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Chapter One

"You can't do this to me!" Elizabeth screamed at her mother. Her icy blue eyes glared at her mother with an intense fury. The red-orange hair that framed her alabaster face made it seem as though her rage had erupted in flame about her. "You can't leave me alone here, in the middle of nowhere, with no car, no friends, and no way to get anywhere!"

"First of all," her mother began, "I'm not doing anything to you. You brought this on yourself." Her mother's eyes, the same cold, blue ones that Elizabeth had, blazed back with equal intensity. "Your father and I..."

"He's_not_ my father!"

"Then go live with your real father. Oh! That's right; you can't! That piece of garbage walked out on me when I was seven months pregnant and left me to raise you by myself! Your _step_father and I are long over due to for our honeymoon. I'm certainly not going to bring you along with us."

"Like I'd want to come! Just leave me the car keys!"

"And have you destroy it like my last car?! I don't think so. Even if you hadn't wrecked my last car, you don't deserve to be driving. Not with your grades, and the acting up in school..."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes.

"Don't give me that look, missy! And don't think that I'm a fool either; I know you've been smoking again. I just better not catch you with any drugs! All this 'goth' and 'punk' stuff," Elizabeth's mother looked her over in disgust. She was wearing a spiked dog collar, skin-tight black T-shirt from a metal band, a black leather miniskirt, knee-high combat boots, and had heavy eye shadow and black lipstick, all of which stood in stark contrast to her pale skin, bright red hair, and blue eyes.

"I'm not on drugs! God!" Elizabeth lied, "Why don't you just lock me up without a trial! Oh! Wait! You are; leaving me alone in this hillbilly shit-hole, for half the summer, with no way to leave!"

"If you were a little nicer to your sister..."

"She's_not_ my sister! And she's ruining my life at school!"

Elizabeth's mother ignored the interjections and continued, "Maybe if you were a little nicer to her, she would introduce you to her friends. And, her boyfriend has a car, if she and you were friends, she might let you tag along with them."

"That back-stabbing goody-two-shoes?!" Elizabeth retorted incredulously.Though, her boyfriend is pretty hot; in a Stetson kinda way, she thought to herself. "Like I'd want to be involved with whatever dork-parade, farm-girl, loser crap she gets up to anyway!" She added.

"It would do you good, to be more like her!" her mother shot back, "I swear, I don't know what's going to happen to you if you don't get your act turned-around this year, Elizabeth! You're eighteen! It's going to be your last year of school. If you don't get your grades back up, you'll never get into college! Then what will you do? Work at the mall the rest of your life? Who'll be the loser then?"

Elizabeth scowled and looked away, but didn't say anything. She knew what her mother was saying was right, and she secretly feared ending up a nobody, with no future. Elizabeth fought back tears welling up in her eyes.

The two stood in silence for a few awkward moments. Finally, Elizabeth's mother spoke, "Well, I need to be going. I suggest you take the next few weeks to think about your future, and how you want your life to turn-out." Then she turned on her heel, and marched out of Elizabeth's room, closing the door behind her.

Elizabeth burst into tears and collapsed on her bed, sobbing. She had a good, quiet cry for about ten minutes, until she heard the engine of her stepfather's truck start-up. She went to her window, eyes burning, mascara running down her cheeks, throat aching, and watched as her mother and stepfather drove off down the long driveway that led off of the ranch. When she saw them turn onto the main road, almost out of sight, she went to her closet and began digging out her belongings until she had cleared away a spot on the floor at the back of the closet.

She pulled up a small floorboard that she had discovered when she and her mother had first moved in just before the past school year started. Elizabeth pulled out a small, purple, velvet bag that had come with a bottle of whiskey, but now held her paraphernalia. From the bag, she pulled a plastic lighter, a pack of cigarettes, a glass pipe, and a large, freezer-sized plastic bag that had once been full of weed, but now was all but empty. "Dammit!" she cursed out-loud. "Only enough left for one measly bowl." She muttered to herself.

Try though she might, Elizabeth had been unable to procure any replacement for her stash since she had been forced to move from the city to this rural town. This was despite the fact that she was quite sure that half the town was baked on a regular basis. Elizabeth had quickly learned that she needed to ration out the cache of marijuana that she had brought with her from the city. None of the kids in her school who were obvious stoners had been willing to sell to her, or point her in the direction of a hook-up, or even let her bum one lowsy hit off a joint.

Elizabeth was about ready to start offering up blowjobs in exchange for some pot. But even that probably wouldn't work, she lamented. She knew she was getting plenty of surreptitious looks from the boys in school; she purposely had been trying to dress as slutty as she could possibly get away with under the rural school's puritanical dress codes. Despite her efforts, no boys had approached her since she had transferred to the school, and the two boys she had made advances on had rejected her (though somewhat reluctantly, it had seemed). All of her troubles, Elizabeth was quite certain, were do to her sainted stepsister, Kayla.

