Prologue: A-Z Challenge

This prologue has been posted before, but since we have an A-Z challenge going on and some new people might be stopping by, I figure I can fill the new people in on my WIP. It has also been edited since the last time it was posted.

This is a fictional work about a character named Shay, and I guess I should warn that the content is a bit rough.

What do I remember of being a teenager?

I remember parties and friends, sleeping in strange places, men with guns and women, dark alleys and projects, dirty, rat infested apartments, sex with men I barely knew, fighting, laughing, road trips, drug runs, smoking cigarettes, being high for days at a time, not going home, cops, drug dealers, car chases, being arrested, shooting galleries, ingesting a plethora of drugs that were foreign to me and over-dosing.

I would walk through dark alleys and jump into strangers’ cars, smiling and being secretly paranoid; paranoid that the cops weren’t far behind or possibly in the car. Who are these people? Do they have guns? Is this when I will be raped and murdered? Will they sell me to others for sex? These thoughts would cross my mind every time I met someone new, but I would be comforted by the sight of baggies, alcohol, mirrors, razor blades, pipes, cocaine and a multitude of pretty colored pills spread across the table.

I remember driving from gas station to gas station looking for the mini plastic roses in glass tubes or cigars encased in glass, not plastic. The items thrown onto the gas station counter were a bottle of rubbing alcohol, Chore and a glass encased rose. I had no idea what people saw when they looked at me; Five foot three, ninety pounds with blackened, blistered thumbs and fingertips, dried, cracked, blistered lips, dark circles outlining my eyes and skin so pale you would swear I was a ghost. I guess that’s what I was.

I was always the youngest one in the group and a lot of times the only female. I was very well taken care of, as much as you can be living this lifestyle. I was looked out for and protected. People gave me drugs. No one hit me or berated me, yet. No one made me feel like I was worthless, yet, and they didn’t judge me. Besides, in my mind I wasn’t that bad. It’s not like I was shooting dope or handing out blowjobs for a fix, and I wasn’t homeless, although that’s how I lived most of the time.

But I knew this was not the normal life of a teenager. I sometimes wondered what would become of me. Would I ever be a lawyer or an architect? Would I eventually change my mind about living this way? Was it possible for me to be a woman of respect and dignity? I would wonder these things while I was snorting lines of cocaine in an apartment that smelled of piss, cigarettes and sex, with torn mattresses on the floor, holes in the walls and crusty dishes strewn about the place. The only items in the fridge were alcohol, drugs and maybe an old crusty bottle of ketchup and some mayonnaise.

Sometimes I just wanted to erase everything and be someone else. I wanted to be the sweet, popular girl with the great stylish clothes and good grades. I wanted the teachers to like me. I wanted my family to like me. I wanted to be loved and understood, encouraged and supported. I wanted to be allowed to be on sports teams again, because I was a great athlete. But I was no longer welcome because for the first time, I was attending a school that excluded you if your conduct was off hand, regardless of grades, which were all right at the time. So I was left with no outlet and nothing to fill my free time. I could no longer hang out with the jocks because I wasn’t part of an athletic team. I wanted to be someone with a bright, successful future, but in spite of all this, I thought I was having the time of my life, with no clue that I was my own worst enemy, destroying my soul.

This is who I was. I didn’t know how to be someone else. I would sometimes wish that God would send and angel in disguise to save me. I would hear stories like that when I went to church with my grandpa, and I would wonder, where’s my angel? I must be important to God, right? He knows my heart, so I’ve been told. So where is He? I must be worth something to Him, but probably not. I wasn’t sure what I believed, but I wanted to believe in something. This can’t be all there is for me.

 
Unfotunately, my writing has been interrupted with school, but the first draft is close to finished.
 
My free time is filled with homework and studying, so it's next to impossible to clear my mind enough to work on this at the moment.
 
Hopefully I'll see you again, but until then,
 
~Live Happy