 
Pulling up Stakes

and Other Piercing Stories

by

**David Lubar**
Pulling up Stakes

and Other Piercing Stories

eBook edition

Collection copyright 2012 by David Lubar

Cover design by digitaldonna.com

"Shockers" copyright 2005, David Lubar, first appeared in Every Man for Himself. "War Is Swell" copyright 2002, David Lubar, first appeared in Shattered. "The Heroic Quest of Douglas McGawain" copyright 2004, David Lubar, first appeared in Don't Cramp My Style. "Bread on the Water" copyright 2003, David Lubar, first appeared in Destination Unexpected. "Orway Otnay otay eBay?" copyright 2009, David Lubar, first appeared in This Family Is Driving Me Crazy. "Duel Identities" copyright 2000, David Lubar, first appeared in Lost & Found. "Pulling up Stakes" copyright 2004, David Lubar, first appeared in First Crossing. "Here's to Good Friends" copyright 2008, David Lubar, first appeared in Owning It. "Claws and Effect" copyright 2006, David Lubar, first appeared in What Are You Afraid Of? "Words of Faith" copyright 2002, David Lubar, first appeared in Soul Searching. "Habitat for Humanity" copyright 2006, David Lubar, first appeared in Twice Told.

First Smashwords Edition, January, 2012

###### Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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# 

# Table of Contents

Introduction

Shockers

War Is Swell

The Heroic Quest of Douglas McGawain

Bread on the Water

Orway Otnay otay eBay?

Duel Identities

Here's to Good Friends

Claws and Effect

Words of Faith

Habitat for Humanity

Pulling up Stakes

About the author

Other books by David Lubar

#

#  Introduction

Each story in this collection began with an act of courage, though not on my part. Nearly a dozen times, an author or editor took a deep breath and made the splendidly dangerous decision to create an anthology. I would never be so bold. I would never be so ambitious. I would definitely never want to tell another writer that he needed to cut his story or, worse, that his story didn't make the cut. Anthologies require a huge investment of time, and receive a lot less love in return for that investment than novels get. Or cakes. I've written six short-story collections. Those are easy. Collections are the voice of one writer. I pick whatever plots and topics I feel like. An anthology has a single theme, but a mix of voices. I'll get a call or email from an editor, stating, "I'd like a story from you about phobias." Or war. Or, gasp, titter, gasp again, menstruation.

That's where I come in. As much as I would never want to edit an anthology, I've enjoyed being on the other end of the gun. The editors I've had the pleasure to write for have helped me craft some of my best work. One story in here underwent both a sex change and a drastic weight reduction. Another was lengthened on request. Titles were shot down. Awkward sentences were circled. Characters were assassinated, or, at least, removed from the page. It's a good process.

As the cover indicates, the stories do seem to involve more than a few sharp objects. I suspect either that's coincidental, or it reveals an aspect of my personality that's better left unexplored. I won't go on at length, here. The interesting part is the fiction, not my thoughts about writing it or the history of the stories. I hope you enjoy what follows.

# Shockers

Delia shrieked liked she was being gutted with a dull butter knife. Oh boy. I knew that scream. I knew it well. It was the one that announced earth-shaking news.

We were up in her room. Her folks were pretty cool about that, as long as we kept the door cracked an inch or two, though her mom generally popped her head in at random intervals to ask if we wanted a cup of hot chocolate or to inform us about the topic for this evening's _Nightline_.

Her dad glanced in our direction if he happened to be walking down the hall, though he didn't talk much. Our longest conversation took place the first time we met. I'll give him this — he didn't blink. I think my hair was pink that week. Can't remember for sure. I had the earrings, the nose ring, and the one in my lip, but I hadn't gotten my eyebrow pierced yet. Delia's dad lifted his right hand, pointed at my cheek, and said, "Steve, I think you missed a spot." Very funny.

Back to the scream. It was Friday night, around eleven. I was hanging out, reading _Neuromancer_ for the ninth or tenth time. The book was one of the summer reading assignments for senior English, which I took as a good sign. Delia was downloading the latest top-forty samples, exchanging instant messages with her friends, and surfing for fashion news to make sure the pants she'd bought two days ago were still in style.

After the scream, Delia leaped from her chair and clapped her hands together like someone killing a bee. As much as I disliked the scream, I loved the way everything moved when she jumped. She was in great shape. She didn't just turn heads. She snapped them. Last week, I swear I saw a guy in the mall do a one-eighty from the neck up. I could almost hear vertebrae separating. Of course, the fact that her skirt could be mistaken for a belt added to the impact.

"Steve, you'll never guess," she said.

"Martians invaded the mall?" I asked, placing my book face down to save my place.

"No. Guess who's playing at the Dome?"

I replayed her scream through my mind and knew the answer. And, with the answer, all the consequences. My fate was sealed. Life would suck for two hours at some point in the future. Why couldn't love be deaf? Ungritting my teeth, I spoke their name. " _Oh! Golly_."

"Yeah. _Oh! Golly_ ," she said. "They're playing at the Dome next month. Tickets go on sale Monday."

"Oh great," I said. Softly. As the posters that were plastered across her walls testified, Delia was their number one fan. I didn't share her enthusiasm. _Oh! Golly_ was one of those bands that, like Frankenstein's monster, have been sewn together by an evil genius. They weren't created in a gas-fumed garage by a group of musicians who'd known each other since birth. They sprang from the depths of a record company's marketing department. Their music was upbeat. Their lives were wholesome. Between the five members of the group, they had enough shiny white teeth to tile a spacious bathroom. The title of their latest album was _Puppy Chuckles._ Kill me now.

Delia dashed across the room and hugged me. "I'm so excited. We are going to have the best time." She kept her grip while jumping up and down. Had I been lighter, I would have left the ground. As it was, I could feel part of my body rising. Okay, kill me later. I reached up to return the embrace.

"You kids want ice cream?" Delia's mom inserted the front portion of her head into the room. "I've got mocha almond fudge, and peanut butter swirl."

"No thanks, Mrs. Kensington," I said, as I stepped away from Delia and tried to wipe all signs of passion off my face.

"Well, let us know if you change your mind." She withdrew and moved silently away along the thick carpet in the hall.

Delia ran back to her computer. I ran various escape options through my mind. Maybe she wouldn't be able to get tickets. Maybe the whole band would come down with food poisoning. Maybe I'd break both legs in a snow-boarding accident. Okay, not likely in the middle of June, but a guy could hope.

As much as I loved to visit my fantasy world where I could imagine entire bands suddenly struck down with a hideously painful gum disease, I realized I was out of luck. Delia always got what she wanted, whether it was a new outfit, concert tickets, or any guy on the planet. Her dad made good money doing some sort of thing with municipal bonds. Her mom came from a family that once owned a chain of movie theaters. Delia was an only child. The Kensingtons had nobody else to spoil.

I'm not poor, but my life wasn't anything like Delia's. We moved in different circles. Possible even in different universes. But we're both good artists. Very good, actually. So we couldn't help running into each other all the time in the art room. I could tell Delia didn't want to admit that some freaky guy with spiked hair and a face full of hardware could draw like a Renaissance master. And I wasn't willing to accept that some egocentric chick with perfect makeup and coordinated outfits could paint circles around the French Impressionists. But there it was. And there we were.

I stayed after school a lot to work on stuff. One day, when Delia and I were leaving at the same time, we started talking. The next day, we talked and grabbed a burger. I notice that she didn't stare at me like I was some sort of freak. And I tried my hardest not to stare at her like she was some sort of cover girl. I might have failed slightly in my efforts, but it didn't seem to bother her. She knew she was hot.

There was a Gustav Klimt exhibit opening at the art museum that weekend. None of my friends wanted to go. None of her friends wanted to go. So she and I went. I guess that was our first date. I figured we'd meet at the museum, but she asked me to pick her up at her place. Said her parents insisted on it. So that's when I first met her folks. It was actually sort of nice. The last couple girls I'd gone out with had tried to hide me from their parents. We'd had a good time at the museum.

Now here I was, more than a month later, still with her. I got ready to head home at 11:45. I have this stupid junior license, so I can't be on the road after midnight. "Hey, I'm glad you're going to get to see them," I told Delia. That was true. I understood the passion, even if I loathed the target.

"Thanks." She stood and put a hand on my shoulder. "I'm glad we're going, too."

I leaned forward to give her a kiss.

Tap.

Bam!

Tap. Tap.

BamBamBam!

I peered around the door. The culprit was Mrs. Kensington in the hallway with a hammer.

"Family photos," she said as she lifted a huge frame onto the hanger she'd just nailed to the wall. "Been meaning to put this up for weeks. Come see."

I came and saw. The newly hung object was one of those photo displays with a bunch of holes cut in a mat board. Lots of snap shots of Delia at various ages in various outfits. All adorable. Faded shots of grandparents. Assorted adults in pairs and groups. One picture caught my eye. Mr. Kensington and Delia with fishing rods, standing by a lake. She's five or six, and grinning. He's holding a fish.

I noticed him coming down the hall — probably to make sure the wall was still standing. "Smallmouth?" I asked, pointing at the picture.

He nodded. "Seventeen inches. I hooked it, but Delia landed it. You fish?"

"I used to. With my dad. It's been a while." Wow. A conversation.

"Delia hasn't fished in a while, either," he said.

She made a sound that indicated she had no immediate plans to ruin her streak.

"Well, I'd better get going." I didn't want to have him start asking about my dad. He'd died way back. I could deal with that. But the sad eyes and all that crap when people found out — I didn't need that at all.

Delia walked me to the door. Behind us, I heard her mother say, "He's such a nice boy." She said that a lot, usually right after pulling her eyes away from the Persistence-of-Memory tattoo that covered my right arm. But she was getting better. The first time she saw me, her face assumed the expression of someone who just realized she's swallowed a live millipede.

I managed to get that kiss on the porch, then drove home, with the new _Smothered Guppies_ CD blasting loud enough to scrape any thoughts of _Oh! Golly_ from my mind.

Hope number one on my list of escape routes was dashed on Monday. Delia hit the phone the instant tickets went on sale and scored seats so close we'd be able to count tonsils. Hot diggity. She bought the limit.

"Six tickets?" I asked when she told me the news.

"Sure. We're all going," she said. "Suzie and Candace love _Oh! Golly_. Everything's set."

And it was. No freak summer blizzards struck. No crazed fans kidnapped the group. I didn't break a single limb. The time had come. We were going to the concert of her dreams. My mom dropped me off at Delia's house. I'd be getting back too late to drive myself home.

Delia's mom answered my knock. When she first opened the door, she just stared. I'd changed my hair in honor of the event. I guess it took her a second to process the information and realize the blonde guy on her porch was me.

"Oh, hi, Steve. Come in. Delia's almost ready."

"Thanks." I went inside and walked past Delia's closed door. "Don't rush," I called. "We've got lots of time." I really wasn't worried about being late. It was fine with me if we arrived after the last encore. Down the hall, I heard the doorbell, followed by a quartet of cheerful voices. I wasn't ready to join the crowd, so I stopped to look at the pictures on the wall, trying to kill time by guessing where each one was shot.

I recognized Seaside Heights. And, though I'd never been there, the Eiffel Tower was pretty easy to identify. The picture with the smallmouth bass was probably from one of the large lakes north of here. I thought it was pretty cool that Mr. Kensington had taken Delia fishing. It probably bummed him out that she didn't want to go with him any more. I had vague memories of fishing with my dad — I couldn't have been more than four or five at the time — but no pictures. I didn't want to dwell on that, so I shifted my attention to other photos.

One shot, with what might have been the Rockies in the background, showed a guy on a Harley. Real biker look — beard, sleeveless denim jacket, boots. Killer tattoo of a two-headed snake on his upper arm. I wondered which side of the family he represented. It would be pretty cool to find out that Delia had a bad-ass uncle stashed somewhere.

Just about the time I'd managed to memorize all the photos, Delia emerged. "Nice outfit," I said. I think she'd just created a new category — erotic preppy. On her, it worked.

"Great spikes," she said, touching my choker.

"Want to wear them?" I asked.

She shook her head. "Not my style."

We joined the other two couples in the living room.

"You know Candace, right?" Delia asked. "And this is Arthur."

I nodded. I'd met Candace couple times. She was okay, but Arthur looked like he expected me to knife him. Obviously, he didn't know the difference between a punk and a thug. Or maybe he was the sort who expected every person he met to hurt him.

"This is Suzie, and that's Lindon." Delia said.

"Nice," Suzie said, reaching out to touch my hair. "Can I borrow you some time? I'd love for you to meet my parents."

"I don't think your parents would be amused," Lindon said, grabbing her hand. He gave me his tough guy look. I gave him my "you're-invisible" look.

"Let's hit the road," Delia's dad said. "Traffic's going to get heavy."

When we reached the van, I noticed there were three seats in the back, then two in the middle and two up front. It didn't take a genius to figure out that this wouldn't work well for our trio of couples.

"Would you mind?" Delia asked. "Suzie and Candace are going away next week, so it would be kind of nice if they got to spend as much time as possible with Arthur and Lindon."

"No problem." I went up front. Delia climbed in the back with Arthur and Candace. Suzie and Lindon took the middle.

"To the Dome, driver," I said.

Mr. Kensington touched the brim of an imaginary chauffeur's hat. As he backed out of the garage, he reached for the CD player. "My car, my music," he said.

I braced myself for Verdi, Sinatra, or Conway Twitty. To my relief, what I heard was Clapton. Sure, it was old-folks music, but it was the tolerable sort.

And then there was the less tolerable noise. I discovered, in the alliterative way in which nature sometimes works, that Lindon was a loudmouth.

"Wow, Steve," he said as we headed toward the turnpike, "from behind, you know what your ear looks like with all those rings?"

I shrugged, uninterested in guessing, but glanced back at him to show I could be civilized even around a total dork.

"A shower curtain."

"Clever." I turned away so he could continue to contemplate the back of my head. Apparently, staring wasn't enough for him. He wanted to play with my head, too.

"So, Delia," Lindon said, "I didn't know you'd broken up with Bronk."

"They broke up months ago," Suzie told him. "She dumped him for Ricky Skeffs."

And on they went, discussing an assortment of Delia's past flames. It was a long list. I knew some of the names. Bronk played football for Milton High across the river. Big black guy with dreadlocks and huge biceps. I'd run into him at a party or two. He got along fine with the punk crowd. Skeffs was a skinny loser with a runny nose. Looked strung out most of the time. Most people I knew stayed clear of him. There was even a minor celebrity in the group — Cage Mathus, who drummed for a local metal band. If Lindon was trying to make me jealous, he was wasting his time. Delia's past dates were her business. The present was all that mattered.

But he did get me thinking. It seemed like all of Delia's guys had been hand-picked from the set of those most likely to freak out upper-class white parents. No, that couldn't be right. There had to be more to her choices than that. But no other explanation quite fit.

I glanced over at Mr. Kensington as he reached up to adjust the rear view mirror. Beneath the cuff of his short sleeve, I could just see the edge of a tattoo. Snakes, maybe. I stared at his profile and tried to imagine him with a bushy beard. Click. A couple things fell into place. "That's you on the Harley, right?"

"Harley?" He spoke without taking his eyes from the road.

"The photo on the wall. Looks like the Rockies."

"Estes Park." He smiled. "That was a lifetime ago."

"Did you know Mrs. Kensington back then?" I asked.

The smile moved closer to a grin. "Yup. Should have seen the look on her father's face when she brought me home. Thought he was going to pull out a shotgun and chase me off." He laughed and shook his head. "As my wife likes to say, I clean up well."

I glanced over my shoulder, past Lindon and Suzie, at Delia, who was actively chatting with Candace. I watched her for a while, but she never looked my way.

The traffic grew heavier and then slowed to a crawl when we got near the Dome. We finally reached the parking lot.

"I'll see you kids back here," Mr. Kensington said. "Have fun. I'm going to watch the Phillies and drown my sorrows in club soda." He headed off toward the Hilton.

Delia came over and took my hand. "This is going to be so great."

People stared at us as we made our way to the entrance. I normally didn't pay any attention to that, since it was an everyday thing. But I noticed that Delia scanned the crowd, watching them watch us. Some of them probably didn't see me at all. Delia was quite stunning. But others had that question in their eyes. _What's she doing with him?_

We got to our seats and my stretch of purgatory began. A bad concert is a great place to lose yourself in thought. While Delia and her friends bopped along and screamed and enjoyed the music, I thought about the two of us. It was hard at first to extract actual details. Delia's presence, even in memories, was like a thousand-watt bulb. But I squinted past the gleam and found a string of moments we'd spent together. Fragments. Our first date. We'd been drawn in different directions at the museum. I could have spent all day with the abstracts and surrealists. Delia preferred impressionists.

And after the museum? We went to the movies a couple times, but not to any films I wanted to see. We went to the mall. Delia liked to shop. I didn't. We grabbed a burger or went for coffee, but we didn't talk a whole lot. When we hung out in her room, she'd surf and I'd read.

I was pulled from my thoughts by Delia's words. "It's over," she said.

"What?"

"The concert's over."

"Right."

"You're pretty quiet tonight," she said as we walked back to the parking lot.

I nodded. Hard to know how to respond to that sort of statement. Fortunately, I didn't have to dredge up a reply. All of them started reliving the evening, discussing every song.

"Want me to take the front?" Arthur asked when we reached the van. I guess he figured if he was nice to me I wouldn't stab him.

"That's okay. I don't mind." I climbed into the seat, closed the door, and leaned against the window. Behind me, they kept talking.

Delia was having a sleepover, so Mr. Kensington dropped her and the girls off first, then took Lindon and Arthur home. I didn't pay any attention to them. I was still wandering through the memories.

"When are you going to do it?" Mr. Kensington asked as he pulled away from Arthur's house.

That jolted me out of my thoughts. "Do what?" Good god, was he asking me if I was going to sleep with his daughter? I wondered whether I should jump from the van before he turned back into a crazed biker and stomped me to death.

"Break up with her," he said.

I let my heart climb back into my rib cage. "How'd you know?" I'd barely accepted it myself.

He shrugged. "Some things are easy to see from a distance. Especially when you've seen them before. Usually, she dumps the guy. Once in a while, it's the other way."

No point lying to him. Or to myself. "You think she'll take it okay?"

He nodded. "Things might get a bit dramatic. And my credit card will take a hit when she shops her way through the pain. But sure, she'll be fine. There's only one thing that worries me."

"What's that?"

"I wonder who she'll bring home next."

There was a moment of silence as I let my imagination play with that question. I figured Mr. Kensington had already dreamed up his own list.

"Why do you think she does it?" I asked.

"Why do you poke holes in your face," he asked me back.

I wasn't sure whether he expected an answer. I wanted to give him one, but I really didn't think I could sum up my life in a sentence or two. Finally, I just said, "That's not the same thing."

He nodded. "Yeah. You're right. It isn't. You're only hurting yourself."

I watched the street lights pass by outside the window for a couple blocks. Before, at the concert, the breakup was just an idea. It existed in the realm of _should I?_ But now that I'd spoken about it, I knew it was real. _It's over._ I thought about losing Delia. Pictured my existence without her. There was a void, but it wasn't a painful wound. I'd be fine, too. It was like if I took out one of my piercings. Eventually, the hole would close up. There might be a small scar, but the that was all.

And it wasn't as if I hadn't enjoyed being with her. Whatever her reasons for going out with me, whoever she was trying to shock, we'd had some fun. Maybe, to be honest, I enjoyed the reactions as much as she did. But it was time to move on.

Still, there was something else I didn't want to walk away from. "That lake where you caught the smallmouth...?"

"Manalappa Reservoir," he said. "I belong to a rod and gun club there. It's just an hour north."

"Uh huh." I felt like a kid at his first dance, tiptoeing around the chance of rejection. "You got any hard feelings against any of her ex guys?"

"Not as long as they treated her right."

I dangled a hint. "Any of them fish?"

"As far as I know, until now, none of them knew a bass from a hole in the ground," he said. "Not that we ever talked much."

"Oh."

We were both quiet for a moment. I realized it had been a stupid idea, anyhow.

"You want to go fishing some time?" he asked.

Or maybe not so stupid. "Yeah. I'd like that."

"Me, too."

Then a shadow crossed my mind, cast by an image of the two of us strolling up to the bank, him in khaki with an Eddie Bauer vest, me in black with Ace Hardware chains. "Are you just trying to shock people?" I asked.

We'd reached my place by then. After he pulled to the curb, he turned toward me, a grin on his face. "I hadn't thought of that. But you have to admit, it'll be fun to watch their expressions. Got a lot of good old boys living up that way."

"That could be interesting." I guess he still had a bit of the rebel biker in him. And I guess maybe some of Delia's habits were genetic.

"I'd been thinking of heading out there tomorrow. Join me?"

Did I want to go fishing with my soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend's dad? Life didn't get much weirder than that. "Definitely."

"Pick you up at six?" he asked, holding his hand out, fingers spread, palm facing me.

"Wouldn't miss it," I said, giving him a hand slap. I thanked him for the ride and headed up the walkway, half lost in the past, thinking about the last time I'd felt the tug of a fish on the line.

Then my thoughts shifted to the future. My grin matched his as I imagined what would happen when I told my friends. Maybe even showed them a snapshot of me, Mr. Kensington, and a small mouth bass. Man, they'd be in for a shock.

