Chapter 5: Magic roller coasters

We drove up the curving road towards the park laughing. Getting more excited the closer that we got. Tristan's six foot four inch muscular frame shook the car every time he bounced along with the others. I finally had to tell them to all calm down before he bounced us off a cliff. We pulled into the parking lot and found a spot. We had to find a trolley to ride to the gate and wait for it to come back and get us.
Tristan and Sam were whispering to Abby and looking at me as we sat and waited for the trolley.

"What?" I asked looking at them. "I'm not stupid! I know you are talking about me."

"Shh! Guys, hold on." Abby quieted the two boys and went to sit besides me. "We brought something. To make this a little more fun for you...and us." Abby smiles and put her arm around me and pulled out two baggies. One was filled with already rolled joints.

"You didn't!" I smiled. "How did you find them?" I took the bags from her and smelled the bag of joints. The smell was sweet,musty, and dank. The next bag held magic mushrooms. I couldn't believe it!

"Wow you guys! Thanks!"


"Happy birthday Val!" Abby said handing me an almost weightless stem. I ate it and we smoked a joint before the trolley came. Soon we were at the front gate paying for our entrance. A world of towering structures took shape before my eyes and I knew then my fungi friends were beginning to take their effect on me.

I had never done mushrooms before. The effect was alot like ,which I had done alot of. Colors were brighter and things were alot funnier than they were supposed to be. I was having a good time even with the amount of people that were at the park. This would have been a very bad thing if we had been on acid.

Sam and Tristan led the assault on the park as they led us from ride to ride. Finally stopping at the parks newest and fastest roller coaster. We had just decided to hide in the brush and have a quick smoke when a park security guard spotted us.

"Hey! You there!" He called after us. My heart beat wildly. Had he seen something we didn't want him to?

"Shit!" Abby ditched the baggies in the bush behind her.

"Yes sir? Did we do something wrong?" I asked.

"No miss," he said handing me my cell phone. "You dropped this. It's been ringing."

"Thanks." I said taking the phone from him. I looked at my missed calls. My mother had called and left a voicemail.

'Hold on guys," I sighed and sat down. "It's my mom."

I punched a few buttons and brought the phone to my ear to hear the message,

"Oh Valerie, sweetheart! I am so sorry!'' She was crying. "Don't come back here. Martin found out you left and he hit the roof. He is really angry. I am going to smash this phone after I leave this message so that he can't find you. When you get to California look up Richard Dawson in Valencia. He will help you out if you need it. He will also explain a few things to you. Good luck honey. I will be at church every Monday doing paperwork if you really need me. But only call if it's an emergency, I'm not safe there. I love you Val...Please be safe."

I hadn't realized I was crying Until Abby and Emma were trying to comfort me.

"If that bastard touches her because of me I will never forgive myself." I cried into my friends arms as they held me and watched me shake with sobs.

"Lets get her out of here and find a place to eat. We need to get back on the road anyway." Tristan picked me up and we all left the park. By the time we reached the car I was passed out on his arms.

I awoke to the smell of salty air, hot dogs, and Love Street by the Doors playing on the car stereo. Ironic since Venice was the birthplace for the group in the late 60's. We turned down Harding and parked in a small parking lot next to some apartments.

"This is where Becca lives?" Sam curled his lip in disgust at the gated entrance.

"Yup this is it." Emma pulled into an open spot and turned off the engine. "Well come on! I don't know about you but a shower and a good meal sounds great right now!" We hadn't eaten since our last gas and go stop and we were all hungry.

Emma led the way towards the white gates the stood guard over the complex. The gate wasn't locked and had been left wide open.

"So much for security." Mumbled Sam.

"Shhh!" I nudged Sam knowing well enough how much he loved to piss Emma off. "Do you have a death wish today?"

"Emmy!!!!!" A Perky white blonde girl came running out of the apartment a few doors down. " Oh my gosh I have missed you so much!" She flung herself at Emma.

"Becca, I am so glad to see you!" Emma said holding on to the girls arms and hugging her again.

"These must be your friends!" Becca smiled at all of us. "Welcome to Venice!"

Chapter 4: Valerie

"Anyone need a potty break?" Abby called through the car jolting us awake. "I gotta pee and someone else gets to drive. I'm starting to fall asleep!"

"Ok! Ok! I will drive next!" I volunteered. I felt somewhat more rested after my nap. A hot cup of coffee would help too.

