 
Tales of a Broken 19

Laura L. Hewitt

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2012 Laura L. Hewitt

# Chapter 1

"And you'll always be my pretty little girl." Mom used to tell me when she combed my hair. I still remember sitting at her vanity next to the window with the green see-through curtains that fell to the floor.. I could hear the trees swaying every time the wind blew threw her bedroom as she would stand behind me running the comb through my long, dark hair. The more time that passes, the harder it is to distinguish my dreams from my actual memories of her. Sometimes I wonder if she really said that to me. Perhaps, I just hope she did. I almost never took her necklace off. It always felt good to have the silver key so close to my heart. Maybe the heart needs memories of a past, fictional or true, just as proof that it was beating all along. Like if someone loved me back then, maybe it was possible to be loved again.

My first kiss...

I was a 19 year-old kid, as I stood on the front porch of the house my family called home. Leaning forward for the usual, quick hug goodbye, I remember wondering how in the world we had made it clear to date number four when we had nothing in common. Lost in my own thoughts, I guess, I didn't notice him staring intently into my eyes. He was a nice guy, at least an okay guy, anyway. Maybe he would have been cuter without all the face piercings and tattoos, but I was never too bent on trying to figure it out. There was no way of telling what he really looked like. Tattoos and long hair shielded his face from the world or the world from his face. He was bold though, and I think part of me kept going on these dates just to figure out if that boldness would go anywhere. Lesson number one: when you have no clear expectations, expect nothing... nothing good, anyway. My clearest memory of Danny is the day he first came into the hardware store where I was working as a full-time cashier over my summer vacation till mid-August hit, when I'd be able to ship myself back to the college town an hour away that my family made look like paradise. A scrawny, and seemingly bashful Danny, who had been in my line the day before, had driven all the way back just to ask me out and I was just bored enough to remember that I had nothing else to do. I still remember to this day exactly what he had bought in my line the day before. One roll of duct tape, some rope, and a very large piece of plywood. It wasn't really a habit of mine, to remember every customer's shopping list, but this particular combination of items, coupled with his sharp looks had me thinking "serial killer." So, needless to say, I was a little nervous the first time that purple honda of his pulled into the drive to pick me up with the same piece of plywood strapped to the top and the duct tape and rope lying in the backseat.

My college roommate Jolene had always commented that I had a thing for serial killers. I had a serious knack for attracting creeps. I had never dated much, but Jolene was terrified of the guys I pointed out to her. It didn't help that I was a huge Dexter fan, which also never settled well with Jolene Once when we were away at school, riding a city shuttle, she had been with me when I gave my number to a guy named Justin who asked for it after talking with us on our way to class. I wasn't really interested, but he seemed like a normal guy. Not wanting to offend him, I went ahead and gave it to him. I hadn't expected him to really call. So, when he did, I was a little surprised. Since our first phone conversation included a vivid description of a dream he claimed to have had about me the night before, and that apparently his hobby was setting fires for fun, Jolene and I decided that maybe he wasn't the one for me. I guess I never really learned my lesson. If Danny had been a serial killer, I guess I would have made a pretty easy target, but floating in the White River for a few months didn't sound all that bad in comparison to an entire summer at home with my "family."

I half smiled and told him that I 'd had a good time, then, leaned in for the quick hug. Tired out of my mind, I guess I didn't really think about it when he hugged me a little tighter than usual. The hug itself definitely lasted slightly longer than that two point five second window of get the hell off me I tended to keep, but since he had given me an escape from the brick prison I was about to walk back into, I decided to allow it. It wasn't that I didn't like him. He was one of the most gentlemanly guys I had ever met. He wasn't too pushy and didn't ask any questions. It was nice just to talk to someone who wasn't an irate customer, a screaming child, or one of the constantly yelling voices from the doors behind me. Even though all we usually ever did was drive around and listen to music, I was fine with that. I think he mistook my usually quiet demeanor for a sweet, shy girl and, for the most part, I thought he was a nice guy. But we're all wrong sometimes.

I had never been a physically affectionate kind of person. No one in my family was. We hugged when there was a death in the family or engaged in those awkward holiday hugs when people no one really liked came to visit. As I leaned away from the hug, I realized, quite to my horror, that Danny's face had, what shall forever in the history of forever be deemed, "the look". I'm talking about the expression that takes hold of someone's face, right before they are about to do something to you. I'm not talking about something normal. It's usually something they're not quite sure about; something that will only typically go one of two ways...really right or so wrong. It was like watching a scary slasher movie, right before the main character with big boobs is about to walk into the woods wearing heels. The only problem was that I was just a B-cup, and there are no pause or fast forward buttons in real life.

Maybe if I hadn't been so frozen in terror, I could have prevented the salivating, foreign threat heading straight for my face. Perhaps, I could have stopped Danny as he leaned closer, brandishing "the look" for all the crickets and God to see. But it happened so fast. I stood there, motionless, on the front porch as his lips met mine. It was just like the movies. My head was spinning. My knees went weak. It was my first defining moment of that summer vacation that I remember. Kind of like your first food poisoning. Or your first shot in the ass on a cold doctor's table, which if done wrong can leave you scarred for life. Something you never forget for all the wrong reasons.

I guessed, I was supposed to be moving my lips and tongue around a little bit too, like Danny was, but didn't know how, so I didn't bother. So, to spit on someone was disgusting, and an insult, but to put all of your spit into their mouth at once was okay? Guess I'm the one who had it backwards. Danny must have picked up on my enthusiasm. A moment later, he was staring down into my eyes, not inches from my face. We both had that dazed look. I mean the dazed look of star-crossed lovers, like Romeo and Juliet. Him longing for me...me longing to kill myself like Juliet. Some moments in our lives don't require words. I thanked God for that, whether I believed in him or not, as the taste of, seemingly, everything Danny had ever eaten floated around in my mouth. He whispered good night in the most awkward and serial killer type way, then, turned to walk back down the driveway to his black Honda, glancing back a few times as I stumbled through the front door. He probably mistook my nauseated clumsiness for a head-over-heels schoolgirl sort of thing. Poor, stupid boy. He had no idea I was about to be heels over head into the hallway toilet with ipecac and a bottle of Listerine (2nd lesson of that summer: don't put ipecac and Listerine together...ever).

After I managed to puked a few times, then drowned out the taste of all things unholy with cheap mouthwash and salvaged what was left of the burnt skin on my tongue, ready to go to sleep and pretend no such thing had ever happened, I was slightly surprised to hear my cell phone buzzing with a text so late at night. I looked down at the lit up screen to find a message from Danny that read:

"Good night, beautiful! (; hope I didn't make things too awkward...just been dying to do that!"

Still, standing over the toilet, I suppressed the urge to text back, "Do I look like a lifeguard to you? (: (: cause I'm definitely not.."

Nineteen was such an awkward age, somewhere right between an adult and a child. This time of year always makes me remember. It's getting colder now. I think it's going to be cold for quite a while. Sometimes the mind starts to remember things the heart would rather forget, but the leaves piling up on that slab of stone make it nearly impossible to forget.

# Chapter 2

The odds and ends home improvement store, just off 93rd street, was where I spent the majority of my time that summer, ringing up people's crap and throwing it in bags. That's what I did, as well as spending my whole day listening to old people who all told the same jokes, every single time they came in.

"Oh, no bag, please. Save a plastic tree." (Giggles!)

"Oh lookie there! Exact change! Now how often does that happen!"

More than you would think. Let me tell you that right now.

"You workin' hard today, young lady?"

From the repeatedly bad jokers, to the uptight middle-aged women who questioned everything on their receipts, asking me to double check the price of every item, as they rifled through their expensive Coach purses (holding up entire lines), looking for coupons, I was beginning to understand serial killers like Ted Bundy a little more each day...I was starting to see how someone could just snap. I practically needed half a bottle of pills and three cups of coffee, not to mention a prayer that I would not go to jail that day, just to get through an eight hour shift.

"You know what sweetheart?" I had a sixty-something year –old man ask me one day as I counted carriage bolts and washers out of as plastic sack to ring him for.

"What's that?" I asked reluctantly, as I had come to realize that, as a cashier, people often told you things could have gone without knowing. Anything and everything. Intimate details about their lives, their families, and their gruesome medical conditions. Sometimes they'd fill me in on what their children were doing, how their divorce was going, and what their psychologist had to say about it all. I figured out it was easier, depending on the customer, just pretend you were listening, and meanwhile go back to that place in your mind where evil couldn't touch you. The world must be a pretty lonely place when the cashier at the hardware store is the only person you have left to confide in.

"I think I'm gonna stop my age and wait for you." He revealed a half-toothless smile and sweat beads clung the edges of his matted beard to the edges of his wrinkled face. He was a regular in the store, always carrying his contractor pencil over one ear and an old cigarette butt just over the other ear. Always smelling of cigarettes and coffee.

I'd heard this one before, probably from that very same man at some point, so I just went along with it like usual.

"Awesome, I'll be here," I replied flatly, trying to pretend it wasn't real. It was another one of those traumatic moments in my life. When you realize how far you've fallen. From reading stories about Santa Clause to having him flirt with you, tragic slacks and all, in your line at the cash register.

"You don't believe me?" He asked me, laughing.

"Don't be silly. Of course, I do. I can hardly wait," I said.

He laughed again, "And she's funny." He turned to the man behind him in line, another regular, whose BS I was about to hear for the next five minutes of my life.

"Think I'll hang on to her." With that he winked, paid, and was on his way.

Just like always. Just like the rest. There, interacting in my life for maybe a minute and a half, and then gone. Maybe to return, maybe not. Didn't matter. Maybe I'd remember them, maybe I would be cursed with the inability to forget them. Didn't matter because karma was real and he'd probably be one of my angry customers at the return desk on Monday and he wouldn't want to marry me then.

That same day, during the hot afternoon heat, when the store had died down a little, like was usual on a Sunday, I reached into my pocket for my cell phone to check the time and realized that it was glowing with a text message from my friend Jolene. Jolene had been my college roommate. We had gone to high school together, only having known of each other at the time. We'd met again at college during our freshman year, when we got placed in the same dorm room. Jolene was from a very typical American family of four. Two parents, two children, 1.5 dogs, and a house with a two car garage in a cookie-cutter neighborhood. Her parents had met in college, as they were both pursuing degrees in teaching. Probably your very typical, sappy, love story, and they were still married even as they sent their own children away to school. Their strong belief in a good education had put both of their children, James and Jolene, on the fast track to college, where it was assumed that afterwards, they would attend grad schools to pursue law degrees at high ranking institutions. Despite their perfectionist ways, their constant complaining about their "messy house" that was never messy, and the fact that, deep in their hearts, they all lived with the knowledge that the whole family should have been taking medication for OCD tendencies, the Martins were nice people. Jolene was simply Jolene. There was no other way to put it. She was short, right around five-two, black, and loud. She was the type that never knew a stranger and said exactly what was on her mind. I always joked that she was built without a filter. Many a time, we had passed some cute guy, on campus, and without waiting for him to get more than two feet away, she would announce to the world, "He was FINE!" I could always count on her words to be the unedited version. I always admired the fact that she was never afraid to say what she felt needed to be said. She was never afraid to be Jolene. She was also the first one to suck up to everybody's parents. It was the same way with teachers and professors, as long as I had been in school with her. She was both the first to win them over and the first to talk shit when they walked away.

I remember one time after Christmas break, we were carrying some heavy laundry baskets and things back into the dorm that we had taken home over the holidays, and the guy in front of us let the door swing shut, without even looking back. Jolene dropped her basket, opened the door, and yelled across the lobby of our building, "HEY THANKS JACKASS! WE GOT IT!" All of a sudden, all eyes were on us as she flashed a smile at the now red-faced guy. That was the moment I thought to myself "Yep, we'll be friends for life."

During our days in Stu Hall, she had made it her God-sent mission to teach me, what she called her "ho rules," along with many other things she claimed she needed to school me in so that, I too, could survive in the cruel world out there. She claimed that girls had to learn to think like guys so they wouldn't "get played." Usually after some random encounter with a guy at the library, or a text, or just about anything she could relate back to the ho rules, she would declare out loud, "Did you see that, Laura? That was a perfect example of rule #...." And she was always serious about it. I didn't care about the whole guy chasing insanity so much, but it was entertaining. She said it was like a game, and you just had to learn how to play it. And for what it was worth, she played it pretty well. It seemed like every time I turned around, she was talking to a different guy. She had football players on campus, smart guys from her lecture classes to assist her at the drop of a hat, and even guys back home so she wouldn't be lonely during Christmas and Summer breaks. She told me it was best to keep the most serious ones in different area codes, if at all possible. Once, a guy from our building had texted me while we were sitting in the student center saying that we should come over to the pizza place where he and some friends were, and Jolene had declared, "NO! Rule #5, Laura. We don't travel. They come to us! Girl, I know I taught you better than that!"

She was always quizzing my knowledge of her teachings. One evening, we were sitting on opposite sides of the dorm room working on projects for finals week, when she randomly asked me the question, "Do you want to know the most important concept for keeping a relationship alive today?"

Since we hadn't been talking for at least an hour, I remember wondering if it was some kind of a trick question, or if it had something to do with her project for her Interpersonal Relationships course.

Feeling puzzled, I decided to go ahead out on a limb and guess, "Trust?"

She dropped her pen on the notebook she was writing in and exclaimed, "PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY!"

Not feeling any clearer on what exactly we were talking about, I took a pause from my own assignment and looked over to find out where the hell that had come from.

She must have been able to see that I was lost and cut me off before I could even begin.

"They're teaching these college kids some straight bullshit girl. Talkin' bout how trust is the basis of a relationship...Shiiiiiiiiittttt." She matched her facial expressions and tone to the same level of politician for a moment, going on a twenty minute tangent about how no one is safe anymore if we don't teach people to love defensively. With answers like that, it was crazy to me how she was the one who wanted to get married and start a family immediately after college. I didn't have to say a word. I knew it was better if I didn't, not that I had an opinion one way or the other, because I was too zoned in trying to finish my assignment so I would have the weekend to just work. Jolene was good at keeping things lively, but I often had to remind myself to stay focused and not get sucked into her eccentric ramblings.

After scoping the area for managers, I laid the phone down on the counter and read the message:

"hey saddle tramp! whatcha up to?? (="

I pretended not to notice a woman wandering aimlessly around the register, reading aisle names aloud as I typed back:

"nm, skank. u?"

The woman began to make sighing and coughing type noises, obviously trying to catch my eye, probably hoping I'd ask her if she needed help finding something. Finally, annoyed at the obviously lost in so many ways customer, I set my phone back into my pocket and asked, "Can I help you with something ma'am?"

She looked at me, squinting exaggeratedly up at my register light, which was clearly on, raised her eyebrows, and asked, "Are you open at that register?"

It seemed like every time I went to work I got that question. No, I was waiting for a bus, I always wanted to tell customers. It got to the point where the word "open" ranked right up there on the list with "coupon". After hearing those words all day long, every day, they began to produce a reaction in me; the same kind of reaction that my grandmother must have experienced when she found out Bush was reelected for a second term. That sudden need to take pills and drink large amounts of alcohol. After a long day of stupid questions just like that one, I finally let that little voice I'd been suppressing throughout my entire shift speak.

I let out a long sigh, before saying, "Yes, ma'am. I've been excitedly waiting all day for you to come in so I could ring you up, right here."

She then went on a long rant about how the credit card companies were tracking her and how that would be the last time she gave her phone number out to a retail store. The whole speech lasted for at least fifteen minutes, but I guess I walked into that one.

The rest of the day didn't get much better. I got moved to the return desk for the last two hours of my shift, which was inside, to cover for someone who was going home early for the day. I got to spend the end of my day getting berated by customers who didn't have receipts or the credit card they had paid with, or commons sense still present in their heads. I also had the joy of getting to explain to one particularly stingy regular, why we couldn't return a two pack of light-bulbs, when clearly only one bulb was still in the package.

"That seems like poor customer satisfaction," She had stated. "I only needed the one light bulb, and I just want a refund for the other."

I remember thinking how much money she had probably wasted driving back to the store, just so she could make a dollar. By the time five-thirty rolled around, I found myself in the employee breakroom, hanging up my vest, right before popping a few more pills, and making my run for the door with car keys in hand. I made my exit through the main set of automatic doors that led out to the parking lot As soon as they slid open, I felt the warm summer breeze upon my face. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. It felt good to finally breathe. I remember mumbling to myself about how I hoped I would never get old and irony still haunts me to this day.

# Chapter 3

After work most days that summer, I would go for a run or sit out in the garage and read or something. It was easier to take the pills and sleep it off without being bothered out there. Our garage, overrun with all of my dad's precious junk, that he swore he would use "someday" was pretty much the only real getaway in a crowded house with eight people. It was scorching hot most of the time, but the need not to go to jail, far overshadowed any fears of dying from a heatstroke. Petite women can't go to jail because we become someone's shower bitch. In some ways it's probably a lot like the real world, where you either have to become a bitch of your own creation or turn into someone else's bitch. The real world may not have metal bars, but metaphorically speaking we're all being punked. Please write that one down before you commit a crime. I mean the thing about petite women going to prison. It's pretty important. Sorry to be blunt, or ruin anyone's dreams, but that's just how it is.

I would sit in the garage for hours, sometimes not doing anything at all but staring off into space thinking, in an old, abandoned, living-room chair. Every once in a while, dad would come out to the garage to poke his head in and ask what I was doing, wondering what I was in such deep thought about. So much so, that sometimes just for laughs when he'd ask, I'd answer him, "I just don't know anymore, dad." I'd only told him about a hundred times that summer that nothing was wrong. I think he must have thought I was doing drugs or "in with the wrong crowd." Little did he know, I wasn't in with any crowd at that particular time. At first, he claimed I'd become withdrawn. Withdrawn from what? A home and a family that wasn't really mine? That had never been mine? That ship had long sailed and he had missed it. That fifteen year-old girl that had held so much faith in her father was dead, and dad still talked to her corpse every now and then to see how hell was going. All those times she had reached out a hand to ask him for help, for him to show some kind of mercy, and all those times he just let her down. I felt sorry for him. I felt embarrassed for him. Most of all, I hated him.