Kayla was the kind of girl that Elizabeth couldn't help but to hate. She was beautiful. She was popular. Her boyfriend was the hottest guy in town. She was friends with everyone from the nerds, to the jocks, to the stoners, to the rednecks. She was an honor student. She was a star athlete. She won all kinds of awards for the stupid horses that she and her father raised. She never got in trouble or ever did anything wrong. In short, Kayla was perfect, and Elizabeth despised her.

The most malicious part of Elizabeth's mind suspected that Kayla might be actively trying to sabotage her efforts in finding a hook-up for weed, or in snagging a boyfriend. However, the more rational side of Elizabeth's mind figured that it was merely guilt-by-association. Kayla was such a goody-two-shoes that no one believed that Elizabeth, being Kayla's stepsister, could possibly be someone they could trust with their weedman's contact information, or that Elizabeth would be the kind of girl with whom they could get past first-base.

Elizabeth began packing her bowl and, to her pleasant surprise, found that she enough for two measly bowls. Both of which she would need after this latest blow-out with her mother. She debated lighting up right there in her room, considering her mom and stepdad wouldn't be home for nearly two months. She decided against it, in the end, however. If Kayla smelled any sort of smoke in the house, she would likely tell their parents when they returned home, and then Elizabeth would be in even more trouble. Instead, she opted for her usual smoking spot; the barn situated about one hundred yards away from the big farmhouse that had been passed down in Kayla's family for generations.

Must be nice to come from money, Elizabeth thought. Before moving in with Kayla and her father, Elizabeth and her mother had shared a tiny apartment in the city. The sofa in their living room had doubled as Elizabeth's bed, and she had never had a room of her own. Consequently, Elizabeth had spent much of her childhood out wandering the streets of the city and hanging around in her friends' homes. She much preferred the city, where she could go where she wanted, when she wanted, and do whatever she wanted. Sure, she had her own room finally in this nice, big house that they had moved into, but the trade-off was that she was twenty miles away from even the tiny little town where the school was. Their nearest neighbors were three miles away, and they were an elderly, stick-up-their-ass, religious couple anyway.

Elizabeth finally reached the barn, and pulled open a human-sized side door next to the large, main doors. It creaked loudly, and she froze, wincing at the noise. She waited, remaining still for a few moments, but heard only the quiet snuffling of a few of the horses. She crept inside, pulling the door closed behind her, and scoped out the stables, looking for any sign of Kayla. There were three horses in the stalls, all of them older ones (or so she had been told), but most were not there, including Kayla's favorite horse. Must have taken them out to graze or some shit, Elizabeth thought. She had been sneaking out here for several months now, and Elizabeth knew the signs to look for to make sure the coast was clear to sneak in a bowl or a cigarette. Along with her favorite horse, Kayla's saddle was gone; this combined with it being early afternoon, meant that there was a good chance that her stepsister wouldn't be back for a good while.

Elizabeth passed by one of the horses, who had his head hanging out of the stall, chewing lazily on some hay. He was a very elderly, gray-haired horse. He was friendly, and had let her pet his snout the last time she had been out in the barn to smoke. Stoned, she had ended up pouring her heart out to the sympathetic creature, telling all of her woes to the kindly, un-interrupting old animal. Elizabeth called him "Gandalf", though she didn't know his proper name.

"Hey, how ya doin'?" she said kindly, approaching the old horse, "Remember me?"

Gandalf allowed her to approach and stroke his snout from between his eyes down to the end of his nose, as before.

"I'm gonna have another smoke out here, if that's alright with you."

Gandalf gave a soft, non-committed whuffle, and stared at Elizabeth with his huge brown eyes.

She crossed the aisle, where another horse, this one brown with white markings had poked his head out of the stall to see what was going on.

"Hi," Elizabeth said, reaching up to stroke the brown horse's snout as she had Gandalf's. This horse, however, neighed loudly, shaking his head, and backed away from her.

"Well fuck you too, then!" Elizabeth spat at the animal.

She walked back over and plopped down on the floor, leaning back against the door to Gandalf's stall. She took out her lighter and lifted up her pipe, which she had been palming, with her thumb over the bowl to keep any of her pot from falling out. Moving her thumb down to the shotgun, she placed her lips on the mouthpiece, flicked the lighter on, held it hovering over the bowl, and inhaled lightly. She pulled the lighter away after getting a spark going, and took short, quick pulls to get a good, slow burn going, and fill the pipe. Letting her thumb off the shotgun, she pulled in the smoke and held it in her lungs for about thirty seconds before exhaling.

Almost immediately, she felt the euphoria creeping into her mind, and her troubles seemed to be carried away from her as she slowly expelled the smoke from her lungs."This is good shit," she said, looking up at the horse above her. Gandalf offered no opinion, only continuing to munch on his hay. "I wonder if I'd be able to find as good, even if that bitch, Kayla, would let me get a hook-up," she mused.