There was a stop for booze. A hobo-looking guy behind a gas station took sixty-eight bucks. He had his underage drinking system all worked out, with clients calling orders in advance and the goods distributed from numbered Walmart bags in the back of an ancient station wagon.

Standing on a vacant lot with several hundred dollars’ worth of booze wasn’t without risks, and Charlie spotted the gun under the man’s grubby overcoat as two dozen cans of Miller and a giant bottle of no-brand bourbon crashed into the pickup bed in front of her feet.

This is dumb. Two and a half years fighting to get out, and on my first night I’m driving to a place I don’t know, with people I don’t know …

‘Nobody touch my bottle of Jack!’ the driver ordered as Dodge passed beers into the cab.

‘Here,’ Juno said, handing Charlie a beer, before sucking the foam bubbling out of her own just-opened can.

Riding in the back of a pickup is probably illegal, drinking beer in a moving vehicle is definitely illegal. Juno isn’t on early release. She’ll get driven back to OIL by a cop; I’ll get bounced back to White Boulder for three months’ minimum. But it’s dark, and I don’t know my way back if I bail …

The pickup rattled over a pothole as it turned back on to the highway. Charlie tentatively sucked her first ever mouthful of beer, and while she didn’t exactly like it, it was liquid velvet compared to the potato-and-orange-peel hooch she’d brewed with two pals at White Boulder.

Juno twisted the cap on the whisky bottle, sniffed, sipped and screwed up her face in disgust.

‘Didn’t he say not to drink that?’ Charlie asked, starting to like the malty beer taste.

Juno smiled as she offered the bottle. ‘He said don’t drink my Jack,’ Juno grinned. ‘But this ain’t Jack Daniels – it’s store brand!’

If you can’t turn back, you might as well try having fun …

Charlie grabbed the two-litre bottle, tapping a front tooth as she tipped it up and used the technique they used for the hooch at White Boulder: neck it fast, then flush the taste.

‘Whoa!’ Dodge roared as Charlie downed four big gulps.

‘Holy shit!’ Juno added while Charlie swished out with beer.

Less than a mile from where they’d picked up booze, the creaky pickup rolled into a parking lot. There were a few dozen cars, mostly old and tatty, and groups of teenagers vanishing into moonlit parkland.

‘You gotta see this girl drink,’ Dodge whooped. ‘My God!’

Charlie felt the heat from the whisky in her throat as she jumped off the truck, still holding the bottle. ‘It’s not that strong,’ she said. ‘Not compared to prison hooch, anyway.’