As anyone with even half a brain should be able to tell you, living in an old truck could be hard. Being a teenager living in an old truck made it even harder. Being a female, teenager living in an old truck, made things hard enough that a taser, knife, and bear spray were just the beginning of the personal arsenal stashed throughout the interior of the old, tardis blue, crew cab, Ford pick up truck.
Jess spent a ridiculous amount of her time for nearly an entire year, dodging social services, police, nosy neighborhood do-gooder type ladies, and the occasional handsy male. It was physically and mentally exhausting. Driving around trying to find jobs that would pay her under the table to avoid leaving a paper trail for social services to follow, and being on the move never able to make friends really, really sucked. But no matter how much living in an old truck dodging Social Services sucked, it sucked way less than living in a crappy foster home, with foster parents from hell, and being forced to go to school. Jess had spent nearly 6 years bouncing around from one lousy foster home to another since her parents died in a car accident when she was just 10 years old. Both of her parents were single children, whose own parents had passed away before Jess was even born. Jess was left an orphan with no family to take her in.
Jess had been in the vehicle and survived the crash, but the horror of watching her parents die in front of her, and being helpless to do anything to prevent it, had turned the 10 year old into a constantly depressed and anxious pre-teen. Jess's parents had both been veterinarians working with Vets Without Borders, Jess had traveled along with them, being homeschooled between patients and in the evenings. The whole family including their dog Bear, a street mutt they had adopted during their travels, had been traveling around New York doing a slew of adoption events and fundraisers when a drunk driver with a serious case of road rage had slammed into their truck on a backroad, causing it to flip over and fly into a deep ditch filled with saplings and bushes. It had been hours before anyone found them. Jess and Bear seated in the back seat were battered and bruised but otherwise okay. Her parents however had been impaled with branches of the bushes in the ditch that the truck had flown into and had slowly bled out infront of her.
Jess's parents had tried once to settle down in a normal vet practice back when Jess had reached school age, so that she could have a more traditional school life. But her strong Empathy, ADHD, and Anxiety made traditional school a torture for the young girl. It had finally reached the point that her parents had pulled her from school and began to teach her at home when she had stopped eating half way through grade one. They quickly found that short intense sessions throughout the day, away from the distractions of the other students, and the stress of the forced social interactions had been just what Jess needed to be able to learn and be happy. Jess could fly through an entire days worth of assignments in a few hours in the evening or in short burst throughout the day between helping her parents with the animals and just watching them work. Her parents happily returned to their international traveling and charity work taking Jess along with them.
Having the only family she had ripped away so violently in the crash, being in a new home, in a strange place, and forced back into normal school had shocked and horrified the young girl so much that for nearly a year following the accident Jess had refused to speak a single word to any of the social workers, foster parents, teachers, or classmates. The only ones she would speak to were animals. But the foster system doesn't worry itself with the pets of the kids they take into their care and placing a child with selective mutism was hard enough without trying to place a large, mixed breed, dog along with her. Bear was taken away hours after they were both found with many promises to Jess that it was only temporary and that he needed to be seen by a vet and fed and given a safe place to stay while things were figured out. Jess never saw him again. And with that one action any hope for anyone to get Jess to behave and conform to this new life was gone. An angry, anxious, child with some serious emotional scaring and trust issues was all that was left on the once happy girl.
Turn out no one wants to adopt a 10 year old with selective mutism, anxiety, trust issues, and ADHD. So Jess bounced around in the foster care system for nearly 6 years. Going from one home to the next refusing to form attachments and acting out and skipping school to work at any job she could find that would pay her in cash.
Over the years Jess's favorite jobs always involved animals in some way. She worked at many small clinics learning how to treat minor injuries and stockpiling odds and ends the clinics were planning to toss away until she had a large duffel bag that she used as an animal first aid kit when she found injured strays. She would clean them up, feed them up, and tame them and work to find them new homes. The kit also occasionally came in handy when she would use items from the bag to treat the wounds she received at the hands of her abusive foster parents.
