Young Writers Society

Hey everyone, sorry if I'm posting this in the wrong place. I just wrote this during a ten minute free write in english class. I have not edited it at all, so if it has a lot of mistakes, I'm sorry. Feel free to tear it apart completely and I'm sorry if it's really bad. I've never written anything like this. Like I said, tear it apart, but please don't be completly rude. Thanks! Love always, Ktg

I dare a glance in my rearview mirror and let out a groan. Yup, he’s still tailing me. I can tell he’s trying to be inconspicuous, leaving some distance between our two vehicles, but it’s not working. Stupid mom. Who is this man and how did my mom get him to follow me? Why did she send someone to follow me? Doesn’t she trust me now? Sure, I made some bad decisions in the past, but I’ve changed now. Doesn’t she get that?

I run a hand through my straight blonde hair. My anger is rising. I try to count to ten like my therapist told me to do in angry situations, but it’s no use. Once my temper flares, I’m gone and there’s no coming back. This is the second time mom has done something like this. If she were smart, she’d realize that this is just going to end the same way as the last time: A screaming match with me eventually storming out and not returning for 3 days. But that’s the thing: She’s not smart. She’s read all the parenting books and attended the “How to connect with your teen” seminars, and yet she still doesn’t get it. She says that she needs to be “personally involved” in my life. She says it’s for my “own good”. But tell me, how is invading my personal privacy and socially squashing me to death good for anyone?

Another glance reveals that the same Blue Sedan is still behind me. I press my foot down in the gas pedal a little more forcefully. Only eight more miles before I’m home. My mother better be ready for what happens next.

I wasn’t always this angry. My therapist tells me that after Dad died in Iraq five years ago, I became so grief-stricken that I began to turn against everyone and everything I knew. For example, when I was eleven, I did badly on a test in Science class. Instead of accepting it and studying harder next time, I turned to the kid next to me and started shouting at him for “distracting me.” Poor Eli Dilshmore, I never did apologize.

My mother, however, chose to express her grief in a different way. She decided that she should spend every minute with me, because you just never know how much time you have left. She smothered me so much that I began to resent ever having her around. I often ignored my curfew and never checked in when she asked me too. I stepped to the beat of my own rhythm, and that was the way it was going to be.

I’m turning onto my road now and mentally preparing what I’m going to say when I face mom. I turn up my driveway and park my little silver Chevy cruise. Striding toward the front door, I fling it open and let it slam behind me.

“MOM!” I screech, like the spoiled 17 year old I realize I was now. “Do you really not trust me enough to just go to the grocery store and back?”

No answer. Just the steady hum of the air conditioner. I throw my jacket on the floor, because I know my mother hates it.

“Ugh!” I groan, stepping into the kitchen of our old Victorian style home. “How could you-“

I stop as the scene before me unfolds. There, lying on the floor in a pool of blood is my mother. A gun shot in her head is spewing out so much blood. I run to her side as a gruff voice calls out, “Stop right there!” I halt and slowly turn toward the wall where I heard the voice come from. A man, dressed all in black, holds a gun pointed in my direction.

“I’ve succeeded in killing both your parents in revenge for what they’ve done to me, and now I’m going to kill you too.”

Boom! I hear the gun go off. I shut my eyes and scream. After five seconds, I open them. The man who was going to shoot me is now dead, lying on the floor. But how? How am I alive and he is not? I heard him shoot the gun. I heard him pull the trigger. Thump thump thump. I hear footsteps on the linoleum floor. A man in his late forties holds another gun. Where did he come from?

“Sophia,” he says my name softly. “I know you probably are very confused and have a lot of questions, but you need to come with me. I can help you. I knew your father.”

I still don’t know why I decided to trust him. Maybe because he said he knew my father, but whatever the reason, I took his hand and he helped me stand up.

I take one last look at my home. Inside, my mother’s dead body is still lying on the kitchen floor. I took nothing and followed this stranger out, where he helped me get into his dirty blue Sedan.

So what do you think?