I'm new to writing Fanfiction but I would prefer it if you didn't baby me, tell me bluntly what's wrong with my story and how I can make it better and I'll get right on it! I really hope you enjoy reading it, I've had fun writing it and I know its AU and a lot of you might not be too keen on it but I'm so happy you decided to give mine a shot.
Rating: Well right now it is K-K+ I think, but I'm quite sure it might be bumped up a little bit!
Warning: For this chapter? None, I don't think so anyway, no spoilers unless Bruno Heller decides to make the Mentalist teenagers in a small western town!
Disclaimer: I don't want to own it; I just enjoy playing with it. It's the four year old playing with dolls coming out of me! However currently I wish some of you lot owned it, I love your ideas, and currently I'm liking you're Season 4 ideas better than what's panning out on T.V.
Inspiration: Too many country songs, title comes from Where the Blacktop Ends by Keith Urban and I started writing this after listening to Dirt Road Anthem by Jason Aldean for about the 80000 time! Also Luke Bryan and Jake Owen are big inspirations for this. The Mentalist is the biggest inspiration, more importantly Jisbon-Jello-J/L-whatever they're calling it now!- and all the writers I've read already are big inspirations!
Wow this is a long Authors Note, well thank you for reading!
Georgia xxx
Where the Dirt Road Ends...
Chapter 1-Part 1
Intro- Following the blazing light and the sound of voices
"Sir?" The voice of a young boy woke him from his sleep. He rubbed his eyes open to see the person in which the voice was coming from. A boy no older than nine before him, long dark curls around his pale freckled face glasses covering what must have been the greenest eyes he'd ever seen.
"Yes?" He asked sleepily, holding back a yawn and sitting up stretching his knotted back and wincing at the pain.
"Can I buy this?" The boy asked, pushing a book about airplanes before him.
"Sure, 7 dollars please." He nodded; typing robotically numbers into the cash register before the safe pinged out, getting stuck halfway.
The boy handed him the seven dollars, a collection of change from his piggy bank and he jiggled the till open more slipping the handful of change inside a small compartment.
The boy gleefully took the book without a bag or a receipt and skipped out of the shop to join a family of five who waited outside.
A blonde woman who stuck out dreadfully against the sea of raven hair, who towered over the man and who wore a tight grey skirt suit, much too formal and business like for this small town. She was hanging on the arm of a man who would have been about 5'8" but compared to the 6 foot pair of legs beside him looked about four foot. He wore a checked shirt over a white wife beater and had jeans with mud caked over them. He looked like he fit into this town, his greasy brown hair tied back in a piece of shabby elastic, day's worth of stubble on his cheeks. There were four kids, the slightly geeky boy who was showing his other two identical looking brothers the hardback book, smiling as he flipped the pages but knocking his younger brothers hands away if he went to touch a page. They all looked the same, the same dark hair and pale freckled skin. The same alluring green eyes. The one in glasses looked to be the middle brother at about nine whereas the younger one looked like a toddler while the older one he guessed was almost a teenager. The other kid was about his age, the only girl. She had a heart-shaped face framed with the darkest brown hair out of the family, she was small but it suited her. She was looking straight at him through the murky windows, her green eyes shining through the brown tint of the windows, she had freckles over her face but they weren't as prominent as her brother's had been. Her mouth formed a perfect pout, dusky pink lips and cherry-tinged cheeks. She was wearing jeans that had been cut to mid thigh and brown work boots. Her family apart from the blonde looked like a usual in this town, a farm family with a truck and chickens. He was bored of those types now; he saw them every day coming in trailing mud with their boots, hiding their faces with cowboy hats. They were a cliché; he hated being one of them.
But she was different. The way she looked, the way she seemed to distance herself.
He waved at her and flashed her a sleepy smile, wishing he hadn't spent all night at old Sam's barn night Sunday. She saw him and turned around, bending down and talking to her brothers. Ignoring him.
Well that was new.
No girl had EVER ignored him.
WTDE
"Daddy we're out of feed for the horses." She called from the doorway, being careful not to step any further from her place on the step in case she got mud on the carpet.
"Well take the truck and go down to Harvey's then." He replied to her sharply from the floor above.
"I'll be back in an hour." She replied as sweet as she could muster. She hated going to Harvey's and she hated driving the truck.
"Pick up something for tea, I'm not cooking tonight." He added.
She sighed and muttered under her breath about him never doing the cooking and closed the door. Wandering over the dirt track to the rusting old truck, god only knew what colour it was twenty years ago but now it was a sort of greyish brown with red patches that might be trace of what the truck looked like in its finer years or it could simply be fancy coloured rust. She took the handle and placed a foot on the bit beside the door and pulled, it reluctantly fell open allowing her to get in. Clambering into the seat she hauled on the broken strap to heave herself in, she closed the door behind her, the vibrations shaking the truck. She turned the key in the ignition and felt the truck roar into action, like a volcano coming awake after years of dormancy. She hated driving the truck, the cracked glass on the windshield made it almost impossible for her to see anything and the seatbelt was broken, both because of one of her father's late night drunk driving.
