A/N: I have not posted much lately. I have been somewhat busy.

In between the release of my last original work and now, I have started college, begun both the English creative writing and legal studies majors (yes, I know, ambitious of me), and got a revised version of "The Arc" published in my university's creative arts journal. I have fallen deeper in love with writing than I ever was before, and also hated it more than I ever thought possible. Writing is very hard.

Here is my final project for a course called "Introduction to English Studies: Narratives of Human Potential". I wrote it in less than two days on an inadequate amount of sleep. Yes, it was supposed to be this long; I'm not sure how or why my professor intends to read so many similar projects and grade them before Christmas. I do not know what grade I got and I am actually a little scared to reread this because I turned it in without a shred of editing.

Let me know what you think! :)

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West of Accident

This is it.

This is how I go down in history, I thought — standing in a convenience store that hadn't been renovated since the 50's, a backpack of stolen food in front of me, my wrist still strangled in the accusatory grip of the sweaty cashier. And my high school crush, Penny, staring me down, never blinking in what I swear to God was at least a good five minutes. Her mom, Inés, was paying for my stolen goods.

"And I want twenty extra for the trouble, I'm technically overtime now," the cashier snapped. Every time he made a new demand, he'd yank my wrist and pull me against the counter that separated us. The bruises on my hip had bruises. "And you — " he jabbed his finger in my face " — if I ever catch you in here again, you're dead meat. I ain't afraid to shoot a girl."

"Nobody'll be shooting anyone," said Inés. Fortunately for me, she was a middle-aged woman with a face full of metal and two sleeves of tattoos, so even as she reluctantly tossed a twenty on the counter, she carried a certain air of authority. "Now hands off. She's with us."

The cashier released my wrist. As soon as possible, I jerked away, scooped up my backpack, and hurried out.

It was a hot June night. The gas station and convenience store parking lot were both vacant except for me, Penny, Inés, and their battered blue van. I stopped on the sidewalk, hesitant, holding my backpack. Both Penny and Inés pushed past me to the van.

"You coming?" asked Inés. I glanced at Penny, but suddenly she was ignoring me altogether. She climbed into the driver's seat.

I hesitated. "No, ma'am, but thank you. I have a place to stay."

Inés gave me a look. "You were stealing chips and water. Get in the van."

She had a point. I got into the van.

Penny drove and took us just west of town, parking on the outskirts beneath a small grove of trees. I didn't say much, and Inés seemed to sense that I didn't intend to, so she didn't ask. "I've been living out of this van for almost a year now," Inés explained as we climbed out. "Right now, I'm bringing Penny back from Harvard; we're going back to L.A. to live with my sister for the summer. But while Penny's in school, I just drive around, hire my guitar out to any gig I can find, you know."

When she led me around and opened the back doors, I blinked in surprise. The back of the van, despite what I'd feared, was immaculate — a mattress took up much of the floor, but Inés was creative with her wall space. Everything had a special hook or shelf, from cookware to medical and hygiene kits to a guitar case. She tossed me a sleeping bag and pillow, told me that the front seat was a great place to sleep, and got to work setting up a small fire.

Dinner, canned food heated over the fire, was as uncomfortable as the whole day had been so far. Inés and I chatted about music and our attempts at songwriting, I avoided any question of why I was in the middle of Arizona and stealing from a convenience store, and Penny remained uncannily silent. But I could feel her eyes on me, analyzing my every move.

After a while, Inés went to bed and I tried to do the same. I took the sleeping bag and pillow to the front seat, like Inés had recommended, and tried to sleep. Tried, at least. Despite the fact I was trembling with fatigue, I couldn't do it.

I don't know if I slept. But at some point, I heard a rumbling above me, like something climbing on the roof. When I got out and looked, I saw Penny lying there beneath the stars, hands folded over her chest.

I took a deep breath, composed myself, and cleared my throat. "Um…hey."

She didn't reply. At first, I thought she might've fallen asleep, but then she moved her hands behind her head and sighed.

"Can I talk to you?" I said.

"I don't care," she replied.

Good as anything. It took me a while to climb up with her, but once I did, she had moved over to make room. Or maybe to put as much distance between us as possible. My history with her was rough. We'd gone to the same middle and high school, and middle school girls are petty bitches, me being no exception. She was one of only a couple Hispanic kids in the whitest school in L.A.; she was poor and I was rich; she wore thrift store clothes and I needed someone to bully to nurse my own poor self-esteem. That's how it worked when you were twelve. Except now it was more complicated.

