A red tornado

Tess Mercer is fifteen years old and she's off to Harvard. It's the greatest achievement in her young life, being accepted at one of the most prestigious institutes of higher learning when all the other kids her age are barely getting their feet wet in high school. Tess knew it just wasn't for her. She could talk, read and write circles around anyone her age she knew, and most of the people older than them, too. Not that she'd have said it was all that difficult, living in backwater swamp as they did, where a Mercer never amounted to anything.

She was going to show them. All of them. Every kid who'd ever made fun of her for trying to better herself, stole her books, pushed her down into the almost ever present mud. “Better start learnin' to stay down,” they'd advise in accents so thick she could barely understand them herself. “You ain't never gettin' outta here.”

Oh, but she was. She had someone on her side, someone who actually praised the attention starved girl and recognized a genius level intellect when they saw it. Mrs. Patrineau, one of the librarians from the Terrebonne Parish Library in Houma. She encouraged a younger Tess to read as much as she could, little did she know how much to heart Tess would take it. She helped Tess fill out all that paperwork universities seem to require, even the ones for scholarships and grants and anything else they could think of, until finally, it paid off.

Tess was going to Harvard and they were going to pay for it. She was going to be a scientist, studying the oceans and lakes and swamp systems she grew up around, the ecology and the animals. She was going to make it better. She'd made it this far, nothing could stop her now.

But she's only fifteen years old and although she might not have any friends to say goodbye to, or that Mrs. P said it was silly to say such things because Tess would be back (she couldn't bear to let the older woman know the truth), there was someone she did have to see before she boarded that bus, never to return.

He was asleep, as he usually was, on the old, musty couch that made up their “family” room, the TV blaring news updates. She turned it off, half hoping he wouldn't notice, but he did, groaning and forcing himself into a semi sort of sitting position. Thankfully, the bourbon was all she could smell.

“I'm going now, Daddy. I just wanted to say goodbye.”

He just looked at her silently for a few minutes, long enough that her heartbeat started to pound in her ears. Were there still sheets on her bed? Were they blue? Then he shook his head in disgust and waved her away with a dirty hand. “You goin' t'leave, you jes go. Jes like yer whoring sainted mother. Go on, girl. Get.”

That was all Tess needed to hear. No more little mermaid or prince charmings needed. She got out, all by herself.

No more goodbyes.