She pulled out of the farm, it was only small and she'd lived there all her life. She was bored of it now, of the routines and of the people. She wanted to be outside the small town. She didn't want everyone to know her name she wanted to be able to walk down the street like a ghost, invisible yet mysterious.
She drove tiredly along the road, each move instinctual. Her mind was at a complete blank, there was nothing she needed to be thinking about, nothing that happened to her that she could mull over. Her life was a daily routine, nothing new, nothing hard, nothing at all.
As she turned into the side of the road at Harvey's she switched the engine off, the music if there had been any went off to and it was just quiet, with only the sounds of the town ahead.
She crossed the road, not even bothering to look for cars or trucks. Nothing ever came along the back road, even if it did she was sure she could stand in the middle of the road for a day and not be hit, nothing happened to her, she just walked the streets, did her chores, looked after her brothers. Sometimes she wondered if she was a human, if she could feel, if things did happen to her or was she just to live her life like this, swimming in nothingness.
"Hey Tessa." Harvey greeted as the door indicated her presence by brushing the bell that hung from the ceiling on a small brass hook.
"Hey." She mumbled her voice not loud enough for him to hear. She brushed a loose tendril from her face behind her ear and wandered up to the counter.
"So what can I do for you pretty lady?" Harvey grinned, despite the man being fifty-years old he hadn't spoken to her without trying to chat her up since the start of her adolescent years, she was getting sick of it. The eerie way he would try to touch her, every time he spoke it made her shiver and feel sick, just the smell of him made her queasy. The blend of grass and beet pulp with sawdust and pine mixed with the poison of his cologne.
"Three bags of Bailey are please." She asked, in a mere whisper.
"Is that all?" He asked, baring his crooked yellow teeth and his blackened tongue.
"Charge it to my tab." She said, taking a step back as he leant across the counter.
"Will do, do you need anything else?" He asked again.
She shook her head, the hair she'd had neatly tucked behind her ear loose around her face.
"Right, I'll meet you outside." He said, disappearing round the back. She let a breath out as he left and looked around the small shack at the photos on the walls. Looking for the faded black and white one she knew was there.
Everybody who had ever set foot on the western town had their picture on the wall, there was pictures of people who were long gone, both dead and left. There were pictures of the ones everyone knew, pictures of relatives you never knew. Pictures of people in long dresses with parasols standing in front of carriages from centuries ago, they were all up there, covering the walls and the roof in smiling faces and watching eyes. She found the picture she was looking for and held her hand up to touch it, the face of a woman holding a four year old girl with her husband looking over her shoulder smiling through his neat moustache. The woman had long hair, passing her waist easily. Her face was perfect; her freckles covered by a thin layer of make-up only to be found if you lived with her, her lips were in a bright smile.
Maybelline Lisbon, mother of four, wife of one, friend of all.
That curly writing beneath it read what was on the stone angel in the cemetery.
Meeting Harvey outside she helped him shove the sacks into the bed of the truck.
"You're a strong little thing." He smiled, licking his lips running a fat greasy hand over her pale, toned arms.
"I have to go." She gasped, pulling her arm away and opening the truck door. Quickly throwing herself into the seat.
"See you soon." He waved.
She felt sick as she drove along the street, feeling the heat of his fingers on her skin, it felt dirty and she was disgusted with herself, despite the fact she hadn't done anything. She braked suddenly as she saw a tall form run out onto the road, her breath hitched in her throat as she lost sight of the man. Shoving open the door she ignored the cry of the driver behind her and the beeping of his horn.
"Are you alright?" She asked, walking round the front of the truck.
There was nobody there.
WTDE
"So how was the shop today?" The taller blonde man asked, changing into his pyjama's on his single bed.
"Sold one book to some kid." The younger one replied, yawning as he turned away from his father in his own bed across the room. Turning onto the side that wasn't coated in purpling skin due to being hit by the truck.
"One book?" He asked the normal sound of annoyance in his words.
"It's a farming town Dad, no-one buys books."
"This book shops been in this town for over a Century, I'll be damned if it closes now."
The younger one sighed, closing his eyes and pulling the covers over his shoulders right up to his chin.
"The devil comes to collect at the end of the month." He whispered under his breath.
WTDE
"Go to sleep." She yawned, standing at the doorway of the large room where her three brothers sat on the middle bed beneath the duvet with the new book and the torch.
"But we're not tired." Jamie complained, pulling the duvet away from their heads so they could see her and fixing his glasses high onto the bridge of his nose.