She really was the prettiest girl I had ever seen — her black hair blue and brown skin ebony in the moonlight, her thin arms bared by her faded tank top, her feet bare and dusty. She wore a thin silver anklet. Her glasses were on, but her eyes closed.

"What do you want, Gail?" she asked me.

"Do you always sleep up here?"

"I come up here to be alone."

Oh. "I'm sorry about…you know…everything from high school," I told her. "I don't deserve what you and your mom are doing for me."

Penny sat up and met my eyes. "Are you saying that because you mean it, or because it'll make you feel better about yourself?"

I hesitated. I had never been asked a question like that before. Penny's gaze didn't once waver, and after I couldn't answer, she tossed her ponytail over her shoulder and sniffed.

"That's what I thought."

"Penny, I — "

"I don't want to hear it," she snapped. "You want to thank someone, thank my mom. Unlike me, she doesn't know why you're out here."

My eyes narrowed. "How do you know why I'm out here?"

She laughed bitterly. "Isn't it obvious?"

"Is it?"

"You're richer than shit, Gail. You have everything you could possibly want because your parents can pay for it. Dream school, perfect grades, cushy artist job. And because your life's been presented to you on a silver platter, which some of us would kill to have, you've got some delusion that it's your destiny to run off and find yourself by hitchhiking across America and stealing from people who maybe really need it."

I was quiet. I wanted to snap back, but…she wasn't even really wrong. So I just said, "Go on."

Her glare sharpened. "Go on?" she echoed.

"Yes," I said. "I want to hear more."

"Fine. I will." Penny folded her arms. "You had some wild graduation party where you got no less than ten thousand dollars' worth of gifts, then you went to some useless art school that's more expensive than fucking Harvard. You spent the whole time partying but still got stellar grades because art is subjective anyway, and at the end of your first year you decided that it still wasn't enough. You decide you wanna travel to 'find yourself', so you do, cushioned by your parents' money and the fact that you can always go back to your Beverly Hills mansion if the big wide world is too hard on poor widdle Gail. We walked in on you at a rough spot, but why'd we even bother? Say you got thrown in jail for petty theft, your parents would bail you out, maybe send a private jet out here to pick you up."

The first part wasn't wrong. I had gone to art school to party and make subjective art. And it wasn't enough.

"I'm sorry," I said, trying to keep my voice even. It wasn't easy.

"You'd better be," Penny told me. "I knew I was right. You never change."

I stayed quiet again.

Penny sneered. I'd seen her sneer at me before, but it was normally because I was bullying her. This time, it scared me, and I quickly pulled my gaze away. "What? Nothing? Exactly how right was I?"

"You were wrong."

She froze. "What?"

I bit my lip and closed my eyes. I had never said this before. For a long time, I hoped I would never have to.

Finally, I said, "My parents kicked me out."

A tear pricked at my eye. I blinked to clear it.

"You're joking," said Penny.

Another tear. I wiped this one with the back of my hand. "No."

"Why?"

I wanted to say you. I didn't. I inhaled and choked on the breath. "I came back from school, and that first night I was back, they said our housekeeper found something in my room. A high school journal, where I wrote about…being sexually attracted to other girls. I am — " I closed my eyes " — a lesbian. I was told to leave home and never come back."

It was Penny's turn to be quiet now. I cracked open my eyes, hoping for something, anything, in her eyes.

Yet there was nothing. She'd turned away. Then she said, her voice trembling, "I'm sorry, I don't know if I can believe that. I had the impression that you hated other girls."

"I never hated anyone," I protested, but as soon as it left my mouth, I knew that wasn't right. "Well — I mean, yeah, Miranda, I hated Miranda, and also Jess from the dance team, and for the record basically the entire dance team, but I'm pretty sure you could agree about them. Just — if this is about you, I never hated you."

"I find that even harder to believe."

"I'm sorry."

"Thanks for saying sorry, now you don't feel as guilty for yourself — "

"I'm serious," I cut her off. "I want to apologize, I treated you like shit in high school. But in my defense, I was going through some really hard times myself, thanks to my parents, because not all of us have a mom who would drive across the country for us."

Penny rolled her eyes. "Wow. Blaming me for having an okay mom. I really feel your regret."

At that, I hesitated. I hadn't meant for what I said to come off as blaming…had I? Was that how it sounded? God. I just mess everything up. Now Penny was beginning to sound right — I really did just want to apologize for myself, because when it made me uncomfortable, I got all weird about it.

"You're right," I admitted. "I shouldn't have said that."