Unless they just knew I was out in the garage, my "family" usually had no clue where I was, whether they realized it or not. They probably forgot they had another child residing in the household amongst the other five that still lived at home. And while in summers past, my dad had always asked where I was going if I was leaving the house and when I'd be back, this particular summer, it seemed like he didn't ask any questions at all. Like he didn't even realize I'd left the house when I was returning. Maybe he'd felt obligated to ask the questions at one time. To know where I was going and that I'd be safe. Maybe he thought it looked like he was being a good dad when his new wife was watching. Probably in the back of his mind he hoped I would just walk away and never return. Just like mom. He would never admit it to anyone, not even himself but my brother, sister, and I were his burden. Just his constant reminder of life he once had and the obligations he no longer had time to fulfill. Like Thanksgiving visitors the day after Thanksgiving...no one wants to come right out and tell them to leave, everyone just quietly hopes that they will.

It's hard to say if a change occurred or some kind of realization of divine intervention had had begun to stir. Perhaps, it was more of an awakening of sorts that I should have seen coming. I couldn't find a reason to care about a lot of things anymore. College hadn't made me a different person, but I was much more used to the independence that came with having no one to report to and operating on my own clock. While many of my friends had gone wild when they'd gone away to college, like Jolene, earning reputations that I got to laugh about every Monday morning as I listened in on stories from people I didn't know, that were about seemingly everyone that I did know, I was too busy working, studying, or simply too stuck in my own head to care about anything going on outside of it. Parties weren't really my scene. I didn't like being around large groups. Parties were for show. To show the rest of the world how much you could drink, how hot/slutty you could dress, that you were "the baddest bitch." I didn't need to be the baddest bitch. Some nights, hours would go by while I sat at my desk, staring out the window onto campus watching other people walking in and out of the building, down the sidewalks, and going about their lives. I'd wonder about their homes, if they were happy, and if they were, how they had gotten so lucky? Occasionally, the thought crossed my mind, "What if I just jumped?" I wondered if anyone would care or if in time I would just become "that crazy chick who jumped from Stu West and killed herself." I wondered what it would feel like to just let it all go.

So many times before I had gone off to college, people had told me that college was the time to engage other people and to embrace the environment of learning and knowledge that was at my reach...or some same flavorfully, corny nonsense along those same lines. Truthfully, though, I never really wanted to go to college. It wasn't something I ever vocalized. College was something I was supposed to want; education, debt, babies, and retirement. Kids with good grades are supposed to want those things. All throughout high school, guidance counselors, teachers, and guest speakers, drilled it through my mind that college was the only way to a happy and fulfilling life. Just the idea of wasting another four years in a classroom was disenchanting, but a lifetime supply of student loan payments to follow...The whole thing sounded like a horrible scam. If I could do it over again, I would never have bothered with the applications. I'm not saying I didn't have some good times in college, becoming friends with Jolene and writing stories when I was supposed to be paying attention in lectures, but college was never where I belonged. I didn't picked my major, radiation therapy, because it was my dream. I picked it because it was a short program and I hated school. I picked it because my dad made himself pretty clear in that I was going to do something that made money...not that he was donating anything to the cause. I was lucky enough to be able to afford books for my classes a couple of times after he and Kathleen dipped into my account. Kathleen's daughter, Leah, needed horseback riding lessons and gymnastics classes...and I guess I had my priorities all wrong. Looking back, I should have packed my car up the night of my high school graduation and driven as fast as I could, but guilt and the lack of clarity held me back like an anchor.

I wasn't enticed by group discussions or the anatomy of the human heart. If it wasn't going to be on the test, and I wasn't being graded on it, then I did not care. As for professors, I could honestly find no evidence that any of them were any smarter than the rest of the population, maybe just a little more eccentric, and often arrogant. They were god-like scholars who bestowed wisdom upon the next generation of future professionals, in their own minds, anyway. I had an English professor, once, who constantly felt the need to let the class know that he could be doing things that would make him much more money than teaching at a university, and therefore that we should be grateful he had chosen to devote his time to educating the next generation, instead of pursing more money. Well, just tell the class how you really feel.

If I wasn't busy driving an hour back home to work from Friday afternoon to Sunday evening only to return back to die upon my dorm bed, I was usually too exhausted from the aftermath of hardware hell to do much else. I would usually arrive back sometime on Sunday evening after guzzling a gallon of coffee from the gas station around the corner from campus, drop down on the bed back first, and hope to wake up at some point on Monday to go to my exciting Physics class. My life ran on caffeine and pills to keep up with the busy schedule. Jolene always told me she didn't know how I did it, managing to work my weekends completely away and still keep a decent GPA. I thought that if I could just stay busy and keep moving, maybe eventually everything else would fall into place. The busier I was, the faster time would go by. That was a big thing with me, wanting time to go by. I couldn't really explain to myself in a way that made sense. It was difficult to put into words. I wasn't really looking forward to anything that time would bring about any faster. It was almost more of a feeling of knowing I should be somewhere else, of wanting to be there, but being frustrated that I wasn't there and having no idea how I was going to get there. I came to that conclusion once during one of my long shifts, dozing off one slow night in front of a cash register at the hardware store. I remember being annoyed at myself for having such deep thoughts about what I considered to be nothing, but in retrospect, I was probably onto something. I wanted to be able to do what other people did. I wanted to be able to look forward into my future and see myself somewhere, doing something, being happy...But no matter how hard I looked slate was always blank and I couldn't see myself at all. Jolene could picture herself down the road, partnering in her law firm, married with two kids, names she had already picked out despite the fact that she had no man to speak of. It wasn't the accuracy she was predicting her future with that intrigued me. I mean, more than likely, with Jolene's background, she probably wasn't too far off. Things happen, however, Jolene was most likely on the right track with what would probably happen to her. However, it was the optimism she had in her description of everything in her future. She had a pretty good idea of what she wanted to be doing and was happy with her plans. She had an innate feeling that it would all work out according to her master plan. I ached for the ability to look forward and say this is where I will be and this is what I will be doing, or even would like to be doing, but the harder I strained to see it, the more blurry the picture became.

It was a pretty long drive to go all the way back home, but it was three eight hour shifts a week that paid better than any minimum-wage job I could have gotten on campus by a decent amount. I was beginning to have a small fortune stashed away, about a few thousand dollars. And with grants paying for most of my college, my paychecks just went right into my account and there they stayed other than the little bit of money that went toward gas tank to get me back and forth. Sure, I'd had to come home every weekend of my freshman year, but I had a summer job to come home to and did not have to ask my dad for money like most of my broke college friends often had to do with their parents, which was good, because he spent all his money on his new kids that his new wife had given him, anyway. I always thought how lucky Jolene was that her parents had stayed together and had the time and always had money to give to her and her brother. How they'd come up to visit her in the dorms and take her shopping for whatever she thought she needed at the time. "Must be nice," I'd think to myself. Jolene's parents loved her. She talked all the time about how they got on her nerves and called too much, but at least they called. She always said her mother was too involved, but at least her mother knew where she was. At least she cared. I didn't even know if my mom was still alive and Jolene was a little bummed that her mom wanted to know if she was sure she didn't need anything else. Jolene's dad told her he loved her every time they talked on the phone and I'd never even heard my dad start to say the words. Jolene had holidays to look forward to going home to, and I dreaded the drive. If a professor was harsh with Jolene about anything, her parents would probably have contacted the president and brought in the troops, whereas one time I was home asleep on a couch and woke up to one of my mentally deficient step-siblings touching me inappropriately only to be lectured by my father that boys will be boys. There's an awakening for you. So, for years I had been afraid to relax or fall asleep anywhere in the house other than my locked bedroom, and Jolene's biggest fear was that she wouldn't make the dean's list and get that car her parents were promising her. I'm sure Jolene never thought of herself as having been born into privilege, but from where I was standing, she never seemed to have it too bad.

The days that I actually lived on campus, I'd go for long jogs, work on school assignments, pretty much anything that allowed me to zone out and go numb for awhile. Often times I just listened to Jolene ramble on about the details of her life. She had a knack for getting juicy gossip she wasn't supposed to know about and seemed to feel it was her moral obligation to share this gift with the world. I usually didn't care, or didn't even know the people that she was going on about, but I had learned that even if I wasn't interested, a "yeah" or "oh really, that's crazy!" was enough to suffice and pacify her devotion. As long as I mirrored the reaction she was hoping for, all was well in room 387 for another day. Jolene had become like a sister to me. Living in the dorms was somewhat like living in a functional family. It was something I had never experienced before. We had a schedule for the most part, even outside of classes. Jolene and I always ate dinner together, did laundry together, and watched the same shows on her big screen tv at night while we did our homework. I always went jogging about the same time too, right around the same time Jolene's mom would call her to talk for an hour or longer. It wasn't unusual to get back and find her still on the phone. The living arrangement was a new concept to me, that people were capable of living under the same roof without screaming and fighting and that disagreements could be solved without police officers. What a concept. It was a freeing feeling that I could sit anywhere in our room, in our building, on campus even, and not have to feel uneasy or in anyone's way. Most of the time on campus, no one's family was around. So, on campus, until holidays and weekends would roll around, I could on some level feel like everybody else for awhile.

When we got really bored, we'd come up with something stupid to do, like putting the free condoms the school passed out on the other girls' doors or writing obnoxious things on the marker boards of the lounges. We became experts at prank calling. We went down to the lobby of our building one time to steal the main school directory to call faculty and professors to let them know there was an ass slapper on the loose. We even stooped one day to calling all of our friends and classmates, pretending to be the free health clinic on campus to let them know they may have been infected with syphilis by a partner in the past thirty days. That one never got old, discovering how many of our friends truly were "hos". The best one was when we got Jolene's older brother, who happened to go to a neighboring college, with it.

"OH MY GOD, WHO WAS IT?!" He asked in a panic-stricken voice through the phone.

"Well, we can't divulge that type of confidential patient information, sir, but what I can do is have the test ordered for you and so that way we'll know for sure what actions need to be taken from this point forward," I answered him in a high-pitched, squeaky voice as Jolene rolled across the floor laughing so hard, I had to cover the mouthpiece for a moment so we wouldn't be given away.

"OK let's do that! OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD, what are my parents going to say?!" He kept repeating.

"THAT YOU'RE A HO!" Jolene finally yelled, roaring with laughter, as I fell back in my desk chair laughing so hard I couldn't stand anymore.

"WHAT?!" He yelled into the phone. "JOLENE?!"

Neither of us could speak, except through gasps between laughing. We were used to getting funny, sometimes even skeptical answers when we did this health clinic routine, but who'd have thought scrawny, studious, little James would have to worry about winding up on somebody's STD list. I guess it's true what they say. Every dog has his day.

"OH MY GOD! James, you are a ho!" Jolene screeched, when she could finally get a coherent sentence out.

"JOLENE AND LAURA?! YOU TWO ARE SO MESSED UP! I SWEAR TO GOD I HATE Y'ALL BOTH!" He yelled before finally hanging up.

We laughed for days about that one. It was one of the highlights of my whole first semester. Jolene and I were always pulling stupid things like that. She was one of the few people I didn't really mind, and seemed to have the same sick sense of humor that I harbored. Despite our differences in backgrounds and personalities, we had managed to stumble upon that common ground pretty easily and had remained friends through it all.

# Chapter 4

It's pointless and silly to wish for things we can't have, like trying to catch the wind. I probably know that as well as anyone by now. When your chest tightens up from that aching in your heart as it reaches out to grasp something so far beyond its reach. Something so unbearable, that it causes you to stop dead in your tracks and everything around you just ceases to exist. Maybe, I'm a dreamer. Call me that if you want. Call me anything at all. I, and I alone, get to decide when this dream is over.

...........................................................................................

Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, I counted each leaf as it crunched beneath my little pink boots as we strolled the bike path that evening. I always had to count things when I was a little kid. The sun was slowly disappearing into the Autumn evening while we talked about school and Halloween. I wanted to be a princess that year. I had already picked out a costume with a white dress, with a light-blue sash, and imitation glass slippers from the costume store. I was five years old, but I remember it as vividly as if it was all yesterday. Cinderella was my favorite movie at the time, and the glass slippers were the most important part. I couldn't wait to where them any chance I got, even though there was still a good week and a half till Halloween. I would have worn them to school if she had let me. I couldn't wait for all the other kids in my class to see my costume, I told my mom. I remember how pale she was that day. It was the same year she had lost so much weight. Her long, black hair clung to her bony, tired looking face. The air was crisp and cool, but my hand felt warm in hers as she squeezed it. I always admired my mother's hands. She had the long, thin fingers that my grandmother always referred to as piano player's hands. She had been playing since she was a child. She smiled as we kept walking down the trail. It was getting dark soon, and we would be making our way back home. We had pumpkins to carve and bedtime stories to read, and I knew that none of this would be real for much longer. Time was running out.

I was being careful not to look up into the sky until I was sure it was completely dark out. I had to make sure I wished on the very first star I saw, so I wouldn't forget. If I only had one chance, I wanted to be sure I got it right. I looked up at my mom, hoping beyond hope that beyond some miracle my wish would come true. I squeezed her hand even tighter, not ready to let go.

I was attending a private Baptist school at the time, saying my prayers the way the teachers said I was supposed to do, every single night. But God didn't seem to be hearing me. I told myself he probably had a lot to do and that maybe he didn't have time to listen to one little girl, or maybe he just hadn't gotten around to me yet. With all those people around the world whispering in his ear at the same time, it was probably tough to take care of everyone. A few weeks before, when we had visited my grandparents in Pennsylvania, my grandfather told me about wishing on a star. He said if I wished on the very first star I saw in the night sky and said the rhyme, that I just might get my wish. He had been talking about a birthday present he was planning to get me, but I had much bigger wishes on my mind for such a little person. I was a little skeptical about the whole thing, because I had also figured out the year before that Santa stored most of my presents in my grandparents' coat closet, which left me questioning a whole lot of things, but I wanted to make sure I covered all my bases. I knew more more than just the leaves on the trees were beginning to change.

The darkness from the moonlit sky was upon us as we finally approached the little, white minivan to go home. She said I could ride in the front seat, since it was just the two of us. It was finally dark enough. I let go of her hand and ran ahead to the passenger side and waited for her to walk up and unlock it. While I waited for her to catch up to me, I looked up into the sky, just in time to catch the very first star of the night. I closed my eyes tightly and said my wish under my breath, for no one else to hear it. Before we got in, I ran around to her side to give her a hug. She told me she loved me and kissed me on the forehead. For once, I couldn't smell it on her breath.

We rode home from the bike trail, the heat on full blast, and my head leaning against the window watching the sky and trees pass by. A heavy heart coupled with the kind of optimism that only a child's heart ever truly knows. I told myself it would all be okay. I told myself she wasn't going to change back. I told myself that she was going to stay just the way she was that very night. If I thought I could get away with a second, or backup wish, I probably would have stopped dawn from ever coming.

That was the last wish I ever made. It was also the same year I stopped believing in God. I'm sure a lot of people think five years-old is young for someone to stop believing in God, or wishes, but we all do what we have to. If there was a god, I guessed he had other plans, but try explaining that to a five year-old. It wasn't fair that all my friends had the kinds of moms I always hoped mine would become, and that I only got her for a little while. It's difficult to justify believing in God when he doesn't show up when you need him. All I wanted was for my mom to stay my mom. I wanted to wake her up and show her everything she stood to lose, but the whiskey was tough competition. Sometimes the pain is stronger than the love that you feel, a lesson I learned to relate to. It's the reason I chose to forgive her in my heart, but the very same reason I could never forget.

That marked the beginning of the end of my childhood. My mother was gone before the snow touched the ground the following winter. I watched her drive out of my life as the first few flakes tumbled from the sky. Elizabeth and Will were asleep in their rooms, completely unaware of how different our lives would be in the morning when they woke up. Meanwhile, I spent the night perched on the windowsill of the upstairs hallway, staring down the road, tears flooding my eyes, hoping I would see headlights coming back, but knowing I probably wouldn't. My warm breath fogging up the cold glass, I just couldn't bring myself to move. Going back to bed would be an admission that she was really gone. I needed to make time stand still in my mind, just long enough that I could process it.

It was hard to look at the Christmas decorations the next day, which were still sitting in their respective boxes next to the tree, where they remained until after New Year's. It sure didn't take my dad long to get over the loss. We wound up spending the holidays at his girlfriend's house that year, not even a full two weeks after mom was gone. Mom had accused dad of cheating for years. I guess she wasn't making it up like he claimed after all.

"She just didn't want to be a mother anymore." He told anyone who asked about mom.

As if it wasn't embarrassing enough when our friends from school asked questions. But to have my father announcing to the world that my own mother didn't even want me was almost more than I could take sometimes. Small towns leave little room to hide your face or your business. It felt like Tennessee got smaller and smaller every day. That was the same year my dad stopped taking the medication to treat his Bipolar Disorder. I guess with my mom gone, he figured most of his problems were solved. He would go through long periods of moodiness, followed by short-lived euphoria. Sometimes he could be a wonderful father. Other times he could be nothing short of cruel and controlling. When my sister, Elizabeth, was nine, she was playing with a can of spray-paint in our unfinished basement and accidentally sprayed a couple of small spots onto the glass door that led from the basement to the backyard. Being nine, she was afraid to admit it. When dad found it, he demanded to know who had done it. When no one confessed, he told us he was going to punish the three of us until the guilty child came forward. Every hour he would beat each of us and then re-ask if anyone was ready to speak up. He tore up our homework, broke toys, and even ripped some pages out of one of my school textbooks. This went on for six, agonizing, hours straight. He did the same time once when he claimed someone had been messing with his shaving cream. He made us eat soap a few times for various infractions. We had the misfortune of having a full-grown willow tree in our front yard, which he eventually incorporated into our punishments. He would make us go outside to pick a switch when he deemed it was necessary.