# War Is Swell

As the second burst of machine gun fire tore the air with its deadly rhythm, Jorgi clutched his stomach and fell to the floor, curling his body into a tight ball around the pain that exploded through his gut.

He called to his little sister, who was sprawled on her back just beyond his reach, "Katya?"

"It hurts," she said, her words half smothered by the rumble of an exploding mortar shell.

"We didn't know," he said. A shower of plaster fell from the ceiling. Jorgi closed his eyes and fought against the panic that came whenever the earth shook, but this tremor was brief and the building was sturdy.

"We were pigs," Katya said.

"Yes, pigs," Jorgi agreed. "I never guessed it could hurt so much." He rose to his knees, then gave up and dropped back to the floor. It was too soon to try to stand. Despite the pain, he had to smile. He'd known hunger all his life. It was a familiar pain, made worse these past few weeks when nobody had food to spare. Who would have thought there was far worse pain in eating too much?

"Let's not be pigs next time," Katya said.

"Just be happy we're here," Jorgi said. He couldn't believe their luck. They'd been alone on the street right before sunrise when Abnar the baker fled. Abnar, who had never willingly given either of them so much as a small crust, left the village with his cart, his horse, and his family. He'd also left one important thing behind — an unlocked door. Inside, they found a treasure of bread, cookies, and two wedding cakes.

Ten minutes after they'd entered the bakery, Jorgi thought he'd never need to eat again. The crumbs of his victims littered the floor. A trail of ants had already joined the feast, streaming out from a large gap where the floorboards met the wall. As he watched them swarm over a piece of fallen cake, Jorgi wondered whether ants ever got stomach aches.

Katya stood and walked to the table that held the pair of wedding cakes. With a grunt, she tried to move the smaller one, but even that was too heavy for her.

"What are you doing?" Jorgi asked.

"I want to make them pretty again," she said.

"Let me help." Jorgi forced himself to his feet. He turned the cakes so the ruined parts faced the wall. "There. Just the way we found them." He didn't feel guilty about scooping handfuls from both cakes. The brides had left three days ago, with the growing stream of people who'd headed for the western border since the fighting reached the village. The grooms had joined the fighting. The cakes were already growing dry, the icing stiff. There would be no weddings.

For months, Jorgi had sensed rising tension in the voices of the old men who sat all day outside the cafe. They drank glasses of hot tea, passed around tattered newspapers, and talked in angry bursts about who was to blame for all the trouble. They'd seemed so concerned with the battle reports that none of them even bothered to chase Jorgi off with stones and curses the way they usually did.

The bakery shook as another mortar shell turned the empty stable across the street into a pile of splinters. A mountain of hay drifted down, lagging behind the rest of the debris as if it was eager to play in the spring breeze. Early morning rays of sunlight danced among the pieces.

"It's raining gold," Katya said, staring out the window.

"Let's go," Jorgi said. He filled a box with bread, picking the freshest loaves he could find.

Katya grabbed another box, which she loaded with cookies. "Back home?" she asked.

"No." Jorgi shook his head. Their home, an abandoned truck at the end of an alley three blocks away, was too close to the path of the mortars. They needed to find a new place. Jorgi liked the river. At night, the peaceful murmur of the water was better than any music. But some of the older men lived there — the ones who were too poor to spend their days at the cafe. Those men shouted at him and stole his food — food he had worked so hard to find for himself and Katya. No, not the river. They could go to the hills. Jorgi knew which plants were safe to eat. But they'd have to be careful to avoid the soldiers, who swarmed the hills like ants. Like ants on a cake...

"I know," Jorgi said, amazed that such a perfect idea had taken so long to come to him. "Abnar's house."

"Yes," Katya said. Her leap of excitement caused several small cookies to bounce from the box. "A bed," she said. "I'll bet there's a bed to sleep on. And maybe even a pillow."

"We'll see," Jorgi said. He didn't want her to hope for too much. Katya was such a dreamer. To her, the old truck where they usually slept was a castle one day and a sailing ship the next. Flat stones turned into plates and saucers when she served feasts to her make believe friends. At least the baker's house, at the top of a small hill to the east, was far from the center of the village, out of mortar range for the moment. Most of the shelling appeared to be aimed at the small cluster of government buildings that lined the main road near the larger shops — though, from what Jorgi had seen, nobody seemed to be able to aim anything very well.

"Listen," Katya said as they left the bakery and climbed over the splintered boards that had once been a stable wall. "No more bombs."

"They haven't stopped," Jorgi said. "I'll bet there'll be another one before I can count to ten." He started counting, quickly at first, but then stretching out each number longer than the one before. When he reached nine, he used every bit of air in his lungs to keep the sound alive. Finally, he gave up, took a deep breath, and said, "Ten."

Far behind them, a blast blew another hole in the street. Jorgi gritted his teeth as a jolt passed through the ground. To his left, near the butcher's shop, a young tree trembled, its leaves shivering in the sudden wind. A moment later, cobblestones rained down in the distance with the sound of galloping horses.

"Let me try," Katya said. "I know my numbers." She started counting. A mortar shell fell when she reached seven. As she hunched over against the shock wave, she spat out the rest, "eightnineten. I did it!"

"You sure did," Jorgi said, smiling at his sister. He stepped around a broken bicycle that had been abandoned in the road. "You're very clever, Katya." It was true. He remembered the time he'd had the fever. Katya had taken care of him for three days, cooling his head with water from the river and grinding food into a paste he could swallow past his swollen throat. She was more than just clever — she was brave.

"Go on. It's your turn," she said as they left the main road for the narrower path that led up the hill.

Jorgi reached ten without an explosion.

"My turn," Katya said. A mortar shell blew up far to their left while she counted. "That's two for me."

They played the game all the way to the baker's house, which sat in the center of a large yard, surrounded by a whitewashed wall. The gate was open.

"Wait here," Jorgi said after they walked down the brick pathway and stepped inside the front entrance. He needed to make sure everything was safe. As he dashed from room to room, he saw no sign of damage. No ceilings ready to crumble, no walls ready to topple like that dreadful moment — the day when the earth shook and the walls crushed his world, burying their parents, leaving him and Katya alone.

The memory of the earthquake was barely more than a dream now. How long? Three years? Four? What was the difference? Somehow, they'd survived, day by day. Always hungry, always cold in the winter, hot in the summer. But alive. They'd found their way to this village, but never found a home, never found people who could afford to offer them more than a brief moment of kindness or a scrap of food.

"There's not one bed," Jorgi told Katya when he returned to her.

"No?" she asked, her face growing dark with disappointment.

"No. Not one. There are five!" he shouted, lifting his sister by her waist and spinning around.

"Can I pick first?" she asked when he put her down.

"Of course."

The mortars stopped for a while, as did most of the gun fire. They slept well that night, and ate well again in the morning.

In the afternoon, they sat on the warm red tile roof of the house, a terrifying and exhilarating three stories above the ground, and watched as a group of men dug holes in the north road and planted land mines. They made a game of guessing where the men would dig next — left, right, or center. Katya was good at the game, which made Jorgi proud. "You're very smart, little sister" he told her.

The next morning, they discovered that the butcher had also fled, leaving behind unbelievable riches. Jorgi cooked thick lamb steaks in the baker's kitchen, frying them in a pan with onions he'd found in the cellar. A sweet, satisfying aroma filled the air as the meat sizzled. They'd made three trips to the butcher's, bringing home sausages, too. The hard, dried ones with the wonderfully spicy flavor — the kind that would keep well in the coming heat of summer.

"Real plates," Katya said as she set the table. She rubbed her hand carefully across the blue flowers painted on the gleaming white china, then refolded the linen napkins until they were perfectly arranged.

They ate with heavy knives and forks of silver and drank their water from crystal goblets. Katya, giggling, shouted orders to the servants. Jorgi played along, unwilling to do anything that might break the spell for her.

That evening, they watched a different group of men dig up the mines. Jorgi kept count, and gave Katya a cookie for every fifth mine. It wasn't as much fun as the guessing game, but he still enjoyed the look on her face each time he got close to the magic number.

After sunset the airplanes came.

"It's beautiful," Katya said, holding her brother's hand as they stood on the balcony of the large bedroom, watching the dazzling flashes that bloomed like giant sunflowers wherever bombs struck the ground. She pointed at the brilliant streaks of light that danced from the earth toward the heavens.

"Those are called _tracers_ ," Jorgi explained. He loved to show her the things he'd learned from listening to the men. "They let the gunners know where their bullets are going, so they can shoot the planes."

"Who's flying the planes?" Katya asked.

Jorgi shrugged. "I'm not sure." He knew that the soldiers attacking the village were enemies. The planes seemed to be bombing the enemy soldiers, so the planes must be friends. But sometimes the bombs hit the village, too. So maybe they weren't friends. Or at least not good friends. Right now, it really didn't matter, as long as none of the bombs hit the baker's house.

A plane exploded, turning the sky from deep black to red for a blinding instant. A lazy boom reached their ears several seconds later. "We used to have a festival," Jorgi said. Another faint memory. "This is like —" He stopped to find the word. "Fireworks!"

"I wish I could go to a festival," Katya said.

"You will, someday," Jorgi told her. "I promise. Not now. But when the war is over."

Katya gasped. "When the war is over?" Her hand opened and slipped limply from Jorgi's grasp.

"Yes, when the war is over." It was a phrase he'd heard many times from the lips of nearly everyone in the village. _When the war is over..._ It was always followed by a plan or a dream or a hope. He watched as his sister turned and stared across the room at the plump feather bed with three pillows, each as soft as a baby rabbit.

Katya crossed to the foot of the bed and stood by the box of cookies for a moment. She stroked the bright quilt that was draped over the mattress, then returned to the window. She glanced toward the sky as the glow of a nearby explosion — a direct hit on an ammunition stockpile — highlighted her face.

Jorgi felt her tears burn small holes in his heart. Katya never cried. Not when she'd fallen and cut her knee so bad it had bled all day and half the night. Not when they'd gone nearly a week without food. Not even when she asked him about their parents. Now, she wept as if she'd just lost all her dreams.

"Katya, don't cry," Jorgi said, trying to comfort his sister. As he looked around the room, he understood. In peace time, they'd slept in a truck and eaten scraps. That was the only life Katya knew. Until the fighting started. When the war came, it brought them food, soft beds, fireworks, and games.

_When the war is over..._ He thought of the way people said those words. It was with the same voice that said _One day, when I'm rich,_ or _If I were in charge_ or a thousand other impossible hopes.

Jorgi put his arm around Katya's thin shoulders. "It was a silly thing for me to say. A joke. That's all. A stupid joke. The war will never end."

"Promise?" she asked, huddling close to her brother.

Jorgi nodded. "I promise." In the sky, an anti-aircraft shell exploded like a bright star. Not the first star of the night, but maybe still good enough. "The war will never end," he told Katya, making a promise, making a wish.

# The Heroic Quest of Douglas McGawain

It was dark out. And stormy. No matter. We were warm and dry, and well cuddled. I was on the couch with Tracy, watching a movie down in her rec room. Rick and Debbie were with us, also well cuddled. Life was good. The night was young. If I were frozen in this moment for all of eternity, I'd be happy. And, as I said, well cuddled.

I'd only been going out with Tracy for two months, but I'd never met anyone who fit so well into every part of my life. Whether we were studying, dancing, driving, sharing a sundae, playing table tennis, walking in the park, hanging out or cuddling, it felt right. We belonged together.

While the moment couldn't last forever, I expected it to at least last until we watched the movies we'd rented.

Then chivalry reared its ugly head.

Debbie drained the soda from her glass and shook it. Rick, like any well-trained guy, responded to the clinking in the manner in which we'd all been conditioned. "I'll get it." He rose from his seat and carried the glass upstairs.

He returned a moment later, the glass still empty.

"Got any more diet Dr. Pepper?" he asked Tracy.

"Just what was up in the fridge," she said. "I guess we're out."

I wasn't surprised. For all her charm, beauty, wit, and magnificence, for all that I adored her, I was well aware that Tracy had an insignificant flaw. She wasn't great at planning ahead. She tended to run out of things. For that very reason, I'd brought a twelve pack of Mountain Dew with me. I didn't mind. Her flaw offered me countless chances to play the hero.

"No big deal," Debbie said. "I can drink something else."

"There's plenty of Dew," I said.

Rick constructed an optical triangle, glancing from the glass to Debbie to some distant point beyond the wall in the general direction of the cold, wet world.

"I'll go for some," he said.

The triangle graduated to a quadrilateral as he included me in his circuit. I loosened my grip on Tracy. There were rules for this sort of thing. My response was as ritually ordained as saying "Bless you" to a sneeze. I spoke the required phrase. "I'll go with you."

"You sure?" Rick asked, initiating the second round.

"Yup." End of ritual.

No big deal. We'd hop in the car. Drive to the nearest store. Grab some soda. Maybe some chips. And return as heroes. To be suitably rewarded with strokes and kisses for our bravery.

No big deal at all.

"Hang on," Tracy said as I walked toward the door.

This, too, was part of the ritual. She had a craving. Yet more chance for me to save the day with Cool Ranch Doritos, Twizzlers, or some other object to satisfy her desires. Instead of telling me what she wanted, she rooted through her purse. I waited patiently, pleased by an opportunity to be gallant.

Tracy frowned, shuffled through the contents a bit more, then shook her head, pulled out her wallet, and held out a ten-dollar bill. That was odd. I was more than happy to pay for her craving.

"Could you get me some tampons while you're out."

An electrical storm danced through my brain as it tried to make sense of those words.

Oh my god.

Tampons?

Guys don't buy tampons. We just don't. Everybody knows that. "Uh...?" I sorted through a thousand potential excuses. They all sucked. Besides, this wasn't some nameless damsel in distress. This was Tracy.

As I reached for the money, the chivalric code wrestled with unknown worlds. Under any other circumstance whatever, I was supposed to say, "That's okay. My treat."

But _tampons?_ Does a guy pick up the tab?

Clueless, I took the money.

Tracy spoke. A brand. A variety. A box color. "Want to write it down?" she asked.

"I got it," I said, repeating the details to myself. Knowing I could never allow the existence of hard evidence in the form of a written mention.

Rick was silent as we dashed through the rain to the car.

"You ever...?" I asked when I got inside.

He shook his head. We drove to the Seven Eleven which, despite its name, was open well past midnight. Rick went to the cooler. I scanned the aisles. There they were. A couple small boxes. I stared at them, trying to decipher the meanings of the words and compare them against the phrases Tracy had spoken. _Light, medium, heavy, super, extra, carefree, fancy,_ and on and on like sacred words from the chanted mantra of a foreign cult.

"You ready?" Rick asked. He stood at the end of the aisle, holding the soda in a bag, obviously unwilling to move any closer.

A woman headed down the aisle. I shifted my attention away from the tampons and grabbed something else. Oh crap — hemorrhoid suppositories. I tossed the box back on the shelf and snatched the first masculine thing I saw. Shaving cream. "Hey," I called to Rick. "Look. This one's extra rich for dealing with manly stubble." I rubbed my cheek and tried to appear deep in thought.

The woman stared at me for an instant, then grabbed a bottle of Tylenol and moved on.

I sighed and studied the boxes again.

"Just pick one," Rick said. "What's the difference?"

I shook my head. Tracy had entrusted me. I wasn't going to fail. She'd always been there when I needed her.

"Let's go to Shop Rite," I said.

We drove onto Rt. 309 to the Shop Rite in the strip mall. As we pulled into the lot, I could see it was closed.

But past the rows of shut stores, at the far end, I spotted salvation. "Big Wayne's is open," I said. It was a discount warehouse. Dad had gotten us a family membership. I didn't go there much, except when I wanted to load up on school supplies, or huge quantities of frozen burritos.

Rick pulled to the curb by Big Wayne's. "I'll wait here," he said.

Bastard. But I couldn't blame him. I wouldn't want to be anywhere near a guy buying tampons, either.

"Right back." I got out of the car and went in, praying to the great Earth Mother that Big Wayne's would have tampons.

Oh man, did they have tampons.

A whole freaking aisle. Boxes in every color. Boxes in every brand. Boxes in every length, width, and voltage for all I knew. But every single one of the boxes was about half the size of a full grown bull elephant.

Damn. There was no way I could pretend to study shaving cream. Anyone facing these shelves was after only one thing. At least the aisle was empty of other shoppers for the moment.

I found the section with Tracy's brand. But that was just the beginning. Good lord. There were so many varieties, I started to question my own limited grasp of female anatomy. It couldn't be this complicated.

There. Up at the top. Blue boxes. She'd said blue. And the words matched those she'd spoken. I'd found them.

Eight feet off the floor.

I jumped and tried to grab a box.

I was barely able to bump it with my fingers. I looked around for a ladder. Nothing in sight. I jumped again, and managed to prod the box slightly from the shelf. Four more jumps, and I got it jutting out far enough that I could knock it free.

Along with about twenty other boxes.

Thanks to a panicked leap backwards, I avoided being killed by the sharp corner of a box holding hundreds of tampons. Wouldn't that make a great headline?

But I had what I needed.

I've always cleaned up my own messes. Until now. I left the aisle, and the pile of boxes. The twinge of guilt was a nice break from the stew of embarrassment, shame, fear, and confusion I'd been steeping in since I'd left the house.

Now, one final obstacle.

I approached the registers. Three were open. I checked my cashier options. A teen girl. No way. An older woman. Maybe in her late thirties. Bright blond hair. Long red nails. Very sexy body. The kind of woman who could make me feel like a little boy, or cut me in half with a sneer. Nope. Last choice. An old guy. Yeah.

As I headed for him, he flicked off the light above the register. I took a chance and plopped down the box.

"Closed," he said.

I implored him with my eyes. I pointed at the box. I sent a mental message, from one guy to another. _I'm buying tampons, for god's sake. Help me out._ It was no use.

I carried the box to the short line at the blond woman's register. Too late, I noticed that there were a couple guys right in front of me dressed like they'd just finished a shift at a mill.

One glanced over his shoulder, started to look away, then stared at the box in my hands. He nudged his buddy. They both looked back and laughed.

I could feel myself shrinking to a size small enough to hide behind the box.

God. I realized people were staring at me from all over.

Finally, the guys in front of me were done. One blew me a kiss as he left. I put the box on the conveyor.

The woman — her name tag said Myrna — scanned the box without even glancing at me. I handed her the money. She gave me my change and a receipt. No bag. Big Wayne's didn't believe in frills like bags.

I couldn't believe I was going to escape without one final knife thrust.

Then she spoke.

"Girl friend?"

I looked up as I grabbed the box.

"Yeah."

"Good for you, Sugar." Myrna gave me a tired smile. "Takes a real man to buy tampons for a lady."

"Thanks."

As I walked off, she called, "You ever break up, you come see me. I could use a real man."

Whoa. The fantasy that danced through my mind was quickly extinguished by the knowledge that, whether I was a real man or not, I had a real woman. And she was waiting for me.

Still, I was walking a bit taller when I left the store, until the wind hit me in the face.

As I hunched over and rushed through the rain to Rick's car, I imagined the damage that would occur if the box got wet. I could see it swell to even more immense proportions, then explode, showering me in tampons.

"Christ, put that in the trunk," Rick said when I started to get inside. "If it will fit. You planning to supply the whole field hockey team?"

"Lighten up. They don't bite."

He popped the trunk and I put the tampons away.

"Can we go now?" Rick asked.

"Absolutely."

"Good." He pulled away from the curb. "I'm done for the night. No more errands."

"That's for sure." I glanced at the trunk, hoping I hadn't somehow screwed up and bought the wrong thing. Outside, the rain fell even harder against the windshield.

When we got back, I handed Tracy the box. "They didn't have anything smaller," I said. "I hope this is okay."

"You did great." She rewarded me with a smile. "Thanks. Sorry to make you run out in the rain."

"No problem," I said. "No problem at all."

"My hero," Tracy said.

"Hey, whose hero am I?" Rick asked as he handed Debbie a can of soda.

Debbie frowned at the can, and then at Rick. "This isn't diet."

I cuddled down on the couch with Tracy.

"Guess I'll go get some more soda," Rick said. He glanced at me. "Yeah... I'll go out again..."

"Hurry back," I said. Then I turned my full attention to cuddling with my lady.

# Bread on the Water

"It's going to be a long sermon," Andy whispered to me."Yeah, we're doomed." I could tell we were in trouble all the way from the back pew. Pastor Donald had stuck so many little colored slips of paper in his Bible, it looked like a piñata. He wasn't the sort of preacher who'd share a couple short verses and set us free to enjoy the day. He really liked to hammer home his messages.

"Turn with me to _Romans_ twelve," Pastor Donald said.

Andy started to snicker. "Romans twelve, Christians nothing," he whispered.

"Ssshhh," I gave him an elbow and looked around. Mrs. Skeffington, three pews ahead and over to the left, was glaring at us. So were Mr. and Mrs. Linden, over on the right.

"As most of you are aware," Pastor Donald said, "this is one of Paul's most important epistles."

"Is the epistle loaded?" Andy asked.

I knew I shouldn't have sat back here with Andy. But I liked hanging out with him. Except when he got goofy. Which was more than half the time. Right now, he'd buried his face in his hands. I could hear snorts spilling out as he tried to muffle the laughter.

"Knock it off, Andy," I said. "It wasn't that funny."

Pastor Donald started to read out loud. "Verse twenty tells us, 'if your enemy is hungry, feed him.'"

