The truth in our songs

Chapter 24

Maia-Jane Miller

I had to leave school for a few days.

It wasn't planned neither did I get to do it. With a few things packed, my father's car and an excuse for school I had headed out of town.

No one knew my reasons, no one even knew I'd be leaving. Anna was having no idea and  came to school the next days and she would be sitting without me. And Chloe would have to manage all the paper stuff herself since I wasn't there to do it. The guys, who now greeted me more often, wouldn't even recognize me being gone. Sometimes I wished to be the unknown Maia again with no social contacts and no friends. I would have to worry less about things than I did now.

My dad was sick. He told me two days ago that he was still deep in shit and that he had to pick something up out of town, if not we'd be dead. Now how should I have reacted? Because I'm sure as hell I should have freaked out. I didn't. I looked at him wordlessly until he noted me  adresses down on a piece of paper and scuffed back to the living room. Before he disappeared in that room again, he had patted my cheek half-thanking me and had told me that I was a good child. Of course, as long as I kept my mouth shut and didn't get hit with bottles or belts. Maybe I should have left town to never come back, my father would have died and I would've been free- I thought. Could be this easy but wasn't. Freedom couldn't be given from him. He wasn't even free himself. I had been on the roads for two fully days now, following targets, giving away letters and packages with whatever in them. I never met someone, just left them at different spots and texted someone on my dad's prepaid phone that the work was done. I had just turned into a criminal because of him.

Ricght now I actually had no idea where my car navigator had taken me and maybe I would die or get kidnapped this time but I doubted that, mostly. I mean they obviously needed something from my dad and I simply had to pick it up from this last adress. The car was now parked in Essex at a gas station. What the hell did my father do here? What kind of criminal shit? It had to be stupid enough to could die from it and now here I was, an eighteen year old who tried to fix what her father had broken. But there had to be so many other things fixed than a lost package in an abandoned flat somewhere.

,, You done? ,, a man asked me and looked out of his rolled down car window. How long had I been tanking now?

I pulled the thing that was in a hole beside the passenger seat of the old car out and pushed it back into its holder. Without saying a single thing I locked it and walked into the small station. As my feet walked over the door a tiny bell rung somewhere and nearly scared me to death, I looked at shelves stacked with an unhealthy amount of junkfood and sweets. Straight in front of me was a cooling shelf with different flavours of sweet drinks in it. I looke for the counter and found a young woman, probably a few years older than me taking a few coins from a homeless looking old guy who bought himself a coffee.

I liked this man. He bought coffee, not beer.

As I came closer my eyes fell to the chewing gum between her teeth which she twisted on her tongue forth and back. The sweet scent of watermelon reached my nosestrills and my eyes wandered over her gray shirt with a sign of the gas station on it and up to her face again. She had pink painted fingernails and her eyes were painted in a light violett. I tried to not question her outfit but found myself admire her blue eyes. She waited patiently until I was ready watching her like a fish. Seemed as if she was used to itand I knew I would feel horrible to be looked at negatively.

,, I like your eyes. ,, I said quickly and hers widened a bit.

,, Really? ,, she asked confused and overwhelmed at the same time, her eyes inspected me. Come on, I don't give compliments but she had likeable eyes.