"No. You shouldn't have."

Yet another hesitation from me. Penny was really good at shutting down conversations.

I couldn't help but stare at her as she, in turn, gazed out at the desert night. The full moon glinted off her scratched glasses; her full lips were chapped from the dry air and she had drawn her scabby knees up to her chest. I loved her so much, but I didn't dare say it. There was a lot wrapped up in that — it'd strip my credibility from maybe lying to definitely joking. And more importantly than it hurting me, as I realized sheepishly, it could hurt her. No. This wasn't about my feelings. This was about her.

I followed her eyes out into the night. We were parked facing the town, or at least, that insignificant cluster of buildings that thought of itself as a town. It was so low and dark that if not for the few pinpricks of yellow light, it might go unnoticed. Between the town and us was a single billboard. Welcome to Accident, Arizona. Population: 40.

I inhaled.

"Tell me what I can do to make it up to you," I said. "I get that you're mad at me, you have every right to be. So just tell me what you want. And I'll do it."

Penny turned her head sharply. I didn't back down. Just waited and tried to be brave.

"Anything?" she asked.

I nodded. "Anything."

She raised her chin. "Tell me the truth."

"The truth is that I'm not lying to you anymore," I told her.

She said nothing, just stared back at me. The slightest hint of a sneer twitched at her upper lip — it took me back to a time when my biggest concern was whether my friends would laugh with me at things I said. A time when I didn't ask myself, every second of the day, who I really was.

"That Gail you knew in high school, she's gone. My parents don't love me anymore, I've got no money and no direction. I'm hitchhiking to Chicago to maybe-possibly move in with a friend from art school who might or might not take me in, and your mom just bailed me out because I was stealing chips I can't afford. I have nothing, Penny, I'm — alone."

My voice broke. Before I could stop it, a tear escaped.

And then my shoulders began to shake and I bent over my knees and it was over; my pride and strength gave way and every emotion I had pushed down and ignored for three weeks came spilling and rushing over me. I was hungry and fatigued but I hadn't dared to ask Inés for more food because I didn't want to sound ungrateful. I was sitting on the roof of a van with the girl I had ridiculed in high school because I hadn't known what to do with myself or my emotions, and now, because I didn't know what to do with them again, I was dumping them all on her lap and forcing her to clean up the excess. And maybe I was trying to shift the attention away from what I'd done to her and towards what had been done to me, and I wasn't sure if that was right, if I had the right to do that, or if it was just another form of the selfishness I had forced her to endure for every abusive year I had spent in my parents' house. I didn't know. All I could understand was that I was broken. The reality of my situation was inescapable, pulling me down, and because I was too afraid to face it alone, I was dragging Penny with me. I couldn't help but cry more.

Then a weight rested on my shoulder. Her hand. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "But I can't help you."

The indifference was cold, colder than if she had just shut me down entirely. But she was right. I wanted Penny to help me, I wanted her to be my magic kiss to heal all wounds, I wanted to lay all my sorrows on her and have them returned in the form of a happily ever after. But it wasn't my place to do that, it wasn't her burden to bear. Especially after what I'd done to her.

Then she sighed and, as if she'd read my thoughts, said, "I forgave you a long time ago."

I inhaled sharply. I realized that I was probably unintentionally mumbling my thoughts aloud again — I really needed to keep a check on that — but suddenly, none of that mattered. Wiping my eyes, I turned back to her. "You…forgave me?"

She just shrugged. "I had to."

"What do you mean?"

Another sigh left her lips and she pulled her hand away, placing it on the roof of the van. She leaned back and turned her gaze to the moon. "You can't just go through life holding on to every time you've grieved," she said. "When you grow up like I do, you just…you stop looking at it like something that only happens to you."

I still didn't get it. I let her know and she just inclined her chin.

"I grew up without a father. Before my mom came on the road with me, she'd worked as a housemaid for twenty years. I was the only Hispanic kid in any of the advanced placement classes. My entire elementary school experience was hiding in the bathroom so people didn't trip me or kick me at lunch and recess. I've been told a hundred times that everything is my fault, that somehow, I'm not good enough for what I earned; even when I got accepted to Harvard, I was told that it was just for diversity points. But you know that, Gail, because you were the one who said it."

Penny paused and locked eyes with me. My whole body stiffened. But what scared me wasn't what she was saying, but the fact that her face was a blank slate. Indifferent. Cold.

