Shirley sat at the dinner table with a sad look on her face, as she had done for a very long time. Christmas time seemed like a different time and changed her dramatically, and showed her that not everything is like in CosmoGirl and TeenVogue. Her mind drifted to the Christmas dance, when she let one of the football players take her home, and in his car he tried to attack her. Luckaly she managed to get away. It also left a bitter taste of teenage life she didn't like. Gone were her preppy clothes, and there were the dress down sweats and tight baby tees. Now she just stayed back, quitting some of her high school activities. She picked at her potatos until her mother quietly spoke up and asked Shirley what was wrong. The young girl snapped, and went into a little screaming match with her mother to stay out of her life. Ms. Miller was shocked, Shirley had never really acted like this before.
Mr. Miller yelled at his daughter to leave the room for screaming at her mother like that. Shriley defiantly got up and mulled her way over to her room. She flopped on her bed and picked up her cell phone off the nightstand, calling up A.J.
"Uhm...hey A.J.? Can I come over?" After a few more seconds of conversation, she left the house, (packing a pair of clean clothes, a bottle of lemon gin and a toothbrush), using the window and climbed down the lattice fence and ran to her best friend's house. There was a party down in the construction pits at the end of town and Shirley was determined to get her mind off of the crap that life was producing.