Jewell Eldora

Jewell's 1978 dirt-brown Chrysler was loud. It was loud inside and outside. The muffler, tied to the body frame with an old wire coat hanger, fell off about sixty miles ago. Jewell kept turning the volume of the radio higher and higher to drown out the noises; the no-muffler rumble, the rustling of the plastic trash-bags stuffed with all her worldly belongs, the empty soda cans rattling on the backseat floor, and the intermittent static from the radio itself.
Jewell had been traveling four and one half hours - she though she'd been moving away from noise, from things that were always too loud. Jewell, herself was loud. She knew the loudness screamed her background to others. Her make-up was too harsh, it glared, and worst of all it didn't cover the acne scars. Her hair was bleached so startling blond that it made people blink. It was pulled back into a ponytail and sprayed into the big-bangs look she favored. It contrasted sharply with the dullness, the ashy, almost dirty look of her complexion.
Upon closer inspection you'd find that Jewell was older than she first appeared. She'd followed all the latest fads, like piercing her ears two or three times, having a small tattoo placed on her ankle, and wearing spandex. Unfortunately these fads were not those of the middle-class life in which she so desperately wanted to belong. Jewell was extremely thin, unnaturally thin. Her slimness was alarming, as if she had been carved out of the thinnest, most fragile piece of balsa wood left over from a model airplane project. She smoked most of her meals, rather than eat them. She existed on caffeine and nicotine and she looked used and tired.