Efflorescence

chapter two

It had been an hour since Maribell finally stopped singing, and twenty minutes since she started snoring as she always did while in deep sleep. Geez, the girl must've been tired the way she was snoring. Sapphire just couldn't catch a break, but she expected it. 

She shuffled around her purse in the front seat of her car, searching for her ear buds. She sent a silent thank you to the universe after she found them. She popped them into her ears, obviously, and turned her music on, not even paying attention to whether she liked the song or not. It wasn't like she was actually listening to the music she was playing; her thoughts were much louder than the lyrics being sung into her ears. 

Sapphire was never the type of girl who over thought things. She could never think about a single topic for more than an hour. That is until today.

She kept having second thoughts about her decision. What if she didn't make it and she just, failed? Would she go back to Oregon? How could she go back to everything she wanted to get away from? That became out of the question once she realized what she would be going back to. Everyone would know how much of a loser she would turn out to be. And she knew that the word would spread faster in her hometown, than it would in any other city. 

See, Sapphire lived in Portland, but not the city portion. She lived in a small section, at a distance from all of the buildings. Although, it wasn't no where near similar to the country, the two could've been compared. There were some farms around her parents' house, but mostly just acres of land. Usually, each family would have a couple horses and land for the horses to gallop around. That was the typical lifestyle in her hometown. 

But she didn't want that. And that was why she couldn't become a failure out in LA. She wouldn't become a failure. If she stuck to her plan, everything would be fine. It was all just a matter of if's.

Her plan was to find herself a manager whom she liked and could get along with, then sell some of her artwork to a couple galleries, and after she saved up enough money she could have some fun. Fun, meaning she could paint some more and maybe, just maybe meet a couple new people. 

Boys weren't in her plan, and they were excluded for a reason. Every time she met a boy and started hanging out with them, things in her life would go South. They were a mere form of bad luck, and she couldn't risk letting any boys distract her from what she came to California for. An adventure. 

Sure, boys held adventures that would definately be considered fun to go on, but boys also broke girls' hearts and distracted them. She didn't want either of those while she was out living her dreams. 

Her train of thought somehow broke when she realized she should stop and get some gas. She only had a quarter of a tank left, and she did not want to run out while getting lost in her thoughts again. She had been in the car for about five hours, what else would she do? She could wake Maribell up but she didn't want to end up with a black eye. Her best friend might've been a small girl, but she could be violent from time to time. 

Deciding not to wake the beast for the second time that day, she pulled into a, luckily, near-by gas station. As she stepped out of the driver's seat of the car, she felt the dry air blow her  hair into her face. It was just a matter of time before she ended up throwing it in, her signature hair style, a messy top knot. After doing so, she entered some cash into the machine and placed the pump in the tank of her car. 

While waiting for it to finish pumping, she took a look at her surroundings. The girls were barely crossing the state line from Oregon, to California. They'd drive a couple more hours and stay at a hotel they made reservations at. It was a fourteen hour drive from Portland, to Los Angeles and they weren't even half way there. She knew she should've taken a plane like her mom suggested. But she thought driving would give her an adventure along the way. Apparently not.