I Woke Up in a Car

Arianna Mitchell was the smartest girl in her class at Jefferson High in New York City. She was brainy but quiet, and gorgeous to boot. On the outside she knew every answer to every question and often times stayed late working the study hall or tutoring other students in any subject. At age 16 she was taking AP Courses with mostly Juniors or Seniors in her classes and she was good at it. But for everything that seemed perfect on the outside to her peers, everything else was a mess.

While Arianna stayed late for tutoring, it wasn't entirely because she wanted to help those that were behind. It was more to avoid spending as much time with her abusive alcoholic step-father and battered and blind-eyed mother as she could. Her grades, not wholly due because she was smart, but because she spent hours locked in her room with a stereo full blast drowning out the sound of the nightly beatings inflicted in their home.

Arianna often played her trusty old, beat-up acoustic guitar, Ruby. She was Arianna's pride and joy, also her lone true friend. Something about the way Arianna could just pick her up and, pick in hand, make her sing with the strum of a chord, the bending of a note, as if she could play her pain away.

Long before she could make Ruby sing, there was her dad. The home was a happier place. No beatings, no drunken rants, but rather family dinners around the table with work discussion and school discussion and things were good. Life was good. Arianna and her mother were happy.

But two years before, things changed in an instant. Arianna's dad was in the wrong place, wrong time. He was in a convenience store during a robbery and it went wrong, dead wrong. The cashier tried to be a hero and the robber started shooting wildly at the cashier, the bullet ricocheted off some metal and struck her father in the chest. He was pronounced dead on the scene.

Suddenly her mother Marie was a widow and she was the girl without a father. Her mother, who had quit her job when she found out she was pregnant with Arianna suddenly had to go back to work. This left Arianna to muddle through her own grief while her mother threw herself into working two jobs just to pay bills. Arianna, seeing her mother's example, took on extra work at school as a way to deal.

What Arianna didn't count on, was her mother meeting someone. Almost a year after her dad had passed her mom began dating and within six months had brought home Gene. He was nice enough at first. They'd have Gene over for dinner a couple of nights a week. He was a city sanitation worker, which was a fancy name for a garbage guy. Within another couple of months Gene was moved in and her mom Marie and Gene were married.

After the wedding things still seemed okay for a while. Then the beatings began. She found her mom with a blackened eye one day after school. Her mom explained it away, said it was an accident that Gene didn't mean to and that sometimes his temper flared. The next time, she fell down the stairs, the time after that, she broke her nose running into the door.

It was the night, two-years to the day, that her father had been killed. Arianna had planned a quiet night in while her mother worked and Gene sat downstairs drinking beer and screaming at the TV. Sometimes things don't go according to plan.

She was downstairs doing dishes, her chores, when Gene turned his anger from the TV to Arianna. He chastised her for making such a rackett during the damn game and how dare she think she can get away with that. He was going to teach her a lesson. The flying beer bottle crashed against the wall inches from her face, shards of glass flew close enough that it cut her just above the brow.

Arianna had only had her license for a few months but her mom had scrimped and saved to buy her a used car. It was an 01 Honda Accord. Not the prettiest, it had a few dings, but it was hers. With her brow cut and Gene coming after her, she dashed to her room, locking the door behind her before Gene could reach her. She looked at herself in the mirror. Some of the dark red blood that ran down from her eyebrow to her cheek also caked a few strands of her ginger hair. She grabbed her bath towel from the back of her door and an old half-full bottle of water and cleaned herself up as best as she could.

When Gene finally gave up on beating on the door, he returned to the downstairs, continuing to scream at the TV. Arianna turned on some music and grabbed her notebook and a pen.

Dear Mom

It's time for me to go. Don't come looking for me, I'll be okay. I promise. The world is a big place, but I love you. This is for the best.

Love,

Arianna

The next morning while both her mother and Gene were off to work Arianna skipped class and loaded up her 2001 Honda with as many things as she could. First and foremost, Ruby, her guitar that seemed to wail more like a siren, then her pictures of her mom, her and her dad, and as many clothes as she could fit into a duffel bag. She grabbed an old ratty shoebox from the top of her closet and pulled out a wad of cash. Babysitting the previous couple of summers had paid well enough and this would get her started.

She didn't have the slightest clue where she was going, but she couldn't stay here, not anymore.