It's impossible to move, to live, to operate at any level without leaving traces, bits, seemingly meaningless fragments of personal information.
William Gibson
Drew ran up the three flights of staircase that lead up to her tiny apartment. She searched frantically for her keys, slamming the door open when she had located them.
"Ma...ma are you here?" Drew said.
Leslie Tanaka was usually anxiously waiting outside the apartment building until her daughter came home.
A dark haired Japanese woman appeared with a frown that brightened when she spotted her.
"Drew, my beautiful girl," she slurred. "You're as stunning as your mom was before she left us."
She wrapped her arms around Drew who breathed in her scent of beer and cigarettes.
Drew sunk into the hug embracing her mother tightly. The woman's tactile moods were rare and even rarer were her loving ones.
Her mother stroked her hair gently before kissing her forehead and letting go.
She then slunk away back to the couch a bottle of beer hanging loosely from her hand.
She looked small and fragile wrapped up in a over-sized, ratty, blue robe as her dark eyes watched the blank t.v.
Drew walked to her room neatly stepping over the passed out man on the floor.
She sighed, grabbing a black book-bag off the back of her white door and, began stuffing it with clothes, water, toiletries, and the money that she had painstakingly saved over the last eight months.
She zipped up her bag and threw it on the dirty carpet. Drew pulled her long hair into a ponytail and flopped on her bed.
She grabbed her pillow and screamed into it, balled up her fist tight leaving deep imprints in her palm, Finally, she smacked her face gently bringing herself back to reality.
Grabbing scissors Drew placed herself in front of the mirror on her wall.
"Mirror, mirror on the wall who's the fairest of them all?" Drew mocked.
"Me," She said cutting off her ponytail in five quick snips. '
Running a hand through her psuedo pixie cut she bent down grabbing her book-bag with her left hand. she peeked outside her bedroom door seeing her mother asleep on the couch. Trails of mascara on her checks showing she had cried herself to sleep.
She walked lightly behind the couch, looking down at her sleeping she smiled.
"Don't worry, Ma." Drew bent down and kissed her mother's sunken cheek. "Aphrodite will pay for what she has done to us. I swear it on the River of Styx."
Thunder rumbled threateningly in the distance.
Drew pulled on her book-bag, taking one last glance at her peaceful mother she left out the door and her mother's life