Closer To The Truth

I couldn't stop tapping my feet. Tapping my fingers posed as a threat to chipping my freshly painted lilac nails. I bit my lip, thinking twice about walking into the quaint little French restaurant that just opened up down the street. My mother had been haggling me to go with her to try it; I guess better now than never. I ran my fingers through my long, wavy brown hair, currently a mess from the humidity outside. I sucked in a deep breath, giving me the final bit of courage I needed to walk into the restaurant and to that little table my parents were sitting at.

"Hey sweetness," my step mother chimed with a big grin on her face. She was basically my mother. I mean she could never replace her, but she had been taking care of me since I was five. I looked at her creamy mocha complexion that time seemed to leave untouched.

"Hey Ma, Hey Daddy," I smiled kissing both of their cheeks before choosing the closest seat to me to sit down in. I placed the napkin in my lap lightly, my feet started tapping again; lucky the black flats I was wearing didn't make much noise.

"So are you all packed up for the big move?" my dad asked after thanking the waiter who brought out soup. I didn't like how quickly the conversation had turned to me, but luckily the waiter asked me what I wanted to drink.

"Just water, please," I smiled politely. I turned to see my dad looking at me expectantly. He hadn't forgotten anything, neither of them wanted me to leave. I think that's why they were so excited I got into a college fifteen minutes down the road, off to study to become a kindergarden teacher, or whatever vision they had for me. How the "free-spirited" had become the "responsible" one. "Yeah, I'm all packed up, ready to drive down there tonight," I spoke in a small voice.

"Well, I checked out ASU, it has a bunch of really great programs for early education that I think will benefit you in the long run," my dad complimented in his own way before taking a sip of his scotch and soda.

"I'm just gonna miss having you so close. We never see your sister since she moved out there," my stepmother kept on before I could even mention ASU. I bit my lip and nodded in agreement to whatever she was saying right now.

"Now there is the matter of tuition, should I write a check now?" he asked, ignoring what my stepmother had said and simply pulled out his checkbook at the table. I looked around and placed a firm hand on his arm.

"Daddy, I actually wanted to talk to you about ASU..." I said before withdrawing my hand from his arm. He seemed concerned and placed the hand that had formerly been reaching for money he seemed too comfortable giving me to the arm rest on the chair. "I'm not going," I spat out rather shrewdly.

"What?" both of their voices chorused into a synchronized shock. I tried giving them my best smile, that had gotten me out of much bigger crisis earlier in my life. Coming home past curfew, getting caught smoking, skipping school drinking, going out with boys my father didn't approve of. Almost everything short of murder.

"I just decided I didn't want to go, just to take a break for a while. I want to know what I want from life- like Roxie. She does music and she loves it, I could do something like that instead of being locked up in a classroom all the time," I tried my best to be tactful in my reasoning, but they seemed pretty perturbed.

"Well, Alaska, what are you talking about?" my dad asked, his mouth still open in shock. I tried to answer, but he kept on talking, "You're eighteen years old you don't know what you want," he dismissed me. I raised my eyebrows surprised at how he was reacting.

"No daddy, I do know what I want, I've thought about this..." I said, burrowing my eyebrows starting to get mad. I was an adult and I didn't appreciate the condescending attitude.

"Alaska, clearly you haven't because otherwise you wouldn't be throwing your future away for nothing. You don't even know what you want from life then stay here and move back into home and think about it. You don't get to do whatever you want, you're not fourteen years old anymore!" my dad had raised his voice to a tone that seemed too loud for my liking.

"Yeah, exactly, I'm not fourteen years old anymore so you can't tell me how to live my life," I stood up, preparing myself to walk out. "I can't understand why you won't support me," I said biting my lip to avoid crying or letting any emotions show at all.

"'Laska!" my step-mom called out after me. I kept walking and climbed into my car driving off to my apartment, it didn't even matter. I packed up my Infiniti QX with all my belongings and got onto the highway sending Roxie a text that I had just left. I hoped I could find the answers for the future, because every time I had it all figured out things shifted on me. I kept my eyes on the road and lit up a cigarette, things were going to change.