30 Day Writing Challenge

DAY 1

Select a book at random in the room.  Find a novel or short story, copy down the last sentence and use this line as the first line of your new story.

From the Book:  Percy Jackson, The Last Olympian 

-

 For once, I didn't  look back. This was both empowering and unsafe, considering that to drive you have rear view mirrors for a reason: to look back. Did I care, though? No. It was three in the morning, nobody except truckers would be on the long stretch of interstate. Truckers, and me. My name is Xanthe Radcliff; this is how I lived, died, and everything in-between.

I first remember the urge to get out of town when I was 5, when my mother took me to the circus. At one point in her short lived life my mother was in the circus, so when it came to the small town of Piedmont, Arkansas she didn't hesitate to bring me. It wasn't the fact that I was infatuated with the circus itself, but the fact that I loved the idea of moving around with a group of friends that became family. The idea that no matter how strange you were, they took you as their own, they loved you, and you loved them. That was what captured me, mainly because as a child, I wasn't the 'social butterfly' I didn't mind, though; if you have no connections to a town you have no trouble leaving. To understand why I didn't mind leaving, you first must understand me and my mothers relationship.

My mother was, and is the strongest person I know. She got pregnant at 20, with her only child; me. In her family, this was unacceptable, (having children before marriage.) She was kicked out of her house,  so she and my father ran to the town I so loathed, Piedmont, Arkansas. As the years went on though, my parents relationship withered; my father did the unthinkable, he hit my mother. Why did he hit her? I have no idea. Why she stayed? I have no idea, maybe it was for me, if it was, I wish she hadn't. Anyways, he did this and it crushed her, she tried so hard to make him happy, she raised me and took beatings, until one day she snapped. The doctors told us that her body was under such intense amount of pressure, it caused the rupture in her heart. She died on my 8th birthday. My father cried over her body, and I wanted to hit him like he had hit her. He in no way deserved the pleasure of saying goodbye to her, when he was the reason she had died. Anyways, as I grew up, I shut him and his liquor out, shut out everyone at school, and I had no one. No one except myself. 

On my 18th birthday, 10 years after my mothers death, I finally did it. I finally ran. Over two years of working at the Thrift Shop down the street, I had not only gained 23,715 dollars, but a friend in the owner, Margaret who supplied me with suitcases, clothes, and anything else she thought I would need. (She understood the urge to leave town, if she didn't have grandchildren, she probably would have came with me.) 

At 10pm on July 12th I did two things: grind up 3 sleeping pills into my fathers scotch, and pack everything for the journey I was about to make.Then at 12am, I loaded my bags into my mothers truck, grabbed the keys, and drove to a place unknown. 

For once, I didn't look back.