"It's a waste of my time to list off the people who have personally wronged me, because in the grand scheme of things, it's not even those people. You bullied me because you grew up in a racist and sexist household — and I guess you were dealing with some internalized homophobia, too. And the only reason your household is that abusive is because of a larger social context that justifies the abuse. Your parents think that by kicking you out, they're just doing what's good for you, or maybe they believe that they're doing the world a favor, or whatever homophobic parents think. Because that's what they've been told all their lives. I'm not mad at you; I'm not even mad at your parents."

"Then who are you mad at?"

"No one."

I frowned. As much sense as she was making, she'd definitely seemed mad before. "Okay, because you definitely seemed mad about your mom helping me."

"Just because I forgave you doesn't mean I have to like you," she replied. Then she hesitated and looked at her feet. "Well…maybe you're right. I don't know if I've completely forgiven you yet. The wounds are still pretty fresh. But I'm working on it."

"So…you really try to just, like, not be mad at anybody? Anybody at all?"

She shook her head. "No. I am mad at a lot of things. You really don't know what I'm doing with my degree, do you?"

I hesitated. I wish I did know. But as obsessed as I was with her, it never seemed the right place to ask her what she was studying in college. "I'm sorry, no."

"Law school. I'm going to fight for civil rights." Penny looked to the horizon again, her face framed in moonlight. I rarely saw her smile, but for a moment then I could see one dancing on the corner of her lips. "I take everything that's made me mad, everything that's made me hate myself…and I turn it around. I can't enact justice on every single person who's mistreated me. But I can save others from being mistreated. So when I look back at people like you or my old teachers, I don't have to see a personal grudge — I see a cause to fight for."

A cause to fight for. A purpose. She shifted, lying back down on the roof of the van, folding her hands over her stomach. As she turned to the heavens, her face washed over with a serenity that warmed my heart.

So I tried it as well. I lay next to her and tucked my hands behind my head — about a week ago, while stuck in Las Vegas and desperate for money, I had sold my long blond hair and snipped the rest down as short as I could. The metal of the van was like ice against my scalp.

But then I blinked and found myself staring at an expanse of sky unlike anything I had ever seen before. I hadn't known stars were different colors. And yet there they were, whites and pinks and yellows and blues, dancing in a great navy-blue band across the sky. I suppose when you grow up in Los Angeles, home of smog and light pollution, you don't know a lot about stars. Not even once during this trip had I taken a second to look up.

It was easy to think about big things under a sky like this. Space and time. Nature and humanity. The universe itself. Who we were, who we were supposed to be, and where we were going. I could never know. It was overwhelming, the sky and the silence that surrounded us. Like we were alone, but at the same time, simple parts of a machine so much larger than ourselves.

A cause to fight for.

"So you really know what you're doing with your life?" I asked, glancing over. "You're sure?"

"As sure as I could ever be," said Penny. She continued to gaze into the stars. "I mean…things come along, my life could change in a heartbeat and this dream could get dashed by anything, but…at least I have something."

I must have gone quiet for a long time, because eventually, Penny turned to look at me.

"Do you think about it a lot? Where you're going?"

I did. I didn't have any answers.

"It's complicated," I admitted.

"Explain."

"I tried to bargain with my parents, but they wouldn't help me, I…I don't know what I can do with my life if I can't go to school."

Penny shook her head. "I mean beyond that. I know postsecondary education seems like such a huge part of doing anything nowadays, but if you could just ignore it, who would you want to become?"

"I don't know!" I closed my eyes and rubbed them, frustrated with myself. "I told you, it's — complicated. My parents — " My voice choked up. It was like they'd died. I couldn't see them again. "Even though they were fucking awful, I — I don't know what to do without them. I don't know who to be anymore."

"Well…you did amazing art; you don't need your parents to do art. You don't even need to go to art school."

"You don't understand," I mumbled. "Every time I did art…it was like looking within myself, pulling a piece out, and putting it on the canvas. All my art was me. But now I don't even know who I am anymore. Or…where I'm going, what I'm contributing to the world, what I want."

The tears were back. I sniffled, sat up, and buried my head in my arms again. "Fuck," I said. It was the only thing that could really describe how I felt.

Penny shifted, sitting up with me. Then, once again, her hand rested on my shoulder.

"You don't have to know," she said softly.

"I want to," I murmured into my arms. "I have a lot of emotions and nowhere to put them. I feel so lost."

"I know."

"But I'm so tired, I don't want to think about myself anymore. I just want to rest."

A sigh, and her hand moved. She hugged me and I buried my head into her shoulder. "I'm sorry."