We pulled into another truck stop in Banning. It was already starting to get hot outside I checked my watch. It was only nine in the morning and just your typical mid July weather. Abby, Emma, and I left the boys and headed to the ladies room to freshen up and get in some girl conversation.

"I can't believe we are almost there!" Emma was squealing as she brushed her hair in the mirror.

"I know! I'm wondering when my parents are going to call and bitch at me." I was really starting to worry.

"Don't start freaking out Valerie!" Emma rolled her eyes. "You talked to your mom about this right?"

"Yes. I did" I sighed trying to relax. "I don't think she really expected me to do it. She didn't want me to go you know. She didn't want me to leave her with him."

My mother...I told her everything. There wasn't much I kept from her except how much of an asshole her husband is. I didn't want to have to decide between us yet. Martin Fredric Allister was a far cry from what his campaign posters promised the voters. He and my mother met when she was waiting tables. Money was really tight. My grandparents helped her out as much as they could but their health was fading and we lost both of them before I was seven years old. Martin swept her off of her feet and showered us in luxuries we has only used to pretend we could afford.

He soon had us move into his big house. A huge stucco structure on it's own mountain. it had seven bedrooms and ten bathrooms. There were maids, and cooks, and a nanny to keep me and my new step sister quiet and out of the way. Courtney hated me as soon as my tattered shoes crossed the threshold. She was arrogant and prissy, a real Scottsdale princess. I stayed as far away from her and the poison she surrounded herself in. Courtney had it out for me no matter what I did. When I found out what kind of man her father was it all began to make sense. My only luck was that she also attended boarding school in Europe and I hardly saw her unless it was a school holiday of some sort.

When I was ten Martin decided to adopt me. I also took his last name. I really believe that it was only so when he announced he was running for office no one would question him about who he really was.

Soon I began to notice he was making my mother into his own version of a brunette Barbie doll. Then I noticed the bruises. She had told me once a few years later that he beat her almost every night if she did not please him the right way or if she objected to his demands. I hated him with every fiber in my body.

"Come on." Emma said hugging me tightly. "lets get out of here."

I followed her and Abby out and we got drinks, snacks, and cigarettes. I chugged an energy drink and soon we were ready to get back on the highway.

"How much longer until we get to Six Flags?" Sam bounced up and down like a small child.

"My goodness! Excited much?" Emma and I were laughing at Sam. We had all agreed to his plea to go there. " We will be there in a few hours! You short little dancing freak!"

"Screw you!" Sam flipped Emma off and got into the front seat while Abby sat between the boys in the back. I took the wheel and soon we were on the road again. Emma tried to make idle conversation with me but my head wasn't in the conversation.

I kept thinking about the night Martin attacked my mother in front of me. He had lost his job recently at a powerful law firm. He and the other partners had a disagreement and he had refused to compromise so he walked out. One night he had come home drunk. he reeked of Jim, Jack, and Johnny...and he was in a foul mood. You could hear him slurring hateful things before the door flew open knocking my nanny Sonia to the ground.

"Stupid lazy Cuban whore! Get the Fuck up off of my God damn floor!" He back handed her so hard that her head hit the marble planter near the stairs and made an awful popping sound. My mother gasped and tried to get me to run. I tried to check on Sonia but my mother convinced me to let her try and calm him down first. I had never seen him like this. She shoved me under the baby grand in the foyer and bent down to whispered to me.

"Stay here love. If he comes after you or if something happens to me run." She told me quickly and followed him down the hallway.

"Martin honey. I am so glad that you are home!" I could hear my mother say in a soothing voice. Pretending that she hadn't seen what he had done. Sonia was now lying in a pool of her own blood. Her skull cracked by the handcrafted Italian mosaic planter my step father had thrown her into. She was clearly dead.

"Get me a drink bitch." He muttered to her. I held my breath as he passed my hiding place under the baby grand piano. "Were are the girls?'' He somehow stumbled to the hallway towards his study and luckily he hadn't seen me. My mother waved me to get out before he did.

"They are sleeping sweetheart." My mother followed him down the hall. I can barely remember what happened next. I only knew he began to choke her. I could hear her gasping for air. At only eleven years old I picked up a letter opener off of the hall table and rushed into the room thrusting the shiny but dull blade into his thigh. He let go of my mother who slumped to the floor and stepped back a few feet then fell on to the sofa behind him and finally passed out from the alcohol.

My mother and I bandaged him up before he regained consciousness and we called 911. We told them that Sonia had tripped and fallen down the stairs crushing her skull in the proses. The county coroner did not want to rule it an accidental death so Martin paid him greatly to cover it up and keep it out of the headlines.

