Eighteen

"Vinnie, come on, come one! It's going to blow!"
"Hide! Over here!"
"I'm coming!"

Laughter and hurried hushes of teenagers filled the otherwise quiet parking lot. The asphalt cracked and spotted with the occasional pothole while the white lines of the parking spaces were faded to nothing more than outlines. Only a few lampposts remained functional but their constant flickering foreshadowed their eventual fate wasn't far off. The only other source of light in the dark was the sparks coming off the assortment of fireworks placed unceremoniously in the center of the parking lot.

Sssssss-fwoooooomph..... POP!

One by one the night sky once littered with only stars was suddenly joined by the vibrant rebellion of pyrotechnics. Vinnie's face wore an expression of happiness. She was content with where she was and now that her and her friends had graduated from high school -- the whole world was waiting for them.

"This is where it starts." She said, a smile tugging on her lips and her eyes locked on the trance in the sky above. "This is the first day of the rest of our lives."

Beside them on the pavement were the scattered gowns from their graduation earlier that day. They laid draped over their bicycles like capes discarded from retired heroes that were ready to live a life unrestricted by the opinion of others. Freedom of self and freedom of time.

"Any idea what you're going to do now? College? What's your life plan?"

"Plans? What are you, crazy? We just got out of school a few hours ago and now you want to go to college? We're finally free, guys! We can do whatever we want! No homework, no classes, no curfews. The best plan is simply no plan at all." She said triumphantly.

-------
The middle-class suburbs of Long Island, New York, were what many 18 year olds considered to be their stomping ground, and Vinnie's "turf" in West Babylon was no exception. She lived in a decent neighborhood-- the kind you'd let your kids go trick-or-treating in alone with their friends and not expect them to end up on the side of a milk carton-- but, you'd need to check all their candy so it wasn't laced with drugs or razor blades.
Her parents put her through private school up until her mother passed away from cancer in the summer after graduating middle school. Now a single father, her dad couldn't afford to pay the private school fees and ended up sending Vinnie to a public high school. She took it in stride, seemingly never one to have any trouble fitting in and the people that met her always tended to love having her around. She was just 'that girl' that was an integral part of any friend group because she just sort of fit in anywhere.

After high school graduation Vinnie took full advantage of the freedom that followed. She got a part-time job to have money in her bank account, occasionally asked her dad for money, too, and spent her nights out with friends. Setting off fireworks, going to the beach at night, parking a car in an inconspicuous spot and hotboxing it with her friends -- every day was a different adventure and a new story to tell. There was never a plan, never a recipe to follow; it was just pure life and the freedom to live it as she and her friends saw fit. (Y'know, except for those hours where she was working!)

------

Nineteen

There's a common saying that goes around: "The dildo of consequences rarely arrives lubed."

Living a life without even the first draft of a plan was bound to become an issue. But who knew it would be so soon?
Vinnie found her father on the kitchen floor. The doctors said he suffered a stroke some time before she found him. Hours, they estimated. He was stable, but in a coma. The hope was that he'd be awake with in a few days. But that hope of days turned to weeks and those weeks into months.

Her dad's bank account had enough in it that the auto-payments for rent sustained themselves for about two months, but she didn't make nearly enough to afford the rent without him. She sold their furniture, their car, everything she could just to last another month but living in New York was anything but cheap.

She didn't have a plan beyond the obvious:

"I just need to wait for him to wake up. He'll fix it. He always does."

Unfortunately, life isn't as free and innocent as fireworks in a parking lot. The doctors broke the news to her as compassionately as they could, but it didn't make any sense to her. She fought, screamed, and sobbed in the room loud enough for adjacent patient rooms to surely be disturbed.

"You can't do this! Please, he'll get better! He just needs time!"

"Your father has shown no signs of cerebral stimulation, no response to any stimuli, and his vitals have only weakened since he has been here. There's no easy way to say it. His body is here, but he's already gone, Miss Graham."

"Fuck you, asshole! He's not gone! He's right here!"

"This isn't a negotiation, Miss Graham. Without funds to pay for the medical treatment and for the room, we have no options left for you. We're truly sorry for your loss, but we ask that you say your final goodbyes while you can."

Shock hits everybody differently when it finally sets in. Vinnie sat in her chair beside his bed, drowning out the shuffle of doctors as she spoke to her father one last time. She can't remember how long she was given, she can barely remember what she said or how she thought he might respond if he could. All she could remember was the sound of the heart monitor steadily transitioning from infrequent peaks to a deafening, constant tone.

----

Twenty

Vinnie was able to stay with friends whose parents were generous enough to show her compassion for the first six months after her father's passing. It gave her time to mourn and time to formulate a plan for the first time in her adult life. She had barely any money to her name and hardly any worthwhile work experience to rely on which severely limited her options.

"What the hell even is a Columtreal?"
"I think it's a bird or something."
"You sure that's where you want to go to school? Your grades are wau better than what they require."
"Maybe my grades are, but my bank account says otherwise. I can't afford to go anywhere else and they offered me a scholarship which at least helps a little."
"Do you think they're cute?"
"What do you mean?"
"Columtreals. The birds."
"Shut up! I'm sure they're perfectly avian in every way. But I'm hoping there's a lot of cute boy situation going on."
"Is Louisiana known for cute boys?"
"Maybe. I mean, at least their sisters tend to think so."
"Haha, that's fucked up! Isn't that Alabama, though?"
"Alabama. Louisiana. They're basically the same thing, right?"
"Your Northern, New York ass is going to fit in perfectly down there, huh?"
"Bite me!"

It was broad daylight when she got on the bus for Hathian, Louisiana. The streets of Manhattan were loud, busy, and blinding from the sun mixing with the fluorescent lights and signs. It was almost poetic in a sick sense-- that her last day in a place she called home was so different than the memory of those fireworks in a dead parking lot that she cherished.

"Last stop. Hathian. Get off if you're still here." The bus driver spoke without even turning around.
"Thank you for the ride, sir." Vinnie offered with a polite smile as she approached the front with her duffel bag.
"Get the fuck off my bus. I want to go home."

 

Without a friend or a familiar landmark in sight she stepped onto the pavement into unfamiliar turf. This was somebody else's stomping ground and somebody else's story that she suddenly found herself in. She took a deep breath and clutched the strap of her bag tightly, steeling her resolve for what felt like the millionth time in the past year.

"This is it." she said.
"This is the first day of the rest of my life."