"I don't care; you need to go to sleep. Daddy wants you to do all of your chores by breakfast." She replied.
"But I don't want to be a farmer; I want to be a pilot." Jamie answered.
"I don't want to be a farmer either; I'd rather be a lawyer." Dylan nodded.
"Me either, I want to be a dinosaur!" Tommy grinned, pulling the sleeve on his blue pyjamas to de-wrinkle the green dinosaurs that decorated it. "Rawr!"
"I don't want to be a big sister or a farmer, but that's what I'm stuck being. So come one, get into your beds." She ordered; she hated saying that. She wanted Jamie to be a pilot, she wanted Dylan to be a lawyer and she wanted Tommy to be anything he wanted to be, just maybe not a dinosaur. He wanted the world for the three boys, she wanted for them not to be stuck here like she was.
The boys reluctantly moved off the middle bed, Tommy going to the little bed nearest the door, Jamie taking off his glasses and lying down on his bed, fixing the covers and Dylan to the bed at the end where he sat down and looked at her.
"What do you want to be Tess?" He asked, his green eyes staring intently at hers.
"A police officer." She replied.
"So why don't you go?" He asked, "When I'm sixteen like you I'm getting out, I'm going to Law School a million miles away from here. Why don't you?"
"If I left, there would be no-one to look after you." She said, switching off the light. Biting her bottom lip to subside the tell-tale tightness in her throat and the sudden glaze of her eyes.
It silenced any further questions Dylan had and she padded through to her box room, sitting down on her too small bed and bringing her face to her hands. Dark waves cascading past her face as sobs racked throughout her body, muffled by her hands. Her shoulders jolted as each tear brought on a new emotion inside her, adding to the growing collection that was ready to burst out of her little bottle inside her.
WTDE
Making sure his Dad was asleep he made his way towards the door of their motel room, clad in simple jeans and a white T-shirt. He closed the door carefully waiting until he heard the faint click before skipping down the steps and onto the board that went along the motel until he got to the ramp that led to pavement. The hollow ramp clunked as his shoes hit the mahogany painted wood and creaked under his weight. Once on the pavement he sped up just a little, he was already five-minutes late and he didn't want to be any later. At the crossroad he went left into the forest where he could already hear the party. The branches cracked as he stepped over them, the dead leaves crunching as they met his brown loafers. The clearing came into sight, it being lit by the blazing bonfire in the centre.
"Patrick!" The tipsy red-head cheered as he came through the gap in the trees, she wasn't drunk. Not in such, she'd only had half a Dixie cup of strawberry wine but it was enough for the private schoolgirl to turn her intellectual mind to jelly. Her hair was down and wavy, falling past her shoulders and they would forever joke that in a few years time she'd have enough to hang over a tower in await for her prince, atop the mile length hair she wore a shoddy cliché brown cowboy hat. She was wearing a white dress, stained green and brown by the log she sat on with Wayne, lying in his arms and a faded denim waistcoat. There were about fifteen others in the small area, sitting on logs, standing beside the fire. All with a Dixie cup in hand occasionally taking sips or gulps depending on the case.
"Well Hey Gracie." He smiled, earning a glare for the use of her childish nickname, one he'd coined her with when they were four. "Wayne, Cho."
The two boys nodded in return not saying much at all, but Wayne regularly stroking Grace's red locks.
"So are you comin' home now Grace?" He asked, sitting by her feet precariously balancing on the edge of the tree.
"Yes, for a month. I'm so glad, all those prim talking school girls from the city bore me."
"Too girly for you?" Wayne chuckled, spreading his fingers out so her dainty little ones could fit through the spaces, looping them together.
"They wear pink nail-polish." She scoffed. "Are you still working at your Dad's bookshop Patty-cake?"
"You mean book storage facility, no-one buys the books anymore." He shrugged ignoring the nickname she had created for him when they were four to get back at him for calling her Gracie. Taking the cup of sparkling liquid a blonde dressed in a yellow top and shorts offered him.
"Are you working tomorrow?" Cho asked, speaking for the first time in the last hour.
"Yeah, but y'all can drop by the shop and hang out there." Patrick suggested, patting his lap for the blonde girl to sit in.
"Do you still have the basket of muffins?" Wayne asked, licking his lips in memory of the creamy softness and the sugary taste of the muffins that sat in a basket by the shop door.
"There might be one or two left." He chuckled, wrapping an arm around the thin yellow-clad waist of the blonde he knew.
As he listened to Grace and Wayne discuss Wayne's diet he focused on the Asian man in the corner. He was glancing around the crowds, waiting. Tapping his foot with his hands shoved nonchalantly in his pockets, the dark crimson t-shirt he wore was different to what he usually wore. A little more gripping along his well-toned chest and arms, the colour a little more daring from the white or blue he usually wore and really it wasn't something Cho would ever choose. A dark crimson t-shirt wasn't the style of the Asian who forced everyone to call him by his last name because he hated is first name, who did the weekly shop, who wore a straight face if someone was burning to death in a clowns suit right in front of him, who couldn't care less about what he looked like or even what people thought of him. Who had close friends but no friends or enemies, who came to this town on his own, leaving his mother and father at only the age of 12.
