"I don't want to move house," Ali could not keep the whine out of her voice, and hearing it made her frown.
"Alison, you've just been expelled from your school. Again," her mother peered at her in the rearview mirror."
"Hmph."
"I wish you would stop fighting so much. Then perhaps you could actually stay in any one school."
"Hey, he was asking for it, okay?"
"You still refuse to tell anyone what he did."
"Well, duh. I'm not some little ratfink. I solve my own problems," Ali turned to glare out of the window, pulling her scruffy denim jacket tighter around her and wishing her mother would shut off the air-conditioner already.
"Your 'problem solving' always seems to involve hitting something."
"It works."
"It gets you expelled. With your record, I don't think we can find you anywhere else to go if it happens again."
"Whatever. I can always take online courses, or something."
"You cannot get a job without an official high school graduation. We've been over this."
"A job sounds boring."
"Alison, that's enough!"
"Sorry," she muttered, knowing that pushing it any further would result in punishment… not that going to school in the middle of nowhere wasn't punishment enough.
Ali yawned. They had risen at the crack of dawn to 'beat the traffic.' She lay down on the back seat and closed her eyes, trying to ignore the cold and the terrible music playing on the radio. Slowly, fog numbed her brain and allowed her to slip into sleep.