By far the most useful job Jess ever had turned out to be working for an old mechanic named Joe Youngblood. When Jess showed some skills in engine repair Joe taught her to do as many of the common every day jobs as possible so he could save his energy for the big complicated repair jobs. Eventually Jess was often acting as his hands for even the most complicated jobs. Aware of her troubled home life Joe allowed Jess to store her savings in a lock box in an old safe in his office. He also had a folding cot and some blankets in the corner and gave her a key so she would have a safe, warm place to sleep when she had to leave her foster home until her foster parents had calmed down and sobered up. Jess wasn't the first teen he had helped over the years. Miguel Black had been in Foster Care and had lived briefly with the same couple Jess lived with now. He had gotten her the job at the shop when he left to go to school to get his mechanics license. As soon as he had his license he had come back to help the old man who had helped him as a young teen. Joe had resisted hiring him at first until Jess had reminded him again that she had no plans to get a high school diploma and become a licensed mechanic and take over the shop so that he could retire.
During the months leading up to her 16th birthday Joe had been helping Jess to completely rebuild the engine in an old crew cab ford pick up truck. He wanted her to have a safe reliable vehicle that would protect her if she ever got into an accident while driving. Jie had even gone the extra mile and built a custom storage space hidden under the back seat. Life with her foster parents had become too dangerous to continue living with them and Jess had zero faith in the system to help her if she tried to report the abuse. Jess got her license the day she turned 16, packed all of her belongings and took off in the middle of the night. She left a note in the safe for Joe and Miguel with an email address for them to contact her and an apology for leaving in the dead of night when she took out her lock box with all her savings. She had recently taught the old mechanic how to use a computer after he had gifted her a second hand laptop in an attempt to make school work easier for her. In s play to try and encourage her to take school more seriously. The same ploy had worked with Miguel but Jess had a lot more trouble with school then Miguel did. Either way it had been a useful gift that Jess treasured.
Pulling out of the shops parking lot for what was likely the last time Jess nearly bit through her lip in an effort to hold back her tears. Joe Youngblood and Miguel Black had been the closest things she had to a family. But everyone knew she worked for Joe and it would be the first place Social Services looked when her foster parents, or more likely the school, finally reported her missing. The only reason the drunks she lived with would notice or care was because Jess was the only one in the house who could cook and tended to make all the meals. But even if they noticed she doubted they would inform Social Services until after the next cheque had been cashed and spent.
Much more likely that the school would inform Social Services first. They had been threatening to call to report her refusal to do assignments or participate in class for or while now after realizing her Foster Parents had zero control over her when it came to academics. Suddenly not showing up to school at all might be enough to finally push the school over the edge and get them to finally file a report. Jess had considered waiting until the summer to leave to avoid the chance of the school reporting her absence but had recently been informed that she would be needing to attend summer school because of her poor performance in her classes. Since the plan to avoid the school reporting her to Social Services by leaving in thr Summer had been foiled by the threat of Summer School Jess decided to leave as soon as she got her license. Leaving as soon as she had her license would give her more time to get settled before cold weather hit.
Jess headed straight for California wanting to be back in a warmer climate like the one she had grown up in. Five years of New York winters had been five too many for the heat loving girl.Jess quickly fell into a routine while traveling. She sent sporadic updates to Joe and Miguel, never mentioning names or places but letting them know she was safe and sending them little snippets about her life. She spent as little money as possible trying to stretch her savings out. The front passenger seat of her truck reclined to a nearly flat position and her bag of clothes and emergency first aide supplies filled the space by her feet so the didn't hang off the end of the seat. For the first time being short really seemed to come in handy. Jess learned that there were unspoken rules she needed to follow if she wanted to live her life the way she pleased. The First rule of managing to live in your truck was to find a spot to take showers. Jess quickly learned that If you look like you're homeless people will ask a lot more questions then if you look like other regular teenagers. The second rule of managing to live in your truck was to find a source of cheap filling meals. For a girl who loved to cook meals from scratch, living off greasy, overly processed fast food was just not an option. Jess quickly learned that she just could not keep most of it down. Volunteering at local food banks was a great way to stock up on canned goods and non-perishables. If anyone at the food bank asked why Jess volunteered so many hours all she had to say was that she needed volunteer hours for school. The