Wordsmith's Challenge

She sat in her E class working up the nerve to get out.

Shit.

There seemed to be a cult of the mom jeans here. And that cult broke off from the cult of the denim jumpers and socks. What the hell had she been thinking when she came here?

Her key was still hanging in the ignition. She should just start the damn car back up and drive back home. She already missed neon signs, and pawn shops, and thugs who posted up on the corner, nodding their hellos. If her mother were still alive, she would have talked her child out of this shit. If her mother were still alive, she wouldn’t be here in the first fucking place.

She looked at herself in the rear view mirror. No one saw her. The windows were blacked like she was the president herself. Course, the president didn’t roll on Dubs. Or wear Gucci stunner shades studded with rhinestones. They might as well have been neon lights. Flashing neon that said, “I DON”T BELONG HERE.” Soon, people would start blessing her little heart for looking so out of place.

It wasn’t so much that her gear was top shelf. The town, though small, was affluent. It was a college town. She wasn’t the only one there with an 80, 000 dollar car. Hell, she could pick out five of them from where she sat. Small private college town. She’d moved here to work with other top surgeons doing research. They didn’t work for minimum wage.
I don’t work for minimum wage anymore.

It wasn’t that she was paid that made her stand out. It was that she was flashy. Way too flashy. Clearly, she hadn’t come from money. And she didn’t care who knew it, she made no effort to blend. Back home, her ride was not the most expensive on the block, either. Maybe the only one with a legal title… Here, they all were legal, boring. No way did any have Budweiser in the trunk. Maybe microbrews. Fuck that. She liked Bud. The carryout by the free clinic she’d opened back home didn’t carry micro brews.

She was here to meet the head of her research team. He’d invited the young single doctor to join him and his wife at the “delightful farmers market” where she could “meet most of the town!” She’d smiled at the white haired old scientist, knowing that she had to make nice and agreed to meet them at 9. She’d said she was, “Looking forward to it.”

Really, she’d been looking forward to listening to the O-Jays and get stinking drunk. She didn’t care about meeting anyone. She didn’t care about making scientific history with the research team. She cared about whipping the ass of heart disease which had taken her mother at the age of 42. To do that, she had to make nice.

She took a deep breath and opened the door, promising a fast return to her 12 little Buds.