By the time he met Kathleen, my father had mellowed out a little. When they were dating, I assumed it was because he didn't want her to see him for who he really was. It seemed like she was good for him, and us, for a little while. I figured out pretty quickly he wasn't as likely to hit us or go into one of his irrational, paranoid episodes when she was around. I was still afraid to step out of line in any way, but Kathleen didn't seem like the type to tolerate full-on child abuse, which kept us all a little safer for awhile. He still had his moments, but never anything like what we had previously experienced in our Tennessee house of horrors.

During my sophomore year of high school, when I was fifteen, a high school guidance counselor called him at work to tell him she suspected that I had an eating disorder. I was suffering with some anxiety at the time, with going to a larger school in a bigger city. I had a hard time eating at school in such a crowded place and was having a hard time making friends at first. I did have a little trouble with body image at the time as well. I had always been very weight conscious. At lunch everyday, I would sit and write in my notebook and keep to myself. I had lost quite a bit of weight since the beginning of the year and, Ms. Marshall, well-meaning as she was, had taken it upon herself to contact dad and express her concern. I would have begged her not to, if I had only known what she was going to do.

He was waiting for me in the living-room as soon as I walked through the front door that day. I could tell something was off right away by the look on his face and tone in his voice. My palms went clammy and my heart started racing instantly. I tried to take slow, deep breaths, to keep myself from trembling as he spoke. The first thing he told me to do was to put my backpack down by the front door. As much as I didn't particularly like Kathleen, I really wished she was home right then. I ran through my mind, trying to figure out what, if anything, I had done recently. He told me to come sit on the couch in front of him, as he sat in the office chair next to the computer. I walked over slowly, seating myself on the very edge of the cushion and placing my hands on my knees, wringing them at times. He had a very icy tone in his voice.

"Are you trying to embarrass me with these games you're playing at school?" He asked me.

I just looked at him, confused. I started to tell him that I didn't know what he meant, but he just cut me off.

"I got a call from your school today. Ms. Marshall said you refuse to eat anything. She seems to think there's a problem in the home." His jaw was fixed and his face was turning a bright shade of red.

"I didn't refuse to eat, dad. I'm just not that hungry at school most of the time," I answered him nervously.

I was shaking at that point. It had been awhile since I had seen him like this and, in my mind, there was no way of knowing what he might do. He was boiling so much I could feel it. He rolled over closer to where I was with the office chair on the hard-wood floor. I was shaking when he leaned into my face and began shouting at the top of his voice.

"YOU'RE NOT GOING TO HUMILIATE ME LIKE THAT EVER AGAIN, YOUNG LADY!"

He looked me right in the eyes as I started to cry. "IF YOU WANT TO START PLAYING GAMES THEN I'M GOING TO BE VERY RIGID WITH YOU! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?!"

Almost too afraid to move, I just nodded my head, quickly. My eyes were blurry with tears, but I couldn't move a muscle. He just stared at me for several moments afterward, until he finally told me to get up and follow him. He stood up and walked into the kitchen. I trailed in directly behind him. He pointed to a chair at the kitchen table and motioned for me to take a seat. I sat down and started wiping the tears from my eyes. I wanted to stop them from coming, scared I would just make him even angrier, but they were flowing uncontrollably. I started hyperventilating, just like I had when I was a little kid and he would scream at me. There I was fifteen, and I still felt the same level of helplessness taking over my body. My breathing felt labored, but I did my best to slow it down. Dad came around the counter with a plate that had three hamburgers on it and slammed it down in front of me. I looked up at him, unsure of what he was doing.

"You're going to clean this plate before you go to your room. Then you're going to go upstairs for the rest of the night. I don't want to hear a word out of your mouth, except to let me know you're done eating." He said harshly. "Maybe next time you'll think a little harder before you walk your ass into that school and make a fool out of me after everything I've done for you."

I struggled to eat the entire plate. I never liked to eat very much meat, so trying to eat three, thick burgers made me sick to my stomach. I felt like there wasn't room after the first two, but I was more terrified not to eat them than I was of throwing up. He watched me the entire time, crying and trying to clean my plate as quickly as I could, so I could go hide upstairs. When I was finally finished, I felt like I might vomit. I tried hard to maintain what was left of my composure, so I would be allowed to go bury myself in my bed. I looked over to where he was sitting silently. His tone was different now, much more flat. Without more than a sentence, he sent me to my room for the duration of the day, where I was more than happy to stay.

He never said another word about the incident. I became very detached after it happened and tried hard to block it out of my mind. I became a vegetarian not long after. That was the last punishment of its kind that my dad ever inflicted upon me again. I always sort of wondered if maybe he had seen himself for the monster that he was.

# Chapter 5

"Bye dad." I mumbled one night, when I spotted him in the kitchen, not ten minutes after I had gotten home from work.

He looked tired, as usual. My dad hadn't stopped looking tired since he got remarried five years before. He had gone from having three very average kids to having seven, two of the new additions being special needs and mentally ill, another one of them being a general pain in the ass. The oldest one was never around enough to know much about him, therefore making him my favorite new addition to the family. Yes, it seemed my father had inherited some exceptional little brats, and while his watchful eyes had stayed awake long nights taking care of them and his whiny new wife, days had gone by and his own children had managed to grow up without any help from him. Between his full-time job and his new full-time-job-children, it was no wonder that he always looked like he had just been through an obstacle course. I knew now that my grandmother had been right about him being an idiot to marry her. Sometimes I felt bad for him. Sometimes I felt that karma was giving him his. Every now and then I felt wrong for thinking that way, but much of life is all about lying in the bed that you made, and, unfortunately, he completely deserved it.

Dad, who had owned his own business hooking up surround sound systems for home theatres, pre-wiring new houses, and helping people set up their television equipment when we'd lived in Tennessee had said goodbye to his flexible schedule and lax hours to take a forty hour a week job. He had taken a job as a manager at a local hardware store, very similar to the one that I was working at, to better support the larger family. I remember being fifteen when my father had met Kathleen, and watching all the changes occur. My brother and sister were happy at first. We were finally going to have a mom and things were going to be easier, or so they'd thought. I had long let go of that brand of blind optimism, much earlier in my childhood. We all learn those lessons eventually. One day we all have to wake up and discover that Santa and the Easter Bunny were never real and this was no different in my mind. I already knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that happily ever after did not exist. Though I had held out a flicker of hope that perhaps Elizabeth and Will were right, that we had finally become part of a functional, family situation, in the back of my mind, I knew better.

It seemed like all my dad and his new wife had done for the past five years was argue. They had a regular pattern going, as a matter of fact. Things would go really well for about two weeks, then, something little would occur. Like dad forgetting to fix the washer. Something little, like dad forgetting to fix the washer, would somehow become everything bad that both of them had ever done to one another, how mothers had been right about the wedding, the tragic crying about how the love was gone. All of those things would become my step-mom packing up her kids, asking for a divorce (bear in mind, that this is all because dad forgot to fix the washer), and going to her mother's house for the night, as dad would sit in his room blowing up her phone all night. That's when I usually took the time to enjoy newly found peace and quiet of the house. That is, until she would arrive the back the next evening, so that they could have their little "I love you and I'm sorry" reunion with songs and poetry and all that wonderful shit. Then everything would go great again for another two weeks as everyone silently waited for the time bomb to go off again. Their whole marriage had PMS, I told my friends one time. I knew I couldn't wait to get married, someday and live happily ever after like them. While some people my age were talking about the future, getting married and having children, I remember thinking to myself, growing up to be a crazy old cat lady didn't actually sound like a bad prospect. As far as Kathleen went as a step-mom, she was a great mom, to "her kids" as she was always so quick to remind the rest of us as often as she saw fit. I can't say she never gave us anything, though. If nothing else, Kathleen taught me the true meaning of conditional love. The conditions being that everything went well for her children and herself and the rest of us did what she wanted, then we were worthy of her "love". Unfortunately for her, I didn't have time for her warped sense of reality or her nails on a chalkboard children. One can only play charades for so long, I had finally decided one 4th of July a couple years prior that the game was up, when I had complained to Kathleen about her youngest daughter playing in a keepsakes box of old pictures of my mother and grandparents that she had found in the garage. When I confronted Leah and asked her to give me the box, she had replied in her spoiled seven year-old voice that she was playing with the pictures and I couldn't tell her what to do. So, I snatched the box and all my pictures, despite her protests, and took them to my room to tuck away in a safe place. It wasn't a full five minutes later that I could hear Kathleen storming down the basement stairs to my bedroom, banging on the door and in full form. I figured she'd be coming and had already prepared myself for the falling out. When I opened the door, I wasn't at all surprised to see her standing in the doorway with that same familiar and sour look on her face. She always took Leah's side before hearing anything we had to say at all. I already knew that the best thing for me to do was listen to her whine for a second, tell her where she could put it, and then watch her storm back up the stairs, looking back at me and threatening to tell my father.

"Yeah," I used to think to myself. "Just make sure when you're telling him you mention my name because he's probably forgotten it by now."

That day, Kathleen had decided to try to cut me particularly deep. She told me that I had an attitude problem and that I had no right to take the box from Leah and that I was to give it back "this instant". She let me know that since I was not even her real child, she would let my dad deal with me when he got home. I loved those moments when my dad's wife tried to get bold and thought she was going to try and confront me about something. She liked to use big words like "deviant" and "juvenile," but the fact that she slept with her door locked at night told me I was still winning this war. She didn't seem to realize that her tactics only worked with people who gave a damn. She and her children were such sheep. Any sudden movement would send them barreling back off in the other direction.

"I'm certain I'm nobody's child." I just laughed at her. "Just keep your fugly children out of my shit please."

I smiled at her sweetly before slamming the door, and then listened for her to go storming back up the stairs to reign over her kingdom; the part that was still safe at the moment. It made me smile to imagine her sleeping with weapons under her bed in preparation of the night I actually went up there to get her. I wasn't planning on it or anything, but it was a nice thought that helped me sleep better at night. I could faintly hear her calling my dad at work and telling him what I had said to her, how I had no respect. Because my dad was totally going to drop everything he was doing at work to come home and spank his eighteen year-old daughter. And she thought I was the one who needed a mental adjustment. It had been a long time since my father had laid a hand on me in anger, but at that point in my life I already knew I wasn't going out like that scared, whimpering little fifteen-year old girl I had been the last time. At eighteen, I was a little bigger since the last beating and he was a little older. Nope. Next time he tried that shit, I knew I was going out kicking, screaming, and fucking his ass completely up. Don't get me wrong. He was my dad and I did still care about him on some level. However, I also needed him to realize that jail was just a free place for me to go stay if he tried anything at all. I always kept a straight face and never let my guard down. I could never let anyone see me cry. I just held the silver key right to my heart and whispered to myself, "This too will pass."

So, in the wake of Queen Kathleen's reign, dad, Elizabeth, Will, and I had dissolved in our separate directions, finding our own escapes. Elizabeth with her music, Will with his videogames, dad with his stupidity, and me into my own mind. Maybe it was more of their hopeful optimism, or maybe they had even decided that something was better than nothing, but my dad and the other two had done their best to, at least partially, maintain this on again off again family. Up until my senior year of high school, I had done all that I could to play the game and pretend for the sake of my siblings, smiling and laughing and hating it all, but not anymore. At some point they had all continued to play the game as I slowly disassociated from all of it.

What was left of dad, Elizabeth, and Will was what remained of my blood family. My real mom was out of the picture completely and I knew very little about her. I knew I probably wouldn't even recognize her anymore if I was to pass her on the street. Not seeing or hearing from someone for years and years tends to have that kind of an effect. I assumed she still lived in Tennessee, but it had been a long time since we'd heard from her, a lifetime ago it seemed, when we had all been different people. If not for the child support checks for Elizabeth and Will, which arrived faithfully each month, we probably wouldn't even have known she was still alive. Dad had mentioned about a year before that on the child support documents and checks he received from her for my younger brother and sister that he'd noticed the last name had changed on the documents. She had remarried. I still remember the feeling. I wasn't sure if it was shock or surprise. Maybe a little bit of both, but that seemed so long ago now, back before a time when nothing surprised me anymore. I had shrugged it off like I didn't care and didn't know why he had even bothered telling me, but despite my nonchalant attitude, just the thought of it had consumed me for a week, despite my desperate efforts to keep myself busy. I wished my dad hadn't told me a little more every day. I had even gone searching her online, out of curiosity one afternoon when I had been bored in my dorm room. It turns out that literally everyone facebooks or tweets nowadays. I had clicked the name and stared at the face in the picture only for a brief second before scrolling down to read the profile details. I was already sorry I had found it. It turned out she had children. They looked pretty young, probably no more than about eight and thirteen. Kayla and Aaron were their names. I'd read them on all of the captions of photographs that showed the two smiling with their perfect, happy family. My mom had stepchildren that her profile said she loved taking back and forth to dance classes and football practices. There were pictures she had posted from Christmases when her own children had received no call, or even a card. I wanted to click on the link that blinked to "send Kelley a message". I wanted to pour every bad thing I could say into one message and make her feel the way I had felt upon seeing the pictures. There was probably much more to be discovered, but I closed the profile. I had read enough.

"Bye" He replied after a second, barely looking up from the mess he was cleaning up on the counter, before my step-mom got home from work, during one of those breaks my they sometimes caught when all the younger kids were settling down for the night; precious time that they used to read week-old mail or catch up on dishes. Precious time that if I were my father, would have been used to burn the house down children and all, and walk away, using the insanity plea while people would still believe it.

Thinking it was going to be like usual, no questions asked routine, I attempted to make my getaway through the front door when I heard him wake up for a moment and ask me, "hey, didn't you just get home?"

"Yeah," I said, poking my head back around the corner of the kitchen, trying to come up with something, in case he decided to ask any tough questions about where I was going. I hadn't been through this routine in awhile. Dad had long stopped the level of interrogation that he used on me from high school; the old who, where, when will you be back nonsense that never made any difference, anyway. Maybe he had started to sense that I was maturing and had long outgrown that type of juvenile treatment. By this time I was old enough to understand dad would be pissed if he had to get up in the middle of the night to go identify a body. Over-publicized news/media stories about adolescents who randomly killed their families in the middle of the night didn't hurt my cause any, either. If the only reason my dad didn't say anything to me anymore about my staying out after four in the morning, was so that he and his wife didn't have to start sleeping in shifts, I was alright with that. We all have to make sacrifices sometimes.

It wasn't like I ever really went anywhere that was so shady that I'd have to lie, but needless to say, there are always details that need not be volunteered, certain names of individuals and places that could cause blood vessels and vital organs to pop. Usually people just fill in the blanks themselves, anyway, with answers that are easy enough for their own minds to accept. That's one lesson I learned that summer, for certain. Plus, dad didn't particularly like Jolene or Danny, not that he had ever given either the time of day. I knew he didn't like Jolene because she had thoughts of her own. Danny was awkward so that one made sense. I had done a pretty good job of making sure he hadn't met any of my other friends because he still thought I was going to some girl named Pearl's house on a regular basis, who I hadn't seen or heard anything from since the tenth grade.

"I don't think I've seen you a complete two hours in the past three weeks," he took off his glasses and rubbed them on his shirt for a moment, before replacing them and then shifting his gaze back upon his stack of mail.

It was true. Seemed like the only time I saw anyone at home anymore was in passing, as I left to go to work or elsewhere. If I spent any quality time at home, it was to go to bed so I could recuperate and run away from home all over again the next day.

"Well, now you've gone and destroyed what a beautiful thing we had going." I answered smirking. He didn't even look up. He just kept rifling through the pile as if he didn't hear the comment. Maybe he knew I was just trying to push his buttons. More likely he just didn't give a damn.

"Where are you headed?" He asked me, glancing at the microwave clock, which read a quarter after ten, but since my father was raised in Mayberry, it may as well have been three in the morning. "Pearl's house this late?"

"Yeah," I replied flatly. "A group of us are going to her house to read the bible."

He grabbed a pen off the counter and began scribbling some dates down from one of the bills he was reading in the stack.

I could remember a time when that sort of thing would have made him smile, but my dad had stopped laughing with me a long time ago.

"Do you work in the morning?" He asked me.

Not that he was legitimately curious. Dad asked me about work every time he saw me. First about if work was busy. Then usually he'd ask when I worked next. All questions that required less than a sentence answer. They were just filler questions because he didn't know what else to say to me. The kind of questions that you ask when you either already know the answer or don't care enough to hear one.

It was no secret that my dad felt like he'd woken up one day to a daughter who was now a total stranger. The same kid who, at one time had functioned as his living, breathing keychain, confiding in him, chatting with him, keeping him updated on her life would now all of a sudden rather be killed than have to kill time at home with her "family", and my dad had no idea what to make of it. He let himself believe that it was college that had changed me because that was the easier answer for him to accept. Why couldn't he see that that kid had gone away years ago and that up until a year or two before, he had been simply dealing with the shell of someone who once was. The same kid who had faked that smile at the dinner table so many times would now rather sit on hot coals than take a seat with the so-called family, and to dad it was out of nowhere. He could attribute it to my being a teenager. He could tell himself I was just tired or too busy, but he could never really figure it out. And at some point, he'd given up trying to figure me out. He didn't have time to wonder about the thoughts of a possibly troubled adolescent mind when he had his new wife and her children to think about. They needed time, attention, money, and I just needed him. I just needed him to hear me and he never did. Maybe if he'd sat down with me early on in my transition, things may have turned out differently, not that there's any way of knowing now.

