Mini NoNoWriMo -- 574 words

Four days after her high school graduation, Nancy McGill packed her diploma with a change of clothes and a few small trinkets of sentimental value into a backpack, and walked away from the house she'd grown up in forever. The year was 1978, and she had less than fifty dollars to her name---which was the reason she was leaving; her brother had stolen her savings, earmarked for college classes---almost eight hundred dollars, and spent it on a piece of shit car. Her mother was pissed that Nancy had had that much money to begin with---she would've taken and spent it on a new TV set, otherwise---and her stepfather was the one who'd instigated the car deal to begin with, so no use looking to him for disciplinary action.

Still a few months shy of her 18th birthday, Nancy got her first full-time paying job working in the kitchen of a small mom-and-pop restaurant. Compared to her mother's slovenly kitchen habits, this was the equivalent of a gourmet cooking class. Over the course of the next couple years, she became a first-class cook, and might have bought into the restaurant, if she hadn't fallen in love at twenty with a passing biker and thrown it all away for love.

Nancy is stubborn; it takes her a long time to own up to that particular mistake. The only other misjedgement that she holds out longer on is in not listening to what she's being told by her intuition; she's been hding away from that small, still inner voice for a long, long time now. All it ever did was get her in trouble, she thinks, remembering the childhood punishments when she spoke out on things that hadn't come to pass, things she wasn't supposed to know.

Then one cold March morning, when Prince Charming's pack is crashing with some unsavory locals during Bike Week, she wakes up at dawn, just hours after she lay down to rest, and without any clear reason why, packs what little she has to show for her twenty-five years back into that same tatty old backpack, and walks away from the crash-house, and gets to the far end of the block uncontested just as the first police vehicle rounds the corner. And that's that.

By sundown on that same March day, she's talked her way into giving readings at a local herb shop, and there's a shabby garage/apartment thrown in. That goes on for a year and a half, then she gets her own storefront in Cassadega, which is a haven for mediums and spiritualists. It's a precarious lifestyle---she's living at the back of the premises, strictly against the terms of her lease, but it's that or live in her car. It's a bittersweet relief when an elderly friend wills Nancy her house.

One of the previous owners didn't trust banks, and while she's sifting through a century's accumulation, Nancy finds money that's been hidden for decades, enough that for the first time in memory, she isn't worried about how to make ends meet. She still has bills to pay, and she's responsible for taxes and the like, but for the first time, it seems like, something's gone right.

Then it's Bike Week, 1993, and Nancy obeys an impulse to visit Daytona Beach. She falls in love again, but this time, the guy's not a biker, and she has a feeling that the ending isn't going to be the same either.

Mini NoNoWriMo -- 574 words

Four days after her high school graduation, Nancy McGill packed her diploma with a change of clothes and a few small trinkets of sentimental value into a backpack, and walked away from the house she'd grown up in forever. The year was 1978, and she had less than fifty dollars to her name---which was the reason she was leaving; her brother had stolen her savings, earmarked for college classes---almost eight hundred dollars, and spent it on a piece of shit car. Her mother was pissed that Nancy had had that much money to begin with---she would've taken and spent it on a new TV set, otherwise---and her stepfather was the one who'd instigated the car deal to begin with, so no use looking to him for disciplinary action.

Still a few months shy of her 18th birthday, Nancy got her first full-time paying job working in the kitchen of a small mom-and-pop restaurant. Compared to her mother's slovenly kitchen habits, this was the equivalent of a gourmet cooking class. Over the course of the next couple years, she became a first-class cook, and might have bought into the restaurant, if she hadn't fallen in love at twenty with a passing biker and thrown it all away for love.

Nancy is stubborn; it takes her a long time to own up to that particular mistake. The only other misjedgement that she holds out longer on is in not listening to what she's being told by her intuition; she's been hding away from that small, still inner voice for a long, long time now. All it ever did was get her in trouble, she thinks, remembering the childhood punishments when she spoke out on things that hadn't come to pass, things she wasn't supposed to know.

Then one cold March morning, when Prince Charming's pack is crashing with some unsavory locals during Bike Week, she wakes up at dawn, just hours after she lay down to rest, and without any clear reason why, packs what little she has to show for her twenty-five years back into that same tatty old backpack, and walks away from the crash-house, and gets to the far end of the block uncontested just as the first police vehicle rounds the corner. And that's that.

By sundown on that same March day, she's talked her way into giving readings at a local herb shop, and there's a shabby garage/apartment thrown in. That goes on for a year and a half, then she gets her own storefront in Cassadega, which is a haven for mediums and spiritualists. It's a precarious lifestyle---she's living at the back of the premises, strictly against the terms of her lease, but it's that or live in her car. It's a bittersweet relief when an elderly friend wills Nancy her house.

One of the previous owners didn't trust banks, and while she's sifting through a century's accumulation, Nancy finds money that's been hidden for decades, enough that for the first time in memory, she isn't worried about how to make ends meet. She still has bills to pay, and she's responsible for taxes and the like, but for the first time, it seems like, something's gone right.

Then it's Bike Week, 1993, and Nancy obeys an impulse to visit Daytona Beach. She falls in love again, but this time, the guy's not a biker, and she has a feeling that the ending isn't going to be the same either.