"Feed him some knuckles," Andy said, lifting his face from his hands.

I checked out my parents, up front. They hadn't looked back. Not yet. Neither had Andy's parents. If I could get Andy to calm down, everything would be okay. "Just cut it out," I said. "All right?"

No such luck. Andy was on a roll. And Pastor Donald was about to hand him even better material to work with. After a brief visit with the Good Samaritan in _Luke_ , and a short hop through _Ecclesiastes_ , he landed squarely in _James_ , chapter two, verse fifteen.

If a brother or sister be naked...

"If a sister be naked, I'm staying," Andy said. "If a brother be naked, I'm splitting."

...and destitute of daily food,

"I thought destitutes made good money." He scratched his head. "Hold it. I think I got my 'tutes mixed up."

And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?

"Doth?" Andy said, stretching it out wetly like Daffy Duck. "Doth who? Doth Vader?" He looked at me and raised one eyebrow. "Be ye warm, Tommy?"

As I reached over to smack Andy, the shadow of assistant Pastor John fell across us.

"Out," he whispered, pointing at the door with one hand and clutching the edge of the pew with the other. I could almost hear the wood splintering beneath his grip.

"I wasn't doing anything," I said.

His index finger curled in, joining the rest of his fist. "Out. Both of you."

Andy shrugged and slipped past me. I followed him toward the door, hoping nobody noticed that we'd just been banished from church. As I glanced back, I saw that Mrs. Skeffington was following our exodus with the gloating satisfaction of someone who has just seen her worst enemy caught stealing money from the collection plate. No doubt, she'd make sure that my parents didn't remain uninformed of my transgression.

My only consolation was the sight of Pastor Donald's Bible, which still had enough slips in it to fuel a small fire. I was going to miss a ton of scripture.

I could still hear Pastor Donald as the door closed behind me. "We are here to help others. Friend, enemy, brother, sister, neighbor, stranger — it doesn't matter."

Apparently, Andy could hear him, too. "Butcher, baker, candlestick maker," he said, getting in one last shot.

I pushed him, but not too hard. It felt good to be free.

"So, whatcha want to do?" Andy asked when we'd walked down the steps to the street.

"I want to snap your head off," I said.

"Now that's not very Christian." Andy pointed over his shoulder. "You should spend more time in church."

"Look who's talking." I wanted to be angry, but what the heck — it was a beautiful autumn day, cold and crisp, without a cloud in the sky. And my fate was at least an hour and a half away. Between the sermon and the singing, church wouldn't get out until eleven. I slipped into my jacket.

Andy was already walking toward the center of town. "What do you feel like doing?" I asked when I'd caught up with him.

"I don't know. How much money you got?"

I looked through my wallet. "Enough for a couple orders of fries and some shakes," I said. "But not enough for a cruise to the Bahamas."

"Guess we'll have to settle for the fries." Andy checked his own wallet. "I think I can upgrade our meal in the direction of a couple burgers."

We headed toward the Bridgeview Diner. When we were half a block away, I noticed a guy huddled in the entrance of a small office building across the street. He noticed me, too. He stood and headed toward us in a way that reminded me of how my cat acts when I open the fridge.

"Man, he's going to ask for spare change," I said. His hand was already out. I hated dealing with bums.

"I never give them money," Andy said.

I was glad to hear that. I figured they probably just spent it on booze.

Sure enough, the guy reached us before we could get to the door of the diner. I took a step back. He looked pretty grubby. His wool plaid jacket was so worn that the squares were all the same color. I dropped my gaze, and found myself staring at shoes that had split on the sides and were now wrapped with twine. "Could you boys spare some money? I haven't eaten in a while." His voice was so quiet I almost couldn't make out the words.

Before I could tell him to leave us alone, Andy said, "I'd be happy to buy you some food. You want a meal? Come with us."

I glanced at Andy, surprised. But then I figured out what he was doing. He was calling the guy's bluff. That was brilliant. The bum didn't want food. He wanted our money so he could go buy a bottle of cheap wine. No way he'd come with us.

"After you," Andy said, holding the door open.

The guy went in. Man, I'd have bet a million bucks he'd have walked away from the offer. I figured Andy would back off now, but he followed the man right in. I didn't. I was used to Andy doing what he wanted. I'd seen him do stuff at school-like talk with the kids who everyone else made fun of. But this was way over the top. Whoever the joke was on, it wasn't funny.

I thought about splitting. No way I wanted to eat with this guy. I glanced at my watch. It was too early to go back to church. Besides, I couldn't ditch Andy. He'd stuck with me a couple times when it would have been more fun to take off. And he was the only one from our school who'd visited me back when I'd had my appendix out. On the other hand, I'd never made him share a meal with a bum. "Let's just get it over with," I muttered as I went through the door.

The place wasn't exactly fancy. Even so, the waitress gave all three of us the same sort of look I'd probably just given the guy myself. I guess she'd already figured she wasn't in for much of a tip from two kids and a bum. She turned away from us and fidgeted with the coffee pot, then started wiping the counter with a rag.

We grabbed a booth. I slid in next to Andy. I didn't really want to face the guy, but it beat sitting next to him.

Andy pointed to himself. "I'm Andy. This is Tommy."

The man nodded toward Andy, then toward me, but he kept his eyes down and didn't tell us his name. His left hand was shaking. After a minute, he put it on his lap.

The waitress finally came over. "Ready?" she asked, her pad out and pencil poised. I guess she didn't want to invest too much effort in conversation.

"After you," Andy said to our guest.

The guy looked at the menu, but didn't speak.

"Get whatever you want," Andy said. "It's our treat."

_Our_ treat? I shot Andy a look. He shrugged, as if he assumed I wouldn't mind. I guess there wasn't anything I could do about it right now. And he'd sprung for a movie last month when I was broke, so it sort of worked out.

The guy glanced up at the waitress, then back at the menu. I thought about the times when someone was treating me and I wasn't sure how much they wanted to spend. I always wrestled with what to get.

The waitress cleared her throat, then sighed. I didn't see why she was in such a rush. There weren't any other customers at the moment except for one guy at the counter eating a donut.

"How about a steak and a salad?" Andy suggested.

The man nodded. In my head, I could hear the ka-ching of the cash register.

"Cokes for us," Andy added. He glanced at me. "Split some fries?"

I shook my head. "I'm not hungry."

The waitress scritched her pencil across the pad, then left.

"Thank you," the man said.

"Our pleasure," Andy said. "Me and Tommy, we've known each other since we were little. I'm a jock. Tommy wants to be, but he's pretty uncoordinated. They let him on some of the teams because they feel sorry for him." He glanced out the window. "Nice day, today. Supposed to be sunny the rest of the week. I noticed they're tearing up part of Main St. for the new parking garage."

Andy kept talking, stopping once in a while to allow the guy to say something if he wanted to, but not asking any questions. I guess Andy talked because that's what people do when they're waiting for their food. And I guess the guy didn't talk because it was hard enough just asking for the food. I wondered how many people had turned him down today. And I wondered how he'd ended up on the street. This close, beneath the whiskers and the dirt, he could pass for one of my uncles. Actually, I had an uncle who looked worse. For that matter, I had an aunt with more whiskers, too.

It was starting to sink in that this wasn't any kind of joke. This was just Andy being himself. Of course, if his act of kindness annoyed the waitress, I suspected that was just fine with him, too.

I could smell the steak before it came out of the kitchen. My stomach rumbled, even though I'd stuffed myself on pancakes at breakfast. A whole hour ago. Across the room, the donut eater tossed a couple coins on the counter and headed up front to pay his bill.

A moment later, the waitress came out of the kitchen. She plopped down the thick, white plate with a loud clack, then gave us our sodas.

The guy tore into the food, eating so fast at first, I was afraid he'd choke. He finally slowed after half the steak and all of the salad had vanished. No question, he'd been hungry. I sipped my soda and thought about how lucky I was to have a home and a family. Even a family that dragged me to church every Sunday.

Andy kept talking. I talked some, too. The guy didn't talk, but he looked at each of us now as we spoke. I didn't look away when he caught my eye. I tried to imagine who he'd been. Tried to really see him.

Lifting his right hand, he pointed to the pile of French fries on his plate.

"Hey, thanks, don't mind if I do," Andy said. He reached out and grabbed a couple.

He nudged me. I took one and ate it. It didn't kill me. Actually, it tasted pretty good. The three of us sat there and shared the rest of the fries.

The waitress was back the instant the guy swallowed his last bite. I still hadn't finished my soda. "Pay there," she said, putting the bill down by Andy's glass and tilting her head toward the register. I gave him all my cash and he went up front.

"Thank you," the guy said as he stood.

"You're welcome."

He started to leave, then turned back and held out his hand. We shook. His grip was firmer than I expected. He headed out, stopping by Andy for a moment. They shook hands, too. Andy came back as I slurped the last of my drink. I saw he still had some money. He jammed a dollar in my shirt pocket. "Can't let my best friend walk around flat broke." Then he dropped the rest of the money on the table. Three dollars and eighty cents.

"What was that for?" I asked as we left the diner.

"Tip," he said. "She works hard. This place is open all night. She's probably been here since four."

"She wasn't very friendly," I said.

"Would a small tip make her more friendly?" he asked.

I guess he had a point. We walked back through town, reaching the church just as the crowd was coming out the door. I worked my way against the flow, hoping to hook up with my parents before they figured out I hadn't been there during the service.

"I'm toast," I muttered to Andy as I caught sight of Mrs. Skeffington talking to my mom.

When my folks reached me, my dad didn't waste any time. "I'm very disappointed with you," he said.

"Sorry."

"Getting thrown out of a church service. Of all the places to misbehave." He went on for a while and I nodded and made the proper noises to show how bad I felt. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Andy dancing through the same routine with his mom and dad.

Finally, my dad turned to my mom and said, "Let's go. I'm starving."

I followed my parents to the car and got inside. Behind us, I saw old Mrs. Wilming hobbling slowly along the sidewalk. Mrs. Skeffington cruised past her, not offering a ride. On the church steps, the Lindens were pulling their little kid by the arms as he dragged his feet and screamed his head off, pleading for a Happy Meal. When they reached level ground, Mrs. Linden gave him a swat on the rear to speed him along. Through my open window, I heard her say, "Just wait 'til I get you home."

"We're trying to raise you the right way," my mom said as dad shot out of the parking lot. "We want you to have some decent values. Not like that friend of yours."

"But he's —"

"Drop it," Dad warned before I could say anything to defend Andy.

I sighed and settled back in my seat. Dad cursed as he got caught in town by the long red light on Harmony Street. To my right, I saw the waitress from the diner. I guess she was on her way home. A guy in a long overcoat walked up to her, his hand out. She stopped and reached into her pocket.

The light changed and we drove off. I looked back, but I didn't get to see what happened. Maybe she gave him something. I'd like to think so.

In the front seats, my parents were playing Invisible Son, talking about me like I wasn't there.

"Tommy needs to show better judgment. That Andy kid is a bad influence," my dad said.

My mom nodded. "Teaching our son all the wrong things. Running around, getting into trouble. And his mother. Did you see the dress she was wearing? It was so tacky."

"We'll straighten Tommy out," my dad said. He floored the gas and tried to beat the next light. It was red by the time he went through it. "I'm gonna make goddam sure he doesn't skip any more sermons. Somebody's got to teach him right from wrong. I'll tell you something else. Next Sunday, he's sitting up front with us. We'll see he doesn't miss anything."

I reached into my shirt pocket and took out the dollar Andy had given me. As my parents continued to discuss the lessons I was going to learn, I held the bill near the window and let the breeze tug at it, then loosened my grip and watched it fly free.

# Orway Otnay otay eBay?

Hurricane Stephanie gets some of the credit for giving Dad a new hobby, Mom a good reason not to kill Dad, and me a taste of true power. She ripped her way up the East Coast, staying far enough off shore to spare most of Florida, Georgia, and the rest of the south, then swung inland and hovered over New Jersey long enough to turn the Garden State into an aquatic mud park.

About midway through the storm, we lost electricity. That wasn't a big deal. Dad had about eight billion candles left over from his millennium stockpile. I wasn't paying too much attention back in 1999, but apparently everyone was afraid there'd be massive problems when the year 2000 started. No electricity. No water. No computers. No sunrise. Didn't happen. But Dad likes to be prepared. Which is why, beside the candles, we had lanterns, flashlights, a kerosene heater, a bicycle-powered generator, a case of dehydrated food, and some kind of gas thing plastered with warning labels about how it would kill all of us if we used it indoors.

So we had light. But no television. I paced around the living room, looking out the window every couple of minutes in hopes of seeing one of those orange cable TV vans or the green electric company trucks — anyone with the power to return the universe to its normal state of wired entertainment.

"Don't you have homework?" Mom asked.

"Just an English project. But it's not due for two months." Okay, it was due the beginning of November, and this was the end of September, so I guess it might not be two whole months away. Still, I figured I'd told the truth.

"Maybe you should get started now," she said.

"I can't. I need to use the computer for research." I guess that was pretty much true, too. Besides, I couldn't do any research until I knew my topic. Unfortunately, Ms. Cowan had told us we could write about anything we wanted. I was having a hard time narrowing down the possibilities. I'd thought about doing something on video games, but I was pretty sure that _anything you wanted_ really meant _anything except what you're really interested in_.

"You don't have any other homework? Nothing at all?"

"Nothing. You don't have to look over my shoulder every day. I'm not in middle school anymore."

Mom shook her head. "You would be if I didn't keep on top of things."

"This year will be different." I didn't feel like going over the same old argument. Mom seemed to think I'd totally fail if she didn't check everything I did. More often than not, she'd stand behind me when I did my math, and clear her throat if I made a mistake. Sometimes, I was surprised she didn't follow me around performing CPR just in case I forgot to breathe. Maybe I'd gotten a couple bad grades, but I was never in serious danger of staying back.

"Well, find something to do," Mom said.

"Read a book," Dad suggested.

"I don't have anything good to read," I told him.

"I can fix that." Dad grabbed a flashlight and headed for the basement.

"Now look what you've done," Mom said as the inevitable sound of toppling boxes drifted up from below.

Dad saves stuff. He's got old clothes he'll never fit into again, magazines, postcards, junk mail, cardboard tubes, coffee cans, and the accumulated equipment from a lifetime habit of switching hobbies. Within the span of my memory, dad has photographed birds, carved walking sticks, made fishing lures, brewed beer, collected stamps, designed stained glass windows, played the zither, and bred Siamese fighting fish.

Unfortunately, the leftovers tend to get mixed together. Dad isn't very organized about storing things. And each search mission makes the jumble worse. Mom keeps asking him to get rid of some of it, but he's never gotten more than halfway to the garbage can without freezing, staring at whatever he's carrying, and saying, "It would be a shame to throw it out. I'm sure somebody could use it."

The big problem is that I'm usually the "somebody" he has in mind. He's always trying to get me interested in his latest obsession.

After about twenty minutes down below, Dad emerged from the basement and held out a musty paperback. "Try this," he said.

"No thanks." My teachers already fed me enough books.

"Come on. I'll make you a deal. Just read the first page. If you don't like it, I won't say another word. Okay?"

I glanced at the cover. _Harridan, Barbarian Swordsman_ by Brutus Jacobs. The guy on the cover looked like an ad for steroids. I could just imagine what would happen if you pricked him with a pin. Pop go the biceps. He had a sword in one hand, and somebody's head in the other. Just the head.

"One page," Dad said. "It won't kill you."

I shrugged and took the book from him. If I read the page, he'd leave me alone. Besides, the first page didn't start at the top, so it wasn't really even a full page. It wouldn't take long. I started reading.

Three hours later, I put the book down.

"Well?" Dad asked.

"Pretty cool," I admitted. Actually, it was one of the best books I'd read in a long time. Okay — that wasn't exactly a long list. Mostly, I just read the stuff they assigned in school. This was way different. It was full of action, but it was also really funny. Harridan might spend all his time killing evil sorcerers and fighting enemy warlords, but he did it with wit and style. Sort of like James Bond in a loincloth. And the chapters had great titles, like _It Takes a Sharp Sword to Get Ahead_ , _Don't Make Me Axe You Again,_ and _How to Dis-arm Your Opponent_.

"Got any more?" I asked Dad. I swear, if we read books like that in English, I'd be an A plus student, which would get Mom off my back.

"You're in luck," he said. "Jacobs wrote at least twenty Harridan novels."

Mom groaned and mumbled something that sounded like, "literary popcorn," as Dad sprang up from the couch and disappeared once again into the great subterranean crap mines.

After the usual interval filled with the muted thumps of crashing piles, Dad returned balancing a towering armful of books.

I tore into them like they were a plate of fresh-baked brownies. Or popcorn, I guess. Even after the power returned, I kept reading. I put on the TV for background noise, but I didn't put down the books.

All the Harridan novels were numbered. I decided to read them in the order they were published, which was no problem for the first six books. But, as I discovered a couple days later, number seven wasn't in the stack. According to the list I found in number eight, the missing one was _Harridan and the Dragons of Dragoff._

"Where's number seven?" I asked Dad.

"It's not there?"

"Nope."

"I'll find it."

Dad dashed downstairs. Mom gave me an annoyed look, then asked, "Don't you have homework? It's bad enough we have a basement full of trash. I hate to see you filling your mind with it."

"No homework," I said. "And I like those books." I paced and waited.

An hour later, Dad came back up, slumped in defeat. "Maybe I loaned it to someone," he said. "Always a bad move. You never get books back. Try the bookstore."

I headed out that afternoon for Book Locker. They had the first three Harridan books on the shelves, and some of the higher numbers. But they didn't have Harridan number seven.

I checked with the girl at the register. "Do you know if you have any other Harridan novels in stock?"

She gave her gum a couple careful chews, then asked, "Who?"

"Harridan. By Brutus Jacobs."

"Did you look on the shelves?"

"Yeah."

"Well, if it's not on the shelves, I guess we don't have it."

"Can you check?"

"Uh, I guess. What was the name?"

"Harridan."

"Hold on. Darn this computer. Wait. Oops. Okay. Here we go. No books by any Harridan. We got a couple Harrisons and a Harriman. You want one of those?"

"No, _Harridan_ is the title. The author is Jacobs."

"Jacobs? How do you spell that?"

"J-a-c-o-b-s, Brutus Jacobs."

"Hold on. Darn this computer. Wait. Here we go. Got it." She grinned at me in triumph. "We have _Harridan the Barbarian Swordsman_ , and we have —"

"That's number one. Do you have number seven?"

"Is it on the shelves?"

"I didn't see it. Look for _Harridan and the Dragons of Dragoff?_ "

"Dragoff? With a D?"

We went a few more rounds with no results other than a strong suspicion on my part that I was being helped by someone who read a lot less than I did. I tested my suspicion by asking if they had the new William Shakespeare novel in stock. She wasn't sure, but told me, "If we had it, it would be on the shelves."

I headed across town to the used book store. They had a good assortment of fantasy paperbacks, but no sign of Harridan number seven. Then I tried the library.

The book was in the catalog, and it was supposed to be on the shelves. But I couldn't find it. Neither could the librarian. "Things disappear sometimes," she said. "People walk off with books. Especially the rarer ones."

"Rarer ones?" Oh great. This was getting worse and worse.

"I'm pretty sure it's out of print," she said.

I went home and waited for Dad to get in from work. We completely tore apart the basement. No sign of the book. We couldn't find numbers nine or fifteen, either, but I'd seen both of those at the library. We did find a whole box of really old tennis balls, including a half-dozen unopened cans. And a stack of unopened junk mail, including ads for computer software, gardening magazines, and miracle car waxes.

At one point, Mom came down to the foot of the steps, stared at us, shrieked, "I give up," and went back upstairs.

As I stood amid the piles of stuff, I had an idea. "I could check the Internet," I said to Dad.

"I guess we could try that. But I'll let you drive." Dad's passion for advanced technology begins and ends with the 1959 Corvette he's restoring. He doesn't even own a cell phone. "Do you know a good place to look?"

"We should start with eBay. They auction all kinds of stuff." I'd never bought anything on it, but I liked to look at the listings for video game systems, bass guitars, and other essential possessions

Dad smirked. "I've always thought that name sounded like pig Latin."

"What's that?" All I could picture was a hog in a toga. I didn't think that's what Dad had in mind.

"Igpay atinlay," he said, as if that would clarify the issue. "Put the first consonant at the end of the word, then add an _ay_ sound. If the word starts with a vowel, just add _way_ to the end. We used to speak in pig Latin all the time, back when ..." He let it go as my eyes clouded over. "Never mind. Let's see this auction thing."

I went to my bedroom and logged on, then pulled up a web auction page and typed _Harridan_ in the search window.

A message came up saying there were eight hundred thirty seven matching items. The first page was a mix of books, movies, posters, and stuff like _Harridan Jones for Mayor_ buttons that had nothing to do with the Harridan I was interested in.

"Whoa. This will take all day," Dad said.

I shook my head. "Let's refine the search." I added _barbarian_ and _number 7_.

"Five matches," Dad said, reading over my shoulder.

"Holy cow!" In the first listing, the book was going for seventy five dollars. For a moment, I gave up any hopes of ever owning a copy. But then I scanned the rest of the listings. The next one had the book for five dollars. There were two more offered at three-fifty, and the last one had numbers seven, eight, and nine in a bundle for twelve bucks.

