LIKE RADIO STATIC

Prologue

Sometimes stronger things exist.

Blue

She threw open an old guitar case, almost breaking one of the gold latches. The top padding and cushion, which was formed to perfectly fit a guitar, seemed a nuisance--taking up too much space. She lifted a piece of torn red velvet on the bottom, and inserted her credit card and a roll of hundred dollar bills. Her heart sped as she added an antique diamond ring her mother had bought for fifty cents ages ago, only to find years later that she could put five kids through college and grad school with it. But Blue's mother wasn't there; she was sure she wouldn't miss it. Blue threw clothing after clothing in that case until it couldn't fit anymore. When it couldn't fit any more, she turned to an old duffle bag that her father had brought back from the army. It was simply an ugly washed out color of green with two straps.

She harshly wiped her tears, feeling disgusted in her own skin all over again. Blue had scrubbed and scrubbed with hot water. She'd scrubbed with the rough part of a kitchen sponge until her skin bled. But it wouldn't help. She tried to push all memories of the night before. About how she loved him and yet at the same time, how wrong it was. She wanted the fact that she loved him with all her heart to overshadow any immorality. But did it work? No. All that ran through her head was how it should have never happened. How it was her fault for letting it happen and that she was an idiot. And most importantly, she believed, was how she was going to go to hell. Blue wasn't a religious person, but the situation was forcing her into the belief.

There lay her tiny little note in scrap paper. Blue glanced at it again, wanting to rip it apart because two little sentences didn't justify her feelings well enough. God, there were so many things she wanted to tell him. Things she'd told him already, and things he didn't know. Blue wanted to let him know. She...she wanted him inside her head--inside her body--to know how she was feeling. There was no other way he could ever comprehend the sorrow and the nauseating feeling at the pit of her stomach that just wouldn't go away. She wanted to let him know how she desperately hoped it was a dream and how she hoped that she would wake up and he would be a person she'd never met. And Blue never did wanted to see him again. And she wouldn't.

Picking up her bags, she turned the light switch off. With one last look, she felt almost guilty for leaving her bed unmade and everything a mess. Blue closed the door behind her, but then quickly opened it again and retrieved a picture of her and her brother as kids on her dresser. She broke off the frame and slid the picture in her pocket. Quickly, she half ran for the front door, her bags weighing her down. Blue was going to turn around for one last look at the place where she grew up and memories were made. But no memory was worth preserving.

Blue walked to the nearest highway, behind a small forest. She'd never thought she'd be the type of person to hitchhike, but there she was scraping her feet along the gravel pathway separating the road on her left and the trees on her right. It was somewhat cold for a summer night, freezing in her tanktop. Blue sat on her bags near the edge of the road, sticking her thumb out. It was obvious to anyone who passed what she wanted. It was obvious to everyone, just by that look in her eyes, that she'd been hurt and confused--just wanting to escape from it all. They knew. They passed her half-a-second glances of pity, only to, half of a second later, return back to their lives: forgetting about her forgetting about that girl sitting by the road. Blue swallowed hard. It didn't matter. It didn't matter that they had perfect lives and that she didn't. How she desperately hoped she was another person with different circumstances. And how she would have and could have, in a heartbeat, walked in the middle of the road if just to forget it for a while. She was determined, however, to do whatever it took to get away from it and beat it.

With that small thought in mind, she got up and stripped herself of her jeans. Blue was then standing in skin-tight boy shorts. Of course, that wasn't enough. Who hadn't seen a teenage girl in shorts in the middle of the summer? With her heart in her mouth, she shook her hair out of her ponytail and stood up. It wasn't much, but it was enough to get the attention of a loud minivan. Joy and hope--as lame as that sounded even in her head, sprung.

"Hey, sugar," a shirtless man with dozens of tattoos slurred, undoubtedly drunk. He looked like someone that Alex would have hung out with. Drunk, carefree, and looking slightly dangerous. He invited her to get in, and she gladly did. "Where you headed?" he asked, moving his feet for her to sit. That caught Blue off guard. Where was she headed?

"Um, where are you going?"

"Babe," someone said from behind her, startling the daylights out of her. Damn backseats. "We've been on the road for three years. We can take you anywhere you like." The guy in the back was slightly more sober than the other three. Which worried Blue as to why he was not the one driving. He was the only one as well, that was fully clothed and reading a book in the midst of dozens of huge white pillows. Some which were not so white anymore. He looked comfortable, though. Road trips and a life of travel had always seemed attractive to Blue.

"Um, well, what's the farthest place from here?"

"Um, well, where are we?" an unfriendly voice said from the front seat. He was staring at her from the rearview mirror, a scowl on his face. He looked opposed to the idea of picking up a hitchhiker. Even though something told Blue that she wasn't the first one they'd picked up.

Blue mumbled the place to him, not wanting to get on his bad side, because frankly none of these guys looked like you wanted to get on their bad side. They didn't look much older than she. Maybe twenty-three/twenty-two or something along those lines. "Hey, don't worry about him," came yet another slurred voice; this time from the driver. "He's just pissy because the last hitcher we picked was a girl. Poor asshole fell in love with her and then she ditched him as soon as we got to where she wanted to." Well wasn't that just cute.

"Oh. Um... Don't worry," Blue began. "I-I'm not looking to, uhm, fall in love with anyone here."

They all roared in laughter at that one.

"I'm gonna like this one," the reader from the back commented. The guy next to her gave him a warning look, sharing something which only the two of them were supposed to know.

Blue shrunk back in the seat, hugging her bag close to her. These guys were so warm and genuinely nice; the kind of people who made anyone feel at home.

However, she feared that she wherever she went from now on, she’d never feel at home again.

Blue didn’t know what lay ahead of her, but she knew it wasn’t going to be alright.