The next night he also started to come into my room at night. He was an awful and sick, sick man. I had blocked most of that out of my head. My poor mother never knew the real reason I hated him so much. After almost four years Martin started to leave me alone. he started to beat and rape my poor mother instead. If he had too much to drink it would be worse. She finally convinced him to go back to work after the bank wanted to take the house in Scottsdale. After that we moved into a smaller house and Courtney came home from Europe after graduation. I had just turned sixteen. That was also when I started saving money so I could get my mother and myself out of there.

I shook my head trying to clear my head when I noticed something in the distance.

"Hey guys!" I called to my friends. "We are almost there! I can see the roller coasters!"

The car erupted in cheers and I turned the car on towards the freeway exit.

Chapter 3: What Emma said

Somewhere after we had crossed into the state of California I had fallen asleep. Abby sang softly along with the radio lulling us all to sleep along with the motion of the car. We had all been awake for more than thirty six hours and our bodies had finally given out. It didn't take much.

I remember how it all happened. About a month before Abby received her trust account and put her money into an off shore account that her mother couldn't touch.

"Gotta keep her from digging her nasty little fingers into it. If she had her way the courts would have the money tied up in red tape for years." She kept telling me. "She could make it to where I would never even see a dime!"

That night Emma suggested we all leave. We were all sitting at Tristan and Sam's apartment.

"You two had better start paying us to come over and clean! This place is beyond nasty!" Emma gagged as she loaded the boys dishwasher and threw a solidified bowl of cereal in the trash.

"We should just move man!" Sam got up and started collecting pizza boxes and soda cans from the tables.


"Sam," Tristan looked at Sam frowning. "You can't just pick up your shit and leave cause things are a little messy! You gotta just pick your shit up!"


All four of us burst into laughter at Tristan's insight into the situation.


"Ah shit Tristan!" Emma cried wiping the tears out of her eyes. "You are seriously funny!"

"And high as a kite..." I muttered to Abby who just smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

"Ya know what?" Sam was getting defensive. "I wish we could move! Go to California or something and live by the beach. That would be awesome!"

We were silence for a while. Each of us pondering what life would be like if we did just pack up our lives and move. I wondered if anyone besides my mom would miss me. Besides her all the people who would have missed me were in this very room.

"Why don't we?" Emma finally broke the silence. "I mean really! What is honestly keeping us here?"

"You are so right Em!" Sam jumped up in excitement. "Seriously! Lets go! Lets just leave all of this bullshit behind us and start over!"

"You make a good point, Sam." I began. "But how the hell are we supposed to afford that? I only have a few hundred saved up."

"Well, I do turn eighteen soon." Abby said. "I get daddy's trust fund he set up for me. We would have plenty of money and we can always get jobs when we are down there."

"I have a cousin in Venice Beach." Emma said.

"Clay is on the outskirts of Venice too. Remember that guy I met at Daddy's memorial in LA last summer?" Abby blushed and I rolled my eyes.

"I think if we decide to do this we need to wait until we are all legal that way we would have no issues with our age." I looked at all of them. "Meaning...if we do this lets do it right!"

"Are we really gonna do this?" Tristan asked.

"I'm in!" Abby, Emma, and Sam said in unison.

"Me too." I thought for a second. "You are right. There is nothing holding us here. My step father refuses to acknowledge me so it doesn't hurt his campaign. It's an election year so this would really piss him off!"

"Emma is on her own. Tristan and Sam...your parents are all assholes to you...and Abby..." I sighed. "You seriously need to get far away from your mother before she tries to kill you again."

Abby touched the scar on her neck remembering where her mother had held the knife to her throat. It had been an awful night. Abby never told us the whole story. I'm sure she didn't want to have to remember it.

So the five of us sat down in Tristan and Sam's smelly trash filled apartment and hatched a plan. We decided to that we would all take the next couple of months to tie up our loose ends and we would leave the night before I turned eighteen.

Chapter 2: Abby

The sun kissed the horizon behind us as the miles past by. I wasn't sure how long it would be before my parents noticed the note that I had left. I gave them a fairly strait forward excuse about going off to "find myself". I only hoped they bought it. Abby was sleeping in the back leaning up against Tristan. Sam was passed out on a closed rear window. A single trail of drool dribbled from his mouth. I had to giggle to myself.
Emma and I sat making small talk about where we were supposed to meet her cousin in Venice Beach. Gradually we approached Blythe, the last reasonable rest stop before the border. We had only been driving for a few hours but it felt like an eternity.