"Wait," Dad said, pointing to the column between the item description and the current price. "This is how many people made a bid, right?"

I saw what he meant. Nobody had bid seventy-five dollars for the first one. That was just what the guy was asking.

I got Dad to register — he picked the user name Clueless Stan — and then we put in a bid for one of the copies that was offered at three fifty.

"Let's see what else is for sale," Dad said.

I searched through more of the Harridan listings. "A bunch of people are bidding on number one. Thirty five dollars for a first edition. Wow."

"Try Dale Gerralds," Dad said. "I've got his early books, from before he was popular. Put that in, and add _first edition_."

"Okay." I did the search and found a dozen listings for first-edition Dale Gerralds books. There were bids as high as forty dollars for one of the titles. "You have this book?"

Dad nodded.

"Wow. Want to sell it?"

Dad shook his head. "I want to hang onto the old books."

"What about some of the other stuff in the basement? You want to try to sell some of it?"

Mom must have been passing by the doorway when I said that. I can't think of any other reason for her to suddenly shout, "Hallelujah!"

Dad didn't look like he was going to agree until I said, "If you make money, you can get those parts you want for the Corvette." Before he could weaken, I pointed toward the basement and added my killer finish. "You saved all that stuff because you knew somebody could use it. Right?"

"Right."

"So, our job is to find that somebody."

I went to the main page and read up on how to sell items. It seemed pretty easy.

"What do you want to sell?" I asked Dad.

"I don't know. Let's look around."

We headed toward the basement. It was somewhere in the hallway that the frenzy began to get into our blood. We started out walking, but as I thought about millions of people bidding money for rare items, I walked faster. Dad kept pace behind me. By the time I reached the steps, I was almost jogging.

Dad and I started pulling things out of boxes and making stacks. "Tennis balls," he said, grabbing the first thing he tripped over.

"Those are old. Who'd want them?"

"Look at the color," he said, holding the can up.

"White?" I asked. "That's weird. Are they so old that they faded?"

"No. They came that way. They don't make 'em that color any more. Haven't for years. That's why I kept them. These are unopened, too. Got to be worth something to somebody."

I had my doubts the tennis balls. But I figured Dad and I were in this together, so I should at least listen to him. We picked five other things to try to sell, too, including some phonograph records, and a bunch of typewriter ribbons.

As I was working on the first listing, Mom peeked into my room and said, "Good. You're doing your homework."

I opened my mouth to admit the truth, when a thought smacked me hard enough to make my body twitch. "You'd love it if Dad got rid of some of his junk, right?"

"Love is too weak a word for what I'd feel," she said.

"If I could help him to get rid of a lot of stuff, would you trust me to do my homework without checking it all the time?"

"How much stuff?"

"Lots of it. Tons."

She stood there for a moment, obviously thinking things over. Then she nodded. "If you can do that, you can do anything."

I spent the rest of the day putting the listings up. And the rest of the evening watching my email to see if we got any bids. Dad stuck it out until 1 am, then went to sleep.

"Anything?" he asked the next morning.

"Not yet."

"Not even on the phonograph records?" he asked.

"Especially not on them." I'd noticed that there were thousands of records offered for sale.

Dad shook his head and walked off. I put my head down on my arms and fell asleep. It had been a nice idea, but it looked like online auctions weren't the way to get Dad to clear out his mess, or to get Mom off my back.

When I woke up, I checked the auctions right away. Still no bids. Worse, someone had topped my bid for Harridan number seven. I decided to break skip to number eight.

Between reading Harridan novels and watching the auctions, time flew. A week passed and we didn't get any bids. I couldn't understand it. Someone should have been interested.

I kept studying the auctions, trying to figure out what sold and what didn't. There was some stuff that was obvious. Old Beatles and Elvis stuff sold — but even that had to be rare. Magazines had to be from the nineteen fifties or earlier, unless it was a special issue like with an assassination or wedding.

Then I noticed something else. There were two people offering the same Beatles album. One had five bids, the other didn't have any. I checked the listings. It was the same album, in the same condition. The only difference was that one person had written a long description of the record. The write-up was so good, it almost made me want to buy the record.

Maybe that was worth a try.

I listed the tennis balls again. My old description just said: "Six unopened cans of white tennis balls."

This time, I got creative, did a bit of research, and wrote: "Rare memorabilia from the early days when tennis was a sport played for love instead of money. If you're old enough to remember the glory days of tennis, then you know that tennis balls weren't always so brightly colored. We're fortunate to have recently unearthed six UNOPENED cans of white tennis balls — the same color used by those early legends of the game, Billy Jean King, Rod Laver, and Arthur Ashe. Now, you can own a flawless piece of tennis history."

I posted the listing, then got back to reading Harridan's adventures.

"Did you do your homework?" Mom asked the moment she saw me with the book.

"I thought we had a deal?"

She shook her head. "Not until I see some sort of progress downstairs. Meanwhile, do you have homework?"

"I have a bit of math due for tomorrow," I admitted.

"Get it done before you read."

"I have plenty of time."

She stared at me. I sighed, grabbed my math book, and did the problems. It didn't take long. The instant I was finished, I checked my email. "We got a bid!" I shouted when I saw the subject heading.

Dad came rushing up to my bed room. "Let's see."

I pointed to the screen. Someone had offered three dollars for the six cans. I pulled up my description on the auction page to show Dad. When I scrolled back to the top, I saw there was a second bid.

By the time the auction ended, we'd sold the cans for $27. I went back to all our unsold items and rewrote the descriptions. They all sold.

Dad and I raided the basement. It became a challenge. He'd pull out some incredibly valueless object and dare me to sell it.

I met every challenge. The floor of the basement started to re-emerge. We even found more tennis balls. I spent all of my free time putting up listings. Dad split the money with me, as long as I promised to put half my share away for college. That still left me a nice amount to spend.

Everything went smoothly until a Sunday afternoon at the end of October when Mom came up to my room and said, "I really have to compliment you. You got your Dad motivated. And I haven't received any calls from your teachers, so it looks like you've gotten your homework problem under control."

"Yup." I allowed myself a moment of pride as I thought about how well I'd handled everything. I generally knocked off my math during study hall, and my history on the bus ride home from school. We'd had hardly any homework in English all through October because of the big project.

Oh my gosh...!

The project...

I froze at the keyboard. "English!" I gasped.

"You have English homework?" Mom asked.

I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, and then realized it was my tongue. Struggling to keep my voice calm, I said, "Just one thing. No problem." Yeah it was one thing. A twenty page report, due tomorrow morning. I glanced at the auction screen, wondering whether anybody was selling English papers. Or new heads, since mine was about to get ripped off by Mom.

"I'm so proud of you. I thought this day would never come."

Mom smiled, patted me on the head, and left the room. I could feel sweat sprouting from parts of my body that I never knew had sweat glands.

I got up from the computer and wandered into the hall. "This is stupid," I muttered. "I'm not a writer. Why do they give us those assignments?"

"Who's not a writer?" Dad asked, stepping into the hall from his bedroom.

"Me."

He shook his head. "You wouldn't know it — not the way your ads have been pulling in the sales."

My ads! A glimmer of hope threw itself at the towering brick wall of my despair. I might get out of this alive. I minimized my auction screen and opened the folder where I'd kept copies of my item descriptions. I started cutting and pasting. Wow. By the time I'd pulled up everything I'd written, I had over twenty-five pages, even without using my usual trick of pumping up the font.

I added a short introduction. Now all I needed was a title. That was easy enough. _Descriptive Language as a Means of Sales Motivation._ Perfect. I was done with my homework.

I handed my paper in on Monday morning. By Monday afternoon, I was convinced I'd made a horrible mistake. As the week went by, fear and panic danced through all my internal organs. By Thursday, I was sure I'd be in 9th grade forever.

Finally, on Friday, Ms. Cowan gave us back our papers. I didn't get mine. "See me after class," she said.

Oh boy. That is never a good sign. I spent the whole class imagining the creative words she'd use to describe my pathetic attempt at a project.

As I walked up to her desk after class, I tried to think of the best way to plead for another chance.

"Here," she said, handing me my paper.

I glanced down. It took me a moment to recognize the strange letter and symbol. There was an A+ on the front page. Below it, she'd written the comment, "Wonderful descriptive writing. The examples you came up with to support your hypothesis were excellent. Keep up the good work. You have a flair for promotional prose."

"Thanks." Now I was puzzled. "Why did you want to see me?"

"Those tennis balls you described," she said. "They sound great. I'd love to buy some as a birthday present for my uncle. Do you have any idea where I can get a can?"

"Sure. I'll have to check with my partner, but I think I can take care of that."

I headed out of the classroom, clutching a paper that would keep Mom happy for weeks. I was going to go to the mall after school and buy a calendar organizer so I could keep track of my assignments, but I realized that would be a waste of money. Instead, I went home. Dad had a whole box of organizers in the basement. They were old, but I found one that started out on the same day of the week as this year, which made it perfectly usable. Hey, there are some things you just shouldn't ever throw out.

# Duel Identities

I committed my first act of self destruction less than five minutes into third period. We were sitting in the bleachers while Mr. Cadutto spelled out the basic facts of gym class to us brand spanking new freshmen. After explaining how many points we got for taking a shower and how many points we lost for forgetting our gym clothes, Mr. Cadutto said, "Okay. We're gonna pick four team leaders. You'll help set things up, so you won't get to do no calisthenics."

Whoa. That caught my attention. _Miss calisthenics._ My heart leaped at the opportunity to avoid having my heart leap. I joined the hand wavers, though I noticed that none of my fellow overachievers from first period honors English had entered this particular lottery. I'd already figured out that _honor_ was an odd word around here. From the varsity jackets of the crowds in the hallway to the huge trophy case that faced the main entrance, it was obvious that honor was paid more to the body than the mind at Kennedy High.

Mr. Cadutto scanned us like a rancher at a beef auction. "You can't be no leader unless you go out for at least two sports."

Half the hands dropped. Mine remained airborne. Despite an inherited lack of bulk or speed or power, I did have two sport in my extracurricular plans. One just for the heck of it, but the other because it had entered my dreams in the hazy days of childhood, and remained there ever since.

Mr. Cadutto pointed to Bruno Haskins, up at the top of the bleachers, "Football and wrestling, right Haskins?" he growled.

"Right, Coach."

Mr. Cadutto waved Bruno down. I sensed a rigged election. The gym teacher obviously already knew the star athletes in our class.

Bruno jogged to the bottom of the bleachers, making each row bounce under his weight. Mr. Cadutto selected Kyle Barrister next, and then Mookie Lahasca, two other champion jocks. Three down, one to go. He scanned us again, then frowned. I guess the jock gene pool had dried up too fast. He stared right at me. His brow creased with a puzzled expression.

"You," he barked, pointing one large sausage of a finger in my direction. He ran his eyes over my imposing 78 pound frame. "Wrestling?"

No way. There was zero appeal in the thought of having my body tied in knots like a rawhide dog chew. I shook my head.

"Track?" he asked, with a touch of disdain.

Another shake.

"Swimming?"

Nope.

"So what's your two sports?"

I uttered three innocent words. "Fencing and tennis."

There was dead silence for about nine millionths of a second. Then the dam burst. Laughter splashed over me like acid rain, spewing from the mouth of every classmate, followed by waves of comments.

"Wow, tough guy!"

"Freakin' retard..."

"You forgot ballet."

"Jerk..."

Bruno cackled so hard he started choking. "Fencing," he sputtered between coughs.

"Coach said sports," Mookie shouted up at me, "not farts."

I knew exactly how the Wicked Witch of the West felt as she melted into a puddle of green ooze.

Mr. Cadutto, who should have been the adult in all of this, snorted like an ox that had just heard a really great joke. After he'd had a good chuckle, I guess he realized he should respond to my request. He regarded me with the sort of combined pity and loathing generally reserved for humans who've somehow managed to cover themselves with their own dung. He opened his mouth. Then he closed it. Then he opened it again. Finally, he shook his head and scanned the bleachers for other options.

My classmates continued to share their thoughts with me.

"Cool sports, Tarbell."

"Hey, if you add hop scotch, you can be a three-letter man."

"You scared to play a real sport?"

"Maybe he's afraid he'll break a nail."

"What a dork."

Apparently, there's a hierarchy of respect among sports. I should have known. I should have kept my mouth shut. I'm such an idiot.

After the fourth leader was selected, our new captains chose teams for volleyball. I was picked dead last. That had never happened in junior high. Even Hippo Schwartz got called before me. So did Billy Esterbridge, who by my estimate had failed in eight thousand consecutive attempts to serve the ball over the net. At least my humiliation had allowed others to climb briefly out of the muck engulfing the lowest of the low.

As the game started, I realized the full extent of my mistake.

"Fencing sucks," one of my teammates said as I walked past him.

"En garde," another said, jabbing me in the back with a finger.

Everyone who got within range took a poke. By the end of the period, I felt like an acupuncture practice dummy.

"Well, you're screwed," Danny Horvath said to me as we trudged into the locker room.

I could always count on Danny for moral support. That's what best friends are for. But he was right. For the next four years, or the rest of my life — whichever came first — I'd be known as the fencing dork. After a quick shower — far be it from me to miss a chance to improve my grade — I got dressed and slunk off through the locker room door.

"Fencing?" The mocking squawk echoed in the corridor.

Oh no. I knew that voice. I kept walking.

"Fencing?" Louder this time.

"Ouch!" I spun around as I felt sharp poke in the back. Trent Muldoon — he of the single eyebrow and single-celled brain — sneered at me.

"Yeah, fencing," I said. "It's a sport."

"For girls." Trent knocked my books from my hand, then sprinted down the hallway.

I thought about racing after him, leaping on his back, dragging him to the ground, and pounding him into a mass of quivering jelly. It might, just barely, have been possible. We were close to the same height. On the other hand, he was a wrestler — which meant he knew a lot more about fighting than I did.

Freshman survival rule #1: never take someone on at his own game. But adrenaline can do wonders. Mothers have lifted cars off of trapped infants. Men have chewed their way out of steel cages. Teenage boys have eaten liver and onions. Well, maybe nothing that extreme. Still, with enough adrenaline behind my attack, I figured I could get in a punch or two. After which, he'd probably toss me on the ground and wrap me up in a wrestling hold so tight it would give me a first-hand chance to view my lower intestines from the inside. Besides, Trent had a lot of buddies. Large, stupid, mean buddies. I'd save revenge for another day.

I gathered my books.

"Scott, you sure about this fencing thing?" Danny asked as he came out of the locker room.

I'd thought I was — before learning the results of the fencing popularity poll. Now, I wasn't so sure. But the damage had already been done. If I didn't go out, I'd be more than just a whimsy dork. I'd be a whimsy dork quitter. "Yeah," I told Danny. "I'm gonna fence."

"The only ones who go out for fencing are kids who want a varsity letter and can't make any other team. Too weak to wrestle, too short for basketball, too dense for swimming...."

"I don't care," I told him. Scenes flashed through my head; musketeers with flashing rapiers, Jedi Knights with light sabers, Inigo Montoya in _The Princess Bride_ , John Steed and Emma Peel — thank goodness for _Avengers_ videos — Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Despite the opinion of the general population, fencing was way beyond cool. I just wished I wasn't the only one on the planet who felt that way.

"And it's a lot more than a sport," I added. "There's centuries of tradition. There's honor. There's spirit."

Danny yawned. "Yeah, sure. Whatever. Fencing is wonderful. Whoopee. I'm happy for you. Come on. Let's get out of here."

I followed him down the hall.

Life dragged on. Football season came and went. Finally, it was time for winter sports. After school, on the first day of signups, I rushed to the gym.

I pushed my way through a thick, noisy mob clustered around Mr. Cadutto at the wrestling table. Other crowds buzzed around basketball and swimming signups.

Across the gym, I spotted the fencing table. It was as uncrowded as a hot-dog stand at a vegetarian convention. I walked over. "Mr. Sinclair?" I asked, recognizing the physics teacher.

He nodded and smiled. "Yes. I'm the new fencing coach."

"What happened to Mr. Billings?" From what I'd heard, he'd always been the coach.

"He got married during the summer. His wife wants him to spend more time at home. So, like that, no fencing coach." Mr. Sinclair shrugged.

I realized a new coach wouldn't be bad, since he wouldn't have any favorites from last season. I picked up a pen and started filling out the signup form.

An older kid, a senior, I think, walked up. "Hey, Mr. Sinclair. I heard you were coaching us this year. Have you fenced much?"

"To tell the truth, I've never fenced." he said.

My hand stopped halfway through writing my last name.

"However, if I may boast, I'm quite a competent chess player." Mr. Sinclair grinned modestly. "If you can play chess, you can play any sport. Besides, nobody else wanted to coach. They were going to cancel the team. So I volunteered."

Oh boy.

A couple more kids joined us at the table, including Billy Esterbridge from my gym class. I glanced over at the wrestlers. They looked like a magazine ad for a health club. So did the swimmers. Not the fencers. We looked like a poster for some unpleasant childhood disease that caused the body to either shrivel or bloat.

Much to my surprise, I saw Danny weaving his way through the crowd.

"Aren't you afraid of being seen with us dorks?" I asked.

Danny shrugged and picked up a pen. "Hey, you made it sound like too much fun to miss."

"Yeah. It'll do wonders for your status," I told him. "I've heard the junior and senior girls love fencers almost as much as they love the AV geeks."

"Hey," Billy said. "Cut it out. I like the audio-visual club. Without us, there'd be no intra-school dissemination of information."

"Relax," Danny said. "Scott was just kidding."

"Yeah, I was kidding." I actually admired Billy's ability to hook things up. I just didn't share his enthusiasm for the activity. I turned back to Mr. Sinclair. "When does practice start?"

"Next Monday."

Well, whether or not he had any experience as a coach, at least we'd have a team. And I'd get my chance to fence.

The rest of the week and through the weekend, I did all I could to help speed the passage of time toward Monday afternoon. Finally, on Monday, as the school day ended, I hurried to the locker room.

"Holy crap!" I stepped into my worst nightmare — times ten. Every wrestler and basketball player in the school was there, shouting, laughing, snapping towels, torturing small animals. Okay, maybe they weren't all bad guys. There were some casual friends and nodding acquaintances scattered through the mob. But there were also some of the nastiest creatures this side of a Wes Craven film.

I slipped along the side wall and snuck over to my locker, hoping to avoid setting off the victim detectors. If I was quiet enough, the wrestlers would leave me alone.

"Time to fence!"

Billy, grinning like a game-show contestant who'd just won a lifetime supply of matching luggage, rushed over and waved something white up and down in one hand.

"Look, Scott, I got fencing pants. Cool, huh? My mom bought them for me. She's real happy. I'm the first one in our family to go out for a sport." He flapped the white pants in my face like a matador trying to goad a bull.

"Ssshhhh..." I said. "This isn't the best time for show and tell."

Too late. A passing hand shot between us and snatched Billy's fencing pants. "Check this out," Trent said. "A fag costume."

Billy reached for the pants.

Trent danced backwards. "You know what? You don't need to wear these. You already look like a fag." He glanced around the locker room. I could see his weasely little brain working out the best way to humiliate Billy. He settled for tossing the pants into the shower where they landed in the middle of the wet, soapy floor.

Billy ran off to retrieve his pants. By the time he returned, Danny had showed up, carrying a pair of sneakers and a sweat suit. "I don't know about this," he said.

"I don't either." I sighed and tried to hold onto the image I'd started with — me as a cool guy with mask and sword, fencing away while the clash of steel against steel rang through the air. It wasn't easy.

We left the locker room and headed for the girl's gym. Yup — one more indignity. The basketball players got the boy's gym, the swimmers got the pool at the YMCA, the wrestlers got the exercise room, and we got stuck with the clog dancing club.

"Okay, team, line up," Mr. Sinclair called.

"Where are the swords?" Danny whispered as he took a spot to my left.

"Beats me." I looked around for equipment. Not a sword or mask in sight. If the Huns attacked right now, we'd be doomed.

"Hey, Mr. Sinclair! Mr. Sinclair!" Billy shouted, waving his hand.

"Yes?" Mr. Sinclair asked.

"What about our swords? When do we get our swords? Can we get them now? They're the electronic ones, right? When do we get them?"

"After we get in shape," he said. "First, we exercise the body. All together, now. Let's start with jumping jacks." He leaped and clapped. "One, two,..."

".... ninety-nine, one hundred."

Oh man. For the next hour, we exercised. Pushups. Situps. Throwups. Okay, just one of those. But at least it wasn't me rushing off to do a shallow dive into the garbage can.

"Great sport," Danny said as we collapsed on the floor after practice. "I feel so dashing. So honorable. Just kill me now, all right? I don't want to live to see how much my muscles are going to hurt tomorrow."

"I'd kill you if I could lift my hand," I told him. "Maybe next week." I was wiped out. Around me, a quivering assortment of fencers lay in various degrees of trauma.

Through lenses of sweat drops, I watched Mr. Sinclair leave the gym. A moment later, he came rushing back. "I almost forgot — we must jog. It builds stamina." He clapped his hands together. "Everyone up. Come on. Just two laps around the halls. Hurry. All together. Run like a team."

With grunts and groans, the dead rose. Somehow, we huffed through the empty hallways, completing two circuits around the outer corridor. As we ran, Danny glared at me and muttered, "Yeah, definitely a great sport."

