Backseat Serenade

one • time bomb

" i'm free of all prejudices, i hate everyone equally " w. h. fields

 one

 • • •

 HER RAGE WAS SPITTING out of her like a volcano in the middle of a burst, words exploding out of her like the million dusty pieces of ash, her hands moving wildly, trying to get her message across, trying to explain, get her opinion in for once in her life, like lava spewing over the rocky outside of the mountainous land structure. Hot tears flew down her pale cheeks, tangling with her eyelashes and blurring her eyesight.

This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair at all.

There was no way in high heaven that she was going to give up her entire summer, the whole summer that she had been looking forward to all year, to go to summer school. Summer school, for fuck's sake. Just because she had given up on learning unnecessary algebraic problems and completely moronic historical wars didn't mean she was stupid, and certainly didn't mean she needed freaking summer school.

Hazel didn't need to know every detail about the War of 1812 to become a tattoo artist, and she didn't need to know trigonometry to become a hair-dyer or whatever the hell they're called.

And it wasn't just a summer school they wanted to send her to; her imbecilic parents were suggesting she go to a military school. A school to right the wrong actions. A school to correct the bad. Tweak the defiant, independent...reckless, even. Laurels School of Discipline. They were just going to send her away.

She had just graduated high school around two weeks ago. She was not going to another school again.

Running upstairs, she angrily punched a number into her phone. It went to voicemail. "Ugh, goddamnit, April, I need you."

Hazel grabbed a sleeping bag and stuffed necessities in her black, leathery bag, including her phone, some clothes, money, some food she had stashed under her bed, and her thin notebook.

Yelling, the yelling, and screaming, and insults flying and jaws clenching and tears falling and hearts stopping. The running. Whizzing out of the door, ignoring the screams of protests and hollers to 'get back here'. They didn't care.

They never had.

They didn't chase after her though. They knew better.

• • •

Hazel Aubrey Jackson ran away from home when she was twelve.

Technically she didn't run from home, as she hid in her yard, but she did run.

It wasn't anything, really. She had been pissed at something stupid, like her mom yelled at her for flunking a test, plus her newly-emotional hormones enraged her even more, making her fly out of the door one summer's evening. She ran right into the side yard and hid behind a piece of wooden fence that