We Leave At Midnight

30 days before the trip

Slam. That's what the door did after Melanie McMorrow slammed it shut. Anger. She was angry. She was angry cause of her parents. Her parents had ignored her ever since she was born. Maybe it was because she was "an accident" or maybe just because they didn't like her. Melanie isn't the dream daughter everyones parents want,

Anymore.

She'd tried to get their attention ever since she found out her parents ignored her. First, it was all about the grades. Melanie was a straight A student and everyone loved her. Her teachers, her schoolmates and even her neighbours. Cause she was also very nice, to everyone. She was popular but didn't go to party's. She got A's in every class but wasn't called a nerd. This didn’t got her parents attention. So she tried something else. She started smoking. Didn't work. She started going to the party's she was invited to. Now addicted to smoking. She tried boys. Yea, you heard it right, boys. Melanie had sneaked many boys into her house and did whatever she wanted to do with them. She didn’t care about their feelings or the fun out of it. She just wanted her parents' attention.

Pathetic? Probably, but not in her eyes. She had become obsessed with it. Obsessed with getting their attention. Obsessed with trying to get her parents' love she'd never gotten.

The only love Melanie'd gotten was from her grandma and her little brother Jack. Her grandma tried to contact her everyday to see how she and little Jack were doing. Jack or little Jack was, unlike Melanie, loved by their parents. They adored him. He didn't got straight A's but he wasn't a bad student either. When Melanie left for High School, Jack was on his own. That is when the bullying started. Because, as his bullies said, his big sister wasn't there to help him. They called him names like Jack-off or Jack-ass and pushed him around. Melanie said they were being immature, sure they were kids but that still doesn't make it okay to bully him. She had asked him if he wanted her to say something about it to the teacher or take on the bullies, but he said he could take care of it on his own, that he was a man. She'd just laughed.

She, or her parents, weren't poor. Not at all. On the contrary actually, they were rich. Rich ass bitches, she'd called them. Even though they gave money every month, she had a job at the small grocery store on the corner of the street. People always asked her why she had a job when she got money from her parents. She always responsed by saying it makes her feel like all the money she gets, she worked for. She doesn’t earn much money at the grocery store but that doesn't matter, it's just for her own imagination.

Anyway, Melanie had slammed the door shut. She put on her denim jacket, she'd grabbed before stepping outside, wrapping herself tightly in it. It was way colder outside than she had expected. She searched around in her pockets looking for her keys. No luck.

Fuck, she thought, now she had to knock when she came back. Or she could just spend the night outside in her treehouse, like she did when she was younger. Her house was near a big forest, with high trees that scared her when she was a little girl. Especially at night when the trees looked like scary boney hands that could grab you, like in the movie, Snow White and 7 Dwarfs. When she and little Jack played in the forest ones, he had gone home without telling her. She was scared to death and thought the trees had taken him. Her grandma had finally came to rescue her after an hour of crying alone in the forest against a hard tree. She wasn't scared anymore, she had grown up to the age of 18 now.

As she made her way into the forest, cold branches and needles of the fir trees poked her jacket. She took out a cigarette and light it with her grandpa's zippo her grandma gave her at the age of 15. Inhaling the toxic cancer stick deeply then exhaling, feeling her nerves calm down by the second. Cigarettes are way too relaxing to be bad for you, she thought. The smell of wet leaves and smoke filled her nostrils, a wicked combination.