The Longest Year of My Life

One Margarita Can't Hurt

Claudia's point of view

I get back to my dorm and unlock the door and am immediately get greeted my cat, Milkshake.

"I missed you too," I pat her head before she meows for some more.

I almost break my already bad back by getting up and search my closet for whatever clothes that I can find. After this, I'm going to the bar. I need it, okay? And Jesus drank wine, so I don't see the problem. I throw some clothes into my backpack and push it down to fit some more. I pace around the beige, bland room picking up my crap that I leave on the floor. Okay, swearing is bad but saying one word doesn't hurt. I'm beyond mad at myself for getting pregnant and even madder at Felipe for acting like a child. I'm no longer scared, just pissed. I want whatever is in me to get out and never come back. I want to forget about what happened that night. And I hate kids! I'm going to be a terrible parent! Well at least if my child acts up I can hit them because they're my kid, but if it's a stranger, I can't whip that child's ass!

I zip up my backpack that is filled to the brim with my clothes before letting out a long sigh. I get a cardboard box from under the bed and put Milkshake in and close the top. This makes it so it looks like I'm carrying a box out, not a pet. Work smarter, not harder. I open the door and the quickly close it behind me and walk down the long hallway and then into the small elevator. I see my reflection in the sliver color of the elevator's interior and it looks like I didn't get any sleep. Oh wait! It's because I didn't. The door opens, but it's not on the first floor. Fuck! It's another person. The guy walks in and stands next me and I say a prayer that Milkshake doesn't decide to move within the next minute. I unfortunately stand still before the door opens and I speed walk out of the elevator before leveling the main gate and into the parking lot. I throw my backpack in the back of the old sliver car and gently place the door with milkshake inside in the passenger seat. I get into the driver seat and milkshake peeps her head out of the box.

"It's okay, kitty," I baby take to her, "it's okay to come out."

She jumps out of the box and onto the floor of the car and curled up into a little ball to take a nap. God, I wish I had her life. Do nothing all freakin' day and night, just sleep and eat. I turn on the car and pull out of the parking lot and drive northeast to my hometown. I don't know if my family is home or not, I guess lied to Felipe so he'd get off my case. There's one week worth of clothes stuffed into my backpack and there's a few more left at my house that I couldn't get after I left. The sky is a bright shade of light blue and small, fluffy clouds float around looking all pretty. What if I was a cloud? Not the big sad ones with rain, the small, pretty ones that just float there. No problems, no worries. Just nothing. And you get a nice view too so I guess that's good.

I roll down my window and immediately chock on the air that smells like smoke. I forgot I'm in the city, or the bad part of it. I remember, before my brother or father died, we'd go into the city during the long nights of summer and go on the one over hyped ride called "A Lua" I don't know what it was called in English, but my mother and father always called it that, which I know in English means "Moon". They always over hyped it for some reason and I remember seeing it and my first thought was "where is it?" Because they sad it was tall. Now the city in my mind is a place where men go to smoke and I go to school. Other than that, nothing special.

After my father killed himself, that was the first time I ran away. I was eleven, no, twelve when it happened. I don't know where I went, but I remember being away from home for a long time. Then I think three months after my father did it, my 17 year old brother, who was supposed to drop out and get a job to support the family, also killed himself probably due to the pressure of having to support three other people. My mother didn't go back to work until my brother died and put her twelve year old kids to work. I trained as a seamstress and Angelo worked on the sugar beet farm as a harvester. Being a seamstress didn't pay well so I was sent to the sugar beet farm and helped to harvest and was a seamstress when the harvest season was over. I went from a harvester to working in the main kitchen owned by the farm owners where I peeled, separated the sugar from the fruit and then packaged the sugar and turned the leftover fruit juice into wine, as the juice had a high percentage of alcohol in it. There's little money in my bank account because it all went to my mother as she tried to buy food and clothes. This is when she still loved me, I think she started to date my deadbeat step father three years ago, but up until then, I thought she loved me.