At some point, I had made the transition from living at home to just boarding in his house. I knew that wasn't as if I just woke up one day and everything had changed, but I couldn't pinpoint when or how exactly it had all come to be. It was lots of little things. One day I had just gotten tired of all the arguing and the uncertainties of living with a family that wasn't really mine, and I had just checked out I supposed. It was easier to walk through the front door when I wasn't really checked in. It was easier to walk through rooms when I wasn't attached to them and past pictures of a girl I no longer was and had never really been. I could spot my dad, my brother, and my sister in the pictures, if I really looked, but there was no family in the photographs. Just two groups of people, brought together by chance, and stuck together by circumstance. It was simpler to walk past photos of a family that I had never really been a part of, just so long as I didn't give it too much thought.

"Not till eleven." I answered him.

"Well have fun, I guess," he replied, yawning.

"Getting caught up in the scripture is always a good time." I said.

He just turned around to finish his tasks in the kitchen. "Be careful if you're going to be out late."

"We'll see." And with that I was out the door, into the night, and on my way to "Pearl's house."

# Chapter 6

I arrived at Tony's that night, expecting to do what I usually did, to sneak around to the side of the house where there was a door that led down to the basement, so Tony's mom, who worked varied hours as a nurse at the local hospital, wouldn't be awakened by noise if he had to let me in, however, when I arrived that night, the front door was slightly ajar and the screen door was the only barrier between the inside of the house and the cool night. Walking, up to it, I noticed that some of the lights in the house were on, and I could see Tony through the screen, heading up the front stairs. I clasped the sleeves of my red sweatshirt around my hands as I made my way up the green, wooden steps of the front porch. It was chilly for June evening.

"Tony." I said as softly as I could, but apparently too softly, because he didn't seem to hear me. I thought I could hear a television on somewhere in the back of the house, and after a second I figured just so long as I was really quiet, I could probably manage to get in without waking Mrs. Crane, or Cindy, as she often reminded me to call her. I pulled the screen door open, trying as best I could to make sure it didn't make any creaking noises, using only my fingertips to lead it to a slow close behind me. Then I slipped in and stepped out of my shoes and onto the wooden floor with just my socks, so I wouldn't make noise on the stairway to the second floor. At that point, I started to creep up the stairs, taking them two at a time, so I would make less noise if it could be avoided and get to the top faster. I could hear Tony as I got further up the stairs and being familiar with the house as I was, it sounded to me as though he was in the upstairs bathroom where door was open down the hall and a dim light shone from inside of it and cast dull shadows onto the hallway floor.

"Oh, God!" I thought to myself. "Please tell me he's not using the bathroom with the door open."

I approached the bathroom, soft step after soft step, being extra careful by the creakiest boards, tiptoeing when necessary. I had the wooden boards memorized from having crept around to help Tony find something in the dark one time before while his mom slept in her room, just further down the hall from the bathroom. I braced myself as I got closer, preparing to hold my breath to protect my lungs from the stench I was certain would hit me at any second like a brick wall, and knock me backwards onto my back, immobilized.

"Tony!" I whispered sharply into the dark. "Tony!"

I was more than a little surprised to hear an answer as loud as the one that responded from just inside of the bathroom.

"Yes, dear?" I heard him laugh. "Breaking and entering, eh? You may come in. I'm just in the tub."

I had started to waltz right around the corner and into the bathroom, when the full sentence he had just uttered registered with me. "Um, no that's cool. I really don't need to see that." I said cracking up, surprised at his openness.

"You know you wanna peek just a little!" He said in a squeaky and fake southern accent, then pretended to giggle girlishly. A white washcloth flew from the dim room, hitting the wall directly opposite the bathroom, before landing dead center on the green rug in the center of the hallway. "Ooops!" He continued in the voice. "Laura, dear, wanna be a peach and grab that for me?"

"Nope, I think I'm good." I whispered in the hallway, even though it was pretty clear that Mrs. Crane wasn't even home at this point. I could see her bedroom door completely ajar from my position in the hallway, where the bed was still completely made up. And I knew Tony wouldn't dare be talking that loudly if she was trying to sleep after one of her practically fifteen hour shifts at the hospital. It was just a habit at this point, that any time we were upstairs, we whispered.

"I'm just drilling some holes for a new shower caddy mom wants to hang on the wall." He now admitted.

Still suspicious, I came around the corner of the doorway very slowly, keeping my hands close to my face, just in case this was some kind of a joke. But sure enough, as I peered into the dimly lit bathroom, I could see Tony, fully clothed, sitting cross-legged in the bathtub, facing the wall, with a pencil in his hand, making dots on the wall and then appearing to examine them, his face inches from the blue ceramic tiles.

"Told you I was in the tub!" He looked back at me laughing. "Hand me that level on the counter though."

I grabbed the level and walked up to the tub, pretending I was going to whack him with it before laying it gently at his side in the tub.

"Does that look straight to you?" He asked me. "Because honestly I could give a damn, but I don't want her having me come all the way back up here to do this again."

"I think it looks alright." I scratched my head. It was kind of funny to see my friend doing something productive. Not a scene I was much accustomed to, but I knew he often came back home to do little things such as this for his mom, since his dad had passed away a few years before.

"Good." He said with a sigh. "Because now when she asks me why it isn't straight, I'm going to blame you."

He looked at me solemnly, seriously even, just before the grin crept back onto his face.

"And I'm going to tell her not to hire a bum contractor next time." I said. "Here, scoot over and let me see." I motioned with my hands for him to make room, since Mrs. Crane would be seeing it mostly from the angle of sitting down in the tub. I plopped down beside him and examined the dots on the wall, too.

"Straight?" He asked me.

"As Richard Simons," I answered him, returning the serious look he'd given me a minute before.

"So wrong, but I do like ambiguity!" he said. "You better hope these holes are straight, Hewitt."

The air coming through the window screen felt heavy upon my face and somewhat in the distance just outside of it, I thought I heard what sounded like the sound of a car door being thrown shut.

Suddenly I could hear someone downstairs coming up the stairs, and then Mrs. Crane's voice trailing up the stairs.

"Tony?" She called out softly.

"Yep," he answered back.

"I was just seeing if you were still around here." She said in a tired voice. "Was that Laura's car outside too? Is she here?"

Tony and I, still sitting side by side in the tub, without hesitation looked right at each other before shouting back in unison.

"We're in the tub!"

Mrs. Crane's airy laugh permeated throughout the house. "That's alright I like her better than some of the little skanks you used to bring around here."

After a minute, I turned my heard only to see her standing in the doorway. She was short and stout, nothing like Tony, which had always led me to believe that Tony must have resembled his father. Even his mother's hair color was much lighter than his. Going simply on looks, mannerisms and sarcastic tendencies aside, it would have been difficult to tell that they were even related. Yes, Tony must take after his father, I had finally settled in my mind one time. Thinking about it, during the many occasions I got to see the two of them together, sometimes caused me to think about my own family. Every now and then, it had caused me to wonder if I looked like my mom. It was probably pretty clear to those who saw our family that I did not resemble my anyone in my household, with my tan skin and dark hair, which in no way resembled my fair complexioned father and stepmother.

During much of high school, I had grown pretty used to looks, from both friends and strangers, which seemed to ask if I was adopted. Stares that seemed to beg me to fill in blanks that I was not interested in filling. It was probably very confusing for those who were unaware of my family situation, those who had not known me before I had moved to Indiana years before...pretty much everyone I knew. I typically referred to my dad's wife as my mom and her kids as my siblings. Not usually because I legitimately thought of them that way, but more because it was easier to go through than the truth. If people wanted to believe I had been adopted, they could think whatever they wanted as far as I was concerned, just so long as they minded their own business.

Tony was still examining the dots. "Gee, mom, no privacy whatsoever in this house. Now you see, this is why I moved out."

She laughed, "Hello, Laura. At least you guys are having an exciting Friday night."

"Hi Miss Cindy," I said back. "All we need now is a bottle of tequila and we'll be in business."

"Very, nice." She winked at me.

Tony's mom had always seemed to like me for some reason. She always made a point of inviting me over for dinner and asking Tony how I was doing if I hadn't been over for awhile.

"Well, drill those holes pretty soon so it doesn't sound like a chainsaw massacre after I pop this large aspirin and die for a few hours." She said yawning. She took off her plain white shoes and placed them by the door before pulling the clip out of her sandy brown hair and turning to make her exit.

"I got you, mom," Tony made a salute as she left the bathroom and headed down the stairs, probably to get her usual, lethal dosage of aspirin. When Tony and I finally decided that the dots were as straight as we were going to agree upon, he drilled the holes and told me he'd meet me in the basement after he put the drill back in the shed.

I headed down the stairs, as quietly as I could, unsure as to whether or not Mrs. Crane had already passed out for the evening. Tony, following closely behind, finally informed me,

"At this point you could literally crank up a chainsaw and not wake her up."

I stifled a laugh there in the dark and nodded my head in agreement.

Once we got to the bottom, I made my way to the left and down the set of stairs to the basement as he headed around to the front door to go put the drill back in the shed. I heard him carefully closing the screen door behind him. I sat in the basement, on the big blue couch I was so used to and started flipping through the channels when I noticed my cell phone was blinking. I looked down at it, expecting it to be some wild, nonsensical text from Jolene about nothing. The only kind of messages she really ever sent. I was mildly surprised to see the voicemail icon lit up as I continued halfheartedly flipping through the channels.

"So where's your boyfriend these days?" Tony asked from behind me, as he reached over my shoulder and set a diet coke can in my hands. He always remembered.

I drank enough diet coke, that summer, to float a small battleship and probably took enough pills to sink one. I was sure my blood was the same consistency as water. It was to the point where I knew that one paper cut alone could cause me to bleed out and die. Between that combination and the endorphins from my long runs, I was surprised I could feel anything anymore. But then again, maybe that was the point.

I popped the can open and leaned further back on the couch. "Don't know. Don't care." I laughed.

Tony laughed as he came around the side of the couch and dropped down right beside me, before lounging back also, with a coke can in his hand. I always thought it was funny that I knew Tony's usual drink of choice was alcohol, and despite all the stories I had heard and the evidence of cans around his basement, he never really drank in front of me. He always remembered. I always attributed it to one night during the school year when I had gone to walk him back from a party to his apartment after he'd had a long night of partying. He was somewhat tipsy and had called me sometime after midnight one Thursday to ask if I'd mind walking him back so he wouldn't fall into the street or something in the dark narrow neighborhood he had to walk back through. He'd been so stumbling drunk, he'd seemed like a different person altogether. He was happy and sweet even, but numb to the rest of the world.

It must have brought back memories on a night like that, because the next thing I remember I was talking about mom. Before I knew it, I was going on about a night I hadn't previously realized that I remembered from childhood. I described, vividly, how she had stumbled around after a heavy night of drinking, and I had helped her to her bed.. I recalled to him how she had stripped off all of her clothes after complaining about how hot the apartment was right before passing out. I laughed lightheartedly, as Tony grew quiet. I'd ended the discussion, the moment I realized it and luckily for me, Tony had never brought up the subject again. Since then, I hadn't seen him drunk or even hold a beer in his hand. I had long held onto hope that maybe he had been so drunk that night that maybe he didn't remember the conversation, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he must have remembered it.

"I don't think so."

"What?" He looked over at me questioningly, as if to say "How do you not know?"

I just shrugged. "Well, I haven't called him back in a few days. And I don't plan on calling him back." I was looking at the tv, but I caught a side glance at Tony, who was shaking his head laughing. "So it doesn't look good."

"Reasonable." He cracked.

"Well, you're the one who told me that the power of the relationship lies with whoever cares least, so I'll let him figure out if we're still going out anymore. And this way we get around all the usual let's stay friends bs, that everyone knows is bs."

I said as I watched the dumb girl in heels go into the beach house, about mid-movie probably, and then as she was followed seconds later, by the chainsaw wielding beast.

Tony nodded his head triumphantly. "I've taught you well, grasshopper."

This was a pretty typical scene of my summer vacation too. Not chainsaws and beasts, but hanging out with Tony. He lived in our college town, in a house that he rented, but since his mom lived in Indianapolis, pretty close to my house, he was usually in town about once or twice a month. We had met through mutual friends a couple of years ago, in Indy. There had been four of us, three guys, which included Tony and then me. We had all been a pretty close group during those awkward, up and down, years. There's actually a good stretch of my teen-aged years where I can't remember associating with anyone other than those three.

After the other two had decided to leave Indy after graduation, however, Tony and I had continued to hangout every now and then. We'd watch movies at his house, go for drives, talk, or just in general hangout. He was one of the most laid-back people I'd ever known, and I completely supported his lifestyle. He was tall and skinny, probably right around six feet, with dark-brown hair. He was also always very pale, probably from his obsessive use of sunscreen, which he claimed made his skin softer (which caused me to question his sexuality from time to time). He practically never wore anything other than sweats and some kind of "other people suck" themed t-shirt, unless it was a special occasion of some sort and he always sported a sarcastic or inappropriate comment. Often, people put up a facade to come across as nonchalant, but not Tony. He was founder and president of club IDGAF. During high school, our collective group spent more time in his basement than a classroom. That basement was a memory-filled place for me. Every detail, from the aroma of cigarettes that lingered on the couch, to the chipped paint on the far wall where Jolene had face-planted, one summer before, trying to teach us how to Dougie. We still jokingly referred to it as the incident that may or may not have involved alcohol. Late nights playing Dance Dance Revolution and making fast food runs before it was time to sneak back home, ran through my head sometimes, after everyone else had gone their separate ways. I still had a vase of dried up blue roses from a high school science project that Tony had stayed up half the night helping me with so I wouldn't fail chemistry. Even if Tony and I were the only two who still made a habit of hanging around the old place anymore, I knew I would never forget learning to dance right before my high junior prom, or how at the end of the night we all got back and fell asleep on the couch watching horror movies until the next day...memories of moments I always wished I could go back to.

"Weren't you like going steady with that pothead or some crap like that, I heard?" Tony asked me.

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, for like two weeks maybe, if even that, I guess. Who says going steady anymore?"

He just smirked, "What did he do?"

"This movie is stupid." I said. "Everybody has now died in it, but the monster. What the hell?"

"Well, you picked it, sweetie pie." He said. "Besides, you're just changing the subject. That's cool too."

There was a long pause, where I tried to lose myself into the movie and maybe get some idea of what the plot was even supposed to be.

Then Tony continued, "It's probably all for the best, anyway. If things had ever gotten serious, Danny's kids would be fugly little bastards, and probably creature-like, as much pot as he smokes."

He rolled his eyes back in his head and began pretending to have a seizure, moaning and muttering the words, "I like...CHEESE!"

I started laughing. "If Jolene were here, she'd say you were going straight to hell!"

It's true what they say about most jokes only being funny because they have some element of truth to them.

He continued with his fake seizure, reaching over grabbing my shoulder and my knee, screaming in a high-pitched voice, "CHESSE, CHEESE, CHEESE!!!"

"TONY! You're going to make me spill my drink!" I laughed, while at the same time, trying to escape his reach. "You really are going straight to hell."

"No," he finally stopped. "You'd go to hell for making babies that ugly. You better believe the only Uncle Tony they'd know would be Tony the Tiger from the commercials. Well, till the dreaded day that one of them caught their reflection on the tv screen, then they'd be shit out of luck there too.

Tony had such a way with words.

After I had leaned over to set my drink on the floor, I noticed Tony's mom's cat, lurking in the corner of the room, so I slid off the couch and sat on the floor to play with her. And with that, Tony and I settled right back into watching the movie, as I leaned my head back into the couch and dozed off with Frannie in my lap.

It felt like I had been asleep for five minutes, but the next thing I knew, I was waking up on the couch, as Tony was shaking my shoulder, saying "Good morning, sunshine!" in an exaggeratedly high-pitched voice.

I sat up on the couch and realized there was a blanket spread across me.

"MORNING?!" I gasped. "WHY didn't you wake me up? My dad is going to kill me!"

Tony looked at me, surprised. "Well, you were sound asleep. You didn't even almost wake up when I moved you from the floor to the couch."

"CRAP! Oh my GOD! I have to hurry up and get home!" I said, standing up, reaching in my pockets for my keys and my phone. "What time is it!?"

"One-thirty." He said, with a puzzled look on his face. "You seem mad? You're nineteen years old. What are they going to do? Ground you?"

"WHAT THE HELL, TONY!" I could feel the anger boiling already. Why had he not woken me up? I thought I was going to shoot him. "I missed work too! I have to go!"

I hurried for the backdoor of the basement, behind the laundry room, right beside the garage. Keys in hand, I was scrolling through my cell phone to see if I had gotten any frantic, missed calls from my parents or from work, cursing Tony's name under my breath, the entire time. All I could think about was how I was going to get fired from work and then reemed by my parents. How in God's name had I slept for over twelve hours like that though! But as I swung open the back door to leave the house, I was surprised to see it was still dark outside. Now, I could hear Tony's laughter behind me, from the other side of the basement.

"What?" I said to out loud to myself, confused.

Tony must have heard me, because his laughter persisted, even louder.

"It's one-thirty in the morning dumbass!" I heard him laughing.

I stared out the back door, into the darkness, as everything slowly sank in, and I realized that the whole thing had been a prank. I closed the door back and threw my keys down on the floor as I walked back around the laundry room to find Tony laughing so hard, he was gasping for air on the couch.

"GOD, you should have seen your face!" His face was bright red and tears ran down it, as he held his stomach, still trying to catch his breath.

"I am going to kill you." I said, looking at him with disbelief.

He just kept laughing though. Eventually, I had to join in too.

"I thought for sure I was going home to be killed." I sighed, sinking back down into the couch, smacking him a few times.

"I know you did!" He continued laughing, trying to protect himself from the blows. He began imitating me, in a squeaky voice, "WHAT THE HELL, TONY! Your face went so pale!"

"Pure evil," I laughed, shaking my head. "You truly are going straight to hell."

After another few minutes or so, I figured I probably should get headed back home. That or risk falling asleep again and being subjected to another dose of Tony's sick humor. So I stood up from the couch and hunted my keys down where I'd thrown them on the floor, next to the edge of the back door. Then I walked back around the corner, where Tony looked to be falling asleep on the far edge of the couch.

