Darlin' ~ FP Jones

Black Beauty

It was a cool winter day when they moved into the town of Riverdale. A town stuck in the past complete with cheerleading uniforms, 50's diners, and the bad side of town. As for the girl, she wasn't sure where she belonged. It was just her and her mom. She had other family but they were nowhere to be found. The girl found it hard to believe that moving to some tiny town in the middle of nowhere was the right decision for her and her mother after her dad left. He had abandoned them about nine years ago and somehow even though that feels like eternity, he never left them alone. So they packed up and moved from one small town to yet another small, if I may say tiny, town. Her mother had lived here and came back every summer until she was eight as a kid to spend time with friends and play at Sweet Water River. It was always her mother's dream to come back here, and now it came true much to her daughter's dismay.

There was a fine line between upper Riverdale and Lower Riverdale, the South Side as the locals called it the new family was just shy of being labeled South Side trash. She hated towns where everyone knew each other, and yet she seemed not to be able to escape them.

She woke up to the sound of her incessant beeping alarm, surrounded by clothes that were flung out of her suitcase while she was in a desperate search from pajamas the night before. She struggled to climb over the large buildup of clothes. Her new bedroom was nothing special. It had a window seat that opened up to a big oak in the back yard. So that was something. After shuffling down the stairs into the kitchen, she saw a note underneath a banana on the kitchen table next to a tall glass of orange juice. She rolled her eyes, it was from her mom.

"Happy first day of Riverdale High! Have a good day, love Mom." She almost smiled as she peeled the banana, so much for a first day of school breakfast. She had to walk through South Side Park as a short cut to school. At the time, she was wary of it. Hearing from her mom that it would be wise to keep away from the South Side the girl still thought she could handle the people. But she was wrong and was totally unprepared for it. Unprepared for him.

There  is not way to describe the complexity of the girl; she was just her, trying to get through another year high school. She slung her bag over her shoulder and stepped out into the crisp morning. The sky was gray and threatened rain. As she walked along the sidewalk of the park, she assumed that this would be the closest she would ever come to walking the streets of the wrong side of the tracks. The naive girl was wrong though as she would soon come to find out. It was early, early enough to be one of the only ones walking down the sidewalk. Her head was bent and her hands were shoved in the pockets of her jacket as she attempted to remember her new class schedule. She wasn't paying attention to where she was walking, when her foot caught a crack in the unkempt sidewalk on the bad side of town. She tripped and fell to her knees, scuffing her hands against the pavement. Her books spilled out of my bag and she took a moment to rest her head in her hands.

"Fuck." She whispered, sighing as she had no hope for that day to improve. Little cuts on her hands began to form, and she shut her eyes blinking back tears of fear, sadness, and loneliness. She re-opened her eyes to see a beat up pair of boots in front of her. She hadn't heard him approach her. The man had been leaning against his truck, lighting a cigarette. He saw her fall and saw her shoulders quiver slightly, he wasn't sure if it was from the cold or from tears so he sighed and came up to her. Now that he was standing in front of her, one hand on his hip the other tucked into his leather jacket. She looked up at him and was greeted with two pools of dark brown, unwavering from her face.

"Need a hand?" His voice had a gravely tone to it. She tore her eyes away from the smirk that played against the man's lips. He found her tragically gorgeous and brushed his thumb against his bottom lip nervously. The girl shook her head but he squatted down next to her anyway and began to hand her some books. He never had been good at doing what he was told. She shoved them in her bag and mumbled an incoherent 'thank you'. He nodded and glanced at the hands that shook with cold and little spots of blood on her palms.