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Jessamy

Age 18

I moved out on my eighteenth birthday.

I had nowhere to go, but I had enough money to get me by for a while.

I also dropped out of school.

There was no point finishing.

I’d learned everything I could.

The day that I turned eighteen, I took the test to get my GED. Then found my first full-time job at the Jesper County Sanitation Facility.

It wasn’t anything fantastic.

I picked up trash Monday through Friday at the ass crack of dawn.

But it paid nineteen dollars an hour, came with benefits, and they didn’t care that I was eighteen with a GED.

Everyone needed their trash picked up, and there were a lot of people that weren’t willing to do it.

I had the job for a total of three weeks when the sheriff pulled up on me mid-trash pickup.

My partner, Caleb, and I both stopped and stared.

The driver got out of the truck and walked around.

He was older than us both, and pseudo-boss of the whole operation.

“Can I help you, Sheriff Black?”

I looked up at the intimidating Sheriff Black and felt my stomach clench.

I’d seen a lot of him over the years.

It was kind of hard not to when your little brother literally made his entire existence out of torturing you. What better way to do that than to get me thrown in jail?

He hasn’t been able to accomplish that yet, but I knew that it was his goal.

Anything to see me suffer.

“Do you have a minute, Jessamy?”

“Jessamy?” Caleb laughed. “I thought your name was Jessica.”

“Jess is short for Jessamy,” Black supplied helpfully.

I hated my name.

It was given to me by my grandmother.

Not that I didn’t love my grandmother.

She was really the only reason that I was a somewhat good person.

But being reminded of the name was being reminded that my grandmother was no longer alive.