Wanderlust✦

CHAPTER ONE.

LET'S BEGIN.

"You were cute.", the women with the crescent shadows under her eyes said through the misting glass, gesturing wildly with her gnarled hands while the security guards eyed her suspiciously. "Once. A long time ago before you started ruining your hair with dye."

The teenager, with luminous coral curls, on the other side of the cold musty glass didn't grin at her, not even falsely and certainly not because the women with the darting hazel eyes was her mother.

Avery had stopped respecting or thinking of her as a mother years ago, even before she was thrown into jail only last month for shoplifting.

And Avery know deep down she should be ashamed of herself but the only one she truly loathed was April - her mother - a distant figure through out the girl's whole childhood.

The only reason Avery had bothered to come to the jail meeting room and be insulted by a silly women who pickpockets for fun was because her deceased father would have wanted her to be there.

Matthew Jennings was the only one Avery had after her mom had gotten less responsible, after she repeatedly drunk and smoked her life away until she looked unlike the thirty two year old she was and more like a withering sixty year old.

But Matthew had died after he contracted dementia and a tumor of the brain even though he promised he would never leave his young daughter.

Avery's motto was don't trust anyone for a reason.

"Hey!", April Jennings said annoyed, tapping on the blurry glass with a yellow nailed finger, reminding her daughter about the years of difficult breathing as her mother shamelessly smoked in a closed window room - completely oblivious to her suffering child.

"What?", Avery answered irritably, smearing the two way mirror with her hot breath - showing the tips of her stained teeth.

When she didn't answer, the younger girl leaned forward -until her nose almost touched the saftey barrier and hissed menacingly under her breath, "You know why I do it - because of dad."

"Because of dad.", April mimicked, her sheared dull bronze hair shining in the harsh light, like the glint of a old penny."Everything you do is because of dad! Do you even realize I'm still your mother?"

"Why would I want you to be my mother? You never even noticed me until dad died!", Avery's hand gripped the edge of the table absently - her thin knuckles turning white.

"I'm the best mother any child like you could have ever gotten! I knew-I knew I should have given you to the adoption center - I was weak, I'm not now.", her mother hissed, her raging spittle hitting the barrier glass.

April had never been fully diagnosed - mostly because the doctor they went to wasn't qualified as they'd lived on the rough side of Brooklyn for almost the whole of their lives.

And also because whenever her frequent appointments rolled around she did her best to escape them.

April Jennings convinced her family and friends that she was depressed - but really it was more extreme than that.

She had severe mood swings leading to suicidal thoughts and abusive words especially to child and her already sickening husband.

Avery still don't understand how her father could have stayed with such a women - but granny always said her grandchild didn't understand love, that she didn't understand a lot of things.

Today was one of her mother's off days, were she lashed out at innocent people.

The erroneous doctor told Avery to ignore her when she got too worked up - like she was now, shivering and drooling like a incapable newborn, itching at her bright jumpsuit and pulling at her faded copper hair with her long fingers.

The light above them cast uncharacteristic shadows across April's face as she sat back in the prison's chairs.

Avery's teal eyes slid back to my mother's - darting unnaturally, as she hunched over in one of the uncomfortable oak chairs, snarling like a caged animal.

"Times up.", one of the guards boomed, taping there watch impatiently.

Another one of the security guards marched forward and seized Avery's irresponsible mother out of the hard backed chairs.

She was mumbling something under her breath, her eyes half closed - her dark eyelashes brushing the tops of her cheekbones.

Anyone could see she was once beautiful - a long time ago.

Her eyes fluttered open suddenly and she stared at her daughter intensely for the first time that day - Avery could see that her hazel eyes were flecked with a dancing gold.

"You think you're smart , don't you?", she said in a monotone voice. "But you know nothing. And you will never know-"

"Alright that's enough", said the bald guard and hauled her mother out of the room without another word.

The guard was right. It was enough. Enough to send shivers up the seventeen year olds spine, to make her blood run cold. What don't I know? Avery thought idly, I ask enough questions and now I have no one to give me answers. What was that crazed women going to tell me?

Avery wanted desperately to slam her head into her hands, to block out the scraping back of chairs and the sound of traffic seeping through the opening front door or throw herself into April's jail cell and demand for her to give her answers.

But she knew she couldn't.

Because April would laugh in her face and seal her lips shut.

Because Avery knows she has to pretend she's strong, fake her exterior confidence because without it the people around you will tear into the small cracks of your armour until your an unfixable mess like her mother.

Avery slipped out of the jail silently and leaned wearily against the wall outside.

They had really bad security.

She was halfheartedly surprised her mother hadn't broken out yet.

Avery had nothing to do after being kicked out of the Brooklyn Arts Academy for not paying rent - except doing the one thing alive she still loved.

Photography.

Avery was digging through her worn back pack for her purple polaroid that her dad got for her, when she saw it.

Floating down the street, imprinted with bold black and gold letters.

Phoenix Photography and Arts Academy.

Sign up today for a whole year free!

Avery snatched up the leaflet off the snowy ground, brushing off the damp snowflakes off the top.

The academy was only five hours away.

In Los Angeles - the city of angels.

Something surged through her and she remembered vividly her paternal grandmother saying that she should find her fate - that her fate would find her, if she allowed it, in clues and signs.

Avery knew that this was a clue.

She looked up into the grey sky dotted with white snow flakes and silently thanked her grandmother.

Then she whirled around a sharp corner and into the shadows, with the leaflet still clutched in her hand and the fairy lights twinkling luminously behind her.