"Are we gonna stop?" Abby broke the silence from the back seat.

"Yeah. I have to pee and someone else needs to drive." Emma yawned. "And I need coffee! Lots of coffee!"

"Sounds good! I think I see the exit up ahead!" Abby pulled her dark reddish blonde hair up into a scrunchy.

I had know Abby since we had hit puberty. Her mother had abandoned her after her father died and neither of her sister was speaking with her. We were the only family she had right now but I wouldn't have bragged about that!

Blythe came into view. Emma pulled into a fast food chain and turned off the car.

"Ok people! Get out!" She laughed.

Everyone, deliriously tired smiled at her and piled out of the car and into the more than accommodating bathrooms. I pulled my dark brown hair up into a knot and splashed some water on my face. My brown eyes looked as tired and stressed as I felt.

"You ok Val?" Emma asked rubbing my back.

"Yeah...fine. I just need to eat and get something to drink. I will feel better in a while!" I lied. I was really worried about what was probably going on right now at my house. I knew my mother would support me but my right winged politician step father would bitch about this for the rest of my life. I could hear him now..."How ungrateful! After all that we have done for you! You need to finish school not sow your wild oats all over the country! Why can't you be more like Courtney!"
My evil step sister who only appeared innocent and pure for "her" daddy. When really she was a chronic pill popper who preferred her percocets over what her doctor was supposed to giver her for her menstrual cramps. I sighed heavily and put my "it's my birthday and I so happy ya know it" face on and went to order some grub with the rest of the clan.
I wondered how Abby was taking all of this in. She was probably glad to just leave all of her bad memories behind and hoping to start fresh in a new place. At least that's what she told me.
Abby had turned eighteen a few weeks before me. Her father, a once a famous musician left her a healthy trust fund. Which is one of our inspirations for our adventure and also a sore subject. Her mother's only point of contact in the last 5 months were the papers that Abby had been served announcing her mothers plan to sue her for the trust fund she though rightfully hers. He had left the bitch nothing.
Ever since his death six months ago Abby had been in a downward spiral. This was the first time in weeks that I'd seen her smile. Maybe it was because of who we were also meeting in Venice Beach. His name was Clayton and they had met during a recent tribute to her father last summer in LA. He had a band and he surfed. He made her week in the knees when she kissed him. The only reason I even tolerated him was because he made her happy. Sometimes I wondered what the hell she was even thinking.
We finished our assault on the town of Blythe and bid it farewell and continued on our journey. Abby took the wheel and soon we were on the highway again watching Arizona fade away.

Chapter 1: 5 minutes Miss Dawson

The night was calm and crisp. Anticipation hung in my throat as I crept down the staircase. Careful not to wake my parental figures in the room below. Finally I reached the landing avoiding the step that would sound the alarm to my midnight flight. After reaching the bottom of the stairs I tiptoed towards the back door. To my surprise it opened without a sound. I escaped into the darkness and let out a breath I didn't even know I was holding.

My friends were waiting for me behind the bushes. Their eyes were laughing as I reached them.



"Have any trouble Miss Dawson?" A tall lanky girl asked." I thought they would never go to bed!"



"Come on Abby." I said pulling her into the faded red sports car parked behind the bushes. "Before they wake up please!"



"Whatever." Abby tossed her hair over her shoulder and smiled at me. "Your bag is in the backseat."



All five of us loaded into the little car. Abby, my best friend was in the passenger seat next to the driver. A perky blonde named Emma. In the back seat squishing me horribly were Tristan and Sam.



"Five minutes!" Emma cried tapping the cars dashboard clock.



"Yes, I know." I mumbled.



"Having second thoughts Val Pal?" Sam teased.



"Please don't call me that asshole! You know I hate it!"



"Sorry...someone is a bit sensitive tonight!" Sam was really pushing his luck! We stopped at a corner store to get gas and drinks.



"One minute!" Abby cried from the passenger seat.



I sighed silently. Why did I have a feeling of impending doom?



"FIVE! FOUR! THREE! TWO! ONE!!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY !!!!" They all cried.

"Thanks everyone!" I said cheerfully.



"Shit." I thought to myself. We pulled away from the pumps and turned onto the interstate highway going west. "Here we go...there is no turning back now."



Lighting a cigarette I looked out the window as life as I knew it washed away in the exhaust of the car. I just turned eighteen and we had loaded up Emma's car and were now headed to California.



This is our story...