Im writing a story...

Aspen Dufresne was charitably described as “eccentric” by the staid, doddering members of the retirement community in which she lived, and was uncharitably described as “completely out of her nut.” Since the age of 9, after her parents had died in a meth-lab fire in the backwoods of Arkansas, she had lived at Shady Pines, a center for the aged, idle, and wealthy, with her great aunt. While some would have felt stifled in a community where her closest peer was 47 years her senior, but Aspen saw it as an opportunity to explore those aspects of her personality which otherwise would have been ruthlessly repressed by the normal pressures, judgments, and criticisms normally associated with the jagged curse that is teenagedom.

In the past seven years, Aspen had changed her hair color not fewer than 147 times. She sported 12 piercings, 8 of them performed at home with a lighter, a needle, and a bottle of tequila. A rusted tricycle was her primary mode of transportation around Shady Pines, a discovery she had made under an interstate overpass while searching alligators (a search that had eventually proved so successful, she was missing three toes on one foot and most of her left ear). Her favorite trick with which to wow newcomers to her condo was to play the first 17 boards of Ms. Pac-Man blindfolded. She had once spent a summer teaching herself Cantonese for the sole purpose of being able to impress the delivery boys from The Lucky Panda restaurant.

But as content as a life of unfettered personal exploration might have made her in the short term, Aspen was, to put it mildly, completely adrift when it came to the long view of her academic pursuits, focus of study, and eventual professional career. The home-schooling of a 73-year-old retired restaurant manager may have provided the essentials necessary to pass the GED, but structure was sadly lacking. As such, Aspen had changed the focus of her major-to-be 10 times in as many days, and the guidance counselors’ numbers at the Bradley Dunlap Institute of Polytechnics, the Sally Frieze School of Cosmetology, and the West Central College for the Dramatic Arts were all suspiciously going straight to voice mail.