And So She Fell (SAMPLE ONLY)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

The trees monotonously rolled past the conveniently stuck open window of the bus. The air was humid and warm, making my skin far too sticky to be comfortable. I also appreciated the earthy smell every time I inhaled deeply. It smelled so lovely and refreshing and, had this happened at a different time, I would have loved it. But no matter how much I wished I wasn't being dumped in the middle of nowhere, albeit with breathtaking views, it was still the truth.

I sighed and subtly raised my butt from the warm leather seat, sighing in relief as the pressure from the long hours of sitting lifted. The old man sitting beside me shot me an irritated look. He'd been giving me that same grumpy face for six hours now. I would have been grumpy too, but I passed the point of irritation, so I ignored him and just focused my gaze on the trees and mountains beyond the highway we were crossing.

In hindsight, I should have seen this coming. My father is just the kind of person to do this, even to his own daughter. He's the type of man who only loves himself. I wish mom were here. A familiar twinge in my chest made me wince. I could still see Henrietta's look of pity and the way her voice broke when she told me that my father was just doing this for my own sake. For a second, I had almost believed it. But then, I could remember the look on my father's uncaring face as he lay down the facts that summarized how fucked up I was.

He spelled it all out during our last breakfast together, merely two days ago. His voice reverberating inside my head, his voice echoing as he told me how my current shrink had informed him about my lack of progress. Despite the expensive sessions I had with him, and about how my school principal had informed him that I had sent an application to an art school in Minnesota, which he had hated. He thinks that arts are for people who have no ambitions.

I have ambition. All right, it's just that my definition of ambition differs from his by more than a mile.

He also talked about my unresolved night terrors. He sees me as a weak liability. A responsibility he would happily toss in a trash bin. And, in a sense, he finally had. After eighteen years, he was finally dumping me in the trash.

And that has me being sent to a middle-of-nowhere, off-the-map part of Texas.

I sighed deeply and resignedly.

Dad had made me a deal. If I could finish the remaining months of high school in this alien place and be able to achieve a diploma, including walk my way on to the stage to get it, then he'd allow me to take the art course. It seemed so easy, but somehow, I knew it would be close to impossible for me to remain in one school for that long. There were just six months left before my senior year ends. It was the middle of the term, and let's just say, I'm not the most sociable person on the planet. Besides that, trouble has a habit of following me like a bad smell.

Hours later, which felt like years, the bus finally stopped and the passengers alighted. The old man shot out of the seat beside me in about three seconds flat, as if the plague was on him. I sat there, waiting until I was the last to get off. When I did, my two big bags were already resting beside a signpost. People scurried past me, going to their families or friends and then taking off in their trucks. Trucks, I noted, appeared to be the preferred means of transportation in this place. I scrunched my nose up in dismay.

I sat in the waiting shed with my bags beside me. I was expecting Hilda, the owner of the cattle ranch where my father had decreed spend the next six months. Music blasted in my ears through my earbuds, as I watched the throng of people thinning out, and the bus drove off again, full of new passengers. I hate waiting and expletives were already forming at the tip of my tongue as the seat warmed beneath my butt.