I didn't have enough air in me for a reply. The slap of my sneaker bottoms echoed from the floor to the walls, then took up residence in my head as a mocking chant: _you fool, you fool, you fool..._ I remember a Stephen King story where kids were forced to keep walking. The ones who stopped got shot. This was worse. We did pretty much the same workout on Tuesday. And Wednesday. And the rest of the first week. There was one advantage to the grueling training. By the middle of the second week, I noticed that gym class didn't seem all that rough. Compared to Mr. Sinclair's routine, Mr. Cadutto's warmup calisthenics were a joke.

Danny was getting into shape, too. Even Billy and the rest of the team were actually starting to look less like cast members for a low-budget zombie movie. All we now needed was cold steel.

Finally, a week and a half before our first meet, we entered the girl's gym to a lovely sight — stacks of equipment. There was a frenzied rush to the table while Mr. Sinclair pleaded for restraint. I knew what I wanted. I grabbed a saber, the only sword where you could score with the edge of the blade. Sure, the purest fencing was done with the foil, and the epee was challenging, but those swords just used the tip.

The saber I picked was pretty well beaten up. The hand guard was all scratched. That didn't matter. I was happy to have a sword of my own. I stepped away from the mob and sliced the air.

Danny took a saber, too. So did Mike Gottlieb, one of the older kids. "Good choice," he said. "I fenced saber last year."

"Line up," Mr. Sinclair called.

We formed a line, swords in hand. Finally, a chance to cross steel with a worthy opponent. I couldn't wait.

"Swords down," Mr. Sinclair called. "Time for calisthenics."

We put our swords down and exercised. But, halfway through the practice, we got our chance.

"Swords up," Mr. Sinclair called.

"At last," Billy said.

I picked up my saber, eager to cross steel with anyone who dared face me.

"Advance!" Mr. Sinclair called.

We stepped forward.

"Retreat!" he said.

We stepped back.

For the rest of the period, that's what we did. Step forward. Step back. Step forward. Step back. Again and again. Occasionally, for variety, we'd move two steps forward, then two steps back. It's less exciting than it sounds. Far less.

When I got home, I dug through the boxes in the garage until I found Dad's chrome polish. I shined up my sword, then fenced imaginary enemies up and down the hall until Mom yelled at me to stop all that thumping and shouting.

Mr. Sinclair did his best to teach us. He brought in some fencing books from the library. And he talked a coach over at the college into coming by a couple times. The guys who'd fenced last year helped us out, too. Even so, we were pretty bad.

I found out how bad at our opening match. It was an away game against Mercer High. Nine kids fence for a team — three each at foil, saber, and epee. In a match, you get to fence three bouts, going against the guys on the other team with the same weapon as yours.

The meet was in their cafeteria. The tables and chairs had been pushed back to make room for the long mat we fenced on. Wires ran from the scoring machine to reels at each end of the mat.

My first bout, the moment I plugged the cord from the reel into my saber's handle and slipped on my mask, I forgot absolutely everything I'd learned.

"Fence!" the referee shouted.

Flick. My opponent extended his arm.

Snap. Something hit the side of my mask. Crap. It was the other guy's sword.

One to nothing.

"Fence!"

Flick.

Snap.

Crap.

Two, nothing.

"Fence!"

Flick.

I got smart. I raised my sword, blocking the cut. I blocked air. Tap. He'd switched to a thrust. I looked down at the point where it rested against my chest. Crap.

Three, nothing.

And so it went. Flick, snap, crap. Flick, tap, crap. I lost five, zip.

"Try moving a bit more," Mike said when I walked back to our bench.

"Thanks."

My second bout went better. I lost five nothing again, but it took the other guy longer to win.

"It's okay to use your sword," Danny said.

My third bout, down two nothing, I started to see the attacks coming. As my opponent made a cut toward my left side, I blocked and counter attacked — a parry and riposte. I think I was as startled as him when the light went on showing I'd scored.

He scored twice more. But at four to one, I made a fast lunge, catching him as he was coming in and scoring my second point.

I lost the bout. And we lost the match twenty-five to two. It almost didn't matter. I'd fenced. And I'd scored a couple points. That was good enough for now.

As we headed to the parking lot after the match, I noticed that the Mike was grinning like we'd won. "What's so funny?" I asked, following him to the back of the bus.

He opened his coat. A stack of sword blades clattered to the seat.

"Where'd those come from?" I asked.

"Where do you think," Mike asked.

"You stole them?"

"Sure. It's traditional. The other teams try to steal from us, so we have to steal back. Don't blame me. It's their fault for not keeping an eye on their equipment table."

Ed Drake, the team captain, joined us and added a couple fencing gloves to the pile. Someone else pulled a mask out of his bag.

I couldn't believe it. This was so wrong. Fencing was supposed to be all about rules and honor. I wanted to say something, but I knew it wouldn't make a difference. I took a seat and kept my mouth shut.

We lost our next match, too. This time it was twenty-two to five. It was a home game. Not that it mattered. Nobody came to watch. I lost all three bouts again, but I scored points in each of them.

"Look on the bright side," Danny said as the other team left the gym.

"What's that?" I asked.

"You don't have to use that crappy old scratched up saber any longer." He pulled a brand new shiny hand guard from his bag. "Put your blade in this."

"Not you, too," I said.

Danny shrugged. "It all works out. We steal from them. They steal from us."

"Not me." I turned away from him.

"Come on. Lighten up." Danny chased after me. "You aren't angry, are you?"

"No." I was disappointed. But he wouldn't understand. I didn't think anybody understood.

Everyone laughed whenever they heard the fencing results over morning announcements. The whole school knew I was on the team — thanks to my first day of gym class. I felt like the poster boy for chronic losers. It got even worse when they started reading the individual records.

"And Scott Tarbell now has eighteen losses for the season."

Angelica Carter, who sat to my right, glanced at me and said "They didn't tell us your wins. Shouldn't they mention them, too?"

I just shrugged and tried to look puzzled. After months of searching for a way to impress her, this didn't seem like my best opening.

Halfway through the season, our luck changed. All three of our foil fencers started winning most of their bouts. It wasn't enough to win any of the meets, but it made the team feel better.

Then, on our next to last meet, we pulled ahead early. The three guys fencing foils were doing an excellent job. I lost my first bout but won the second. It was only my fifth win for the season. The epees were doing well, too.

But I noticed Ed and Mike exchanging that same grin I'd seen on the bus. Something was up. The other team's coach complained to the referee. They all came over and started to examine the foils.

I knew what they were looking for. When you score a point, it completes a circuit and lights a bulb on the scoring machine. I'd heard rumors of kids trying to rig their swords. I'd even heard a story about a kid who'd tried to short out his foil with a penny. They say it fell out of his hand during the match.

"Nobody'll find anything," Mike whispered to Ed.

"Bridge is a genius," Ed whispered back.

"Is there anything to find?" I asked

Mike grinned and shrugged. I knew something was going on. But he was right — the referee didn't find anything in the sword. Just to be sure, he made our fencer switch swords. Our guy lost.

The match continued. The score was tied when I came up for the final bout. The moment the match started, I shot out a cut to the head, just to see how my opponent reacted. Much to my surprise, my saber whacked his mask with a satisfying smack. I had an easy point.

I tried it again. Bad move. He lunged under my strike and scored. I faked another head strike. As he lifted his blade to block, I brought my sword around and scored against his right side.

Two to one.

He scored again. Then I scored twice. Four to two. I was almost there.

I stood, ready. I had the advantage. I had the momentum.

But we'd cheated. That must have been what Mike and Ed were talking about. I though about who'd been winning. Ed at first foil, Walter at second foil, and Billy. Oh man — Billy Esterbridge. Ed had said _Bridge is a genius._ Billy was a hardware geek. If anyone could rig the swords, it was him.

My opponent attacked, jerking me out of my thoughts as his blade smacked my left shoulder.

Four to three.

He came in hard and fast this time. I parried, but I didn't return the attack. I knew I could score, winning the match and the meet. Just like that, I could be the hero. He attacked twice more with the point, and then with a cut. Another attack with the point. I noticed that he always twisted his wrist slightly just before lunging.

No matter how good you are, you can't block forever. On his next attack, his blade nicked my arm just beneath my guard.

Four all.

We faced each other for the final point. I realized I had to make a quick decision. Which was worse — winning a match when my teammates had cheated or letting myself lose a match I was sure I could win?

He turned his wrist slightly. I knew what was coming. He lunged.

I parried the thrust and flicked my blade across the side of his mask.

The team went crazy.

Feeling nothing at all like a hero, I walked through a sea of congratulations and gathered up my stuff. Most of my stuff, that is. Someone had stolen my spare blade from my bag.

As we headed to the locker room, Danny said, "You almost looked like you didn't want to win."

I told him what happened.

"So why'd you score that last point?"

"If I let myself lose, that would be like cheating. Right? Besides, for all I knew, the other team was cheating, too. Maybe every team we ever faced cheated."

"Get over it," Danny said. "There's no honor in the world. This is just a high school sport. It's only cheating if they catch you."

There was no point arguing. I showered and got dressed. Billy came over while I waited for Danny. "That was great match," he said. "Really great. I'm glad we finally won one."

"Yeah," I said. "Really great."

"Hey, it's the girls."

Oh crap. Not now. Trent strutted up on his way out of the shower, a towel around his waist and a mocking leer on his face. "I'll bet you guys play with each others swords in the dark." He reached out, grabbing Billy's foil from the bench.

"That's mine," Billy said. "Give it back."

"I'll give it," Trent said. He poked Billy. "You like that? I'll bet you do."

Other wrestlers crowded around, laughing. "Stick him, Trent," someone shouted.

"Shish kabob time."

"Bend over, Billy."

"Cut a Z on him, man."

"No, make it a T for Trent."

I backed away.

Goaded by the laughs, Trent poked Billy again. Harder this time.

"Cut it out," Billy said.

Bad choice of words.

"Cut? Sure, if you want me to." Trent slashed the sword, leaving a long red mark across Billy's chest. He slashed a second time, downward, making a crude T. One small drop of blood oozed from the welt.

"Stop it, shithead!"

Trent snapped around to face me. I don't know which of us was more surprised by my shout.

"What was that?" he asked. "You defending your lover boy?"

Why did it always come to that? I didn't even like Billy. But I had to try to keep him from getting hurt any worse. "Hey — it's not even fair. You have a sword. He doesn't,"

"Yeah, he doesn't. But you do," Trent said. He poked me with the foil. I barely felt it through my winter jacket.

"Just stop it, okay?"

"No. I want to sword fight with you," Trent said. "Come on." He poked me again. I looked at him, standing there in nothing but a towel. I had a heavy jacket. And gloves. It was about as unfair as it could get. I glanced back over at Billy as he sniffled.

"Let's go," Trent said, giving me a third poke.

I reached down to the bench next to me and grabbed my fencing mask. "Okay," I said as I slipped the mask over my head, "let's fence." I pulled my saber from my bag.

Trent laughed as I got into position. To the untrained eye, the fencing stance probably looks whimpy. Actually, it looks pretty whimpy to the trained eye, too. But it works.

Trent let out a yell and slashed at me like some sort of malfunctioning audioanimatronic from a Disney ride.

I parried his attack effortlessly. After a match where I'd faced three experienced fencers, this was a joke. He slashed again. This time, I followed my parry with a move of my own, flicking the blade across Trent's shoulder.

"Ouch," he yelped, taking a step backwards.

I pressed forward, easily blocking each of his clumsy slashes, and easily picking away at him. Even with the blunted tip and dulled blade, a saber can hurt — especially against bare flesh.

It wasn't fair. Not at all. I was heavily protected, and heavily skilled compared to my opponent. Trent had a sword he didn't know how to use and a towel. He had no more chance of beating me at fencing than I did of beating him at wrestling. It wasn't fair at all. It violated everything I'd ever believed about fair play and honor.

But it sure felt right.

With each thrust, I forced him further back. The crowd of wrestlers moved with us, keeping clear of our blades, but following right behind as we passed the last row of lockers and reached the end of the corridor.

I halfway expected one of Trent's friends to clobber me from behind. But nobody interfered.

As Trent put his back against the locker room door, I charged, giving him a stinging assault on both arms. Then I thrust my point toward his face. I was only faking, but Trent didn't know that.

He howled and stumbled backwards — right into the hall. I followed, leaping through the doorway. I had him moving now. Halfway down the hall, I did something I never could have done to a real fencer.

I disarmed him.

It was so slick. I caught the middle of his blade with my tip, spun my wrist, and sent his sword into the air. If only Angelica Carter had been there to see that move. Without a doubt, it was the coolest thing I'd ever done.

I even caught the falling sword in my left hand. As I stood holding both swords, a dozen movies flashed through my mind. All my heroes would do the same thing now. They'd bow and return the weapon, re-arming their opponent. Then they'd smile and say, "Shall we continue?" That was the honorable thing. That was fair play.

"The hell with that," I said.

This wasn't a movie. This was high school. I lunged with both swords and buried the tips in the towel. With a yank, I pulled the towel from Trent and flicked it over my shoulder.

Weaponless, and naked, Trent turned and ran, vanishing around the corner. I didn't follow.

I pivoted and found myself facing the rest of the wrestling team. Even with two swords, I felt badly unequipped.

Bruno Haskins smacked me on the shoulder. "Pretty cool," he said. "You're good with that sword, man."

"Did you see that jerk go running?" another wrestler said.

Bruno laughed and shook his head. "Trent is such an idiot." He walked off with his friends, who trailed their thoughts behind them.

"Freakin' moron..."

"...what a loser..."

"You see him run?"

"Total jerk..."

The distant sound of female screams told me Trent had been spotted. I found Billy and returned his sword, then grabbed my bag. "Wow. One for all and all for one," Billy said.

"Right." I didn't shatter his illusion that he'd participated. He needed his dreams, too.

"Those guys could have killed you," Danny said as we headed out.

"Yeah. I know."

He shrugged. "I guess they didn't really like Trent, either."

"Maybe there's some hope for them, after all." I took off my mask and looked at my sword. In the dented hand guard, my reflection was oddly contorted. But there was no hiding the smile. I wasn't Zorro. And I wasn't John Steed or Captain Blood. But I was a fencer. That was good enough for me.

We lost our last match. Badly. Mr. Sinclair insisted on inspecting all the swords himself. Whatever way Billy had rigged the electronics, Mr. Sinclair was a good enough physics teacher to figure it out. It didn't matter. Win or lose, I loved fencing. Even if it marked me as a dork.

After all that, I wasn't even be able to go out for tennis. Someone ratted on me, and I got handed thirty days detention. I guess that was fair enough. I'd happily have given sixty days in exchange for that one moment. In a perfect world, my victory over Trent would have earned the guys on the fencing team at least a bit of respect. But the glamour didn't last. We went back to being the butt of jokes pretty quickly. On the other hand, nobody ever touched our swords again.

# Here's to Good Friends

"Spit out that gum!"

I hate it when teachers shout. What's his problem? I looked up at Mr. Forester, who was huffing down the aisle toward my desk. First period on Monday, you'd think he'd have the decency to let us ease back into the grind. School's enough of a drag without having to plunge right into quadratic equations, the Great Depression, or the use and misuse of the gerund.

"Ratner, spit out that gum right now. I asked you three times. Are you deaf?"

"Me?"

Mr. Forester pressed right up against my desk. "Is there another Brad Ratner in the room?"

"If there is, I hope he did my homework."

I heard some choked-back laughs from around the room. I glanced over at Jordie and grinned. Forester bent forward and got right in my face. "Now."

I pushed my chair away from the desk and walked over to the garbage can. Patoooee. Thunk. I love the sound gum makes when you spit it into a can. I wonder if there's some kind of career where I could do that? Wouldn't that be awesome? I could see myself like one of those street musician guys with the wild hair and shaggy beard. Playing the gum can. Yeah. I could set up different cans, with different sounds. Pass the hat. Make enough money to buy more gum. Maybe get famous and be in Rolling Stone. Brad Ratner, world's best rhythm spitter. Of course, a beard might be a bad idea, with all that gum.

Crap. Forester was shouting again. I headed back to my seat. Almost tripped, but I caught myself. Maybe I should tie my laces. Not cool, but definitely less trippy.

Forester glared at me and shook his head. "Every day, Ratner. It's getting old."

Yeah, so are you.

At least he left me alone for the rest of the period.

I met up with Jordie in the hall when the bell rang. "You better watch it," he said. "Forester is going to give you detention."

"Nah. He can't. I've got detention deficit disorder." Damn. That was pretty funny. I let out a laugh as I realized what I'd said. "Yeah, that's it. I've got DDD. Got a note from my doctor. I even have a prescription for attituderol. They gotta treat me special. It's the law."

"Dickhead." Jordie gave me a push. And then he forgot all about everything in the world except his glands because his main squeeze, Carla, was coming down the hall.

Carla. Yum. She was fine. Hot. Smart. Fun. She had this body that, if she was made out of cake, you'd eat the whole thing because it would be impossible to stop after a couple bites. She reached us, and gave Jordie the sort of hug that's illegal in seventeen states. Lucky man. I think they're going to be together for life. That's cool. I was happy for them. After they untangled, she looked over at me and said, "Oh. Hi, Brad."

No smile. That's the thing. She was hot. But sometimes, for no reason at all, she was cold. Maybe I should call her "faucet." Wasn't there a Sarah Faucet or something like that? I could call her "Shallow Faucet." But that would piss Jordie off. And I wouldn't do that to my best pal. I mean, even though we've been hanging since 10th grade, he could have dumped me when they started going out. But we still did lots of stuff together.

"Brad."

"Huh?"

"Did you hear what Carla said?"

"No. Sorry. I was thinking about something."

"She said they added seats for the sold-out show. The extra tickets go on sale tomorrow night."

"For Razor Heart Nine?" That was awesome. They'd just released a new CD. I could play the first part of a couple of their songs on my guitar.

Jordie frowned at me. "What are you talking about? We saw them last month. Are you spacing out on me?"

"Just kidding." I turned to Carla. "Sounds great."

"We gotta go," she said. She grabbed Jordie's hand and dragged him down the hall toward their second period class.

"DeepAndDark!" I shouted after them as I remembered which band was coming to the arena.

I headed off to English class. Tripped again. Gave up and tied my laces. Must have lost my homework when I dropped my notebook. Ms. Tilden wasn't happy about that. I could see a lecture bubbling away in her chest and rising up toward her mouth. But I gave her my charming smile and she gave me some slack. People like you if you smile. I survived English and headed for algebra II.

It would be easier if I could get to my locker after third period. That would be perfect. But my third and fourth period classes are in the north wing on the third floor, and my locker is way across the building on the first floor. By the end of fourth period, each minute seems to take an hour to tick off. I can taste the bell.

Ring. Sprung. I pushed through the crowd, surviving the steps because the mob is so packed there's no place to fall. If they played music, it would be a mosh pit.

Thirty six, eighteen, four. The lock didn't open. Damn. I needed to get in there. I yanked harder and hurt my hand. Damn lock's broke or something. No. Wait. Thirty six...? That was my middle school number. Four years ago. Why would I even remember it? Stupid mistake. I've had the same lock since way back in freshmen year. Twelve, twenty one, fourteen.

Victory. I got the locker open, grabbed the half-empty Coke bottle from behind my stack of books, checked to make sure nobody was watching, and chugged most of it down. Jesus, that's better. Back in balance. Life was good. As I put the bottle away and shut my locker, I thought about another swig, but that wouldn't leave enough for later. I'm nothing if not disciplined. I popped a stick of gum in my mouth and cruised down the hall.

There were posters up for class president. It would be cool to be president. I read them as I walked down the hall. Some of them were pretty good. I wondered what mine would say? The election's a month away, in November. I got to class late. But that's okay. Mr. Breznik is retiring at the end of the year, and he probably wouldn't care if I didn't show up at all.

He barely glanced at me as I walked to my desk. The sound of his voice floated around my head, like background music. It was kind of soothing. I settled into my seat, content. It's amazing how well everything worked out. Except that last bit of fourth period. It's all part of my system. I keep my mind perfectly tuned, like a Lamborgini. Perfectly lubricated, everything in balance, with the formula I perfected last year.

One beer before I leave the house, because breakfast is the most important meal of the morning. But just one, because drunk driving is a bad idea. And one beer doesn't make me drunk. But it doesn't make me flow in perfect harmony with the universe, either.

So I grab the Coke bottle from the trunk — it's a bad idea to have anything up front where it can get you busted — and adjust my blood chemistry before first period. Which makes Forester's droning lectures a lot easier to take. I get my booster shot after fourth period. Another swig or two after eighth kills the bottle and keeps me balanced enough to make it home.

As I strolled out of the building and notched off another day, I was perfectly able to drive. Detention deficit disorder. That really was funny.

###

Jordie and Carla were in the parking lot, waiting by my trusty, slightly rusty Civic. He lives way out in the boonies, next to a stunning couple acres of crumpled steel. I'd been giving him and Carla a ride ever since he got a speeding ticket two weeks ago. Before that, Jordie drove most of the time. He was kind of obsessive about that. I guess it's some kind of control thing. I didn't care. I'm just as happy riding in the passenger seat. He's not driving now. He didn't lose his license, but he got his wheels clipped for two months. And he was only going like ten above. His dad, Mr. Talmadge, is real super crazy about safety. He owns a collision and salvage shop. I guess seeing all those wrecks makes him overprotective. Mr. Talmadge doesn't have to worry about Jordie when I'm driving. I never speed. Speed kills.

