American Flowers

Chris was in the second grade. His mom dropped the bowl of Fruit Loops in front of him splashing milk onto the sun-faded, oak table. "You know, I really wanted a baby," she said, poking one of her ever-present cigarettes into the corner of her mouth and lighting it with the Bic she kept in her bathrobe. She drew in smoke, her cheeks sucking in momentarily while she did. Chris thought she looked like a fish whenever she did that. His dad didn't look like a fish when he smoked. She exhaled; it drifted upward to join the layer of smoke that always seemed to hover just below the ceiling in their house. "And then once I had one," she continued, "I found that I really didn't want one after all. But once you have a baby, you're stuck with it."
A lump formed in Chris' throat and it was a real effort for him to swallow his bite of cereal.
"You mean....me, Mom?" he asked, his voice wavering and tears welling in his eyes. She picked up her vodka tumbler and drained it.
"Of course I mean you. Now go to school."

Chris Shafer spent the next ten years trying to earn his parents' love--straight A student, baseball star....drug addict.
Enter Allie Laughton: smart, self-assured, and raised in a similar environment of indifference and neglect.

They hit it off immediately.

American Flowers follows the lives of Chris and Allie as they go from promising, young adults to the couple the media ignorantly begins calling a modern day Bonnie and Clyde. On the run from Chris' volatile-tempered drug dealer and manipulated by a psychotic ex-convict, Chris and Allie are caught in a dangerous game where there can be no winners.