Word Count: 310
They told her he was bad but of course, she didn’t believe them. Young girls believe in the power of love, nothing more.
It’s new to them, you see, to have someone who tells you that you are beautiful, who claims that no one before you filled up his life. At that age of first love, a mother’s low opinion of anything, from fashion to boyfriends, is held as an emblem of its opposite. A father, if interested at all, is simply protecting his little girl from the wolves.
She was fifteen and a virgin. He was seventeen and riddled with anger. He had a record for drinking and stealing a car. The small thefts went unrecorded since he was also a clever dude and never got caught. He rolled her first joint, poured her first whiskey, seduced her into her first sex. In short, he was her savior from normal, though normal was what she thought she wanted to be.
She called her mother one night and said they had run away to get married. Her mother cried and begged. Her father threatened to find them and kill him. The dude only laughed when she told him.
Long months went by, a year, almost two. Then the phone call her mother had prayed for. Can she come home? Yes, of course, all is forgiven. She came back the very next day.
There was something different about her. They didn’t ask and she didn’t offer. They knew she’d been through things no parents should know of their children. She got into trouble; drugs, they suspected. And stealing; from them and from others in town. Things that were missing they suspected she’d sold. One day they found their savings all gone.
She only laughed when they asked her. And the very next day he rolled in and they left town again.
