South Road Sarah E

Florida International University FIU Digital Commons FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations University Graduate School 2-28-2013 South Road Sarah E. Pearsall Florida International University, [email protected] DOI: 10.25148/etd.FI13041503 Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd Recommended Citation Pearsall, Sarah E., "South Road" (2013). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 821. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/821 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the University Graduate School at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY Miami, Florida SOUTH ROAD A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF FINE ARTS in CREATIVE WRITING by Sarah E. Pearsall 2013 To: Dean Kenneth Furton College of Arts and Sciences This thesis, written by Sarah E. Pearsall, and entitled South Road, having been approved in respect to style and intellectual content, is referred to you for judgment. We have read this thesis and recommend that it be approved. ____________________________________________________ Kimberly Harrison ____________________________________________________ John Dufresne ____________________________________________________ Debra Dean, Major Professor Date of Defense: February 28, 2013 The Thesis of Sarah E. Pearsall is approved. ____________________________________________________ Dean Kenneth Furton College of Arts and Sciences ____________________________________________________ Dean Lakshmi N. Reddi University Graduate School Florida International University, 2013 ii © Copyright 2013 by Sarah E. Pearsall All rights reserved. iii DEDECATION I dedicate this thesis to Mike and Randy. If we are never sure of anything else, know this to be true; in the kingdom of childhood, where summer is eternal, love never dies. That is where we live, always. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank all of my professors for their overwhelming support, encouragement, and guidance during my years at FIU. I would not be the writer I am today without you. Thank you for never allowing me to give up. I thank my thesis advisor, Debra Dean, for helping me see the true story within my many drafts and helping me get it down on paper. I want to give a special thank you to Lynne Barrett for always being the firm hand steering me down the right path. Finally, I would like to thank Les Standiford for his unwavering confidence in my writing and teaching abilities and all the wisdom he shared. My life has been shaped so profoundly by my time spent in the creative writing program. All that you have taught me, I will carry with me. I can only hope to be as great a teacher, writer, and friend as all of you have been to me. v ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS SOUTH ROAD by Sarah E. Pearsall Florida International University, 2013 Miami, Florida Professor Debra Dean, Major Professor SOUTH ROAD, a novel told in third-person limited, follows Adrienne Harris as she navigates the trials of her coming-of-age summer and then must deal with the aftermath. 1997: seventeen-year-old Adrienne Harris wants nothing more than to flee her eccentric grandmother’s rule and leave Harbor Point and never look back. When she meets her new neighbors, Adrienne knows her life will never be the same. Adrienne quickly falls in love with the charismatic Quinn Merritt. They decide to keep their relationship a secret since both families disapprove. This secret starts a chain reaction that seemingly leads to the suicide of the troubled and poetic Lucas Merritt. The summer culminates with Adrienne running away, pregnant and heartbroken. 2011: thirty- one-year-old Adrienne is an out of work line cook and single mother. The story opens as Adrienne reluctantly returns home to Harbor Point to care for her ailing grandmother. Once home, Adrienne has to confront the things that haunt her—the summer she met and lost both Merritt brothers, and also her dysfunctional relationship with her grandmother—in order to heal and repair her own life and her relationship with her daughter. In the end, Adrienne discovers many truths that alter her perception of her past in Harbor Point. Adrienne is finally able to move forward and start to build a life for her and her daughter. Harbor Point, the last place in the world Adrienne Harris wanted to be, turns out to be the only place she wants to call home. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE One:……..………………………………………………………………………………………….1 Two:……..………………………………………………………………………………………..32 Three:…..…………………………………………………………………………………………58 Four:.….…………………………………………………………………………………………..64 Five:.....….……………………………………………………………………………………......73 Six:….….………………………………………………………………………………………....76 Seven:…..