"Good night, jerk." I said laughing.

"Good night, bestie!" He grinned, struggling to keep his eyes open.

I got in the car and made the short drive home, walking through wet grass in my flip-flops. Once inside, I crept through the house and down the long basement stairwell that led to my bedroom, so that I wouldn't wake anyone, particularly any nosy or tattle happy family members. Once I made it, I climbed in my bed with an unsaid prayer that I wouldn't oversleep for real, but the more I thought about working the next day, the more I secretly hoped that I would.

# Chapter 7

The next day at work was fairly busy. We were short handed though, so I had to work my shift outside, as a garden center cashier, which I didn't really mind since there were usually less people out there. It had to be a hundred degrees outside that day, but people were out there buying flowers and loading mulch to beautify their lawns, or because they had nothing else to do with their lives, I supposed. The worst thing about working as a cashier out in the garden center was that customers automatically assumed you had knowledge about the plants and whatnot. They walked into the greenhouse, carrying with them the mindset, that if you were working in the garden center, that you loved plants as much as they did. All day long, I'd get questions like, did we have any azaleas, or geraniums. I didn't even know what the hell those were. I still don't. Usually, I would just point to the sign that said "flowers" and tell them to try over there. There were plant experts all over the place in the garden center, and customers would come find the cashier to ask questions like that.

One day I had a frumpy, fifty-something year old lady come set a potted plant down in front of me and ask, "What do I need to do to take care of this?"

I didn't even know what the damn thing was.

"Water, sunlight, love? Honestly, I don't know." I told her. "There're garden people over there that can help you with that, ma'am."

She just turned her nose up, with an attitude, and said, "Well you work here, don't you? Seems like you'd have knowledge on what you sell."

Unfortunately for her, I was rolling through one of those days where I could have benefited from a prescription for Prozac.

I just sighed, "No ma'am. Those guys over there are the ones who sell garden items. I just ring things up and hand out receipts. Would you like paper or plastic?"

I made sure to smile extra sweetly as I uttered that last sentence.

The woman looked stunned. Retail was such a bitch. The woman finally just snatched up her potted plant and stormed off, but not before saying, "I will be speaking to your manager!"

"Please do." I urged her. "And when you do, let her know she forgot my break. Thanks and have a nice day!" I said the last part with the same voice and sweet smile again.

Some people were just a headache to deal with, which is why I hated retail half the time. It seemed to me that some of them were under the misguided impression that just because you were employed by the store they were shopping in, you were supposed to wait on them hand and foot, as if you worked for them.

A short while later, the register phone for the garden center rang, and when I picked it up, I realized it was my manager. I figured she'd be calling before too long, if that woman had actually said something to her.

"Hey, Laura, this is Vanessa--,"

"Hey, Vanessa! Girl, how are you?" I cut her off, in a much sweeter voice than I normally used.

"I'm good, thanks for asking." She said. "I was actually calling out there to find out about what happened out there about an hour ago. Sherry said we got a customer complaint that the cashier out there was rude to her?"

"Oh, really?" I said in a fake dumbfounded voice. "That's odd. But you know, a woman did come out here a little while ago, going off on me in some other language, and her English was so rough, it was hard to understand her. I tried though. I really did, but she just stormed off saying the word manager."

Vanessa paused for a second before saying, "Oh, ok gotcha. That makes sense. You know, I figured it was just some kind of misunderstanding. I know how people can be."

I just did a fake laugh and asked, "So, do I need to sign anything since I had a complaint against me?" I already knew the answer.

"Oh, no girl, don't worry about it." She reassured me, "Doesn't sound at all like it was your fault. Just keep doing a good job out there!"

"Gee thanks, Vanessa!" I said.

As we hung up, I couldn't help thinking to myself, "What an idiot." I've only pulled that crap like five times this summer so far. Either she really believed that foreigners were just constantly walking up and yelling random crap at me, or she just didn't feel like dealing with it. Either way, next time I'd tell her something different, I reassured myself. Job security, you know.

The rest of the day went by with less incidence or entertainment. I spent some of the most boring parts of the shift, texting Jolene and Tony the muffin top count for the day for the garden center, the number of women who believed that on hot days they could pull off the combination of skin tight jeans with shirts that weren't quite long enough. The bulge that occurs in the space where the shirt and jeans don't meet is known as the muffin top...and fyi, most people old enough to be shopping a home improvement store cannot pull this look off as well as they believe, no matter what lies Jenny Craig or Marie Osmond has told them.

"ugh thnx fo that image" Jolene had texted me, upon receiving the official figures.

"No problem buddy :)" I texted her back.

Jolene was on a family vacation to Alabama to see her aunts and uncle who lived out there, and it seemed like every day she was in the car with her family, I would get texts about how she planned to slit their throats that night as they slept. You know, normal teenage thoughts. As I had yet to receive my daily report yet that day, I texted her to ask how the traveling was going, probably mostly because I was bored and wanted a good laugh.

The text I got back less than ten minutes later read:

"hows the trip? girl in bout 2.5 ima bitch slap my bro if he asks me 1 mo thing..thats how the trip is. i cant wait to get back & tell u bout half the shit that went down this week"

I loved her daily reports. It was one of the few times at work I really got to smile. Her messages about offing her family gave me hope, lifted my spirit, and made me think about the future. I often wondered if one day, just maybe, Jolene and I would go from sharing a dorm room to sharing a cell. After all, anything is possible if you believe. I figured since she was going to school to be a lawyer eventually, anyway, we'd have a pretty good chance at bailing out and skipping town.

That day after work, I went for a much needed eight mile run through the neighborhoods, and then collapsed in the old chair in the garage for a few hours, as I had grown accustomed to doing on humid days like that one. After a little while of thinking and daydreaming, I had nearly slipped into an afternoon coma, when I felt my phone buzzing. It was Danny. I hadn't heard from him in days and had been hoping to keep it that way and never have to relive that nightmare again.

"You have got to be kidding me." I thought to myself, as I considered just deleting it and taking my nap.

The text simply said:

"we need to talk"

"do we?" I texted him back.

About two minutes later I got another text that read:

"yes"

I remember thinking, "There's nothing to talk about."

So I texted back, "no :)"

I wasn't sure if that tactic was going to work, but I was optimistic and figured, you never know.

I got a text back saying, "no?"

At that point, I realized that maybe I should just get this over with. So I texted back, "k fine"

He texted me back within the minute, saying, "when can we talk?"

"why don't you just call me right now?" I sent him.

The next text he sent me said, "can it be in person?"

By this point, I was beginning to get irritated that he wanted to do this the adult way, when I could have been asleep by now. This was one of the times I actually agreed with one of Jolene's crazy rules. The way a relationship is ended, should be somewhat equivalent to the status of the relationship itself. One night stand should equal no call back ever. A few dates should equal a text. It seemed pretty common sense to me. Why did everyone always want to do things the mature way and talk it out? Why couldn't this just be like junior high, where people just washed their hands of one another and did their best to act fake when they ran into each other later. So, I waited it out for five minutes to think about it before texting him back, "k fine. where?"

"This must be really urgent," I thought to myself, because my finger had barely left the send button when he texted me right back:

"how about the coffee shop right by your house in 20 mins?"

And once again I texted him back, "k fine."

As I stood up to go get my keys, I remembered that my dad had borrowed my car for the afternoon, while his was getting new brake pads, and he had told me he would be gone for at least a few hours. I couldn't remember exactly what time that had been, only that I had been asleep when he asked for the keys and I'd handed them to him and dozed right back off in the chair. I thought about rescheduling or asking Danny to pick me up, but neither of those sounded wildly appealing. So, since the coffee place was less than a mile away, I decided to text Danny, "drive slow i'll be walking."

Thirty seconds later, my phone was buzzing again:

"do you want me to pick you up?"

"drive slow i'll be walking," I texted him again.

I didn't even bother to change out of my running clothes. I'd probably just jog back, anyway, I figured. The weather had started to cool off a little bit and it had become pretty cloudy. It felt like it might even rain soon, so I grabbed one of my dad's old sweatshirts on my way out of the garage and began my trek for the coffeehouse. My eyes still felt sleepy, and every step that I took reminded me that I had just run eight miles, and was much too tired for this insanity. I was starting to think that I should have just left it at no and a smiley face. Major life lesson learned that summer: when in doubt...just leave it at no and a smiley face.

I made it to the coffeehouse in about fifteen minutes, but by the time I got there, Danny was already sitting at a table, way in the back, away from the crowd just staring off into his cup. He was bouncing his knee and wringing his hands. His long hair was more unruly than usual, and he just looked like a mess.

"Hey," I said, as I got to the table and seated myself directly across from him. I must have startled him, because he jumped a little at my greeting. He started to get up to give me a hug before I sat down, but I hadn't realized and sat down too quickly. Now I sitting, watching him fumble, and thanking God for my swiftness.

"Hey," he said back nervously, once he finally seemed to have figured out which way was up. "It's been a few days."

This whole thing was awkward, and here he was trying to bring up small talk. I just wanted to cut the small talk and get this conversation over with. It hadn't even been a real or mature relationship, so why did we have to be? In my opinion, it was the kind of thing that could easily have been ended in a text message, or just an assumed ending, like I had been attempting to do before he messed it all up by deciding that we should meet in person to talk. Surely he wasn't going to ask me out on another date, the thought occurred to me. He couldn't possibly think this was going well.

"Yeah, it has." I answered him, purposely nonchalantly, as I slouched back in my chair. "What was so urgent we had to meet right now?"

He laughed uneasily and shifted in his chair. "Cutting right to the chase then, I guess."

"Well you sure made it seem like an emergency twenty minutes ago." I remember thinking.

"Might as well." I said.

Danny just sat there, though. It was probably about five minutes, but no doubt, the longest five minutes of my life. It was like watching Helen Keller learn to speak. Every thirty seconds or so, he would start to open his mouth like he was going to talk, but then he'd stop, as if he wasn't sure of his words, looking down into his cup the entire time. Maybe he thought he'd find the words floating around in there. After all, he did smoke a lot of pot. Anything was possible. Meanwhile, I could feel my cell phone buzzing in the pocket of the sweatshirt, where my hands were resting. "Something told me I just shouldn't have left the garage today." I thought to myself. To top it off, I looked over my shoulder to take my eyes off of Danny's agony for a moment only to realize that it was now sprinkling outside, and that the sky had grown much darker.

When finally, I could not take another minute of this awkwardness, and Danny hadn't uttered anything other than indistinguishable vowel-sounding noises in several minutes, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and began scrolling through it and realized I had a missed call from Tony. I scrolled a little further and realized that I also had a missed call from a Tennessee number. It wasn't in my contacts list, but I recognized the area code from having lived there before moving to Indy a few years before. I felt my heart speed up for just a second and I wondered if it could be who I thought it might be. They hadn't left a voicemail, according to my icons, which only made me wonder more if my mom had tried to call.

I pushed it from my mind quickly and instead sent Tony back a quick text:

"i'll call u back..watching danny have a stroke @ the coffeehouse =0 lol can't believe walked all the way here for this"

It was probably a wrong number or an old friend calling to find out what I was up to. I couldn't think of anyone, but as I sat there in the coffeehouse, that's what I had to believe.

Tony replied a minute later:

"haha ok have fun...btw u left a movie at my house so i'm gonna drop it in ur mailbox before i head back outta town just fyi"

I looked up at Danny to see how he was coming along. He seemed oblivious to the fact that I was even still sitting at the table. He seemed oblivious to the fact that he was born with functioning, fine motor skills.

"Danny?" I finally said, probably somewhat irritated. "I assume you had something to talk to me about, today? If you've had a stroke or lost your speech in some other tragic way, why don't we just reschedule?"

There was a long pause, during which time I considered getting up and leaving. Then finally, Danny seemed to stir a little. He looked up from his coffee cup at me with sad eyes. His usually somber, grayish-green eyes were all of a sudden red and puffy, and I could see tears welling up in the corners.

"You're always so funny." He smiled a sweet, sweet smile at me, as he let the first tear run down his cheek. He grabbed the napkin out from under his cup and let out a sniffle into it. "I know we haven't known each other for very long, but sometimes I think I love that about you."

"And you're always so high," I thought, silently to myself, "high as a kite, indeed."

As I stole another glance around the coffeehouse, with every intention of escaping, I felt Danny's hand under the table, grasp my free hand that had been resting on my knee. He used the other hand to release more sniffles into the napkin as he sobbed, "But I have betrayed you and our relationship."

"We're still in a relationship?" I thought to myself.

This was certainly news to me. I wasn't entirely sure we had ever even actually been in a relationship to begin with. This whole dating thing was becoming quite complex, as it turned out. Apparently, my first relationship ever had come and gone, without my ever having had knowledge of its existence. And with this breaking news bulletin came a new set of issues. I couldn't decide if I should go with it, so I could get home and go to sleep as soon as possible, or somehow address the fact that I was just informed by the boyfriend I didn't know I had, that I had been betrayed in our relationship that I wasn't aware existed.

"Oh?" I said to him, as it seemed like a safe answer either way for the moment. I wasn't sure I really cared to hear the rest of what he was going to tell me, but I could tell it was already raining pretty hard outside at this point, as I could hear it on the roof of the coffeehouse. So, I figured I had a minute.

He began to sob harder, and a little louder. "I'm so sorry for what I'm about to tell you and I hope that you'll forgive me."

He started to squeeze my hand even tighter and I could feel the clamminess of his own hand, as well as the little bit of circulation left in mine. I looked around and began to sink down into my chair a little, as it was becoming abundantly clear that we were drawing an audience. Suddenly, I was glad he'd chosen that quiet table in the back, after all. I remember wondering, once again, why hadn't I just stayed in the garage that day. I've found that there are times in our lives when we wish we could just disappear, and this boy seemed to have that affect on me lately.

Tears were running down Danny's face like a faucet. He continued, "I get the feeling that you've suspected something all along," he cried. "Just by the way you've distanced yourself from me."

Now, it seemed that the whole coffeehouse was quiet. Even the noise of the baristas getting orders and chatting with customers had died down almost completely.

Danny looked at me expectantly, like he was waiting for some kind of response, desperate for to find the forgiveness in my heart, for the evil he thought I suspected. Suddenly I was curious enough for the entertainment value of the situation, that going along with this insanity was worth a few stares. Besides, I couldn't just disappoint him, not to mention, our audience.

I wasn't sure what to say, but I had to say something. The word "yeah," fell out of my mouth without even thinking about it.

"I knew it!" He sobbed, even louder yet.

"What the hell is this boy talking about?" I thought to myself, amused.

It seemed like every second, his grip on my left hand intensified, so finally I used slid my cell phone back into the pocket of the sweatshirt and sent my right hand down to rescue it. I gripped the assassin hand that had a grip on my left hand, and after a moment, he latched onto the right hand instead. I seemed to have in the process, however, activated my invisible WWTD (What Would Tony Do) bracelet.

"You can tell me." I said in an almost whisper across the table to Danny.

Danny shook his head. "I cheated on you." He said in a high-pitched squeal, as though it physically pained him to say it.

"Really?" I thought. "This guy was able to get more than one girl to talk to him?"

That was pretty impressive in my mind. The same guy, who besides being a good listener and having alright taste in music, was about fifty steps back from being a lady's man, in almost every way humanly possible. The same guy, whose idea of a good time on a Saturday afternoon was to ride his moped to the zoo to visit the Butterfly Garden Exhibit. I had way underestimated his capabilities, but, nevertheless, opportunity had come knocking, and I was answering. I drew my hand away from his grasp, and scrunched my face up. I wondered if it was too much, but it must have been convincing.

"What?" I said in a mortified tone, though I failed miserably at creating fake tears to go with it.

Danny placed his hands on his face and continued sobbing for every bit of two minutes, as I tried with all my might to hold back my own tears...of laughter.

After a few minutes, Danny went on, in the dead silence of the coffeehouse, to tell me the story of how he'd met this girl at a party, while he was drunk and one thing had led to another, and things had happened and so on, as I inserted phrases, such as "oh my God," and "how could you?" when appropriate... "At least, he found someone who likes his toilet water-tasting kisses." I thought in my head. He apologized over and over again for how he'd broken my heart and would do anything for me to forgive him. And please don't break up with him. In the grand scheme of things, I really couldn't have care less about any of this. I hadn't even realized we were in a relationship until like ten minutes prior, and truth be told, I was growing bored with him already. I simply saw an easy way out at this point, and was just about to take it. That is, before his little speech took an unexpected turn.

"And the worst part of all of it," he sniffled into the napkin, "is that she's pregnant."

I heard quiet gasps of shock all around the room. A quick glance around told me that all eyes were shamelessly, on us. They were probably mostly curious as to what my reaction was going to be. Would I hit him? Would I throw things? Would I get up and run out of the coffeehouse with tears in my eyes and a broken heart?

"SERIOUSLY?!" I said in a shocked voice. I legitimately could not believe it.

Danny was shaking , he was crying so hard. His voice trembled and all the color had drained from his face. "It wasn't my fault though, Laura!"

I just looked right at him. None of it felt real. Maybe I really had fallen asleep in the garage, and this dream was the result of the heat.

"Honestly! I was so drunk and she was like two-hundred pounds! By the time I realized what was going on, she was too heavy and I couldn't get her off of me!" He blurted out.

In that moment, I could contain it no longer. Even I could not believe the magnitude or intensity of the laughter that proceeded to escape from my body. Danny, along with every other soul in the coffee shop, froze as I laughed and struggled to get out of my seat. They must have found my reaction somewhat puzzling, I suppose.

All in the same afternoon, I had been informed of a betrayal in a relationship that I didn't know I was in, discovered that my relationship had come and gone before I knew it had even existed, and learned that my boyfriend that I didn't even know I had was a lying, cheating jerk.

I was still laughing, as a matter of fact, as I turned away from Danny to leave the coffeehouse. From behind me, however, I heard him say, "Are you angry?" He sounded confused. "I don't understand. Why are you laughing?"

