California Dreaming

Chapter 1

Of all the things to hate about work, it was the carpet Ann liked the least. It was probably some shade of blue once, but now it was a drab color that would best be described as grayish. The whole building was probably thirty or forty years old now—it was obviously very nice at one time, but was not any longer, sort of like those run-down motels you see on the sides of old highways.

Ann worked accounting for a Mexican food distributor. It was rarely exciting work, but it was work. Her office was in the third floor of a run-down building in a worse-than-average part of Albuquerque. If you walked down the street, you’d find lots of bail bond places and car title loan places. Of course, you’d be crazy to walk down the street unless you had some need to.

Ann was a single woman, 22 years old. She was attractive, or at least she thought she was. Her features were delicate and she had a small build—she’d always been a small woman. Her hair was chestnut colored and she had brown eyes that sparkled when they caught the light right. She’d always liked her eyes.

Ann was born in a small town in Ohio. It was one of those towns where everyone knew everyone else, which Ann couldn’t stand. Her childhood was typical, she always thought—she was just an average American girl who couldn’t stand to get out of town as soon as she was old enough. She had a group of friends—they weren’t really close, but they enjoyed each other’s company. Once school was over, nobody Ann could recall went on to go to college.

Dating was something Ann never thought she was very good at. Sure, she’d had a boyfriend in high school, but they never got serious. She mostly had a boyfriend because all the other girls did, too. Once she had graduated high school, there was a tacit agreement that they’d each go their separate way.

California would be nice, Ann always thought. So not a month after she graduated high school, she told her family about her plans to move. Naturally, they thought she should stay in the area. After several heated discussions, she packed her car and drove off to California without any real agreement with her parents.

That was one of her biggest mistakes, she later decided. She had no money saved up and really had no plan for life. She didn’t know what it was she wanted to do—California just sounded nice, and it wasn’t Ohio.

She ended up driving to Los Angeles and renting a dumpy apartment in a bad part of town. Better than living at home, she told herself. She found a job as a clerk at a gas station. It paid the bills, she told herself.

Deep down, Ann knew she couldn’t accept being a gas station clerk for the rest of her life. That’s when she knew she’d have to go to college if she ever wanted to get anywhere in life.