………………………………………………………………………………………....94 Eight:.….………………………………………………………………………………………...126 Nine:.….………………………………………………………………………………………...133 Ten:....…..……………………………………………………………………………………….151 Eleven:.…….………………………………………………………............................................159 Twelve:,….…………………………………………………………………………………...…170 Thirteen:.………………………………………………………………………………………...176 Fourteen:.….…………………………………………………………………………………….181 Fifteen:..…………………………………………………………………………………………197 Sixteen:..……………………………………………………………………………………...…216 Seventeen:..…………………………………………………………………………………...…227 Eighteen:..……………………………………………………………………………………….232 Nineteen:.……………………………………………………………..........................................237 Twenty:.……………………………………………………………………………………...….250 Twenty One:……………………………………………………………………………………..257 Twenty Two:…………………………………………………………………………………….262 Twenty Three:.…………………………………………………………………………………..266 Twenty Four:...…………………………………………………………………………………..267 vii Twenty Five:………………………………………………………………………………….…269 Twenty Six:……………………………………………………………………………………...272 Twenty Seven:…………………………………………………………………………………..280 Twenty Eight:……………………………………………………………………………….…...292 Twenty Nine:……………………………………………………………………………………300 Thirty:……………………………………………………………………………………….......312 Thirty One:………………………………………………………………………………….…...315 Thirty Two:………………………………………………………………………………….…..319 viii Chapter One ~ June 2010 The end of the world is a place called Harbor Point… It was all just a terrible dream, Adrienne Harris thought as she entered the small town of Harbor Point, Florida. She had vowed to never step foot within its city limits. Now, nearly fourteen years later, there she was, driving once again on the road of her childhood. She and her daughter, Kali, passed the “Welcome to Harbor Point” sign that stood at the edge of town, marking where the rest of the world stopped and Harbor Point began. Made out of coquina rock, the welcome sign had stood since the late 1800’s. Adrienne’s great-grandfather had helped erect the sign. It looked the same as it had the last time she’d seen it out her rearview mirror as she drove out of town. As they entered Harbor Point, what seemed to Adrienne as an alternate reality, the welcome sign turned out to be one of the only things still familiar. The town had changed since she left. Growing up in Harbor Point, nothing ever seemed to change. That was one of the reasons she’d dreamt of leaving when she was young. She should have expected change after being away for so long, but that was the funny thing about memories, they were liked fixed stars in your mind. A part of Adrienne was still seventeen, and stuck in the 1997 version of the town. It made her uneasy to see the differences all around her. It was as if she had only blinked and transformation had occurred in the momentary lapse of darkness. The old familiar false front stores were almost all gone, replaced by newer stucco strips of small shops that ran along AlA. Twyla Pushcart’s, Flower 1 Heaven, with its tropical plant mural painted on the side of the building, was gone. All that remained was an empty lot guarded by a chain link fence. A ragged piece of the concrete mural wall jutted up, like a torn page out of a child’s coloring book, from the middle of the empty lot. The Sunshine Self-Serve car wash, where Adrienne had spent hours each week helping the locals wash their boats, was now a luxury motors dealership. All the shiny expensive cars glimmered in the June heat as Adrienne drove by. The few people out on the sidewalks were well-dressed, and wearing designer sunglasses. She passed by two women wearing Lily Pulitzer dresses. They walked dogs, the size of large rats, on rhinestone crusted fuchsia dog leashes. It looked like Palm Beach had seeped its way south along the coast, like some kind of slow-growing fungus, and now their little town was infected. She looked over at Kali who was typing furiously on the keypad of her cell phone. Probably complaining to her friends back home in Grayton Beach how awful her new home was turning out to be, how she wished she was back up in the panhandle where things made sense, how she wished she wasn’t being forced to move, to a place she didn’t know, live with a great grandmother she’d never met, and start her freshman year of high school in a place where she had no friends. Adrienne had to agree with her on all counts. Adrienne felt flashes of heat rise through her body simultaneously with chills when she thought of the move she was making for them. It felt like a giant invisible hand pushed her car along the street towards her grandmother’s little beach house. The itch to turn the car 2 around was overwhelming. She found her hand ever so slightly

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