New Storyline: Let's Try this Again

Back in July, I posted what I'd hoped would become a new storyline. I promptly forgot all about it. Well, sort of. I have thought about picking it back up a few times, but life has been... a hectic mess for me fore the last year. "Witch's Moon" was done, and then it wasn't. Then it needed revising to remove some major parts, and then it was done... and then my beta reader found some small but important plot holes. I'll be honest, I do not know when it'll be fixed at this point. I have stepped away from it for a bit because I was starting to get into a bad mind set.

Back to the new story line. Today's post will be a re-post of that post from July, and I'll be picking it up from here.

~ Rebecca

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Samantha parked her 1989 Toyota whoopty car in the last open spot at the strip mall just off the highway and sighed. She had a degree in business, more than a decade worth of experience in corporate accounting. And she was delivering pizza in the middle of Nowhere, Montana because this was where her car, dubbed the Crappy Corolla by her boss, had broke down six months ago. It wasn't even a real town. There was a real town down the road a few miles, called Talbot's Peak, but this was where the only motel was, so here is where she'd stayed.

That fateful day, back in February, she'd had high hopes for a job interview in Kennewick, Washington, which she hadn't made it to. She'd had two-hundred dollars in her pocket, which hadn't been enough to fix the clutch on the Crappy Corolla. She had had plenty of clothes, though, since everything she'd owned had been jam-packed into the trunk and back seat. She might have cried about her lot in life that day, but hadn't bothered wasting her energy. As a product of the South Dakota foster care system, she'd been through worse and had learned how to land on he feet.

The first thing she'd done was get a room at the motel, and then she walked up and down the strip mall looking for a job. She'd found one slinging pies at the pizzeria. Six months later, she was still working there, only delivering pies now that the Crappy Corolla was operational again. She kept telling herself that it was only until she had enough money saved up to make another push for civilization. It wasn't exactly a lie. She had had car repairs to pay for, and room and board to pay for, but she'd managed to save up almost five-hundred dollars, more than twice what she'd had when she first arrived, but experience had taught her that the more money you had, the easier it would be to relocate. High hopes were not enough.

A knock on her window startled her, and she quickly rolled it down. Her boss, Jerad, was leaning over, peering in at her with a frown on his withered, craggy face.

"You ok, girl?" he asked, his gravely voice pinch with concern. "You been sitting out here a while."

"I'm fine," Samantha sighed. "Just have a bit of a headache tonight." She squinted, trying to read the cheap clock on the wall of the pizzeria, a task that would have been easier if the window hadn't been fogged over with years of grease, grime, and fingerprints. Jerad kept a clean store for the most part, but like most guys who had no women in their lives, he never seemed to notice things like dirty windows. If she wasn't mistaken, it was a quarter to ten. Only an hour and fifteen minutes to closing time.

"Well, how about you take one more run for me and then call it a night," Jerad said gruffly. "I've got enough people to cover the closing shift."

Samantha smiled wanly up at the old coot who'd given her a chance six months ago and nodded her thanks. Because here was the real reason she was still in Nowhere, Montana: people who actually gave a damn if she was feeling ok.