Jessica eased her 1990 Buick down the driveway, gritting her teeth. She knew that this was a bad thing to be doing. She was 17 years old, had perfectly straight teeth thanks to a two year stint with braces, and here she was grinding her teeth. It was getting to be a habit. Jessica took a few deep breaths and tried to think relaxing thoughts. When this failed, she turned up the radio, hoping to loose herself in the music. But this too proved futile and she drove down the road, lost in unhappy thoughts.
Family could be like smoke. Jessica's mother, for example, was capable of being smothering. She had been known to hover until particles of her essence seeped under her daughter's fingernails, entered her bloodstream through her pores, left a foul smelling odor in her hair. Sometimes she felt like she was drowning in smoke. But when Jessica instinctively struggled for a breath of clean air it only led to fights, which often left her feeling worse than she had before. Drowning in smoke-- a slow death, and one that no one seemed to understand.
Jessica believed in being strictly honest, a trait which, while sometimes earning her praise, more often led to excessive confrontations with her family. It had grown more difficult to be honest during the last month, while her family dealt with the aftermath of the 'accident'.
"Accident," Jessica muttered, slamming her hands hard on the rim of the steering wheel. What a stupid word for something so cruel. She preferred the term tragedy. It was more descriptive and fit better with the way she felt. Accident. What a pointless euphemism.
It was after the tragedy that Jessica had decided God couldn't exist. No loving God would have allowed the tragedy to occur. She had believed in Him and He'd turned His back on her. So she'd returned the favor and begun searching for the truth.
Her mother had noticed of course. Not that Jessica had tried to hide her lack of belief. On the contrary, she knew that she would have felt like a hypocrite at church, so she'd refused to go. Her mother had argued the point and Jessica had told her flat out that she no longer believed in God. Her pious mother had wept and raged and pled with her to reconsider, but Jessica had remained firm.
It wasn't until a few weeks later that she began to soften. She blamed this on the thin walls in her house. Through them she could hear every word of her mother's lengthy discourse to an unseen God each night. Her mother poured out her concern for what she saw as a wayward daughter every night without fail.
Her parent's lack of interest in what she believed annoyed Jessica to no end, as did their constant requests for her to go to church, but her mother's prayers burned into her conscience. Eventually they'd come to an agreement: Jessica would go to youth group on Wednesday nights and they would stop trying to get her in a pew on Sunday mornings. Neither side was very happy with this arrangement, but it was all that they could agree on.
So it was that Jessica found herself in her beast of a car, grinding her teeth, heading towards the last place she wanted to go-- a church.
A/N: Still interested? I hope so! You may have noticed that pronouns referring to God are capitalized even though Jessica doesn't believe in God. As the author, I have a feeling that Jessica really does believe in God way down beneath her anger, but I could be wrong. She hasn't told me yet. Anyway, God pronouns are capitalized to show respect. PLEASE tell me what you think, and thanks for reading.