Young Bodies

Sweat from the warm air clung to Olivia's skin despite the open windows in the car, the wind blowing thought her blonde hair making it easier to breathe for once. Every window to every house were dark. The only light coming from the streetlights lining the small town road. Everything was quiet, not even the radio in my car was on. She only wanted the sound of the old engine to fill the night. Never any music, only a few, few times had she a CD along with her on these late night car rides. It would small use to install a modern stereo that you could connect your phone to when you owned most music you wanted to listen to on CD or cassettes.
The clock tower beside town hall was showing the wrong time like it always had. Things staying the way they always had was apart of the small town charm around here.
Since she was a kid she'd wanted to get away from her home town, wishing for a place more exciting, a place where things happened. Now years later she didn't want to leave it behind, not for a second, and defiantly not for months without ever coming home between.
But in a few weeks she'd be in her car ready to drive to Charleston for college. Last year things changed and she had no desire to go to New York, Seattle or Providence like her dreamed had previously tried to lead her towards.

The streetlights disappeared when she got higher up and left the town square behind, going towards the top of the hills. The houses showed up less frequently and soon she passed her own, a house she now lived in alone despite her young age of 17, soon to turn 18. It wasn't legal but she doubted her dad would suddenly show up and ask for the place back. Her mother would never come by again, those were the predictions the doctors had told her dad and her when they last visited. Since then Olivia had never gone back, it was too bad. Hospitals had never been her strong side and a mental institution was far worse. Especially when your own mother didn't remember you.
After a few minutes of continuously driving upwards she parked the car as the road ended. It was never clear why this road was never finished. Since anyone in town could remember and many years before that, it ended in a perfect straight line where the pavement stopped. A large sign informing the driver to turn around was placed in the grass and dirt in front of it.
The sun was beginning to rise far in the distance, giving the early South Carolina sky a pink, orange and golden glow. Soon, in a few minutes the sun would peak up over the green hills miles and miles away. A new day just beginning like they always did. It didn't matter anymore however. Every day was the same it felt like. Sit here on the hood of the car, look out over the county and wish for better days to come. They would never arrive. Not for many years. It's quite impossible to make yourself a better life when everything you love crumbles under your feet. Now the only thing that held her back was the house down the street and the pick up truck beneath her body.

There isn't a house here that isn't surrounded with flowers. Hydrangeas, magnolias, rose bushes climbing up the roofs, you name the flower and someone has it in their garden. Everything is green. The roads are lined with beautiful green lawns. The largest street, the one leading you down main street in front of town hall, is divided with oak trees with spanish moss and spidery branches, just adding to the ideal southern town I'm constantly surrounded with.
She'd always loved the large amount of hydrangea brown into bushes over the years, lining the path to the white porch, had been the prettiest sight in the world. Now it held too many bad memories.
Before last year the worst it had seen was Olivia breaking her arm on the drive way, clutching it in tears as she ran inside screaming for her mom or dad. But now the worst sight by far was the one of her sister Jenny lying dead on the first few stones leading from the drive way to the porch steps.
It was a morbid thought to always have to think when arriving home. She knew that, but what could you do about it? You could scrub away the blood but not the sight of finding her there, thinking she was passed out from another party.

She walked across the lawn, never talking a step on the path since 341 days, and opened the door. There was no need to lock the doors around here. If there was a car that nobody recognized a phone chain would be created, making sure everybody was on guard incase of breaking and entering.
That was how her parents had found out about her brining her boyfriend, correction, ex-boyfriend, over the first time as a surprise.
Another depressing thought. George, her ex-boyfriend since a few weeks. He'd been there when Jenny had died, he'd been there when her mom was taken away, he'd been there when her dad had left. But now he'd left too. It was too sad to think about, she didn't allow herself more self-pity. She wasn't sad over him, she was furious. Him breaking up would have been heartbreaking but catching him kissing another girl, getting ready to get out of the house with her clearly forgetting about Olivia, was far worse.
Sometimes she went as far to think she was cursed. It wasn't normal to have a single person go thought this much in a short amount of time. Her school counselor had told her that the world wasn't fair. That some had to go thought too much, good people went though shit and sometimes they didn't come out. But she was not allowed to be one of them, she had promised herself that.