I turned to face him one last time, as I told him, "Don't worry about it. I guess I dodged a bullet. At least, Jolene and I will have something to talk about when she gets home. Goodbye, Danny."

# Chapter 8

The rain was coming down in buckets that afternoon, it seemed, and due to that and the heavy traffic at the time, I was forced to take a slightly longer way home as I walked back from the coffeehouse. I decided to take a larger, looped route that was about three quarters of a mile longer than the way I had come, but it had sidewalks so that I wouldn't have to worry about cars not seeing me alongside the busier roads because of the heavy rain. I had the hood up on the oversized sweatshirt, but since I was still in my running shoes and shorts, I was getting soaked to the bone. It was all I could do to protect my cell phone, underneath the sweatshirt, so that it wouldn't get too wet. As I got about halfway home, I felt it buzzing under the sweatshirt, so I peered down underneath it to see if I had gotten a message. Tony was calling me again. I had forgotten all about calling him back before I had left the coffeehouse. I carefully transferred the phone up to the hood and pulled the hood all the way over my head, planning to answer it really quickly just to let him know I'd call him back as soon as I got home.

"Hey, Tony." I said somewhat loudly, so he'd hear me over the background noise of the wind and the rain. "I'll call you right back in just a few minutes!"

"What?" I heard him ask.

"I said I'll call you back!" I repeated, nearly shouting this time.

The line went dead, so I figured he had heard me. I stuffed my phone back under my sweatshirt and gripped the hood over my head, though I was starting to wonder what the point of it was, considering I already looked like I had just been through a car wash. My running shoes were sinking, with each step I took, deeper and deeper into the mud and water that collected on the roadside. Then, over the sound of the rain and the cars, I heard a voice behind me yell, "Get in the car, DUMBASS!"

I was surprised to see the familiar blue of Tony's truck pulling over to the side of the road, right next to where I stood on the sidewalk. The passenger side window was opened just a crack and I could hear Tony telling me that the door was unlocked.

I swung the door open and attempted to wring out my clothes a little before getting all the way in.

"Don't even bother." he laughed. "Nice day for a walk, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes." I replied as I shut the door behind me. "Just wonderful."

"I saw those jogging shorts a mile away, so I said to myself, there's a hooker with some style. Thought I'd get a good deal, till I realized it was just you. So I figured while I was headed to your house, anyway, the nice thing to do would be to pick you up. So I watched you struggle for a minute or two for my own entertainment, then decided to let you know I was behind here to the rescue." He said.

"Well thanks, buddy." I laughed. "What a gentleman."

"What can I say? That's just the kind of guy I am." He replied with a sly smile as he checked his mirror before pulling back out into traffic. He turned the heat on low and then he reached under the bench seat rifling for a second before pulling out a red IU sweatshirt.

"Here," he told me as he set it in my lap, "just don't get your cooties on it."

I rolled my eyes, "It's an IU sweatshirt. I should be worried about it getting cooties on me."

I had stolen that sweatshirt from him so many times though, I didn't know why he even bothered calling it his anymore. I had just returned it to him a week prior, only to be making off with it again.

We took the longer, more scenic route back to my house to avoid the busy traffic. It was a quiet drive with very few words. The mix of the cold wet clothes and the warm air from the vents hitting me was making me shiver a little and every now and then Tony would look over, amused, taunting me with his mischievous green eyes.

"Cold? I can't believe you would pass up the opportunity to ride home with your lover, sweet Danny." He stated at one point, failing miserably at hiding his smirk.

I just shot him a dirty look, "Haha you just keep laughing."

I gave him the two minute run-down of my rocky relationship all the way through the traumatic break-up. When I finished, the only words that came out of his mouth were, "What a shame, that Danny. He was a real catch."

"Only Tony," I thought to myself, smiling as I stared out the window contemplating the rhyme and reason of my day.

When we finally pulled into my neighborhood, about ten minutes later, the rain was down to just a drizzle. The truck crept along the line of trees on the far side of my backyard, before rounding the corner and coming to a stop at the edge of the driveway. I shivered one last time as I started to take the sweatshirt off over my head and hand it back to him, to prevent myself from stealing it again, but before I got both of my arms out of it, I heard him say,

"Just get it back to me next time."

"I guess it would be decent for me to wash the cooties off and throw it in the dryer for awhile," I said, my mind drifting off to the hot, three hour shower I was about to take.

"Yeah, just maybe," He laughed. "I'm sure I'll get it back some time in November."

I nodded. It was probably true. "I'll just wrap it up and give it back to you for Christmas."

He ran his hand over his dark hair and rolled his green eyes.

"Knowing you..." He trailed off. "It looks better on you, anyway."

"I know, right!" I said sarcastically. I reached for the door and slid out of the truck. "Thanks, buddy. I'm sure I'll be seeing you again at some point in my life."

"I'm sure you will be." He nodded. "Hell, there's nothing to do in Muncie."

Sweat was literally clinging to his forehead and he reached over to turn the heat off.

"Oh, so you don't come back to Indy because you miss me?" I said, reaching for my heart. "Cut me deep." I was still standing in the drizzle with the truck door partially opened.

"Later, Hewitt" He laughed.

"Ciao!" I said in an exaggeratedly squeaky voice.

He scrunched his face up and cupped his large hand as small as he could make it, making a sarcastic waving motion. "Smooches!"

I laughed, closed the truck door and turned to trot up to the front door of the house. Tony could always make me laugh.

I made it all the way to the door, my fingers gripping the handle of the storm door, feeling closer and closer to that hot shower, when I heard Tony yelling my name.

"Hey Hewitt!"

I looked back. He was waving my cell phone and walking toward the front porch. I hadn't even realized I'd left it.

"Oh, thanks!" I said surprised, as I turned to meet him on the first step of the porch, but as I did so, I fumbled on the corner of the welcome mat and fell right off the step and into Tony. Shaken from the fall, I tensed up and grabbed Tony's shoulders. He looked mildly surprised as well, as he managed to keep his grip on the cell phone and catch both of my arms with a tight enough grip to stop my fall. My right ear brushed his and I could feel both our hearts pumping from the adrenaline of the motion. Tony was warm and I could feel his breath on my shoulder. It all happened so fast. Still gripping tightly to my forearms, just beyond my wrists, he pulled away, slightly to see my face. We were now almost eye level, as I now barely stood on the step, but more leaned on him for support. I forgot sometimes how tall he was. His green eyes looked right into mine as he asked,

"You alright, there?"

Still stunned, looking right into his eyes, it took me a second to register that he had just asked me a question. "Oh," I started to answer, "yeah, I just slipped I guess."

I didn't even have to look into a mirror to know that my face was now as red as his. My cheeks and ears were burning.

"I swear, Hewitt, sometimes I can't tell if it's drugs you're taking or drugs you need to be taking." He laughed nervously, as if trying to fill the empty silence. I don't think he even realized that he was still more or less supporting most of my weight. When he finally did seem to notice a few seconds later, he moved slightly closer to the step, which allowed me to set both feet down more firmly on the ground. For a moment, I couldn't tell if it was his heart or mine that was still pounding. We were standing just inches apart.

His grip on my arms loosened, yet remained, and then without warning, it all happened so quickly, but felt like slow motion. The next thing I knew, Tony's face was approaching my own and then his lips were on mine. The warmth of his skin seemed to cover me like a blanket. It couldn't have lasted more than about five seconds before I was looking back into his eyes again. I had no idea what to say and I could tell that he didn't either. No urge to vomit had come over me, but I thought my head might explode. I stood there looking at Tony for one more second before the words,

"Um....thanks for saving my life," fell out of my mouth. I thought I could fall over at any point. Like my legs would just give out and I'd have to crawl through the front door. Tony had let go of my arms now and as we both turned around to walk away in our opposite directions, we were so silent it was terrifying. We didn't even take a second look back. We made our getaway with such urgency that not another word was said. I made my way through the front door with not so much as a glance back behind me. Walking down the hallway toward the bathroom, I could hear Tony's truck starting outside. I cut the bath water on to drown out the sound and walked around the corner to steal a fresh towel from the laundry room. I must have stood there for a long time, because when I got back to the bathroom, the tub was nearly full. Even though it had just happened, I could hardly remember how the events had played out. The stupid phrase "Uh...thank you for saving my life," kept replaying like tape recorder. What a dumb thing to have said!

I stripped away my soaking clothes and hung them on the shower rod, just above the tub. I sat on the edge of the tub just letting my thoughts wander. Before I knew it, I was naked sitting on the edge of the tub, sobbing as hard as I could. Everything in my college education, not to mention my common sense, had told me not leave the garage that day. It was almost as if divine intervention had been screaming it in my face and I had disobeyed, only to face cruel and unusual consequences.

My mind flashed back to one summer day, four years ago when I was still fifteen. I'd gotten out of the bathtub only to find one of my step-brothers, standing just beyond the curtain. He'd been watching me all that time and I hadn't even realized it. I felt the shock and the embarrassment for a moment, as if it was happening again. I felt rattled when I recalled the urgency with which I wrapped the towel around me just as fast as I could and screamed for him to get out. My hands got clammy as I felt him grab my arm all over again and rip the towel out of my hands. The horror of the moment never faded from my mind. He'd pushed me up against the tiled bathroom wall with such force that I had hit my head. He had grabbed me and began forcing the weight of his body upon me, trying to kiss me in the process. I was so disgusted. I'd gotten away from his grasp finally and made my way past the living room and down the stairs, straight to my basement bedroom. I knew the creeper had been looking at me strangely since we'd moved in, but I never could have imagined anything like that. I remember the feeling of never wanting to come out of my room ever again. I'd called my father bawling on the phone, doing my best to tell him what had happened. I was so ashamed and could barely form my mouth to speak the words to utter them into the phone. He seemed upset at first, swearing he'd do something about it immediately, that he was coming right home. I guess he consulted Kathleen before he handled it, though. I could hardly believe my ears as he came downstairs and explained to me that boys would be boys. It was the final straw for me. I remember calling Tony right after it happened. I don't know why I did. I still recall the softness that seeped into his tone as he asked me if everything was okay, but I couldn't bring myself to endure the humiliation all over again. So, I just asked him to stay on the phone with me. I held the silver key to my heart and tried to hold back the tears. I hoped he couldn't hear the lump in my throat that just grew bigger every time he asked if I needed him to come get me. It was a tempting offer, to escape my prison, even for just a little while. But the idea of him seeing me that way was more than I could bear. He stayed on the line with me for hours that night until I was almost sound asleep. That very day, at that very moment in time, I had no family anymore.

I was a pathetic girl with wasted sentiments. I had slipped through the cracks and dad had watched me fall. Somehow, my friends had all gotten parents who cared about their well-being and safety, parents who loved them with all their hearts, even if they showed it in the strangest of ways. And my dad had once again chosen his new family over one of his own. The words "boys will be boys," echoed in my mind long after that night , and many nights to come, as years of nightmares and deep remorse for being alive lingered in my mind and on my heart. That was how they had decided to explain away what had happened to me. Boys would be boys.

And why did this keep happening to me? Why did it seem that suddenly people wanted to put their tongues in my mouth? I was a decent person. I had never really hurt anyone. I was a good kid. I went to school. I had a job. I was sort of religious...I was certainly starting to believe in karma anyway. Why did the thought of getting close to anyone make me physically ill? Why did it make me hurt? My mind just continued to flutter back and forth between Tony and "why me?" At least, I hadn't thrown up this time. I thought to myself amused, "Isn't your life sad when that's the basis on which you judge all kisses?" I was fairly certain that whatever higher power watched over things hadn't intended for it to go quite like that. I forgot to stick my toe in as I usually did, to test the water before hopping in and was slightly surprised by the almost scalding water. So, I turned the handle on a slightly cooler setting and edged in slowly. Before long, I was all the way in, lying down completely in the water, attempting to soak away the horrors of a life gone so completely wrong.

# Chapter 9

The leaves crunched beneath my running shoes as a cool breeze swept over me in on the dark trail. It was some time in the night, sometime between eleven at night and three in the morning possibly. I shivered and pulled edges of the long-sleeved sweatshirt down around my fingertips in an attempt to keep warm. I was running quite quickly, past several trees and a large open field to my left. It was all very familiar. I wondered how many times I'd been there. Each time the wind picked up, little swirls of dead leaves would rise, making the faintest, almost inaudible, swishing noise, tangling themselves in my shoestrings and scratching lightly at my ankles. The cool air chilled my bare legs while the swirling wind rustled my light jogging shorts. It was so dark I could hardly tell which trail I was on. I just kept running down the hill, watching my shadow cast from out of the corner of my eye between the breaks in the trees. Every now and then I would do a double take, thinking I'd seen two shadows, each time coming to the conclusion that mine was the only one there. It seemed like I was running forever, like the scenery was never changing.

Then I came to a small uphill grade. All of a sudden it was broad daylight in the park and I knew exactly where I was. I could feel summer all around me as the patches of light between the trees danced across the sidewalk from the soft breeze. The warm sun and the green trees on the park cast an exuberant, picturesque scene of the gazebo at the top of the hill. Yes, I had been here before. There was no doubt in my mind. I took slow deep breaths and I neared the gazebo, taking in the smell of the honeysuckles and a lake that I knew was just farther down the path. I could feel every step as I got closer to the small white gazebo at the top of the hill. I smiled for some reason, a large smile from ear to ear as I neared it, though I had no idea why.

The small white gazebo looked flawless and beautiful with the light that the sun upon and through it, from the opposite direction. It reminded me of a star at the top of the tree at Christmas time. From just a few feet away from it, approaching it still with a quick jog, I could see the yellow and purple Black-Eyed Susan flowers that were planted all the way around it. The smile still had not faded from my face as I neared the doorway of the gazebo, looking upon it like a sacred temple. It wasn't like me to stop during a run, but on this particular one, I had come to a complete halt at the sight of this simple scene. I bent down low to the ground and gathered a handful of the flawless Black-Eyed Susans. Upon first glance from the front of the small gazebo, no one appeared to be in it. I had carefully walked around to the white wooden steps with my hand-picked bouquet and made my way into the small building.

Somewhat to my surprise and somewhat not, I suddenly realized that I was not alone, after all. There was a small woman on the opposite side of the gazebo, looking out onto the lake, which was further down the trail, just over the hillside and fully visible from the gazebo. She was wearing a long black dress with dark colored sandals. She was quite tan. A mess of long dark curls hung down just below her shoulders. Suddenly I could hear water splashing in the direction she was staring. I walked slowly up behind her to catch a glimpse of the scene. I could see Elizabeth, running along the edge of lake in a bright yellow two-piece swimsuit, attempting to get away from Will who was wearing blue dark colored swim trunks and catching up to her quickly. Both were laughing. They made their way up to the dock, where I noticed my father was letting his feet dangle into the water, watching and laughing at the two. Will ran past the both of them and jumped into the water first, doing a cannon ball dive, splashing the other two on the dock, who were still laughing at him. I watched as he swam back up to the dock and climbed out, attempting to grab Elizabeth and throw her into the water as well. She was putting up quite a struggle as tiny Will tried with all his might to drag her, making little progress as she held onto one of the wooden poles laughing and fussing that he was going to mess up her suntan lotion.

Though I could only see part of her face, I could tell that the woman in the dress, seated in the gazebo, was smiling at the scene going on down below.

At last, and unfortunately for Elizabeth, Will must have recruited dad's help. He had gotten up from his previous position at the end of the dock where he had been letting his feet soak and now had a hold of Elizabeth around the waist, tickling her, as Will pried her fingers from the dock pole. The two of them, satisfied with their success at prying her free at last, made their way to the end of the dock, Elizabeth high over dad's shoulder in protest to the whole situation, but still laughing, nonetheless. Her light brown hair hung down over dad's white t-shirt and Will was just behind her dad messing with her hair and delivering wet willies to her ears, payback no doubt, for all the times she'd gotten him and he'd been too short to get her back.

Dad was just about to toss Elizabeth overboard when Will decided to surprise everyone and push them both over the edge. Much to his surprise, dad had half-turned just in time to grab his son's elbow with his free arm, and drag him down along with them. It was a funny sight, watching the three of them topple into the water, especially in such strange form. Something right out of the three stooges.

"Those three are ridiculous, aren't they?" The woman finally spoke, laughing and shaking her head.

Her voice was soft and familiar. I remember thinking how much it sounded like Elizabeth, but older somehow. Each word sounded carefully placed, like glasses in a cupboard, as though each vowel had been carefully spoken and placed. I was enchanted by the voice. The familiarity. The warmness to the tone.

I didn't say anything at first, still entranced by the scene taking place on the lake. Will was attempting to get away from dad and Elizabeth now, who were hot on his tail, as he scrambled toward the dock. All three, sharing the same goofy laugh, as they got closer and closer to him.

"Did you enjoy your run, sweetheart?" The woman had now turned her attention to me, where I was standing behind her in the gazebo, holding the flowers down at my sides.

"I did. The trails are looking great today." I told her, as she smiled sweetly back at me.

It was like looking in a mirror, slightly distorted by time and age, but a future replica of my own face nonetheless. The woman touched my arm and shifted her gaze back out to the three stooges on the dock.

"I'm so glad we all got to come out here again today," she said in her soft tone, running her hand along the upper part of my arm and sighing. Her same hand ran all the way down to my wrist, whereupon she realized I was holding something. She turned her head back towards me and fixed her gaze upon the still flawless, bouquet I had been holding onto all this time.

I held them up for her to better see.

"Oh, sweetheart, they're beautiful!" She smiled enthusiastically, as she motioned for me to sit down beside her.

I handed her the bouquet as she beamed at the beautiful, brilliant yellow and purple shades of the blooms.

"I picked them just for you, mom." I told her.

She reached for a box just beneath her seat, behind her legs, that I hadn't previously noticed. She pulled out a long, tall drinking glass.

