Teen Jaywalker

Abstract

I turned 16 sitting in the backseat of a battered Navy Blue Double Cab Isuzu pick-up truck that smelled of hay, cattle, sea and fish. I was smoking a tobacco and marijuana cigarette, studying for my High school Physics finals, hoping that my mum would make it through the second surgery that week and trying to ignore my scruffy 26 year old secret boyfriend’s horny groping. 6 days before, I called him in the middle of the night, because my mum was running a cold fever and complaining of intense stomach pains and vomiting blood. He came racing his pick-up truck and rushed my mother to the hospital. She had to undergo emergency surgery on an ulcerated duodenum to stem the bleeding. This second surgery had come up when she started bleeding again the day she was to be discharged from the hospital.