Southport. That's where they'd sent me? I sighed in defeat as the landscape blurred into mixed colours and objects outside the window of the bus travelling down the road towards my new temporary home.

I had just assumed when the fostering agency had said that when they had found me a new placement, it would still be in the same state of California. They had obviously forgot to mention just how far away North Carolina was by bus, too. I'd already spent yesterday travelling in the stinking hot vehicle, and I still had about another three hours to go since boarding early this morning.

I still preferred the two day bus trip to my old life any day.

My chest tightened slightly as guilt crept in. I had left my mother, taking the cowardly way out. I had left her to self destruct by herself, and that had me biting my nails as the guilt settled in my belly. No, that firm voice in my head said, no, you did the right thing.

But had I? My mother was only partly to blame on her slow fall from what had once been her good, happy life. But at the end of the day she chose to do the drugs day and night, trying to forget through meth or ecstasy, forgetting that she had a daughter.

Forgetting she had a life.

I sighed again. It was the right decision to get away from there, from the stuffy, cramped apartment that was filled with more of my mothers druggie friends then furniture, the dodgy neighbourhood, the creepy apartment building that almost once a month, there was either a gun fired or a domestic happening in the upstairs rooms.

To get away from Jack. As soon as his name passed through my mind, a cold shiver ran up my spine, and I couldn't stop my throat drying out slightly as the all familiar gut clenching fear hit me hard. I breathed in deeply, reminding myself that Jack couldn't get me know, not when I was states away. He couldn't hit me in front of my mother anymore, he couldn't taunt and tease and torture me to the point of contemplating suicide a few times, so getting away from him had been the best part of all.

It didn't stop me from pulling the hood of my sweatshirt up over my head, however, my protective habit.

I closed my eyes and leaned my head on the window, feeling the cool, slightly moist glass on my forehead, closing my eyes as I thought about the other reason my mother had fallen off the rails. When I had been younger, when my father still acknowledged myself and my mother as his family, I had dreamed the whole American dream life. Two storey house, white picket fence, maybe a dog for the backyard. The nosy neighbours, trimmed lawns type of place.

Oh, and part of that dream consisted of having a mother that wasn't constantly high, and a father who wasn't as cold hearted and disgusting as mine.

But that dream had been effectively dashed the minute he'd struck my mother, confessed about the mistress he'd been hiding for years, and walked out on us when I was eight. The real kicker was that he'd been even more successful with his business empire after he'd left.

I was nine when I talked to him last. So yeah, you could say my father was a deadbeat, in the sense that he was never around. He didn't even send child support, although not because of money shortage. No, my old pops didn't want to send checks in the mail in case they were picked up and his stellar reputation got tracked back to my mother and I, which wouldn't be good for him at all since he was known to have one wife, no children. His priorities had never been mum and I, though, and it had taken me a few years to begin to realise that. I still believed he was mostly the reason mum fell into the drug scene, because she was so in love when he walked out, and it tore her in two. She just...stopped being herself. It was like she'd left when he had too, and I'd been left on my own to fend for myself.

I still loved my mother, however, but if I had stayed one more minute in California, flitting between our apartment and a few foster families here and there, I was terrified her life would soon become mine, and although I'd never touched the stuff, the thought was still scarier then anything else.

So, I did what felt right, and the second the fostering agency told me about the family in Southport, I jumped on the chance, and was on the bus before the days end.

I glanced around the bus once more, taking in the nearly empty seats. There was two young adults sitting near the back, talking quietly together. An older man sat directly in the middle, not lifting his head from his book once. There was a tired looking woman, maybe mid forties, opposite him, sitting beside a small child who was asleep, head on her shoulder.

I took a haggard guess that not a lot of people took the bus to Southport, judging by the passengers head count.

As I turned to look back out the window, I caught my own reflection in the glass, and paused to squint at my reflection. Last night, I'd had the sudden desire to change my look, and whilst holed up in the small hotel room, I'd brought some hair dye and scissors.

The end look I was strangely liking. It had been hard getting used to at first since my hair had always been a lightish brown, long and lank and not at all interesting. Now, however, the dark shade of blonde set apart more natural highlights, making it look more natural then I was expecting.

The scissors I'd hesitated with. All I'd ever known was my long hair so I'd cut it as neatly as I could to about shoulder height, already liking the length better.

Best of all, I felt cleaner. Like getting away from the bad atmosphere and getting a new hair colour and cut refreshed me, made me a different person to the one that had lived under the same roof of a drug addict for the past nine years.

But I couldn't trick myself. We passed the sign to Southport, and the heavy feeling settled back into my chest. What if my new foster family knew of what I'd gotten up to in Cali? What if they knew of the rumours going around. Would they be nice? Would they be just like the last couple who'd taken her in and treated her more like a rodent then a teenager?

You've got one more year until you're legally an adult, just stick out the year, that voice surfaced again, calming me down some. The rumours weren't true, not all of them, but some I couldn't deny. I guess living with someone like my mother had it's own effects. So I'd never been a model student at school, or a model daughter, but I wanted a completely fresh start. I wanted to forget the past, to start a new life in this city, meet new people, that sort of thing. Get my feet back on the ground of the normal population. Then, when I was eighteen, the plan was to leave and try and figure out what I wanted to do from there.

I smiled slightly when the bus finally pulled up, the engine groaned slightly as the middle aged bus driver shut it off. I heard the hissing of the door, and felt the warm night air seep in. This was it. I was free from my old life, free to be whatever, and whoever I wanted to be. I was no longer Marissa Ingram. I wanted to be known as Marnie, the nickname my grandfather had given me before he'd passed away when I was six.

So as I, Marnie Ingram, stepped off the bus and took in the unfamiliar surroundings, two things stood out.

The first was that the bus stop was over flowing with young children all yelling and screaming in excitement.

The second was the side of the bus stop had a life sized poster of my father, smiling cynically at me, with some words underneath that I couldn't quite read.

And then it struck me that getting away from my father and old life may be harder then I had originally thought.

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Here's my new story! :D Sorry it seems a little boring at the start, but I need to get this information in so the plot can get twisty and cruel...cough cough...later on :)

Enjoy!

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