On the first anniversary of her mother’s death, Nell didn’t visit the grave site. She didn’t even visit her family. It’d been months since she last talked to any of them and she doubted they even wanted to see her. Besides, Trevor had bought her a new phone a few weeks ago and she’d had to change her number. She hadn’t tried to contact any of them, so they had no way of contacting them.

It’s probably better this way anyway, she thought, I don’t have to listen to their BS about how great a mom she was, how much they miss her. It’ all crap. She never cared for anyone beyond herself.

Instead of going home, Nell marked the occasion by drinking tequila instead of her usual few beers at the bar she and Trevor had been frequenting since they found their way to this dump. The whole town was along one main street, and the only thriving businesses stayed open until 3 am or charged by the hour. Trevor said he had spent some time here when he was young and still had some connections, but the only people she ever saw him talking to were the truckers and other travelers that came through the bar every night. Still he was making money somehow, enough to get them a room at the town motel down the block. Her whole life had become wandering from that room through the few antique and pawn shops until she ended up hunched over a bottle for the evening. She’d tried to go in the town library once, but she couldn’t sit still long enough to read more than a few pages before giving up on that endeavor. Books had been her friends when she was a kid, but now even they had abandoned her. The words swam on the page and her mind became filled with voices that didn’t belong to her beloved characters.

Without those books, Nell was more lonely than ever. Trevor didn’t want her talking to the guys in the bar, he said they’d try to take advantage of her, and everyone else just looked at her with so much pity in their eyes she couldn’t stand it. It was like they knew she was an orphan or something. But who were they to judge her? She didn’t need their pity. She was better off without them.