomy and gray. Rain was starting to fall from the sky in fat, sporadic drops that were becoming more frequent as time passed. Wind howled softly as it blew between the buildings, crashing into the people crowding the sidewalk as if to push them along to their destination.

Scarlett Knight sighed, looking at the sky while readjusting the strap of her duffel bag on her shoulder. The soles of her well worn high top Converse slapped lightly on the wet pavement as she crossed the street, the green walk light blinking brightly from the other end of the crosswalk. She passed through the headlights of several vehicles already lined up just to her left. Her mind took a mental snapshot while also pulling up a different one from not that long ago. Cars lined up to start a race, although the sound of heavy traffic on the adjacent road reminded her that her memory was not at all the present. Sadness draped over her tense shoulders like a blanket at the thought. 

Scarlett did her best to stay out of any major puddles that had formed in the broken concrete of the sidewalk. Wet shoes were just a pain in general, but facing the inconvenience today was not something she could mentally deal with. Having successfully crossed the street, it was just a few more steps before she was under the overhang of the bus station. Pausing right beside the front door, just out of the way to not be hit by the constant foot traffic, she lowered the hood of her thin jacket off of her head. Her brother only wore these kind of zipper jackets to jog in but she had found that they added an extra layer of warmth beneath her leather jacket. That thought had her sighing again before tentatively turning her head toward the window that let light wash over her face, contrasting the gloom of the day.

Scarlett's gaze caught on the line of people just inside, the boards behind the counter at the other side of the room showing the names of different towns that she had never heard of. In that moment, she hesitated.

"Am I really going through with this? Michael and Kitt will never forgive me for leaving without saying goodbye in person. And Devon will be worried sick despite the letter I left him. Maybe this isn't a good idea."

With doubt surging through her mind, Scarlett started to turn around. A twinge in her right leg made her freeze halfway through the movement that had her almost facing the still bustling street. It was enough to remind her of why she was doing this in the first place. How leaving the city where she had lived her entire life had become necessary for her well being. Because it was no longer home to her, just a place full of memories she wanted to escape. To walk down a street without an image of the people she had loved and lost standing there smiling. It was becoming her own personal form of torture, one that was breaking her inside. There was no fixing it and at this point she could only see one way out. Escape. She had already come this far.

They could have started searching for her by now. It had taken her a while to carefully slip away without attracting any attention to herself. Devon would be attempting to check on her after seeing how she had been nothing more than a ghost at lunch. Little did he know that Scarlett would, in fact, become a ghost and disappear into the night. 

"You need this. It's time." Scarlett reasoned to herself.

Squaring her shoulders, Scarlett turned back toward the bus station and gently opened the door. Joining the back of the line closest to her, she started looking at the towns listed above the station employee's heads. There were a seemingly endless amount of possibilities, yet none of them seemed right. Each one she looked at pulled up a picture in her head and some of them were unpleasant. She closed her eyes, hoping to make them go away, but they just became sharper in her memory. Her head started to pound from the effort so she quickly opened her eyes. By the time she was in front of the counter, she still hadn't picked a destination for her escape and she now had a headache. 

The young man behind the counter just looked at her as she stepped forward, obviously over his day to the point where he did not feel like greeting the customers.

Scarlett swallowed roughly before catching a glimpse of a bus number that was heading to some town in Georgia within the next five minutes.

Not looking fully at the name of the town so it wouldn't register in her mind, Scarlett blurted out, "I need a ticket for bus G-30 to Georgia."

Her rushed words didn't even seem to phase the worker. He sluggishly went to work and handed her the ticket she had requested.

Scarlett gave him a polite, albeit weak, smile before stepping out of line and glancing at her ticket. After making sure it was the correct bus number she headed toward the door that would lead her to the transport.

In the ten minutes Scarlett had been standing inside the station waiting, the rain had started to fall brutally from the sky to pound onto the ground. She stuffed the ticket into the zipper pocket of her leather jacket to keep it dry during the walk outside. Her thin hood was once again pulled up over her head, although it did little good against the amount of rain pouring from the heavens.

Scarlett quickly located her bus and rushed up the steps to get inside after handing the drenched duffle bag containing what was left of her life to the worker storing suitcases in the luggage compartment. Her ticket was handed to the driver to verify she had in fact paid to be there and then she proceeded down the narrow isle. She found an open window seat and quickly settled into it in order to rest her pounding forehead against the cool glass just as the doors hissed closed.

Scarlett looked out of the window as the vehicle left the station and entered the still busy Las Vegas traffic. Rain drops obscured parts of her vision through the window along with fog that formed when she let out a breath, but she felt as though she had never seen a better view than this one at the moment. The city she had come to despise was slowly trickling past her. Memories would increase the pounding in her skull as she recognized places she went to with Michael and Kitt or with her godfather as a teenager. It was bittersweet. Her guilt at how much tension left her body as the bus went further out of the city was festering in her chest.

Just as she passed the city limits onto the open road ahead, Scarlett turned her head toward the front of the bus and rested it back against her seat. It was time to leave her guilt and bad memories behind her.

It was time for a fresh start.