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two full shot glasses in front of me. From the corner of my eye, I see someone walking up to me. I take one of the shots before I brave a look over my shoulder at the person. I’m not in the mood for company, but apparently no one gets that. I turn around and snap out, “What?”
       “Oh, I’m sorry Lynkin. I was just coming over to say hi while I was on my break. But, I’ll just leave ya alone,” a pretty brunette waitress says as she pulls the apron back over her head.
       As she grabs the strings to tie around her back I stop her. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so rude. Just not having a really good day.”
       “Really, its fine I need to get back to work anyways, Lynkin,” she replies.
       “No, see it’s not fine. It isn’t enough that I snapped at you, but it seems that you know me but I don’t remember you. And that makes it worse.”
       “Oh. You really don’t remember me?” She pauses to sigh. “I’m Sam. You know. The ‘new girl in town.’”
       “The new girl in town? This town hasn’t had anyone new in five years.” I say.
       “That’s exactly why I am still called the new girl.”
       “Sam? Oh, hell. You’ve grown a lot since I last saw you.” I mean this girl went from pigtails and braces to short shorts and a barely there tank top. She looks good. “Are you even old enough to work in here?”
       “Yes, I turned 18 a couple of months ago. Anyways, I’ve got to get back to work before Jennifer gets here in ten minutes. My shift is over at eleven if you want to come back and maybe get something to eat together,” she says with a blush.
       “I would love to, but I really can’t. Wait, did you just say Jen’s shift starts in ten minutes?” I ask her.
       “Um, yeah.”
       I take the last shot and race out the door. I reach in my pocket for my keys when I get to my black four door jeep, the last piece of my hard work I have left. And that’s not because I get to keep her. Nope. It’s because they haven’t come to take her from me, yet.  I really shouldn’t be driving it with all that I had to drink in there, but then again what does it matter? It won’t be mine soon, anyway.
       Fuck it. I run my hand over the hood as I make my way to my door. I might as well enjoy her while I have her, and if that means they get it wrecked, so be it. I turn the key over and listen to her roar to life. The wheel vibrates under my hand when I rev up the engine, and adrenaline pushes through my veins. What a high. I put it in drive and floor it, kicking up dirt from the parking lot. I leave behind nothing but a dust cloud blocking out the lights from the bar.
       What the hell am I doing? I can’t believe I have stooped to the level of kidnapping. What do I really expect to get out of this? That Carl Donovan is just going to hand over his money and that Sage isn’t going to go telling everyone who was holding her? That’s wishful thinking. All I can get out of all this is jail time and disappointing my mom.
       With the gas pedal to the floor, I don’t even take the time to stop or even look when I bust through red lights or stop signs.  If this whole thing doesn’t work out I am no use to my mother anyway. All the hard work was for nothing. I am right back to this one horse town and back to not being able to support my mother. I will never be able to amount to anything, no matter what I do. These past three years are just proof of that. Sure, mom will be devastated that I am gone but she is tough. She’ll survive. Plus, Jen will look in on her for me.
       All of a sudden, the car jerks to the right and I am spinning uncontrollably. It takes me a minute but eventually I get it righted and to a stop. I jump out of the car and look around to see what happened. There is no one else around. I walk up to the road and check it out for anything I could have hit to make the car jerk like it did. All I find is a big ass pothole. It is so big,