For a long while, neither of us moved. I could have spent a lifetime in her arms. I breathed in the scent of her hair, which wasn't anything in particular — just something that smelled like her — and as I wrapped my arms around her back, I couldn't help but run my fingers through the soft locks of her ponytail.

"How did you figure it out?" I mumbled. "What you were gonna do?"

She pulled back from the hug. "Well," she sighed, "it was just kind of obvious. I like to read, I've never gotten less than an A-plus in history, and when I was seven, I memorized the Constitution for fun. I was born to be a lawyer."

I couldn't help but smile at that. "I mean how'd you know…you were gonna help people as a lawyer? Do you get some sort of charity tax exemption?"

"Of course not; what kind of — " Whatever the end of that sentence was going to be, Penny cut it off and seemed to rethink it. "Right. You grew up rich. Undoubtedly, you were taught how to evade paying as many taxes as possible."

I shrugged. Couldn't argue with that.

"Well…" Penny looked up at the sky as she thought some more. "I guess it just comes back to what I was saying before, about being angry. That's it. I've lived with injustice for so long, and I don't want anyone else to face it, so I'm using my full potential to fight it on behalf of those who can't. I want to make a change, not so that it can benefit me, but so that one day, I can look back on a human race that is suffering a little less."

We both fell quiet. I turned the words over in my head and came up blank, but it was then that I turned and saw a faint lavender glow. The first glimpse of morning lined the horizon. The town of Accident was darker than ever, sound asleep in these smallest hours.

"It's morning already?" I asked.

Penny raised an eyebrow. "What time did you think it was?"

"I don't know," I confessed. "I didn't think I had slept, I thought it was still, you know, earlier night."

"Nope. You were passed out."

"And you wanted to be up this early?"

"Yeah." A smile touched her lips. The first real smile that I could remember. "You'll see why."

Again, we felt quiet, her eyes on the sunrise and my eyes on her. For what could have been hours, I watched the lavender on her cheeks slowly fade to tawny pink. She met my gaze then. I wanted to kiss her more than anything in the world. But I didn't want to look away from her face, the beautiful light dawning there, and when I finally pulled away to find what was so interesting about the horizon, I didn't want to look away from that either. I had seen sunrises before. Just not like this. It was so quiet, the only sounds I could hear were our breath, the gentle inhales as the first ray of sun washed over our faces…the sigh as Penny rested her head on my shoulder.

"You know," she said, "when you're not being racist, you're kind of okay."

Penny was touching me. Kindly and voluntarily. I was so surprised that the only thing I could think of to say was, "I should avoid being racist more often." Which was really dumb. She laughed, a beautiful sound.

"So…Mom and I are hitting the road as soon as she wakes up, and if we don't take too many bathroom breaks, we'll be back in Los Angeles by tonight." Turning her head, she looked up at me. "You need a ride?"

My eyes widened. With one unbelievable surprise on top of another, I was basically speechless. "I…um…I was going to Chicago."

"To stay with the friend from art school who might or might not take you in," Penny finished.

"I guess."

She raised an eyebrow, then pulled away to fix her ponytail. "Well…my Tía Marci is more than inventive about making room for her summer guests. If you want a more secure option, just let my mom know."

"She'd be okay with that?"

"Are you kidding? You know musical theory. I haven't seen my mom get so excited to talk with someone since we ran into Don McLean at a Food N' Stuff."

Penny laughed, but I didn't. "I don't know who that is," I said plainly.

"Oh, don't let her hear that."

"Uh…I won't."

"Point is," said Penny, "I don't think you're a bad person, Gail. And I'm really sorry for what happened with your parents. If you'd like, maybe we can turn the page on all that high school bullshit. Start over."

"You'd do that?" I asked, my eyes wide.

"Sure, if you're up for it — "

"Yes!" I blurted, maybe with a little too much zeal. Penny grimaced and I winced. "Sorry…yes. Yes, I'd like that. Thank you."

"Okay," she laughed. "So turn the page it is, then. Hello, I guess."

She waved awkwardly, and I waved back, grinning. "Hi."

"Well…my name's Penny, I'm a pre-law English major, and I'm glad to meet you."

Penny gave a shy smile. I had never known her to be shy, but I had known her to be a lot of other things. In the golden morning light, I looked at her and came face to face with many things I didn't dare to look in the eye — love and rage, jealousy and guilt, fear and passion — all tangled together in a horrifying, intoxicating display. I closed my eyes. I felt the tear trace its path down my cheek. I let it fall, then looked up at her again.

"My name's Gail," I said, "and this is my new start."