"They're perfect." She smiled at me, with my own smile, Elizabeth's smile, I remember thinking to myself. "I'm going to get them some water so I can take them home to put into the kitchen, she stood up. The sunlight, which filled the gazebo, made her hair and skin glow. She didn't look real. I turned my head one more time out to the dock to see what the stooges were into now and realized they had left their posts, down in the water, probably to come up and get snacks, I had reasoned with myself.

"They're probably on their way up to scare you!" I warned my mother laughing, as I turned my gaze back around to meet hers. But she was gone.

It was dark outside again and I realized suddenly that I was sitting in the gazebo all alone now. An icy breeze brushed my cheek and bare legs, causing me to shiver at the chilly night. I could hear no splashing or laughter, as I had just moments before. I turned my head back in the direction of the lake, but it was so dark now that I could barely see it, other than the reflection that the moon cast out upon the wind-rippled surface of the water. Once again, I could hear the swishing of the leaves and the whistling of the wind, and not another sound. I was alone. Just like before.

I woke up from the dream with a start. I shivered for a moment as I sat up in bed, as though I had truly been out in the cold air, goose bumps raised across my arms. The dream always ended that way, all alone in the dark gazebo. I peered down at the clock on my cell phone, which read 5:08 a.m. I sat there, straight up in bed, for the longest time, just hoping to God I wouldn't fall back asleep. My hands were so cold and clammy. Tiny droplets of sweat above my brow seemed to be following the creases and squints of my eyes, stinging every few seconds or so. I was so thirsty. I sat there for several minutes, focusing on the pitch black walls of my room. I was like a small child after a nightmare; scared to get up and scared not to. It wasn't like most nightmares, where you wake up safe in your room and the terror is gone. No. I could wake up from a from a bad Freddy Krueger nightmare and see very clearly that Freddy wasn't actually there...and on a good night I could even possibly convince myself for the eighteen billionth time that Freddy wasn't even real. On a good night, that is. But not this nightmare. This nightmare was different. No matter how many times I had this nightmare and no matter how many times I woke up from it, I would always wake up alone in the dark gazebo. I would always wake up completely alone. Alone in my room, alone in this world, and alone would always be real.

Finally, when my throat could stand it no longer, I convinced myself to make the trek to the kitchen for something to drink. I reached around the foot of the bed in the dark, running hands over the sheets to find the socks I had pulled off earlier in the night. Once I found them, I put them both on before placing my feet on the cold basement floor and made my way out of the bedroom and through the rest of the cold, dark house.

When I got to the top of the carpeted stairs that led straight into the living room, I could hear the sound of someone snoring from what seemed like just a few feet away. I squinted into the dark, trying to figure out who had died on the couch. Probably dad, I figured. A fight with Kathleen or staying up late to look after one of her full-time children, I wasn't sure which, but sure enough there was dad passed out on the couch with his back facing the doorway to the basement stairs. I tiptoed past him around the couch, into the kitchen, being careful not to wake him. I crept around the kitchen with the same carefulness as I slipped a glass mug from the cupboard. A cold glass of water sounded amazing to my throat, but I knew that something that refreshing would probably keep me from getting back to sleep. I probably wouldn't be getting back to sleep anyway, I reasoned with myself, but a hot glass of tea would probably ease some of my clamminess. So I pulled a teabag out of the drawer and went through quietly opening and closing a few drawers for a pot and sugar. I thought I could hear dad shifting in his sleep here and there as the water for the tea boiled, almost inaudibly. I crept over to the kitchen table and moved a chair over closer to the stove, right up against the window.

The water finally seemed hot enough and I dipped the bags in and stirred it. I always used several bags and little sugar to make the tea taste stronger, a habit from childhood and one of the few memories I could or would let myself remember from that long ago. I finally emptied it into the mug and stirred the sugar in, plopping down into the wooden chair and staring into the darkness again. From where I was sitting, I could now see dad through the doorway of the kitchen dead to the world on the couch. I stared at the gray-haired stranger lying there, wondering how exactly he'd wound up on the couch on this particular night, just before realizing that I really didn't care. He'd wound up there thousands of times and he'd wind up there again. I just stared at my dad, almost in a trance, sipping on my tea as I listened to the sound of each deep breath he took when his chest rose and fell rhythmically.

The stranger there on the couch looked nothing like the dark-haired, youthful dad in the dream. I couldn't remember the last time I'd even been to the park with my dad. It had been years at least. I could barely remember the last time I'd gone anywhere with dad, or even wanted to, other than an adoption agency o be dropped off my last two years of high school. When dad made the decision to remarry, everything had changed. I, for the life of me, could not figure out why he'd stayed with her for so long. Sitting there in the dark, I supposed that Einstein must have been right. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results really was insane. I wondered if my dad was expecting different results. Maybe he was just stuck, I thought silently to myself. Stuck like me, unable to move forwards or backwards. Or maybe, just possibly, despite everything I'd witnessed as well as what my own common sense told me, my dad had found some form of happiness. Maybe the arguing, the chaos, the fighting, all gave my dad and Kathleen some sort of rush, or reminded him that he was still alive. I didn't know. Or perhaps, my dad had found himself wound up in a trap he would never free himself from and it was just something he had come to accept.

All I really knew was that I had done my best to fake it for my dad and pretend to be one big happy family at first, as long as my gag reflex could take it, anyway. I'd done my best to grin and bear it when Kathleen belittled me, and as she and her children ripped away at every bit of then notion of family that I had left. I'd been the shoulder for my younger brother and sister to cry on. I'd been the listener and the one to cheer them up when Kathleen unleashed her wrath upon them, and the one who faked it just well enough for dad to be happy. Then one day I realized it that it was a losing battle. So I pretty much said fuck it all and left my post. If dad wanted so much to maintain this life that was nothing more than a lie, then he could do it himself, I had decided. Then, either gradually or all of a sudden I'm not sure, one day dad had looked up to realize that I had checked out. He struggled to accept it at first, while he still had the window of opportunity, forcing me to go to holiday events I didn't want to go to, like Thanksgiving and Christmas. By the time our last Easter had rolled around, our tensions had reached boiling point. I remembered that day suddenly, a drizzly evening when I was getting home from work, preparing to make the long drive back to school. Dad, in his at the time, constant efforts to try and get me to interact with his new wife and kids, had asked me to go help Kathleen in the kitchen and tell her "Happy Easter" before I headed back. He'd been at it for the last four weekends with the nagging and the texts, when I'd informed that I was opting out of all of the Easter festivities, going to work and then heading straight back to school. I'd purposely made sure I was scheduled all day on Easter and loaded all my clothes and books back into the car so that the only thing I'd have to swing back by the house for would be my computer.

Looking back on it now, as I sat in the dark kitchen, I supposed I'd just grown fed up with it. Why hadn't it been enough just to be civil. I had never agreed to go above and beyond, or to even pretend, as I'd done for him the last couple of years. Why I wasn't that enough? Why was it never enough to just be his daughter? Why didn't he protect me? Maybe it was that I'd grown fed up with his persistence, or the fact that he was so keen on living a lie.

Dad must have been pretty shocked I guess. Maybe it was a realization for him as well. He no longer had the same control to force me to be a part of his lifestyle, and I think it must have really rattled him. I remember him standing in the yard barefoot as the rain came down in patches, yelling for me to get back in the house as I stormed right for my car with my backpack. I held back the tears. He wasn't concerned about all the hurt he had had caused me, all the pain he had put me through over the years. So, I wasn't about to volunteer any signs of weakness.

I still distinctly remember him shouting after me,

"I don't know what those friends or that school has done to you, but maybe we need to make some changes, young lady!"

It took everything I had not to gun it through the yard and run him down.

We had shared a few choice words and I'd driven off on that note. What the hell did he know, trying to say my friends had changed me for the worse or even suggesting that I might be on the wrong track because of them? No, I had wanted to tell him. Getting out of that fucking asylum of a house had changed me. Though I'd come back the very next weekend to work one week after our exchange, just as I always did on weekends, nothing was said about it, whatsoever. Dad and I continued to talk now and then, but it was much less than ever before. I still made my sarcastic, joking comments every now and then, and he still pretended to be dad sometimes and weekend after weekend it was exactly the same. It seemed that after the fight, he had given up on trying to force me to do most anything. Little did I know, that when I drove off on that note on that drizzly Sunday evening, that dad and I would never leave it. Besides the quick coming and going conversations we sometimes had as we came and went, conversations that ran as deep as puddles, we truly had become strangers. Day to day, we went about our separate lives, one of us trying to cope with our reality, the other one trying to escape it.

# Chapter 10

The next morning I woke up with a light head and heavy feet. I sat up in the bed and rubbed my eyes until the room materialized around me. The first thing I noticed, right away, were the brown cardboard boxes sitting on and next to my desk labeled "storage" across the sides with a heavy black marker. I was puzzled for a moment, before I remembered that my younger sister's marching band was supposed to be gathering items for the annual rummage sale any day now, and that she had probably left them for me to fill with old clothes. It wasn't the first time she had used a bobby pin to break into my room, intent on stealing my clothes. At least this time it was for a good cause, I laughed to myself. I rolled out of bed and started to make my way past the desk, grabbing my hairspray and cell phone, preparing to go take my shower. As I got to the desk, however, I happened to catch a glimpse into the box sitting open on the very edge of the desk. A flash of blue happened to catch my eye. I turned to get a better look. Right away, I noticed my favorite pair of blue jeans sitting in the top. I picked them up to make sure, only to see a whole pile of clothes that very much still fit me folded all the way to the bottom. In the box by my feet, I could see all the books from my shelf, including my treasured Edgar Allan Poe collection, stacked both ways. Figuring this was her way of making some suggestions, I just emptied the books back onto my desk, rolled my eyes, and decided I would deal with it later. A little annoyed, I started up the stairs from my bedroom to the hallway bathroom, wondering why my sister would have taken the liberty to pack up half my stuff.. The brown throw pillows on the couch, where my dad had been asleep the night before had been placed neatly back on their respective sides of the couch and the cushions had been straightened, like dad had never been there. The blinds from the back windows of the house gave way to the warm sunlight, which seemed to illuminate the entire hallway. The house was silent and for a brief moment I wondered where everyone had gone before I realized I should just enjoy it while it lasted. That's when I felt it for the first time. I could tell something felt different about me that particular morning. I sensed a something welling up inside me. It felt similar to excitement, or anxiety, but I felt very free and under my own control at, yet the very same time. I wondered if maybe I just needed some coffee. Sometimes I felt off when I woke up without it. I tried to push the feelings aside as I convinced myself that's all it was. I would feel better after a hot shower.

Walking by the mirror, I had to do a double take at the pale, tired looking girl standing in front of me. I ran my fingers through my hair, rubbing my scalp, my fingertips cold against it. Two drops of red fell warm against my forehead. I looked around to see what it was and where it was coming from, my eyes scanning the white textured ceiling. Holding my arms up directly in front of me, I suddenly saw the lines of red running from my wrists to my elbows. It was blood. The drops sprinkled onto the stony-tiled floor, drop after drop, like rain. Hating the sight of blood, I closed my eyes tightly, holding my arms against my body, feeling faint. When I opened my eyes, I looked back down at my wrists, preparing to grab the nearest towel and apply pressure. I took a deep and shallow breath. To my shock and surprise the blood was gone. I blinked twice and tried to catch my breath, grasping at my arms and trying to make sense of it all. Maybe it had just been a daydream, an awful daydream, I tried to tell myself, still shaking from the terrifying image. I stepped backward into the bathroom wall, and slid downwards toward the floor, holding onto my knees. I buried my face in my hands and took a few more deep breaths. When I finally felt like I could stand on my own two feet again, I reached forward for the counter and pulled myself back up. I looked back down at my arms one last time, to make sure one more time, there was no blood. I thought I must have been going crazy. When I found no blood, I fixed my stare, once again back onto the mirror.

"Well this is attractive." I laughed at myself. Coffee wasted and diet coke trashed as Tony would have called it. I turned my head sideways as to assess the damage. For a brief second, I caught a glimpse of my eyes. Mom's eyes. Just like in the dream. My mind flashed back to the morning of my high school graduation, almost two years prior, and how the same thought had crossed my mind as I'd examined my made-up face. I'd never escape those eyes, I thought to myself, before shaking the train of thought and continuing to assess the rest of the damage. I figured there wasn't too much I could do about it to look decent, and since I was only on my way to Jolene's house, other than brushing my teeth and briefly running a brush through my hair, it was a sweats and t-shirt kind of day. Jolene had lived with me for almost a whole year. She had seen much worse. That in mind, I took a quick shower, splashed some water on my face, and made my way down the street to her house to catch up on every piece of gossip she hadn't bothered to put into a text during the summer and any new ho rules she had designated during our time apart.

"Girl, that was the trip straight from hell!" Jolene threw her clean laundry on her bed and tossed the basket over into the doorway.

I pulled the bottom drawer of her dresser open and started folding and placing her jeans into it. Jolene, and her neat and tidy ways. Had we been in my room, laundry might have gone in the dresser, but folding was definitely not a priority. I must have been doing it wrong because a minute later, she came around to my side and started unfolding the jeans, spraying them with wrinkle release, and then rolling them tightly instead as she chatted away about her vacation adventures. Jolene was a perfectionist and I was used to her obsessive compulsive ways.

"I don't know about you, but I'm sooooooo ready to go back to school." She sighed. "Never thought I'd see the day...!" She trailed off, examining her pile of white socks, intensely. I could tell she was trying to decide whether or not to run them through a second time with bleach or not. The things that plagued my poor, dear friend's mind. She must have finally decided, because she scooped the pile up and put them back into the basket she designated for white clothes only. Once, she seemed to have made her full circle back to earth, and the sanity returned back to her eyes, she exclaimed, "Ooooh, girl! So tell me 'bout this little bit of lip action with Danny!"

"Oh, god." I groaned. I forgot I had even told her about that, briefly as it had been through a short text message. Something along the lines of:

"So I'm thinking about cutting Danny's tongue off with a machete today...Just thought you should know."

"Please," I pleaded, "Let's talk about anything else."

"Oh hell naw." She cracked. "Don't even think you're getting off that easy! I been stuck in the car for three days like a MOFO! Most interesting conversation I heard the whole vacation was about hemorrhoids. Please, child, enlighten me!"

"That's too bad." I tried to push what she had just said from my mind. One day I'd have to draw up a contract that informed her that we were on a need-to-know basis. "But I'm taking it to my grave."

"Girl, now it couldn't have been all that bad." She said, searching my face, though I wasn't budging. "You didn't like it? Even just a little bit?"

"Nope," I answered her, "continuing to fold laundry.

"Well, damn," she said, after a long pause. "Probably just as well. He's not the cutest. You could definitely do better.

I was doing my best to ignore her, hoping she'd change the subject.

"Don't worry, girl. We'll get you a few hos when we get back to school." She nodded, completely serious.

"No thanks." I was quick to answer her. "I've had enough of this game to last me the rest of my life. I was perfectly fine before people started wanting to put their tongues in my mouth like some kind of epidemic!"

Traumatic flashbacks flooded my mind. It was literally like a zombie apocalypse from the movies I had watched with Tony.

Jolene was cracking up at this point. "Well girl, lemme tell you! If them tryna stick their tongues in your mouth has you this freaked out, just wait! Because it only goes downhill from there! Literally!" She laughed.

She tried to compose herself as I tried yet again to push unwanted images from my mind.

"She's probably right." I thought to myself.

I had never had this problem before. Back in high school guys were my friends, my classmates, or they blew me off completely. Then, all of a sudden one day I woke up and tongues were swooping in ruining my life and stealing my sanity. Cat ladies didn't have to deal with dilemmas like this. The thought crossed my mind. Yes, I could be a cat lady. Just move somewhere really far away, since I didn't really do Indiana winters, anyway. I'd call myself Millie, buy twenty cats, and live all alone in the middle of nowhere. Then all my troubles would be over. Or I could could be a nun. I remembered reading one time in high school about a convent in Spain where nuns prayed and baked cookies all day. I wished it was that simple. The thought crossed my mind with such seriousness that it scared me.

Growing older was a terrifying plan.

"So...?" Jolene asked me, "Since you're clearly no fun, did you do anything else this summer besides work you life away at hardware hell?"

That was a good way to describe my job, I remember thinking to myself. Luckily and unluckily, with it being towards the end of the summer, I was getting fewer and fewer hours as they had less customers. It meant less extra cash for school in the upcoming fall, but I had saved up so much anyway that it was really my sanity that was being preserved by not having to put up with customers quite as often.

"Not really." I said. "Worked, hung out with Tony, ran...the usual basically."

"TONY!" Jolene made me jump. "Now THAT is a piece of ass I wouldn't mind chasing all summer!"

I just laughed. "SMH, Jolene."

"Seriously though, girl. Tall, fine, and a white boy with some swag! Mmmmhhmmm!" She exclaimed, cracking up. "Girl, don't be actin' like you don't know your friend is hot. Can't be stuntin' on him like that!"

I grabbed a sock bundle and wailed it at her head.

I barely missed her. Laughing, she said, "You're lucky I like you, but throw one more thing over here and I swear Ima put my foot so far up your ass, we'll need surgery to remove it."

She pointed her finger at me to emphasize her seriousness. She'd been making that threat since I met her, and as far as I could tell my ass was still fully intact.

"Don't think I'm stuntin'!" She shrieked with laughter when I didn't seem to be taking her too seriously. "Shoot, I'll mess you up for throwing shit...lucky you missed!"

She stood up to walk across the room to turn the radio up, which has been on low for a little while.

"Uh-oh!" She screamed. "Me and Nicki Minaj 'bout to tear it up!"

Jolene was a huge fan of Nicki Minaj, as white as Jolene always reminded me that I was, thanks to her, I know knew almost every word to most of her songs.

I was singing along quietly when Jolene jumped on to p of her bed and began to attempt to win the BET awards.

"EXCUSE ME!

I'M SORRY!

