I can still see the sign in my head that announced 'Arco, pop. 995' somewhere in Idaho, in the summer of 1983. I was rising fourteen, a backseat passenger on a road trip round the North-West of the USA, with my parents and Great Aunt.

It had all the ingredients for a Tarantino movie: an ill-assorted group of travelling companions (ok, we weren't post-apocalyptic vampires in a van with tinted windows) but I was a geeky adolescent (think Velma from Scooby Doo, minus the Dream Machine), Dad was depressed, Mum was being the Girl Scout keeping the carnie freakshow on the road and my Great Aunt had morphed into a full-on nut-job possessed by her dead husband, Harold.

Her vintage Cadillac was straight out of The Flintstones (with a touch of  Wacky Races). Harold was our tour-guide and ringmaster. Not one iota did we deviate from his itinerary. It had each look-out, fruit stand and gas-station firmly marked in his automatic writing, fresh from the other side. It was touch and go whether we'd run out of gas in the Badlands, when road-side signage perkily proclaimed the next pump-station was in 200 miles.

That's why I remember Arco, with a sigh of relief. We stopped to fill up and stop over at the Mountain Home motel. We weren't going to end up shrivelled roadkill or a vulture buffet. Not this time.

Forty years on, I have recast the whole surreal episode as a 'Nineties film script, for that was my era and my memories resonate with the same grainy vibe, with some mash-up elements, courtesy of David Lynch. We have a moody back-drop of lakes and mountains, Twin Peaks style, plus some arid desert.

We open with a Shining pan shot of the Caddy cruising beside the Snake River, close up of Great Aunt at the wheel, played by Frances McDormand, styled by Anthony Bates' iconic mother. Pure Lot Dinosaur in denim flares and Junkyard Dog sandals. Angelica Houston and Jack Nicholson are my fantasy parents. Mum has a great Morticia glare and Dad could definitely throw Johnny-style hissy fits (so frustrated writer on vacation). I am Juliette Lewis, reading Nietzsche with teen introspection, wishing I was anywhere but here, Gas, Food, Lodging style, plus big hair and low-cut leopard blouse. I'm sweet seventeen and I can drive.

Local bad boy (Nick Cage, in snakeskin jacket and wifebeater, for I've always been Wild at Heart) chats me up beside the motel pool while Great Aunt conducts a seance in our orange velour room. It's crucial for the script I share with her, not with my parents, who have turned in early. Both are suffering the aftermath of dining on marshmallows in mayonnaise. I sneak him in there while Great Aunt enjoys Jello salad from her five-dollar All You Can Eat Oldtimers' Buffet and we have hot sex in the vibrating massage chair. We take her hostage (luckily the Caddy has a big trunk) and gag her with her doggy-bag.

We tip her into the nearest box canyon and cruise back smoking spliffs, snogging to a blues soundtrack, me wearing his snakeskin jacket. We leave a note on the Caddy's windscreen for my parents saying 'Gone for a ride. See you at the airport.' We torch the gas station and set off on a crime spree in his beat-up pickup. He shaves his head and I go a bit grunge and let him tattoo 'Bitch' on my neck. (That'll shock my parents).

They enjoy the rest of their holiday after they know I'm fine and have a blast at Yellowstone Park with Great Aunt's credit card. He drops me at Seattle Airport. There's a touching scene where I gaze back at him, caressing his jacket then turn and run towards my parents for a family hug. Distraught, he robs a bank and gets arrested.

Plane mounts and I sit back in my seat, tears glistening, as I snuggle into my jacket. I return to school magically transformed into a cool rock chick with a dark secret and write letters to my boyfriend at Folsom State Prison when I should be doing my homework.

Cue: happy ending after he pals up with Johnny Cash at a concert and cuts a gold disc. He's released early and sends for me. There I am, waiting outside the prison gates, wearing his jacket. But there's a creepy twist: Great Aunt isn't dead. She's a revenant seeking revenge, disguised as his Probation Officer.

In reality, I was staring at the rain out of the school bus window, heading home to watch Blue Peter and whinge in my diary. I much prefer the slipstream version of our weird road-trip. The reality was indescribable and nobody believed it, anyway. I'm still not sure I do: hence the rewrite.