I hopped behind the wheel, waited for my passengers to board, and took off. It would be fun to drive a cab, I bet. We don't have taxis in Brockford. Too small. But in a city, that would be fun. Zooming around New York or Chicago. Meeting people. Maybe get a rock star in the cab. Get to know him. Hang out with the band at clubs and stuff.

"Brad! Look out!"

I jerked the wheel hard to the right, saving us, then swung left to avoid running off the road. "Did you see that bastard?" I said as the truck vanished in my rear-view mirror. "He was way over the line."

I glanced at Jordie, then behind me at Carla, to make sure they were okay. But just a glance. It's dangerous to take your eyes off the road.

We got to Jordie's house without any more trouble. "How about I drive you home," Jordie said as I rolled to a stop in his driveway.

"What are you talking about?"

"I haven't driven in a while," he said. "Come on. It would be fun."

"Not if your dad found out. And how would you get home?" I asked.

"I could get Todd to pick me up," he said.

I didn't mind letting Jordie drive my car. Anything for a pal. Even if it did seem like kind of a weird request. But before I could say yes, Jordie's older brother, Todd, stepped out on the porch and said, "Dad needs a hand shelving the parts that just came in."

Jordie looked at me, then over at Todd, then back at me. He sighed and said, "Be careful driving home."

"Always." I watched Carla get out of the back seat. Damn. I really wish she liked me. Not like a boyfriend, but like her boyfriend's friend. She and Jordie went inside with Todd. He's a cool guy. He went to Hollywood two or three years ago, and actually worked for a while as a stunt man. For real. He'd still be doing it, but he blew his knee out in a fight scene. So he's helping out with the family business while he works on this screenplay he's writing.

I backed out of the driveway and headed home. Slow and careful. There are a lot of idiots on the road. That truck wasn't unusual. At least once or twice every trip, some jerk swerves too close to me. But I guess I'm just lucky. As always, I made it to my driveway in one piece.

My folks were at work. Dad's an accountant. He twists numbers. Mom's a physical therapist. She twists joints. They both work real hard so that some day in the future they won't have to work real hard. Maybe you have to be an adult to make sense out of that strategy. I went up to my room and did my chores. Which means I refilled my Coke bottle for the next day. Petrogov vodka is a real bargain. I can get a four-liter bottle for less than my allowance, and that's plenty of cruise-juice to sail me through the week, and have some left over if I want to get a bit of a buzz on the weekend. There are a couple homeless guys in town who'll buy you booze for a buck or two. I've only been ripped off twice. That's because I'm a good judge of character. The ones who walk the highway, picking up cans and bottles for money — you can trust them. They're hard workers. The ones you have to watch out for are the guys who are so wasted they can't think about anything except their next drink.

I went to the kitchen and topped the vodka off with enough Coke to make it all chuggable. Then I stashed the bottle in my back pack. I was going to do my school work, but I forgot my math book in my locker. So I played Nintendo for a while, practiced my guitar, then took a nap until my folks came home.

It was Monday, which meant Mom picked up lasagna from the catering place in town. Dad lets me have half a glass of wine with dinner. The first time he did that, Mom gave him a look, but he said, "If he has a little now, it won't be a big deal when he's exposed to it at a party. Face it — kids are going to drink."

"I guess a bit of wine is all right," Mom had said. She gave me the wise Mom look. "But this doesn't mean it's okay for you to drink when we're not around."

I nodded, but didn't tell her she was about five years too late with that request. Back in seventh grade, I had this friend Rob. His dad was always passed out drunk in the living room. Which meant Rob could help himself to whatever was around. Rob was a pal, so he shared. The first time I drank whiskey, I puked in his kitchen sink. But even as I was spitting the sour taste out of my mouth, I wanted more.

Once or twice a week, after school, we'd go to his house and get buzzed, then look through his dad's magazines. I think that's when my grades started to slip. It didn't last long. Rob had to move away after his dad got shot holding up a gas station. So the supply dried up for a while. But by the time I got to high school, booze was everywhere. I got drunk a bunch at first. But then I learned to control it.

"Your father asked you a question."

"What?" I looked up from my lasagna. "School's fine. I had a good day."

Dad nodded. I'd guessed right. Not hard. That's pretty much his one and only dinner question. I like wine. It doesn't have a whole lot of alcohol, so you don't get a fast buzz unless you chug it, which wouldn't be good table manners, but it tastes pretty good.

"You didn't eat much," Mom said when we were cleaning up.

"I had a big lunch." I thought back, and couldn't actually remember whether I'd eaten anything at school. Lots of times, I'm not all that hungry. Which is good. Tons of kids are worried about their weight. I guess I'm lucky that way.

Dad stuck his head in the kitchen. "Want to watch a movie?"

"Can't," I said. "Got homework." I grabbed a glass of orange juice from the fridge and took it upstairs. Vitamin C is important. Especially when you mix it with vitamin V.

###

Tuesday went pretty much like Monday until after school, when I headed for the parking lot. Jordie was staring at my car. I noticed my front bumper was dented on the passenger side. "Damn. Someone hit me in the lot."

"That happened yesterday," Jordie said.

"No way."

He nodded. "When you swerved. You clipped a tree. Don't you remember?"

"Sure. Can't you tell when I'm joking?" I checked out the fender. It was no big deal. Just a crumple. Even if it had been worse, it wasn't a problem. I could get Todd to swap it for a better one. They've got a dozen cars like mine in the yard, except those cars are wrecked, and mine's perfect. Not counting the bumper. And maybe a couple other dings. People were so freaking careless with other people's property. I got in the car, but Jordie and Carla stayed outside.

"We're thinking of walking," Jordie said.

"You kidding? It's like three or four miles."

"Nah. It's a nice day," he said. "Besides, it's not that long if we cut through the woods." He gave me a look.

Okay. I got it. I figured he and Carla were planning to enjoy nature. "Have fun. Don't fall into the gorge." I laughed. But it's not all that funny. Once or twice a year, someone goes off the road on Springbrook curve, just a quarter mile from Jordie's place, and ends up in the gorge. Or in the pond at the bottom of the gorge. I think the tow truck drivers know the way down there in the dark.

As they started to walk away, I leaned out the window and called after them, "Want me to get tickets for the concert?"

They stopped and looked at each other. "They're expensive," Jordie said.

"Hey, anything for friends. I'll order them tonight. My treat."

They spoke at the same time.

"It's not necessary," Carla said.

"That would be great," Jordie said.

I stared at Carla. Finally, she said, "That's very thoughtful."

"Awesome." I headed home.

###

After dinner, I was feeling kind of tired, so I went up to my room and took a nap. When I woke up, I looked at blogs for a while. One of them was all about how great the DeepAndDark concert in Seattle was last week.

Crap. The concert. I checked the clock. It was nine thirty. I already knew what I'd find when I went to the ticket site. Sold out. Damn. Maybe I could score some from a scalper or something. I hated to let Jordie down.

But I couldn't lie to him. "No luck, dude," I told him the next morning. "The tickets sold out in a flash. I guess you have to be connected to get them."

"Hey, no big deal," Jordie said. "Listen, Carla's got to go somewhere with her mom this afternoon. Why don't you come over after school?"

"Sure." I realized we hadn't hung out — just the two of us — for a while. I even let Jordie drive. But we switched right before we got to his place, so his dad wouldn't see. That was kind of sneaky of him, but I understood.

When we got up to his room, he said, "I'm sort of worried about you."

"What?"

"You seem kind of out of it, lately."

"I just got stuff on my mind," I said. I walked over to his Playstation and grabbed a joystick. "Bet I can still kick your butt at Tekken."

"Brad, I'm serious."

"So am I. I can seriously kick your butt." I stared at him and waited.

"Brad..."

"Let's play."

"Yeah. Whatever." He grabbed the other joystick. We played for a while, but then I sort of wanted to get home. I'd tried to get Jordie to sneak a drink from his dad's supply once or twice, but he wouldn't do it. He's not real strong in the bravery department.

I wasn't sure why, but I had a feeling he was pissed with me about something. But he'd get over it. Friday morning, I discovered he was over it big time.

"Guess what I scored?" he asked.

"Not a clue."

"Three tickets to DeepAndDark."

"For real?"

"Yup. Todd got them for me from a friend."

"So we're going?"

"Yeah. The show's at eight. Come over tonight around seven."

"For sure. Want a ride home?"

"Nah. I have a ton of stuff to do. But I'll see you tonight."

This was awesome. The rest of the day passed in a blur. I got to Jordie's about a half hour early. Carla was already there. I joined them up in his room.

Carla gave me another of her funny looks. I didn't care. I was pumped for the show.

"I got something special for the concert," Jordie said. He held up a bottle.

"Brandy. That's pretty classy. I'm impressed." I had a bottle in my trunk, but just the usual stuff.

He shrugged. "We're classy people."

"I'm going to grab a snack," Carla said.

"Hungry?" Jordie asked me. He put the bottle down on his desk.

"Nah. I had dinner. You guys go ahead." I pointed at the Playstation. "I'll get some thumb exercise."

"Come on down if you change your mind."

"I will."

I figured it would be ok with Jordie if I had a sip. There was plenty for the concert. It burned my throat, but in a good way. I had another sip to numb the burn. Then just one more tiny little drop, to push the numbness up to my brain.

I could hear them in the kitchen downstairs.

One more sip. There was plenty. Actually, I could drink a third of the bottle. That would be my share. I'd just enjoy it now, instead of later.

Man, it felt warm in there. But good.

Carla didn't drink much. She wouldn't need a whole third.

This was nice stuff. The world spun a bit. I took a drink to steady things.

Wow. Real nice. I was feeling no pain. Me and Jordie. Going to a concert. Awesome. And Carla. Hot Carla. I took a drink to wash away indecent thoughts.

Damn. It was warm in there.

Another little sip.

Kinda dizzy.

Small sip.

Warm.

Sip.

###

Up. Side. Down.

What...?

I was hanging. Dangling. Something pressing my chest.

Shoulder belt.

My hand found the buckle.

What?

Click. I twisted, felt a door latch.

Dark out. Where?

Crawled. Tried to stand. Threw up.

Sat down. My car — upside down. Smashed windshield.

Jordie! I got to my feet. Looked in the car. Nothing. Stumbled to the water six feet away. Saw a shirt. Jordie's. Half on the bank. Floating. I stepped into the water. Felt around. Nothing.

"Help!" I got back on land. Looked at the car.

Oh Christ — a body. Legs and a torso, sticking out from under the roof.

I rushed over. Saw. Puked again, my stomach kicking out acid, and then spewing emptiness. Her body was ripped open, nearly torn in half. Guts spilled. Carla.

I staggered away, clawed up the wall of the gorge to the road. "Help!"

"Sshhhhh!"

I spun, fell.

"Quiet, man."

One of the homeless. In the shadows. Wool cap pulled low. Shaggy beard. One eye dead white. Gaps in his teeth. He limped toward me, his clothes smelling like rot, carrying a garbage bag full of empties. _Please, let this be a nightmare._

He leaned over and put a hand on my arm. "Saw you roll the car, kid. Tough luck." He pointed down into the gorge. "I ain't no fan of the cops. They catch you now, it's over. DWI. Homicide. All over. Jail for a long, long time. Unless you're smart."

"What do I do?"

He let got of my arm and turned his hand palm up. "Advice ain't free."

I gave him all the money I had in my wallet. "Help me."

"Get home. Sober up. It's your only chance. Wait until morning. Longer, if its still in your system."

"But how can I explain...?

"Trauma. You're in shock. You walked away from the accident in a daze. You don't remember anything."

"My friends..."

"Too late for them. They're dead."

They're dead.

Feeling dead, myself, I stumbled toward home, hiding whenever a car came down the road. The long walk was like another endless nightmare. As soon as I got to my room, I grabbed the vodka and unscrewed the cap. My hands shook so hard, the vodka splashed out of the opening. I'd lifted the bottle halfway to my lips when I froze.

Sober up.

I had to wait. Be sober when the cops came. I took a burning hot shower, trying to wash the vomit and horror from my body and mind. I went to bed, curled up, and wondered whether it was possible to will yourself to die.

I keep hearing Carla's voice. Seeing Jordie's face. They were so happy together.

Somehow, though I was sure I'd never sleep, I passed out.

I woke late, and looked out the window. No cop car. My head throbbed. My mouth was so dry, I thought it would crack. I was dying for a drink. Just one. I picked up the bottle again. The smell made me throw up. Nothing came out but sorrow.

I needed to report the accident. I reached for the phone a hundred times. I reached for the bottle a thousand times.

Jordie. Carla.

Evening came. I skipped dinner. Mom stuck her head in my room and asked where my car was. I lied. Told her I'd dropped it off for an oil change and they had to keep it until Monday. God, I wanted a drink. The bottle called to every cell in my body.

Life would be so much better with one drink.

But my life was over. I was as dead as Jordie and Carla. I deserved to rot jail. Or die.

Where were the cops?

Tomorrow, I'd turn myself in. I owed that much to Jordie.

I couldn't sleep. I fell into numbness, wracked with tremors. The night passed as I imagined their bodies decomposing in the gorge.

I was awakened by a knock on my bedroom door. I checked the clock. It was just after eleven. I guess I'd finally fallen asleep.

The door opened. I sat up.

They came in. Jordie. Carla. Ghosts. But not.

My muscles went slack.

Todd stepped into view behind them. "First day's the hardest," he said. He sat down on the bed next to me. "You doing okay?"

I pointed to Jordie. "How? I killed you. Both of you."

"Hollywood magic, my friend," Todd said. He pulled some money out of his shirt pocket and tossed it on the bed. "I guess I make a pretty convincing homeless guy."

I stared down at the money I'd handed him last night, trying to piece everything together. "My car?"

"Still at my place," Jordie said.

"How? It was wrecked!"

"Nope. Your Civic is right where you left it. We towed a wreck from the yard to the gorge.

I looked at Carla. "But I saw..."

"Cow guts," she said, making a face. "My uncle's a butcher."

"You doing okay," Todd asked again.

"Yeah. No." I looked for a third answer, somewhere in between, but all that came out was a weak, wordless cry. I grabbed Todd, my body shaking, all the pain, all the fear, spilling out like soda gushing from a shaken bottle. I couldn't stop the sobs that jerked my body.

Other arms cradled me. "It's okay," Jordie said. "There's help. There's all sorts of help."

"I'm so sorry."

"Hush," Carla whispered.

I looked at her through blurred eyes. "You covered yourself with cow guts."

She nodded.

"For me."

"You're Jordie's friend."

"Am I?" I looked over at him

He nodded, too. "But I think I might be your worst enemy for a while," he said. "From what I hear, it's going to be a bitch."

"It can't be worse than Friday night," I said. I thought about the wrecked cars at Jordie's place, and the wrecked lives of the homeless men who hung out by the liquor store. What would people give for a second chance? Or a real friend? I didn't know. But I was going to find out.

# Claws and Effect

She has a great personality.

That's supposed to be what they say about a girl when she isn't real pretty or smart or anything. But that's nonsense. Phoebe has a great personality. And she's more than just pretty. She's stunning. Especially when she smiles. She's the first girl who's ever paid any attention to me.

I'm amazed she likes me because, let's face it, I can't even pretend to have a great personality. I'm a total geekazoid. If I was in a movie, I'd be the guy in the group who doesn't get any lines. If it was a horror movie, I'd be the first to die. Maybe even during the opening titles. If it was a comedy, I'd be the one who accidentally drinks a whole bottle of laxative, or gets locked out of his house when he isn't wearing any clothes.

But, somehow, Phoebe's my girl friend. And I'm not in a horror movie or a comedy — I'm in my junior year at Crescent High, which was pretty much the same thing until she came along and turned it into a romance. Me and her. Phoebe and Randy. It would all be perfect, except Phoebe lives with Johnny Depp.

I learned that the hard way the first time I walked her home from school. We'd been hanging out together for a couple weeks, mostly in the school library, and then at lunch. That's where we'd met — right in the library — when we'd reached for the same book on coral reefs.

"Go ahead," I'd said, stepping back from the shelf.

"No, you take it," she'd said. "Do you have a report to do?"

"Nope. I was just going to read it for fun." Oh god — I winced at the sound of that. The words marked me as a total geek. Who reads science books for fun? I could feel my face getting hot.

"So was I." She smiled at me. I never thought braces could look so cute.

I found out Phoebe was as passionate about oceanography as I was. And I discovered it's not hard to talk to a girl, even a stunning girl, if you both love the same thing.

We'd met last Saturday at the mall for a movie. I guess that was our first real date. We held hands, and she rested her head against my shoulder. It was nice. Monday, she'd suggested that I should offer to walk her home. Which I did, since I can take a hint after I've been hit over the head with it three or four times.

We chatted about small stuff for most of the walk, but there was one big thing I needed to know. With a couple minor exceptions, I'm a rational guy. I believe there's an order and a meaning to the universe. Stuff usually makes sense. The thing I needed to know was, _Why me?_

I couldn't come right out and ask it that way. I had to sort of creep up on the subject. "You date much?" I asked.

"Not really."

"But you're so..." I searched for a word that would sum things up without sounding wrong. Hot? Awesome? Wonderful? Out of my league?

Phoebe saved me by answering the question I was trying to ask. "A lot of guys are scared of smart girls," she said.

"You're kidding."

She shook her head. "Nope. No joke. I guess they feel threatened or something. But not you, Randy. You don't seem to be scared of anything. Not even smart girls."

"That, I can handle," I said.

"Besides, you're kind of cute. Especially when you smile."

I grinned at her, but kept my mouth shut so I wouldn't say anything stupid.

"Want to come in?" she asked when we reached her house.

"Yeah."

As I walked up the porch, I noticed a flap at the bottom of the front door. My stomach felt like I'd just yanked my belt a notch tighter than normal.

"You have pets?" I asked, trying to keep my voice from quavering, which was already hard enough, since I was a bit nervous about going over to her house.

"A cat," Phoebe said.

I froze on the steps. Years ago, we'd had a cat. I was too young to remember what exactly I did, or what exactly he did, but I still have enough scars on the back of my hand to make it look like I went through some sort of tribal rite of passage.

"Want to meet him? He's a total sweetypuss." Phoebe glanced around, then called, "Here, Johnny! Come here, boy."

Don't panic. Okay, she has a cat. But it's not a problem. Cat's don't come when you call them.

"Johnny!" she called again. "Johnny Depp!"

"I'm sure he'll show up later," I said. Everything would be okay. Cute little Johnny was out somewhere in the neighborhood, chewing the head off of a sparrow or ripping the intestines from a chipmunk. My own stomach began to wriggle free of my esophagus and slide back down to where it belonged.

"Oh, there he is," Phoebe said. "Come here, sweetie."

Oh yeah. There he was. One of those scrawny gray beasts. Thin and mean looking. An outdoor cat. That meant he had claws. And teeth. I glanced at the row of small white dots on the side of my right hand near my thumb. Healed tooth marks. My intestines felt like they'd been overfilled with warm water.

Phoebe knelt and held her hand out. But instead of going up to her, the creature padded toward me. As I stood there, trying to decide what to do, he put both his front paws on my leg, stretched, and extended his claws. He stared at me with the cold eyes of a serial killer.

I wanted to scream and run. So did my last meal. I knew Phoebe expected me to say, "Nice kitty," and pet him. But there was no way I could touch that animal.

"Isn't he just so adorable?" she asked.

I nodded. _Not to me._

She bent down and snatched him up. His claws pulled at my pants leg like evil Velcro, but she finally yanked him free. My knee tingled from the feel of those tiny needles.

"Come on. Let's go in." She jiggled the cat. "Johnny can keep us company."

Johnny was still staring at me.

"Oh god — I just remembered. I have to water my aunt."

"What?"

"Water my aunt's plants," I said. "She's away. I promised I'd water her plants. And I forgot. If they die, it will just kill her. She's like ninety-seven. Sorry, Gotta go."

I turned and fled.

Behind me, I heard Phoebe call, "Come back here."

I almost stopped. But then she said, "You come back here, Johnny Depp."

Oh crap. I didn't even look to see whether he was chasing after me. It was supposed to be dogs who did that. And bears. Not cats. But I wasn't taking any chances. I ran as hard as I could for three blocks. Which isn't easy when your lungs have turned to concrete.

Stupid cats. I can't stand them. Not even on TV. They completely creep me out. Every time I see one, I can just imagine it leaping on my face and biting. Or shredding my eyes with its claws. I know that isn't rational, but I can't help it.

###

"Are the plants okay?"

"What?"

"Your aunt's plants?"

"Oh, yeah. I got there just in time."

We'd met, as usual, outside the school. Phoebe didn't seem to be upset that I'd rushed away. I decided the best strategy to avoid another encounter with Johnny Depp was to invite Phoebe to my place. "Want to come over after school."

"Sure. I'd love to."

Wow. A month ago, I would have been terrified of asking a girl to my house. But, facing a much more tangible fear, I'd hardly thought about what I was doing before I spoke. Maybe terror wasn't so bad when it pushed you to do other things you were just slightly scared of.

So Phoebe came to my house. We studied. We talked. We ate popcorn and watched documentaries about the ocean. We laughed. My folks adored her from the instant they met her. Life was pretty much perfect.

