Bruce Brockway Post

Fleeing Steady Habits

On Christmas Day, Junior arrives at his father’s junkyard trailer home for their once a year holiday meal only to find his Pop murdered. Seizing an opportunity from this tragedy, Junior decides to take his Pop’s car and the cash he saved for Junior’s college education and leave his hometown behind. But he can’t leave without saving his best friend Courtney from her drunken, sexually abusive father. Junior picks Courtney up and together they head off with a vague destination of maybe Mexico. In the glovebox of Pop’s car they find a priceless Russian icon. They deposit the icon in a pay locker in a bus station in Pennsylvania. The authorities may be looking for them, and Courtney convinces Junior they should take on a hitchhiker to look less like a couple of kids running away. Unfortunately, they pick up Hunter, who tries to rape Courtney and steals their cash so that they are nearly broke. In a lucky turn, they meet Chuck, a t-shirt bootlegger on tour with Metallica, who offers to give them work. Soon they have plenty of easy cash and are living the rock and roll life. But this fast life threatens to come between them and soon Courtney is dependent on Ecstasy, something she hides from Junior by distancing herself. What Junior and Courtney don’t know, is that Hunter has tracked down Courtney’s father, who is determined to find the pair. After a sordid scene Courtney creates in a Nashville Strip Bar, the two teenagers strike off alone again, only to be trapped at a motel by Hunter and Courtney’s father. There’s something, Courtney’s father wants, something he is willing to kill for, and he uses a method that he once used to get what he wanted from Courtney’s mother: heroin addiction.