I'm really such a lady!

I rep young money.

You know Slim. BABY!" She sang as loud as she could and then gasped for air.

It was always entertaining to watch Jolene "go Nicki," when her songs came on. She started pulling out dance moves I had never seen before. Dance moves I could have gone the rest of my life without having seen. She was a stick person with a curvy soul, and in complete denial that she was a black girl born without an ass.

I was still laughing in my mind about the comments she had made about Tony. I'd have to let him know that he had swag. He'd appreciate that...If we ever spoke again. Things had been so awkward since that afternoon on my front porch a few days before. Neither texts nor calls had been exchanged in either direction. I was beginning to notice a pattern with that front porch.

I was so confused. Tony's kiss hadn't been like Danny's. It hadn't sent me running for ipecac and the commode. It hadn't made me sick at all. It felt normal...and ok. Too normal...and I think that's what scared me most of all.

" _That front porch is ruining everything,"_ I laughed to myself. I knew it was much deeper than that, but the thought of it gave me something to smile about.

..........................................................

It's hard to believe that it's been three years since that afternoon at your house, Jolene. I know your life went on, and I hope it's everything hoped for. The presence of the words unspoken is never far from my mind.

# Chapter 11

That evening when I parked my car in front of the house and started across the yard, I noticed an extra car in the driveway, the exact reason I never parked there. It was a trap to block you in and the only way out, as I had discovered the summer before, was to gun it through the front yard, and the still partially visible tracks from my last escape attempt were still a topic of great controversy at home. My step-mom was still threatening to hide my body where no one would ever find it if I ever even thought about attempting another "the fast and the furious." I made it five feet in front of the front porch before thinking better of it and deciding to go around to the back door. I had learned my lesson. Every time I got too close to that porch, something bad happened, and my life was changed forever. Besides, this way I could avoid the family and whoever this visitor was...likely some annoying family member of Kathleen's as well. Two birds with one stone, and to top it off, the pissed off porch wouldn't get to finish me off.

Carrying with me, the pride that I hadn't let the porch get me again, I began to make my way around the side of the garage and down the hill, where the backyard already looked dark. If I hadn't walked right into him, I might not have noticed dad making his way up the dark hillside in the opposite direction. The sight of him startled me a little.

"What are you doing?" He looked at me, puzzled.

"The front door was locked." I lied quickly...so quickly that I was pretty impressed with myself. I knew that neither avoiding family nor what he would consider to be stupid superstition would bode well with him. He'd grown tired of his own children complaining about his new family long ago. To say something about them was just to start a fight I didn't care about. So, a lie seemed like my best shot.

"Oh," He sighed, "That's weird. Guess I better head to the back door too, then. Your Aunt Mary probably locked it."

He rolled his eyes and turned to walk with me around to the back.

Yep, I definitely called that one. My step-Aunt Mary was a prime example of family members I'd rather not associate with or breathe the same air as or give ice water to if they were on fire...you get the point.

"Aunt Mary's here?" I said, not even bothering to contain the excitement in my voice. "Nice."

Dad didn't say anything. I had the feeling he too shared my excitement. Once he and I made it around the side of the side of the house and to the back door, he swung it open and started in, propping it enough for me to walk in as well. However, I just stood there for a second, trying to figure out some excuse or way to avoid being sucked up the stairs and into the family room with dad, now that I had been officially spotted. I didn't mind doing chores and earning my keep, but not when Aunt Mary was around. I didn't care to hear her racist remarks that everyone excused, or hear her go on and on about her real nieces and nephews when I didn't give a fuck about them either. They could all go to hell.

"You coming in?" He finally asked me, and I knew it was escape now or suffer for the next two or three hours of my life until Aunt Mary decided to go home.

"Crap!" I exclaimed a little too dramatically, momentarily forgetting everything Tony had every taught me about lying before making a quick save and stepping right back on my game. "I forgot my phone in the car. I'll be back in a minute."

I turned around quickly, as if to head back up the side of the house, so dad wouldn't catch on by any tell tale look on my face. Dad yelled after me that he'd unlock the front door for me so I wouldn't have to come back around again. I yelled back a quick thanks, and as soon as he closed the door made a beeline for the opposite direction toward the trampoline in the back corner of our yard, toward the very end of the dark tree line. I'd sneak back into the house in about half an hour when they forgot about me. They'd assume I'd gone to sleep in my room or left again without saying anything. Dad might even forget that I had even been home if I was really lucky.

I made it to the back corner, where the trampoline was situated by itself on a small hill in the backyard. I climbed up on it, removing my shoes, before I rolled over comfortably on my back. From the dark yard, I could see the whole family in action through the large back windows of the house. It was like a tv show. A tv show that I had once been a part of. Even just a year ago, I thought to myself, I would have been in there with them all laughing, joking, and eating dinner, like was usual for me back then.

The trampoline felt warm on my back, where the sun had reflected off its black surface all day. I watched my younger sister joining Will at the table watching Aunt Mary talking about something from across the room. I felt sorry for them that they hadn't escaped in time. Elizabeth would probably come up with something to get out of it about halfway through dinnertime. Will was more like me. He was so far gone that he would remain in his own head for a few more years before he too would see the light.

I turned my head toward the street instead and tried to figure it out. In my early high school years, I had been the all around good girl. I had stayed home with the family and had actually had the strength enough to pretend I enjoyed being around other people most of the time. My "parents" were always right, even when they were wrong, and I did whatever they told me to, even making sure to look over my shoulder regularly to be sure I was doing things as they would want me to. Whatever it took to keep the peace. Then one day, out of nowhere it seemed, I had woken up and the world was a different place. My family was officially gone, charades was overplayed, and yes, other people sucked. There, on the trampoline, I began to wonder to myself, when that change had occurred. I thought about the day my dad first dropped me off at college, and how I had cried thinking to myself about my life and how I didn't know who to be. The act had gotten so good that even I had halfway believed it. How had it come to be, that now I'd do just about anything not to go home? How had it come to be that now I'd rather run into a burning building than my own front door.

As I lied there thinking to myself about it, I noticed a pair of headlights slowing down by the edge of the tree line. I squinted, but due to the darkness and the trees, couldn't really tell what kind of car it was. It came around the edge of the tree line and crept up to the stop sign, before parking at the corner and cutting the engine off. Then, I watched as a tall dark figure crept down along the edge of the house, stumbling next to the burn pile and one point, as it made its way all the way up to the back door. I lied still, watching to see if they would go in, and wondering who it was. Probably some boy for Elizabeth, I had reasoned with myself momentarily. The figure stood there for a moment before pulling out a cell phone and as the light shined upon their face, I could suddenly see clearly that the figure was Tony. My phone, which was lying at my side, began to buzz. I clicked the talk button and put it up to my ear.

"Hello?" I said in a quiet voice. "Are you here yet?"

"What?" He asked in a confused, whispered voice. "How did you know...?"

"Because I can see you, bestie!" I said louder, across the yard. I was less worried about anyone in the house hearing, with all the noise that I could tell was already going on in the living room through the windows, "And I might add, would you like some fries with that shake?!"

Tony jumped a little. I was impressed. It was usually impossible to scare him. I heard him laughing as he headed toward the corner of the yard to join me.

"Nice." He said, kicking his own shoes off and leaping up beside me, extending his feet to rest upon my lap.

"I thought so." I said triumphantly. "What are you doing here...creeping the outside of my house? I thought you were Danny for a minute, putting that duct tape and rope to good use."

I pushed his feet off my lap.

"You mind?" I laughed.

"Not at all," he replied, laughing and throwing them right back over my thighs, making sure to frog my right thigh with the bony heel of his foot. "I forgot you're only attracted to killers. Next time I'll bring a weapon and see where that gets me."

Once I had escaped the assassin heel, I rolled over onto my side, laughing and looking up at him, happy it was dark out so he wouldn't see the red in my face. He was wearing a familiar, black Zeppelin t-shirt I had only seen a thousand times. The same mustard stain along the collar that had never completely come off, from a chili dog in my car one time that just couldn't wait. To be fair, in his defense, it was indeed the "perfect" chili dog: hot chili sauce, cheese, horse radish, mustard, onions, more cheese, and love. I remember myself and the vendor of the chili dog stand just about gagging when he was asked to repeat his order. Needless to say, I'd made him roll down the window on his side before bringing it into the car so I wouldn't pass out from the fumes. It always made me laugh to think of that day and how excited he'd been to get his hands on it. How he had paid the man and then smiled at his foot long heart attack like he'd just won a million bucks, only to drop it on the floorboard of my car before even taking the first bite. I could still see it so vividly in my mind; his daring rescue onto the floorboard as if he was James Bond, to rescue his dear chili dog. The saddest eyes I'd ever seen examining the chili dog and then looking back at me. I half expected to see tears in his eyes.

I could still hear him, as if it had happened yesterday, exclaiming, "TEN SECOND RULE!" before inhaling it anyway.

Luckily, my car had plastic floor mats at the time, not that I would have been nearly as concerned about stains as the smell of a concoction like that forever branded my car as an accessory to the chili cheese dog massacre. We had had some good times.

"Well," He said airily, "I just so happened to be in the area early this week, and was wondering if you'd care to go for a drive?" He stopped talking and there was a long pause.

I could tell we were both still trying to get over the awkwardness of our last encounter.

He added quickly, "Basically there's nothing else to do, so since you don't really have a life, I figured I could come bug you."

"Whatever!" I reached over to smack him, but he scooted away too quickly. "Well, Aunt Mary is here, so you could just about bribe me away from the house with trip to the dentist...Even CHURCH!" I exclaimed sarcastically.

"CHURCH?!" He played along. "That's pretty serious. Let's get you out of here!"

"My hero!" I joked.

With that, we crept up to his truck and made our getaway across the yard, staying close to the other side of the trees to avoid the view from the windows. It wasn't long before the awkwardness that had been so strong and present seemed to fade like the house that had never been and never would be home, in the rear-view mirror.

I'm sure we drove for hours that night. We took a long loop around the whole city or Indianapolis, laughing and talking as though no weirdness had ever happened, and for that I was grateful. I wound up telling him about the dream about my mom at one point. I'm not sure why we got into that. It just some came up and the next thing I knew I was telling him every detail of it, from the hot sun, to how she looked like me, even about how thirsty I was when I woke back up and how I had barely gotten back to sleep. He was quiet the whole time I described it all to him. I'd been having the recurring dream for a couple of years, but this was the first time I'd ever actually told anyone about it. It felt strange to describe it all out loud, almost like I was hearing it for the first time, myself. After I'd finished telling him everything, we just sat there in silence for several seconds. I began to focus on the yellow lines on the street in front of us, wondering whether or not I should have told him, wondering why in the hell I'd told him. When he finally opened his mouth to speak, I have to admit, it doesn't happen very often, but I was stunned.

"What a selfish bitch." He said, much to my shock and surprise.

"What?" I asked him, looking right at his face, trying to figure out where in the hell that had come from.

"Yeah," he said with a serious face, still looking straight ahead, hands resting on the wheel. "I mean, you ran all that way and even brought her flowers, and she just left you in the park without offering to give you a ride. No wonder you woke up so damn thirsty."

I laughed for a second, wondering if he'd even gotten the gist of what I had been saying, or had only been half-listening and then jumped in when it seemed like a good time.

He turned his head to flash me that mischievous grin.

"Women," He pretended to gripe, shaking his head, causing me to laugh with him.

After a little while, I leaned my seat back a little and relaxed as I watched the street lights pass by, accompanied by the low hum of the radio and the sound of Tony's voice, just above it making fun of people walking through Broad Ripple Village.

"Look at that drunk woman dancing by herself!" He pointed out, laughing.

I smiled here and there as he talked, just enough that he couldn't tell that I was in off in my own little world, lost in my thoughts and the tranquil night. It had been such a long summer, but in that moment, it was as if all that mattered was the glow that the city lights cast across Tony's face and the way his eyes lit up when he smiled, reflecting the image of the road ahead as he stared at the path in front of us. I'd miss this. He was slouched back in the driver's seat with one hand on the wheel, so comfortable...just like summer should be. The way the whole world should be. All year, it now seemed to me, I had been moving through rooms and just going through the motions. There at college, where I didn't belong, and living at home with my family of strangers for so many years. A job that I was terrible and had no desire to get better at. That constant longing to be somewhere else, no matter where I was. But right then, in the car with Tony, was the first time in a long time that I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be. Still looking over at my best friend, I continued to let my head swim with those thoughts about a summer, and a chapter, rounding the bend, and coming to an imminent close.

"Tony?" I said to him in a soft tone, looking out the window, far away. "I..."

He cut me off, "It's ok. I know."

Just the way it is with the best friends, sometimes the unsaid is said and the said is unsaid. And that was all the discussion we needed. I wanted to tell him so many things. I think first I would have thanked him for teaching me how to dance, and for always being Tony. I just reached around the back of my neck and unclasped the chain that held the silver key, in the dark. He didn't even notice, as I set it, carefully, into the cup-holder on my side.

I felt different somehow, but still the same. I clutched the sleeves of my sweatshirt and pulled it close to me, wrapping my arms around one another.

When Tony dropped me off that night, or more accurately put, that morning around three-thirty a.m., we said our sleepy goodbyes in his truck, knowing we'd see each other again at again at some point. I wanted to leave things on that note. No one ever really knows about such things. I think we both knew things would be different, neither us knowing how, just somehow that they would be. Part of me wished the night didn't have to end because I knew things would be different when I got out of his truck. Life would never reflect the way I had felt that particular night. I would never get back to being the person I should have been, and that's why I had to do it. I knew that without much contemplation and felt more sure of the decision I had already made. I smiled as I got out and stood in the door of it for just a second, for the very last time.

"Ciao!" I said exaggeratedly, before a long awaited yawn finally got me.

It must be true what they say, that yawns are contagious, because he yawned too and tried to erase from the sleepiness from his tired green eyes. Those tired green eyes that always seemed to be looking right through me, as if they already knew, a visual that never left me.

"Smooches!" He laughed.

As soon as it fell out of his mouth, we both turned a little red. It was clearly too soon for jokes just yet.

We exchanged awkward smiles and settled for a simpler goodbye. I spotted my necklace with the silver lying just across from him, sparkling from the ray of moonlight that shined across the dashboard. A representation of one of the two things he would never go anywhere without. I'm glad he kept the necklace, even though it's about time for him to put me away. I know a couple of times he's going to dial six digits, right before he remembers, and I hope it gives him comfort, knowing I wanted him to have it. I hope he holds it close to his heart when he asks himself why, because in his heart a part of me will never leave...I stood in the yard, watching and waving, as he pulled his truck back out onto the street and disappeared into the night. Then, I turned and walked slowly up to the house to make amends with the front porch. That late at night, at the tail end of a summer like the one I had just endured, I figured a semi would damn near have to come barreling off the highway, through the neighborhood, and into the house for the porch to finish me off at this point. Besides, after a night like that, I was optimistic enough to believe that everything had happened for a reason.

So instead of dodging it, or hurrying over it and into the house, I sat down on the top step and let my feet rest against the soft ground. Leaning up against the brick wall of the house, I stayed planted there, just like that for hours until the sun came up. Thinking about my summer and my life. Days gone by and days to come. I thought about my friends, my dissolved family, and even the missed call from the Tennessee number. Earlier, as I had ridden in the car with Tony, I had even considered calling it back. Part of me had wanted to know if after all this time, she had really tried to call. Part of me had wanted to know what she could possibly want, if it was her at all. But as I sat there on the porch, holding my phone in my hands and staring down at the number, I watched as my finger pressed the red delete button and as the pop up appeared to ask if I was sure. I was. I forgave her a long time ago. I no longer needed to know. I thought about calling Jolene for a second, but it was late and I knew she probably wouldn't answer. It would all be okay in the morning. After a long time of searching, I finally had a sense of calm. It was almost over. It was almost time to go. The new is so hard to accept when the past still hurts so deeply, but I was ready to let go of what I had previously known to make room for the journey ahead of me. I was ready to stop grinding my teeth at life and carrying the burden of a heart so many times broken. I knew people were going to say what they wanted, but I, and I alone, determine the truth that best defines me. And if I'm truthful to myself, then I can admit what I knew along. I never belonged in that world. It was finally time for me to go home and I didn't feel any sadness. I felt relieved.

It's impossible and pointless to try to turn back the hands of time, but I think the thing that would have made the biggest difference would have been my parents telling me they loved me. Part of me wishes they had hugged me every day and just told me how much they cared about me. One father and one mother. Even if they weren't under the same roof, just telling their daughter how important she was to them. Maybe they would have seen how much I needed them. Maybe they would have noticed something when I didn't wake up that morning. And then maybe I would never have gotten so broken in the first place. It could have made the difference...but now we'll never know. No one will ever know now. There are places beyond this realm that we embrace as our world, where there are no more tears, where heart break ends and we're forced to spend all of eternity thinking about what could have been. As I watch the tears fall; the tears of those who never understood me and never tried to mend me. Tears of those who would not under any other circumstance have come to love and cherish my memories the way they do now, along with the tears of those I never really left. Everything I ever owned, sitting in a box, and my body in the ground. Now they gather around to love me from afar. They congregate to remember the person they all thought I was and love me for a picture of a place in time that can never be erased. Some of them have their faith to help them reconcile that I have found peace and am in a better place. A few of them will have remorse for words unsaid and time not taken. Most of them will never have seen it coming. I'll watch them leave their flowers, and me, behind...

I was a 19 year-old kid as I stood up on the porch and prepared myself to go home. I looked out onto the yard and as far as I could see into the dark neighborhood. I could tell that the sunset was just over the house by the red and purple colors in the sky and the light it all cast into the yard. I longed so much to be a part of it. It looked ominous and indecisive, as my summer had seemed to be, as well as the days ahead. People will tell you things your whole life. How to look, how to act...how to feel. I finally did something just for me. I finally set myself free. I lingered for a second more before turning and heading into the house and to my bed to sleep.