We started hanging out at my house most days after school. I thought it would become a problem after a while. I figured eventually she'd invite me back to her place. For three weeks, she didn't. But Friday during lunch she leaned forward over her tray and beckoned me with her finger. I moved closer. She whispered in my ear. The sensation of her warm breath so near my flesh shut down my power of hearing for a moment. But then the words sunk in.

"My parents are going away tonight."

"Oh?" A half-dozen glands shot various overdoses of hormones into my blood stream.

Phoebe nodded.

"Away?"

"Far away." She smiled. "They won't be home until real late."

_Are they taking the cat?_ "Great."

"We'll have the whole place to ourselves."

_Not really._ Maybe the cat would stay outside. Panic sent my mind to strange places. I imagined buying a bird and leaving the cage in her front yard. Or dousing myself with some kind of chemical that repelled cats. From there, my mind bombarded me with scenes of Johnny Depp leaping into my lap. I could almost feel his claws digging into my groin.

"You don't seem very interested." Phoebe batted her eyes and made a sound somewhere between a meow and a purr, then said, "Don't tell me you're a scaredy cat."

"Are you kidding? This is fabulous. It's just, my folks want me home for dinner. We're having company."

"No problem. Come over after dinner. It's Friday. We can stay up late." She reached under the table and squeezed my knee, sending a tingle up my thigh that felt far nicer than the sting of imaginary cat's claws. "As late as we want."

###

"It's just a cat. It's just a cat. It's just a cat." No matter how often I said those words, they had no power to change reality. The very word itself — cat — could raise my pulse. I could barely eat dinner. When we were done, I kept looking at the clock. It was almost seven. Phoebe was expecting me. And I wanted to go. Man, did I want to go. This was every guy's dream. A hot girl — a girl I really cared about — and an empty house.

But the house wasn't empty. The thought of being a captive plaything of that hideous beast was enough to make me want to slink up to my room, crawl under my covers, and never come out again.

I couldn't go through with it. I'd have to invent some sort of excuse. It was too late to tell her I was allergic to cats. I should have done that the instant he showed up. But I'd been too freaked out to think straight. Maybe I could tell her I'd been grounded. That would work. I wouldn't have to pretend to be disappointed. My disappointment would be real. Very real.

As I reached for the phone, it rang.

"Hello?"

In answer, I heard my name, stretched through several octaves and far more syllables than usual.

"Phoebe?" I asked.

"Uh huhhhh."

"What's wrong?"

"Johnny...."

_Johnny's dead?_ I felt a huge wave of guilt over the huge wave of glee that hit me at the thought of Johnny wrapped around the front right tire of a Ford Explorer. But no amount of guilt could drown out the glee.

"... caught a mouse."

Phoebe hit even higher octaves with the word _mouse_ , as if a tiny rodent could be the source of all terror in the world.

"A mouse?"

"Yeah." Three syllables, two octaves.

I waited for more information. Instead of explaining further, Phoebe let out a scream. That was followed by a thump and clatter that did temporary damage to my right ear. I had the feeling she'd dropped the phone.

"Can you hear me?" I shouted.

Distantly, I heard her voice. "Randy, help."

A damsel in distress. The total geekazoid fantasy. If only the cause of the distress had been something I could handle, like a spider, or a dragon. Anything except a cat. I didn't want to go. But the fear in her voice lingered in my mind. I knew how she felt. Knew it all too well. She was a prisoner of irrational terror, and she'd reached out to me for help. "Hang on. I'm coming," I shouted into the phone. I headed over to her house.

###

When I opened the front door, I expected Johnny Depp to leap at my face. There was no sign of him. I forced myself to take a deep breath. "Phoebe?"

"In here."

I followed her voice to the kitchen. She was on a chair. I wasn't super thrilled about the idea of dealing with a dead rodent, but I could handle it. I glanced around the floor, looking for the corpse of Mr. Mouse, hoping he'd died from internal injuries and not loss of blood. The only dead thing I spotted was the handset of the cordless phone. At least there was no sign of the cat. Maybe he'd gone outside to kill again.

"So, where's the mouse?" I asked.

"There." She pointed to an archway that led to the dining room.

The cat walked through the opening and sat on his haunches. The mouse — or at least its lower half — dangled from his mouth, the tail hanging like a limp piece of dirty string.

Before I could move, Johnny Depp opened his mouth and dropped the mouse. It didn't plop on its side or back like a respectable dead rodent. It landed on all fours.

"I think it's still alive," I said.

"Eeeeeeeeee," Phoebe said. Her arms waved like a badly manipulated marionette.

The mouse ran across the kitchen, right toward us. Johnny Depp loped after it, gave it a casual swat, then snatched it up in his jaws again.

"Do something," Phoebe said.

I was already in danger of doing something that would require the services of a very skilled dry cleaner. Johnny sat two feet from us, the mouse dangling from his jaws again.

Eat it. Swallow the damn thing.

Johnny got up and put his front paws on the chair. I knew for sure that if he dropped the mouse near Phoebe's feet, it would lead to her death in some sort of tragic way, and I'd be doomed to spend the rest of my school days alone and then grow into a bitter old man who lived by himself in a small apartment stuffed with piles of yellowing newspapers, ate cold spaghetti right out of the can, and creeped out all the little kids on the block.

_He can't bite me if his mouth is full._ I looked at Phoebe. I looked at the cat. Oh crap — it was like being faced with the lady or the tiger. Except I knew what was behind each door.

Phoebe screamed again. Johnny started to open his jaws. Knowing that the next moment would become part of my permanent collection of nightmare memories, I bent down, grabbed the cat around the waist with both hands, and snatched him from the floor. He wriggled, but didn't let go of the mouse. I held him at arms' length and raced toward the front door, dropped to my knees, let go with one hand to push open the cat door, then chucked Johnny Depp and the mouse onto the porch.

As the flap fell back in place, I collapsed against the door, blocking the entrance with my back.

I tried to take an inventory of the damage. I hadn't been bitten or scratched, but I was trembling. I still couldn't catch my breath. My heart was hammering like an uzi set on full automatic. My guts felt like someone had been kneading them to make bread dough. This moment would definitely linger in my mind.

Worse, something else lingered — the memory of a loud scream, all the way from the kitchen to the door. Not Phoebe's scream. Mine. I'd left a trail marked by my fear. I'd howled like a whipped child, and exposed the bare, naked terror that lived inside of me. I knew that wasn't something that drove the ladies wild. I hoped she'd at least let leave by the back door so I wouldn't run into the cat.

"Poor Randy."

Soft fingers touched my cheek. Phoebe sat on the floor next to me.

"You were scared?" she asked.

There was no way I could hide the truth. Not when I'd nearly shattered every window in the house with my scream. And no way I could speak, yet. My lungs hand shriveled to the size of pencil holders. I nodded.

Phoebe reached down and took my hand. "I knew we had a lot in common." She leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek. "It's okay to be scared. Mice are so creepy. They completely freak me out. But you got rid of the mouse even though you were afraid of it. That makes you my hero." She punctuated this with another kiss. On the lips.

I still couldn't breathe, but fear didn't get all the blame for that. I returned the kiss. A while later, when I could trust myself to speak, I said, "Maybe we should keep Johnny outside for a bit. There's no such thing as _one_ mouse. Who knows what else he might drag in."

"Yeah. Who knows."

"You don't mind?" I asked.

Phoebe reached behind me and latched the cat door. "Johnny likes it outside."

###

When I left Phoebe's house, late that night, I saw Johnny sitting on the porch, less than five feet from me. The fears came right away, but I thought about how I had carried him out of the kitchen. And survived. That eased the terror just a bit.

I braced myself for him to leap at my face. Instead, he stayed where he was and looked at me with lazy eyes.

"I like her," I said. "I like her a lot."

He turned his head away and licked his flank.

"We're just going to have to get used to each other."

He dropped on his side, arched his back, and stretched out his paws, as if inviting me to scratch him.

"Not quite yet." I walked down the porch and across the lawn. "Maybe never." The thought of petting him made me shiver. But not once, all the way to the street, did I need to look back over my shoulder.

# Words of Faith

There's nothing that can ruin your day like the words _I expect better from you_ scrawled in red across the first page of a paper. Except, maybe, the words _I expect MUCH better from you._ With _MUCH_ underlined. Twice.

"Merry Christmas," I muttered as I stared at my grade. To my left, Mr. Sterns shuffled along the aisle, handing out the last of the papers just before the bell rang.

"Have a lovely holiday," he shouted over the noise of twenty seven students scrambling toward freedom.

I kept looking at the grade, hoping I'd misread the number. No such luck. It was definitely a sixty five. And it was definitely my own fault. I'd dashed off the paper the night before it was due, figuring I was a good enough writer to get by with a first draft. Bad plan.

This truly sucked. I needed to end the year with at least a ninety. That's what it took to get into the senior honors writing program. I'd managed an eighty seven the first marking period. I'd been hovering around ninety one this period. Until now. It was going to be hard as hell to climb out of the pit I'd dug. Maybe impossible.

I had to get into that class. I'd been planning on it ever since I was a freshman. I loved writing. In my humble opinion, I was probably the best writer in the school. But that didn't mean anything without the right grade.

I tried not to obsess about my problem during vacation, but it kept getting in my face. A&E ran a biography of Steven King. I worshipped him. He had the bug so bad he lived in a rented trailer while he wrote his first book. AMC showed a special on novelists who'd become screen writers. The Science Fiction channel did a feature on Ray Bradbury. His short stories are awesome.

Despite my misery, the holiday sped by. I read, I wrote, I watched too much television. Christmas Eve, Mom mentioned something about going to church.

"You really want to?" I asked. The idea didn't thrill me, but I'd go if it would make her happy. Maybe I could pray for a better grade. _Dear God, all I want for Christmas is a ninety._

Mom pushed aside the curtain and looked out the window. "It'll probably be crowded."

"There's always next year," I said.

We rented a movie instead. I think Mom went to church when I was little, but I don't remember much except this room with a picture on the wall of happy pairs of animals boarding the ark. And cookies. They had great cookies.

The next day, we unwrapped presents. I gave Mom a boxed set of Audrey Hepburn movies and a really nice scarf. She gave me a fountain pen and a blank journal bound in leather. On the cover, stamped in gold, it said _The Early Works of Michael K. Ellison, Famous Author_. Aunt Jill renewed my subscription to _Writer's Digest Magazine,_ and Aunt Leona gave me a book-store gift certificate. Dad sent me a football.

Weighing down the fun of Christmas was the knowledge that I'd blown the one thing that mattered the most. But the first day of school after vacation, I found hope. That was also the day I met Julia. My homeroom teacher had sent me to the office to drop off some papers. On the way back I noticed this girl wandering the hallway. She moved from door to door, staring at the numbers as if they might eventually change. I knew from my own experience with Mr. Sterns's grades that such miracles never happen.

"Lost?" I asked her.

"Once." She gave me an odd smile, as if we'd just shared a joke. "I can't find room 307."

That explained it. Whoever numbered the doors had screwed up and skipped 307. Instead of doing it over, he'd just changed the last number on the floor from 329 to 307. "That's where I'm headed. You just move here?"

She nodded, sending the ends of her red hair kicking across her shoulders. "Last week. Right after Christmas."

"Where'd you come from?" I asked.

"Paris."

"Wow." I hadn't noticed an accent. Damn, a redhead from Paris. My eyes dropped to her sweater, wondering what was hidden behind the loose draping of wool. I looked away as a dozen fantasies flashed through my mind and a guilty warmth spread through my cheeks.

"Paris, Texas," she said.

Not France, though still pretty far from Pennsylvania. I slowed my pace. Even so, we reached the end of the corridor too soon. "The mysterious room 307," I said.

I followed her in, and dreamed of other ways I could help her feel at home. But all thoughts of learning more about Paris were set aside that afternoon when Mr. Sterns dribbled a crumb of hope into my dismal pit of failure.

"It's time to start your writing projects," he said. He outlined the requirements. Then he explained his grading system. And there I found salvation.

"In order to encourage writing and discourage sloth," he said, "I'm awarding an extra credit of one point for every five hundred words in your finished project. So feel free to knock yourselves out."

There were the usual protests from those who'd rather crawl through ground glass soaked in vinegar than write a hundred words. But to me, five hundred words was a warm up.

"Any limit?" I asked. I was already running numbers in my head, figuring out what it would take to bring my grade back from the dead.

"You can get as much extra credit as you want," Mr. Sterns said. "No limit." He probably figured that only a complete maniac would try for more than three or four points.

I planned to get fifty.

That meant I had about a month to write 25,000 words. Rough, but doable. Dean Koontz produced a couple thousand words every single day of the year. Alexander Dumas wrote 300 novels. Big, whopping mothers. All by hand with a quill. Hell, I had a computer. I thought about using some of my old stories, but I'd already showed the good ones to Mr. Sterns. I'd have to start from scratch. The moment I got home from school, I hit the keyboard, so eager to start that my hands were shaking.

Almost immediately, the demon — the one who reveals the dark side of every plan — whispered words of failure in my ear. I could get a great grade in the project and still blow my average by screwing up some stupid little quiz. I wasn't going to let that happen. No way. I studied hard. In a week, I wrote four stories and aced a tough test. I spent so much time hunched over my computer, mushrooms sprouted from my flesh. I hardly saw my friends. I talked with Julia in homeroom, and thought about her a lot as I was drifting off to sleep, but she wasn't in any of my classes, which made it tough to get to know her.

Julia, on the other hand, found a way to get to know me. I was heading out of homeroom at the end of the second week of my writing marathon when she said, "Hey Michael, got any plans for tonight?"

"Not really." I had a hot date with a PC.

"Want to go to a concert?"

Somehow, I gained control of my nervous system before I leaped in the air. "Sure. That would be nice," I said, trying to sound eager but not desperate. "How much are the tickets?" Christmas had wiped out most of the money I'd earned last summer making French fries in hell.

"Good news — it's free," she said.

"Free?" Bad news. Usually when people gave away music, it was stuff nobody liked. But I figured I'd happily sit through almost anything if I was sitting through it with Julia. Except opera. Good god, don't let it be opera.

That gave me a plot idea — guy goes to an opera with a beautiful girl. It's so unbearable, he leaps from the balcony to end his suffering. As he dies, she reveals that she hates opera, too. She only went because she thought he wanted to go.

"It's not one of those classical things, is it?" I asked.

Julia smiled. "No. There'll be plenty of guitars and amps. Drums. Bass player. The works. You'll like it."

"Great." We arranged to meet at my place since it was on the way to the concert.

That evening, I had an early dinner with Mom, then went to my room to write. But my mind kept drifting to the concert, and especially to the walk home afterwards. It would be cold. Maybe we'd huddle together for warmth. Maybe she'd forget her gloves. Maybe... I must have fallen deep into the day dreams, because the next thing I knew, Julia was knocking at my bedroom door.

"Hi. Your Mom let me in." Julia pointed at the computer. "Am I interrupting something?"

"No, I was just working on my English project." _And thinking about you._ "I'm writing a book of short stories."

"A whole book?"

"Yup." I tapped the bottom of the monitor, where the display showed the page count.

"Wow," Julia said as she leaned over my shoulder and read the number. A fresh smell — shampoo? — teased my next deep breath. I wanted to touch her hair. Instead, I got up and followed her out.

We walked through the center of town, then took a side street past the library. After a block and a half, she stopped in front of an old brick building with a wide wooden door.

"This is a church," I said.

"Yup," she said. "It's a church."

I read the sign by the steps. _El Shaddai._ That sounded like Hebrew. "Are you Jewish?" I asked.

Julia laughed and shook her head. "No. I'm a Christian. Though my dad says we're adopted Jews." She started up the steps, then turned back. A half formed word dangled from her lips.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

Her eyes shifted toward the door. "The crowd might be kind of enthusiastic. So don't get spooked by anything. Okay?"

"Spooked? Me? No way. I read Edgar Allan Poe for bedtime stories." I followed her up the steps, wondering what kind of spooky enthusiasm waited on the other side of the door. How wild could things get in a church? My mind answered that question with a story idea about a guy who thinks he's on a date but ends up being a human sacrifice. I stashed that plot away before I spooked myself. Time to stop dreaming up disastrous dates.

The inside was far from scary. It was the plainest church I'd ever seen. No pictures or stained glass — just a wooden cross on the wall. We found a spot at the end of a pew about halfway down the aisle. After we sat, I checked out the instruments up front. The band's name was painted on the bass drum. _Tarsus Express_. Weird. That sounded like an ankle bone. Two guitars and a bass leaned against Marshall amps, flanked by an electric piano and three floor mikes. Definitely enough gear to make some noise.

A moment later, the band came out. They seemed pretty clean cut for musicians. One guy picked up a guitar, hit a chord, then moved toward a microphone and said, "Praise God."

He hit another chord and the rest of the band joined in. The first song was about someone named _Emmanuel_. The next song was just like the sign out front — _El Shaddai_. Even though we were in a church, I hadn't really expected religious music. The Unitarian church across town had concerts all the time, and those never had anything to do with religion. But the band was good, so I didn't mind.

Around me, kids were standing, clapping along. Julia grabbed my wrist and gave a yank, pulling me to my feet. I didn't mind that, either.

After a couple more songs, the guitarist said, "Okay, let's get some testimonies. What's Jesus done for you?"

Huh? I felt like I'd suddenly found myself in German class after taking three years of Spanish. I didn't even understand the question. _Testimonies?_ A dozen hands shot up. I hunched down in my seat and listened as kids spilled their sorrows.

"Man, I was all messed up," this guy in a torn denim jacket said. "I was on drugs, living in my car. I stole from my parents. Got kicked out of the house." He told how he'd been saved by Jesus.

A thin girl with haunted eyes confessed she'd tried to kill herself three times before she'd found salvation.

I felt funny listening to the testimonies, sort of like I'd snuck into an AA meeting.

When the music started up again, everyone got back on their feet. The air grew so warm from all the clapping bodies that Julia took off her sweater. As she pulled it over her head, her t-shirt lifted for an instant, revealing a glimpse of the smooth flesh above her belt. The shirt fell back, but the memory stayed. It was the sexiest thing I'd ever seen.

I tried not to stare at her. Plenty of other distractions fought for my attention. Kids were hopping in the aisles. Others raised their arms and swayed to the music. A girl behind me kept screaming out stuff that sounded like her own private language. It made me think of the doo-wop lyrics they sang in the sixties....shamma ramma lamma damma, shoo-bop-awooo.

The band stopped a couple more times for testimonies, and once so the drummer could preach a sermon about going where God sent you. At the end of the concert, the lead singer put down his guitar and said, "If you want to accept Jesus as your Savior, come forward."

Whoa. Back to German class.

A handful of kids left their seats and walked toward him. I couldn't imagine doing that — not in front of all those people.

The guy who'd preached started laying his hand on people's heads and yelling about fire and the Holy Spirit. One kid fell on his back and flopped around. Nobody seemed concerned. More came forward, and more fell. The floor looked like the deck of a fishing boat right after they dumped the net.

The place was so warm now that I could barely breathe. Up front, the sounds shifted to quiet voices mixed with sobs. Finally, the crowd began to filter out.

"Well," Julia asked as we merged with the flow heading through the exit. "Like it?" The air had grown crisp. She rubbed her hands together and put them in her pockets. No gloves.

"Yeah. It was kind of fun." _Except for that stuff at the end_ , I thought. Orion hovered ahead of us, bright points marking his outline. "So..." I said.

"So?"

"You're into this?" I flinched at my clumsy wording.

"I serve the Lord," Julia said. "I've been born again."

The silence grew painfully obvious as I searched for a suitable response. _That's nice,_ seemed far too shallow. _Holy shit_ struck me as totally wrong. I wasn't used to being around religious people. I figured I'd probably broken all sorts of rules I didn't even know existed. As hard as I tried, I could only remember a couple of the Ten Commandments.

Other memories were much clearer. Every thought and fantasy I'd ever had about Julia shot back to me like evidence at a trial. That brief glimpse of her flesh taunted me. Forbidden fruit. I wanted to hold her. And I wanted to run.

"Hey, what's wrong?" she asked. "Never met a Christian before?"

"Yes. I mean, no. Sure I have. My mom's one. I mean, she was. So I guess she still is. And I celebrate Christmas. Easter, too." I tried to think of other religious holidays.

Julia's smile tickled at the edge of her lips. As my own words echoed in my mind, it dawned on me how ridiculous I sounded. "I'm babbling. Right?"

"Maybe a little."

"Sorry. I guess I don't know anyone who's really religious," I said.

"You might be surprised. We don't wear signs. Not every Christian goes around shouting scripture. That's no way to win souls. My life is my testimony."

There was that word again. "The stuff they talked about. You know, the people who told how messed up they were..." I paused, afraid to pry.

Julia answered my unspoken question. "I've never suffered those things. Some of us come to the Lord more easily," she said. "I've been a believer all my life."

_A believer all her life._ That seemed so foreign. And so permanent. "What kind of church is it?" I asked. The sign out front hadn't offered any clue.

"Pentecostal," Julia said. "Some people call us _Holy Rollers_. But we're just enjoying the gifts of the Spirit."

"You go around knocking on doors?" I asked.

"That's not us. Mostly we stand on street corners shouting about the end of the world. I love to scream 'repent' real loud. It saves tons of souls."

"You're kidding?"

Julia nodded. "Yes, I'm kidding. But that's what people think. They think all kinds of weird things." She touched my shoulder. "Why not come to church with me some Sunday? Then you can see for yourself. I know you'd enjoy it."