The blonde on Patrick's knee playfully moved her tongue along his jaw line to his earlobe. This was a regular thing at these parties with Angela, who'd taken a liking to him when they'd met. They were sort of boyfriend and girlfriend it just wasn't exclusive and no-where near like Grace and Wayne's. He wasn't the type to be official and proper. He was nineteen for crying out loud, he had the rest of his life to find proper girlfriends. He ran his hands up her body, feeling each curve and dancing his fingertips along her bare flesh that the small yellow vest revealed. Enjoying what the blonde was doing to him he went back to focusing on Cho, he saw a tall girl walk over to him and his face light up, she had short-cropped black hair and wore an old worn black dress with knee high boots. She grabbed his hand and dragged him behind them all, into the world of tree's and darkness. But before they disappeared Patrick saw the grin on his friends face, it was short and looked quite weird on him but it reflected just how happy he was with the mysterious new girl that wouldn't be mysterious for much longer.
WTDE
If she listened really closely she could hear the shouts from the Wood Party a mile away, anybody who was anybody went to it. It happened every night in the Season Holidays and it lasted all night. She'd never been to one for she'd never been invited to any of them and she didn't know anyone her age in this town. Dylan had been invited to one of them this year, one of the nineteen year olds who started the tradition-a group of four- had a little sister who was Miss Popular of her year and had started up a Wood Party for her age that was before the older ones but she hadn't let him go. She wanted to let him go, let him be what she wasn't but she worried. She knew about the older ones, the alcohol, the bonfire and the "kissing" and she hadn't wanted Dylan to go to something like that, despite the fact she knew there would be no bonfire or alcohol and there definitely wouldn't be that sort of kissing they did but she would always picture her little brother beside all those rowdy teens and she'd worry so she didn't let him.
She went to town parties, where they played guitar and they sang round a bonfire, where there was adults and kids together and she enjoyed them. She enjoyed the cliché sound of a small town band, she loved the dancing they would do, she loved how the men would dress in cowboy gear and would swing their woman like everyone would imagine if you said line-dancing. She did wish she had someone to go with though, she usually sat out or danced with her brothers having no boyfriend or for that matter friend to dance with.
She rolled over and tried to fall asleep but her mind was spinning, trying to conjure up images of the party she could hear going on right at that very second. Every time she closed her eyes she could see a blazing fire with happy people dancing around, people her age. In desperate need to stop the wheels turning in her head she swung her legs out of bed, not minding the freezing cold air that hit her short clad legs and grabbed clothes from her dresser. She pulled the camisole she wore in bed over her head and replaced it with a green apron top she knew was long out-dated but she loved it too much too part with and after shimmying out of the cotton pyjama shorts she slipped into the tight denim shorts she had vowed never to wear. Slipping her feet into her riding boots she picked up the leather hat that hung from her door and placed it on her head over her un-brushed curls. She tip-toed down the stairs and out of the door, before stopping just as she reached the end of the farm road.
She didn't think she'd get this far, she never had before.
Would she get there?
Would she be able to let people see her?
Or would she hide behind a tree then run home?
Vowing never to try it again but doing the same the next night.
She closed her eyes and let the wind brush over her, the light breeze dancing over her skin, flowing through her hair and tickling her bare back. She smiled and let the wind give her a new burst of confidence as she headed down the dirt road, past the rotting motel, along the blacktop road to the woods.
The shouts were louder here as her boots met with the foliage and twigs beneath her, cracking and crunching like a horror movie. She could hear singing and the sound of an out of tune guitar playing Jake Owens Barefoot Blue-Jean Night it was one of her favourite songs and she happily stood still to listen to the chords of the song accompanied by the voices of wine and teenagers. She crept closer as she heard the song end, hiding behind an oak that stood tall into the night sky; she looked out from behind the bark through a tiny gap. She could see the vicious orange glow of the fire and she shadows of the people sitting together, it reminded her of an old picture of black stick figures dancing around a blazing fire that flew high above their heads.
Her vision was cut off as two people came through the gap, holding hands and giggling. She hid behind the tree with her back to the trunk, trying to regain her breathing pace. She cursed herself for being so frightened of the sudden movement and looking up at the branches and the sky above her she made the decision.
To go or to leave.
Barefoot Blue-jean night is a truly amazing song by Jake Owens, I don't own it but I advise you to go and listen to it if you like Country Music!
Leave a review please, I look forward to reading criticism and points to making my writing better so feel free to write that as well as the lovely reviews!
xxx