The sound of my mama blasting Elton John and the old coffee machine buzzing woke me up. She was practically screaming Bennie and the Jets by the time I got into the kitchen with my torn up Old Navy sweatshirt and ‘Kiss me I’m Irish’ soffe shorts. “Morning mama” I say, kissing her cheek and taking in her smell which consists of hairspray and Wal-Mart perfume. Her hair is already done up with a pound of cheap hairspray she doesn’t leave the house without. She’s wearing what looks like a bedazzled purple pant suit and a ‘groovy’ patterned ascot tied around her lace white button down shirt. The best part is her navy panty hose and cowboy boots. She looks like an antique store threw up on her. But that’s mama for you. Doesn’t care too much about her looks, all except her hair, the women loves her hairspray. I on the other hand have my own style, which is made of the $10 of cash every two months for clothes that I buy off of the clearance rack of the local Goodwill or Salvation Army. I spruce the stuff off in between shifts at the Wal-Mart or babysitting near the trailer park down the road. But that doesn’t happen a lot. You see, I dreamed of being a big designer living in the city, making clothes and traveling around the world, making them with the most valuable fabric. But then I wake up here, living in an airstream with my mama and two pups, with a father I don’t even know the name of and I realize that im never gonna make it. It was a little better when my sister was here, Shelly. She’s 4 years older than me and graduated from high school as valedictorian last year. She got a full intuition scholarship to Yale and doesn’t come home too much anymore. During high school she used me to cover up for her. I’d say the dogs were bugging me so I let them out during the dead of night when I was helping her sneak in from doing Lord knows what. She’d always tell me how great it was, running through the wildflowers barefoot being chased by the stream of lights from the sheriff whose busted the drinking party she was coming from. She told me to never leave the house without lipstick, and to love with all your heart. I never knew if she had someone to call hers, or if that was what she snuck out to see. Then when her junior year came around and I was in the seventh grade she got hung up on school work, sucked all the life out of her. Now she was the one getting on my case for getting on the hood and starring at the stars when it was only 10:00. But she was gone. Like a spider you killed and flushed down the toilet. You felt bad for it but there ain’t nothing you could do now, it was gone. By now my mama was off to work at the school, as a minimum wage receptionist. I was just sitting, eating the knockoff brand of pops I bought at the Wal-Mart that were crunchy and stale, when a knock erupted making me spill milk over my entire lap. I opened the door and yelled “THIS BETTER BE WORTH A BOWL OF CEREAL!”and standing there was a boyish looking man with torn up jeans and a grey muscle shirt on, his hair a tangled honey colored mess and nails caked with dirt, behind him stood a beat up old bike with rusted red paint and a can of coke sitting cockeyed on its seat. “Sorry to bother you miss but-“
“But what? “ I retorted and I picked at a bug bite on my elbow. “Speak up or I is gonna slam this door so hard its gonna hit you square into tomorrow.” He smirked and smiled a one dimpled smile. The bright Carolina sun shining into his eyes so they became squinted and small. “I wanted to ask you something” Did I even know this lousy piece of scuffed up man? What was he doing poking around the Airstream Park asking me a question?! But before I could say anything he jumped right into it. “Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?” I snorted, slapped him, and slammed the door, which fell out of the frame and onto the dusty clay beneath the cinder block steps, So much for that attempt at ending this. He turned his head up to me and our eyes locked as we began to laugh it all away.