Chapter 1 The Static and the Sock
The house at 42 Maple Drive wasn't a home. It was just a roof that kept the rain off furniture and the misery inside.
Leela Marshall sat at the kitchen table, staring at a crack in the linoleum, trying to make herself small. Across from her, her mother, Helen was nursing a glass of vodka with a splash of tonic--her third since dinner.
The air in the kitchen was thick enough to choke on. It was always like this. There was no harmony here, only a pressurized silence that broke occasionally into giant shouting matches.
Helen Marshall hadn't wanted a daughter. She had wanted an escape hatch.
Leela knew the story; it had been weaponized and thrown in her face enough times. Eighteen years ago, Helen had been desperated to get out from under the thumb of her own father, a tyrannical man who controlled every breath she took.
She had met Frank Marshall when she was waitressing. He had been, loud, confident, and employed. She thought he was her ticket to freedom.
She had been wrong.
She had jumped from the frying pan straight into the fire, he wasn't a savior; he was just a different warden. He didn't care about Helen's dreams or her feelings; he cared about a clean house, a hot dinner, and absolute obedience.
And Leela? Leela was just collateral damage of a failed escape attempt.
"Stop staring at the floor," Helen snapped, the ice cubes clinking in her glass. Her eyes were rimmed with red, glassy and mean. "You are just like his mother when you sulk. That bossy heffer."
"I'm not sulking." Leela said quietly. "I'm trying to eat my toast so I can go to bed."
"You're taking up space," Helen corrected. She took a long swallow of her drink. "God, I was stupid. I figured having a kid would fix it. I thought it would make him softer. Make this house...something else."
She laughed, a bitter, jagged sound.
"But it just trapped me," Helen whispered, leaning across the table. "I traded one prison for another, and you were the lock on the door.
Leela stopped chewing. She put her toast down. She was used to the cruelty, but tonight the air felt different. It was charged static. The hair on her arms stood up.
"We've had this argument so many times." Leela looked at her toast. "If you hate it here so much," Leela said, her voice trembling, "why didn't you leave?
Helen slammed her glass down. Liquid sloshed over the rim.
"Leave?" Helen sneered at her. "With what money? With what life? I gave it all up for you. For this."
She looked Leela dead in the eye. The mask of indifference slipped, revealing pure, unadulterated regret.
"I should have never had you," Helen said. The words were quiet, precise and fatal. "I should have walked out that door the moment I found out I was pregnant, had an abortion and kept on walking and never looked back."
SNAP
It wasn't a normal sound. It was the sound of the house screaming.
Every lightbulb in the kitchen--the overhead fluorescent tube, the warm accent lights under the cabinets, even the small bulb in the stove hood--exploded simultaneously.
POP-POP-POP-CRASH
Glass rained down onto the counters and the linoleum floor. The room plunged into darkness, illuminated only by the streetlights filtering through the blinds.
"What the hell!'
Frank's heavy footsteps thundered down the hall. He appeared in the doorway, a silhouetter of annoyance. He crunched on a piece of glass as he stepped into the room.
"What did you two do in here?" Frank barked. "I just replaced all these bulbs last week."
"Ask YOUR daughter," Helen muttered from the dark. She hadn't moved. She didn't even seem startled by the explosion. She just looked tired.
"It's the wiring," Frank grumbled, kicking a shard of glass aside. "Cheap piece of junk house. I told you, Helen before we bought the damn place it was going to be one massive expense after another.
He looked at Leela, who ws sitting frozen in the dark, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. He didn't ask if she was okay. He didn't ask why she was crying. He didn't want to know.
:"Deal with YOUR daughter, Helen," Frank snapped, turned toward the hallway. "I have to work in the morning. For god's sake clean up this mess.
Frank marched back to the bedroom. The door slammed shut/
In the ringing slience of the kitchen, Leela looked across the table. "Mom?" she whispered.
Helen sighed. She reached out in the darkness, found her glass and took a sip.
"He said deal with you," Helen murmured, her voice flat and void of any maternal warmth, "But honestly, Leela? You're seventeen almost eighteen. You're old enough to deal with yourself."
"Old enough to take care of myself?" Leela asked. "I've been dealing with me my whole life. You never did."
Helen stood up, navigated through the broken glass, and walked out of the room, taking the bottle with her.
Leela sat alone in the dark, surrounded by the ruins of the glass she had broken.
Two hours later. 1:30 am
The house was finally silent. The rhythmic snoring from the master bedroom was the only sound.
Leela stood in the center of her room. She wasn't crying anymore. The tears had dried up, replaced by a cold, hard clarity.
She wasn't a daughter here. She wasn't even a person. She was a regret. She was a 'lock on the door.'
She grabbed her duffel bag, She packed it with mechanical efficiency. Three tshirts, two pairs of jeans. A hoodie and a toothbrush.
She knelt by the bed and pulled out the sock. It was heavy with ones and fives. The secret she had kept for two years. She pushed it deep into her bag.
She walked out of her room and watched every step she took. She knew which boards made the most noise and she did not want to wake them up and explain to them she was leaving.
She stepped out the back door. The night air was humid and heavy, but it felt better than the air in that house.
she got into her car--"The Bean." the rusted Toyota she had bought with her own money. It was the only thing in the world that was truly hers.
She turned the key. The engine coughed, sputtered and roared to life.
She backed out of the driveway. She didn't look at the rearview. She knew what she would see: a dark box that had never been a home.
She reached the end of the street and turned onto the main road.
She had no map. She had no plan. She didn't know a soul outside of this town.
But as she gripped the steering wheel, a sensation bloomed in her chest. It started as a headache, the moved down to her ribs. It was a tug. A magnetic pull.
It felt like a fishhook caught in her heart, pulling away from the rising sun.
Go West, the feeling whispered.
Leela didn't question it. She didn't have anything else to listen to. She hit the gas and let it guide her into the dark
She didn't reach for the radio dial, She didn't want music, and she definitely didn't want the chatter of a DJ pretending to be happy. She just wanted the hum.