third rule of managing to live in your truck and avoid Social Services was one of the hardest. Don't make friends! Friends ask questions. Friends your own age meant parents and parents asked too many questions. Too many questions always tended to lead to Social Services or police being involved. Which meant moving again. Trying to make friends who are old enough not have nosy parents sometimes worked and sometimes backfired if those friends were looking for more than just friendship or came to care to much and became concerned by the way Jess lived. There was a few good things about living in a truck. You were always able to move suddenly at the drop of a hat without worrying about packing, or getting your first and last month rent back. No worrying about security deposits, and best of all no one to make stupid rules about having a pet. Jess was crazy about animals. Humans frankly she could live without. But cover something with fur and give it some teeth and claws and it didn't matter how mangy, dirty, or bad tempered it was, Jess would go out of her way to clean it up, feed it up, and try and find it a permanent home. 99% of the time Jess managed to turn a cranky, nippy, unruly animal into a respectable, well-behaved animal. To be honest half, if not more of her spontaneous moves, were caused by the need to find a new home for a stray animal Jess had found and taken in. Animal shelters were a last resort and only after being thoroughly vetted by Jess and confirmed to be one of the few truly good shelters would she ever consider leaving an animal in one. All the time spent working with stray animals, and living in her truck, had taken Jess's natural gift of empathy, and her learned ability to read body language, a skill learned out of necessity when living with volatile foster parents, and had fine tuned them. Her ability to sense emotions and to catch someone in a lie by reading their body language had saved Jess from being caught by police and Social Services many times in the time she had been living in her truck.
Pulling over onto the shoulder of the road Jess pulled her laptop out of it's protective case and turned it on. While she waited for it to start up she pulled out the last of her stash of beef jerky and dividing the strip in half held a piece over her shoulder while shoving the rest in her mouth. When no eager nose met her hand she suddenly remembered that her latest stray had been picked up by his new owners that morning. A young couple had seen one of her posts on Facebook and contacted her with sterling references from their current vet. They were looking to adopt after recently losing their elderly dog to cancer. They were a young active couple who worked out of their own home and enjoyed hiking. The perfect home for the large hyper black mutt Jess had found tied to a dumpster with a broken leg. He was unmicrochipped and still intact and clearly had never been trained. He was slightly overweight with mats in his long fur and nervous habits likely developed from being left in a fenced yard for long lonely hours to entertain himself instead of being walked or played with. A trip to a local vet for a cast and shots and 2 months living with Jess had turned the slightly neurotic, untrained young pup into a well behaved canine citizen. His leg had healed well and his extra weight had disappeared with a decent diet and moderate exercise. Regular brushing had kept his coat silky and smooth and the better diet made it shine. The couple who adopted him would be following up with the vet who had overseen his recovery to be sure they eased him into heavier exercise slowly so as not to strain his leg. Jess had worked part time for the vet while she stayed in the area and had managed to restock her first aid bag with odds and ends from his clinic, make a decent bit of cash, and help him train and rehome a few strays he had living in the clinic. Jess had been tempted to stay longer in the area until the receptionist at the clinic started asking some pointed questions about her home life. Resigned to the need to move on and missing her most recent furry companion Jess dropped the second part of the piece of jerky back into the bag and started searching online for job openings at nearby animal clinics or mechanic shops. Her preference was for a clinic but not many would pay a teenager under the table to help out. Older mechanics tended to be much easier to persuade to pay her in cash once she had proved to them that she actually knew what she was doing.
Seeing several jobs listed in a nearby town Jess closed up her laptop and packed it away in it's case. Jess had taught herself to be almost militant with the way she organized her belongings. Often she needed to be able to find what she needed in an instant to help an injured animal or to help herself to avoid pointed questions from some nosy neighbor. A place for everything and everything in its place helped keep her life running smoothly...or at least as smoothly as it could while living in an old truck and dodging Social Services. Pulling back on to the road Jess turned up the radio and belted along to the lyrics of one of her favorite songs. "Life on the Highway..."
Jess drove along the road always watching the edges of the road for signs of a stray pet. The nomadic life she lived was a lonely one and she had quickly learned that being without a companion led to depression and bad decision making. She liked to joke in her emails to Miguel and Joe that like Doctor Who she did best traveling with a companion. After driving for 2 hours Jess pulled into the parking lot of a small motel and read the sign.
Beacon Hill's Motel
free wifi
rooms available