"I can't right now. I'm pretty busy with my English project."

"Maybe another time?"

"Sure." We'd reached my house by then. I think, if I'd lived closer to the church, I'd have just walked her home. But the strangeness of the evening had faded with distance. And the flesh and blood Julia was still by my side. "Want to come in?" I asked.

"That would be great."

We were cold from the walk, so I nuked two mugs of milk for cocoa. Mom peeked into the kitchen, said hi, then left us alone.

We talked for a while. Just about school and stuff. Nothing heavy. Nothing spiritual.

"Let me walk you home," I said when Julia got up.

"You don't have to."

"Yes I do. It can get a bit rough around here at night."

So I walked her home, and we talked some more. When we reached her house, she said, "Have you ever read the Bible?"

I wanted to impress her by saying yes, but I realized it wouldn't exactly be the best thing to lie about. "Not really."

"Here." She pulled a small red booklet from her front pocket. "It's _The Gospel of Saint John_ , in modern English. Give it a try."

We said good night. She stepped away before I could think about kissing her, and I watched her glide up to her porch.

"Nice girl," Mom said when I got home. "Very pretty. You have a good time?"

"Yeah. I did." Mostly.

Mom sniffed, then scratched her nose. "I think I'm allergic to her soap or something." She scratched again, then laughed. "You remember what your grandma always said?"

"Yeah. If your nose itches, it means you're going to kiss a fool."

Mom gave me a kiss on the forehead. "See, it's true."

I watched TV with her for a while, then went upstairs. It was too early to go to sleep, so I looked through my stories. I'd written nine, but two of them stunk, so I really had seven, several of which were just first drafts. I needed at least ten stories to reach my goal of 25,000 words. No problem. It wouldn't be hard to come up with three more.

As I stared out the window and thought about Julia, my mind invented a scene. A guy sees a beautiful girl drift past. He follows her. Wait. Reverse it. What if it was a girl who saw a guy? Yeah. Much better. He's wearing clothes from a different era. And carrying something. What? I traced a dozen branching possibilities as I let the story evolve in my mind.

I wrote the first paragraph, finding the viewpoint by reliving the moment when I watched Julia walk up her porch. I moved to the next paragraph, where the fiction began. And the next. The writing filled me so deeply that nothing else existed. No world. No room. No chair. Just words.

I didn't stop until I'd written the whole story. By then, I was beat. I fell into bed and picked up the booklet Julia had given me.

In the beginning was the Word...

Cool start. Words were one of my favorite things. If this had been a movie, or one of my stories, I guess I'd have been instantly converted by the power of the written word. But this was life. _The Gospel of Saint John_ was interesting, but I wasn't ready to believe a story just because someone had written it. In a way, I envied Julia. She was able to accept things she hadn't seen. I could never do that.

_God,_ I thought as I drifted toward sleep, _why is it so hard?_ Would it hurt for God to give people one little sign? A familiar line floated through my thoughts. _Ask and it shall be given._ Maybe God just wanted people to make the first move.

"God..." I said aloud, the word hanging in the darkness, barely louder than a thought. I wondered about the crowd at the concert. All those believers. They seemed so happy. Were they mindless sheep? Or had they found something I could never understand? "If you're listening to me..." I stopped again, realizing how stupid that was. If God was God, he heard everything. "Do something," I said. "Just something little."

What kind of sign could I ask for? Any god who could create a universe could certainly give me some small signal. I blurted out the first idea that came to mind. "Make my nose itch."

"Stupid," I whispered at myself. I couldn't believe I'd just asked God to make my nose itch. I was such a moron. Even so, I held still, waiting to see what would happen.

Nothing.

I wondered what I'd have done if I'd felt the slightest of itches, a sensation so subtle that I couldn't tell whether I'd imagined it. Maybe that's what faith was — just a form of imagination. Was that the secret of the universe? Was faith an imaginary itch? My last thought, before I fell asleep, was that, real or imaginary, it must be nice to have faith.

It would have been even nicer to have faith at six that morning when the policeman came to the house. Mom had driven to the corner store. I guess to buy milk for her coffee because her selfish idiot of a son hadn't left any. She'd been mugged in the parking lot. She tried to fight the guy off. The cop told me this while he gave me a ride to the store. Our car was there. A smashed carton lay next to it, the puddled milk tinged with blood.

"She's at the hospital," he told me. "You okay to drive?"

I nodded and he left. Then I closed my eyes and saw all the ways this was my fault. If I hadn't used up the milk, Mom would still be okay. If I hadn't gone out with Julia, none of this would have happened. What if I'd gone forward at the end of the concert? Would God have stopped the mugger? Was I being punished for not believing? A worse thought hit me. Maybe I was being punished for my fantasies. Punished because the whole time I'd sat in that church I'd wanted to pull Julia close to me, run my hands under her shirt, and touch the warm soft skin of her back. Kiss her neck. Bury my face in her hair. If only I'd walked out when things started to get weird.

Last night, all I'd heard was _God is good_ and _Praise the Lord!_ I wished one those grinning believers was here right now. I'd have pushed his face into the blood and asked if this was how his god worked.

I drove to the hospital, then waited a couple hours before I could see Mom. She had a broken wrist and a deep gash on her forehead. But she'd be okay. A cop came by later to tell me they'd caught the guy.

When I got to school on Monday, everyone had already seen the news in the paper. There were lots of questions, and lots sympathy. I handled things okay until Julia came up to me.

"You all right?" she asked.

I thought I was just going to say, _Yeah, I'm fine._ But something else shot out. "No, I'm not all right." I hadn't slept in two days. The whole thing kept looping through my mind, echoing like a nightmare. I'd punched my bedroom wall hard enough to knock a hole in it. My fist still throbbed. "Is this what your god does?" I asked. "Hurts people for no reason?"

Julia backed off a step. "God does everything for a reason. But we don't always know the reason."

"Well, there was no reason for this. If you think there is, you're crazy." I walked away. She was wrong. Life was random. Good things happened. Bad things happened. I couldn't believe I'd tried to talk to God.

That evening, I picked up _The Gospel of Saint John_ and wrote in red pen on the first page, _Good start, but no follow through. You fail to convince the reader._ I added a grade — seventy two — then tossed the booklet aside.

Life got hectic. While Mom healed, I handled the housework. I couldn't believe how much stuff there was to do. Over the next couple weeks, I felt like I was watching myself from a distance.

I was sorry I'd gotten angry with Julia, but I didn't want to hear any more about God, so I avoided her. Once again, she didn't avoid me.

"How's your Mom?" she asked me one morning as I headed out for first period.

"She's getting the cast off on Monday," I said.

"That's great."

"Hey. About that day. Those things I said..."

Julia gripped my shoulder. "I forgave you the moment you spoke," she said.

Bad choice of words. I backed away from her as a wave of fury swelled through my body with such strength that I lost the power to breathe.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

I forced air into my lungs. "I wish you wouldn't act so damn perfect. Don't you ever get angry? Don't you ever hate? Don't you ever just feel freaking miserable?"

Julia flinched. "Every single day," she said. "I'm human. There was only one perfect man. And they crucified him." She put her hand over her heart. "I'm just like you inside. Probably nowhere near as strong. I'm weak. I have daily battles with hate and envy and pride."

She dropped her eyes for a moment, then looked back at me with an embarrassed smile. "Lust, too."

That caught my attention. But she quickly stepped away from the subject. "Sure, life is tough. But it's easier when you have something to believe in."

"I don't get it," I said. My body sagged against the emptiness inside of me. Why couldn't I have faith? What kind of God would create people who weren't capable of believing in him? It seemed like the cruelest joke in the universe. "I just don't understand."

"Then come to church with me," Julia said.

"How can I go when I don't believe?"

"Faith comes from hearing the word of God. Give it a chance. Open yourself to the word. Sunday morning. Ten thirty."

"No thanks." I rushed off, knowing that anything else I said wouldn't do either of us much good.

That afternoon, Mr. Sterns reminded us our projects were due on Monday. I'd fallen behind schedule when Mom got hurt. But I figured I'd be okay. The first eight stories were all set. I only needed two more. It was Friday. I could write both stories by Saturday night, then polish them on Sunday. No problem.

I got started right after school. Nothing came at first. But I didn't worry. I knew I'd get an idea sooner or later. I'd have bet my life on it. I typed a couple sentences, then deleted them. Tried another opening. Killed that one, too.

Friday evening came and went. Saturday morning, after having breakfast with Mom, I returned to my room. Two stories. Due Monday.

Nothing.

I waited.

Still nothing.

I took a walk around the block. That often helped kick my mind into high gear. I came back, out of breath from the fast pace.

Nothing.

Lunch.

More time staring at the monitor. Nothing.

Dinner.

Back to the computer.

Something.

An idea, fully formed. A gift from the creative regions of my skull. I loved when that happened. Usually, I just got an idea for a scene, a character, or a chunk of the plot. Sometimes I started with nothing more than a line of dialogue. Not this time. The whole story rose into my mind — plot, characters, setting — blooming in one glorious piece. It was all I could do to type fast enough to keep up with the images flooding my head.

Wow.

It's the greatest feeling in the world. I'd created a whole story, a miniature universe, from nothing. And I saw that it was good.

One down.

My brain was fried. I decided to get some sleep. I'd write the other story Sunday morning. It would come. I knew that beyond any doubt. I slept deeply but woke early.

One to go. I let my mind wander, trying to pluck an idea from the stream. Time passed. I thought about going out for another walk.

The phone rang. I ignored it.

"Telephone," Mom called from downstairs.

Damn. Any interruption could kill the flow. I picked it up in my room. "Hello?"

"Hi. It's me. Julia. I wanted to see if you felt like coming to church."

"I can't," I told her, relieved to have a ready-made excuse. "I have to finish my project."

"Oh..." There was a pause. Then she said, "How's it going?"

"Not bad. I wrote a story last night. One more and I'm done." I felt a bit of the barrier between us dissolve as I talked. I'd built the wall. It was my job to remove it.

"You're amazing. You've got a true gift."

"Not really." It didn't seem special to me. I wrote stories. Big deal. I had a hard time understanding people who claimed they weren't creative. It was like hearing someone say he didn't know how to breathe.

"Where do you get all those ideas?" Julia asked.

"They just come. I don't try to examine it." That was as good an answer as I could give. The ideas always came. Sometimes, like last night, I had to wait a while. But, sooner or later, I knew I'd get an idea. I couldn't explain how it worked, but I was sure it always would. The words were there when I needed them. The words never failed to come.

My word....

The random pieces of the universe came together. If I hadn't been sitting, I might have fallen to my knees. As it was, I let the hand holding the phone drop to my lap. It took me a moment to notice that Julia was still talking. I raised the phone back to my ear.

".... guess I'll see you Monday, then."

"Yeah. Bye." I put the receiver down. "Faith," I whispered, giving voice to my revelation.

I couldn't see or touch the source of my ideas. But I believed in it. It had no name, and no face, but I knew it was an endless fountain. I had faith. Rock solid faith. Not religious faith. But faith in something unseen. Faith in something mysterious and magical. Something wonderful.

All these years, I had true faith, and never saw it for that. It was so simple. I'd been a believer all my life.

I put my fingers back on the keyboard. One more story. Piece of cake. My eyes drifted to my clock. Ten fifteen. I could just make it. I rushed down the stairs, said bye to Mom, then hurried out.

I ran into Julia outside the church. She grinned when she saw me. "I'm so glad you came. You finished your last story already?"

"No. I'll do that this afternoon."

"You sure?" she asked.

"Absolutely."

"Great. Come on." Julia grabbed my hand. We ran up the steps and into the church. Once inside, she let go. I guess church wasn't the place for hand holding. But the warmth of her touch lingered.

On the way down the aisle, I stopped for a moment as another sensation hit me. I couldn't help laughing as I realized what I was feeling.

"What's so funny?" Julia asked.

"I'll tell you later." I reached up to scratch my nose, then let my hand fall. I was in no hurry to get rid of this itch. Maybe it was a sign. Or maybe it was just my hormones kicking into high gear from the touch of her hand.

We sat and waited for the service to begin. I didn't know what lay ahead, but I was open to anything and eager to discover where this new plot twist would lead me.

# Habitat for Humanity

(This story requires a brief explanation. It was written for an anthology that contained pairs of stories inspired by original drawings. The drawing for my story showed an old woman standing outside a cabin, arguing with a bear.)

The damn creature was back, raising a ruckus. Just when I was finally getting to sleep. I could hear her right outside the window, roaring away. And I could hear Grandma roaring back as she rose from her own half slumber.

"Leave her be," I told Grandma. "She'll scurry away soon enough." I was glad there was a wall between us. Bears and people were a dangerous mix — especially this time of year, when food and sunlight grew scarce and the cold wind blew from the north.

But Grandma wasn't content to leave anything be. Not when she could make a fuss. "Shameless beggars," she said as she stomped toward the door. "Someone should chase them off for good."

"They've always lived around here. Same as the rabbits and the mice. Or the raccoons." I turned my back toward her and squeezed my eyes shut. "The only difference is they're bigger, and they eat more."

"They eat, all right. That's all they do. Eat and sleep."

"That sounds pretty good to me. Especially the sleep part."

"And they're dangerous," she said, ignoring my hint. "Unpredictable. No telling what they'll try."

"They're harmless as long as you leave them alone. You go out there, you'll just stir things up. If you'd be patient —" I flinched as icy fingers of air slipped through the open door. By then, she'd gone out. So I stopped talking. Not that it mattered. The results were always the same once Grandma had her mind made up, whether she could hear me or not. She did what she wanted.

As much as I hated the way they disturbed us, I knew it wasn't all their fault. They'd been chased farther and farther up the mountain. We'd taken their habitat. It might not have been right, but we'd done it. Not us, really. Our ancestors had taken their land. Maybe blame gets diluted a little with each generation. In another ten generations, the blame and the evidence might both by gone, and we'd scare our youngsters with tales of vanished creatures that once haunted the woods. We'd stagger and lurch in imitation of their clumsy motions, and shout our own version of the beastly cries that issued from their throats.

I had to admit, there were times when I'd sit outside and watch them off in the distance. I could do that for hours on a warm spring day. But it was late fall. After the harvest. I felt sleepy and heavy. Grandma had put on weight, too. I was glad. I always worried about her when the sky took on the gray tones of fall and the nights got so long they threatened to grow together, forming an endless blanket of darkness.

Well, old age might have slowed her down, but it didn't make her any less ornery. She was by the window now, too, shouting away. Probably face to face. Tired as I was, I couldn't help smiling. For all her growling, Grandma was a softie. She might chase our visitor off, but she'd give her something to eat, too.

I'd never let myself get that close to one of them. There was something in their eyes that spooked me. Sadness. But a light, too. Like they could think. They were smarter than the rabbits or the mice. That was for sure. But I didn't want to dwell on how smart they might be. I'd hate to feel they really understood what we'd taken from them. It was better to just believe that they were dumb beasts.

As much as I wanted to drift back to sleep, I knew there was no point trying until Grandma was finished. The growls and shouts seemed to go on forever. Two stubborn old females. But then the sounds softened. Murmurs, whispers, snuffles. Finally, I heard Grandma lumber back in and close the door.

"She go?" I asked.

"She went."

"You give her something?"

"You know that only encourages them."

"I know. So, you give her something?"

"Why would I? Shameless beggars."

"What'd you give her?"

"Couple berries."

Already, I was halfway back to sleep. But I lifted my head briefly and glanced out toward the rise. I could just see her disappearing among the trees, hunched over as if she clutched something to her belly. Her dress rippled as she wove her way deeper into the woods. Her thin white legs seemed so fragile, so unsuited to life in the hills. Wispy gray hair peeked from the scarf on her head. I couldn't imagine what life would be like without fur. How cold they must get. Poor creatures.

"Sleep well," Grandma said as she dropped back on all fours and curled up next to me.

"See you in the spring," I said. As I fell asleep, warm and fat, I wondered whether the people in the hills would make it through the winter. I hoped so. They might have been noisy pests and shameless beggars, but I guess this was their home, too.

# Pulling up Stakes

Uncle Ian gave me two presents before I left for America. One was _A Guide to American Slang._

"This will help you fit right in," he said. He opened the book and pointed to a phrase he'd underlined.

"See you later, alligator," I said, speaking the unfamiliar words carefully. I turned to another page. "Don't take any wooden nickels."

"Very good, Adrian. You will make many American friends."

The other present he gave me was a warm coat. "Does the weather get cold in Arkansas?" I asked. I'd studied America and learned it had a north and a south. In the south, the land was warm.

"The weather can get cold anywhere," he said.

When I thanked him for the coat, he wouldn't look at my eyes. I thought it was because he was going to miss me. Later, I wasn't so sure.

I had plenty of time to study the book. My parents and I traveled from Brasov to Bucharest by train. And then we sailed by boat to America. I found the perfect phrase for this in my book — we were _pulling up stakes._ We'd sold everything we owned. Which wasn't much. That was the reason we were coming to America. It was a land of opportunity. Uncle Ian had taken care of all the arrangements, getting us our tickets and even finding my father a job. My father had been in business with Uncle Ian, but something had gone wrong. My father had lost most of his money.

That's the way the cookie crumbles. English is not hard. I already spoke Romanian, German, and Hungarian. We learn Latin in school. Between Latin and German, I recognized many English words.

Once we were in America, I discovered our journey wasn't finished. We flew on a big plane. And then on a smaller plane. And then on a very small plane with loud propellers. It was dark when we landed. And it was cold. As soon as we got our luggage, I put on my coat.

Then I checked my watch. This should have been the middle of the morning. But perhaps I didn't quite understand the time zones.

"America is very dark," my mother said as we sat in our new apartment and watched the bright stars through the window.

"And very cold," my father said.

The next day, when I went to my new school, it was still dark.

The nice woman in the school office smiled at me. "Welcome to Alaska, Adrian."

"Is Alaska in Arkansas?" I asked her.

She shook her head. "Alaska is a state." She showed me a map on the wall behind her, then tapped a spot. "Here we are."

America is very big. I saw that Alaska was far to the north of the rest of the country. And we were far to the north of the rest of Alaska.

"Let me get someone to take you to your class," she said.

I was excited to learn what my classmates would look like. They were all different. Some were very white. Some were very dark. Some had fancy clothing. Some had simple clothing. Many of their shirts had words on them, or pictures of rock groups.

In my old school, I wore a uniform. Today, I wore a white shirt. Tomorrow, maybe I will wear a shirt with words on it.

The students looked up when I walked in. But two boys in the back kept talking to each other. One had a shirt that said, "Lord of the Rings." The other had a shirt with a picture of the man in the black helmet from Star Wars.

As I looked around the room, I caught my breath. There was a girl, also sitting in the back, but not near the two boys. Her hair was long and dark. Her face was beautiful, even though she wore makeup that made her eyes scary. She had a black shirt with the word "Lestat" on it. I didn't know that word. Maybe it was French. She glanced up when I walked in, but then turned back to the book she was reading.

My teacher said, "Why don't you tell us a bit about yourself, Adrian."

I felt nervous to speak in my new English. So I didn't say very much. "I am from Brasov, in Romania."

They all waited for me to say more.

"Brasov is past the forest," I said. "We call this area Transylvania."

The girl looked up from her book when I said that.

The two boys in the back stopped talking and stared at me, as if I had said something important. Then one whispered to the other. The other nodded and whispered back. I think they were making fun of me. "I'm done," I said to my teacher.

She let me sit down.

###

"How was your new school?" my mother asked when I got home.

"It was good," I told her.

"Did you make any friends?"

"Not yet."

"You will."

My father came home from the new job Uncle Ian had arranged for him. "It is still dark," he said. "And there is some confusion. The people at the factory do not know Ian. All day, they send me from one person to another. Nobody knows about this job. I think Ian made another big mistake."

"I think we are not in Arkansas," my mother said.

I explained that we were in Alaska. "It will be dark for many days. But then, it will be light for many days. It all works out."

"I will kill your Uncle Ian some day," my father said.

###

The next morning in school, one of the boys from the back row walked up to me in the hallway and said, "I have a present for you." He held his hand behind his back. His shirt had a picture of a space ship.

A present? This was not something I would expect. "Thank you," I said. For the first time since I arrived, I felt warm.

"A _special_ present," he said.

I waited to see what he was going to give me. And I worried that I did not have anything for him. I didn't bring much with me. I could give him my book, but he must already know American slang.

"Here!" he shouted, thrusting something in my face. I was so startled, I took a step back.

"Aha!" He stepped forward as I moved away.

The thing in his hand was so close to my eyes that I couldn't focus on it at first. Finally, I realized it was a cross. I was surprised. I had heard that America was a godless country. This must not be true. He was so excited to give it to me, his hand was shaking. "Take this, Vladimir."

Perhaps Vladimir is an American term for friend. I reached out and took the present. "Thank you, Vladimir," I said to him. I remembered a phrase of friendship from my book. "You are the cat's pajamas. Are you sure you want to give this to me?"

He nodded. But he didn't say a word. Instead, he walked away without turning his back.

When I was leaving school, he came up to me again, with his friend.

"Would you like to go for pizza with us?"

I didn't know this word. "Pizza?"

He nodded. "It's food. You do eat food, don't you?"

"Of course." This was such an odd question. I must have misunderstood. I realized my English was still not very good. I would need to study harder. And perhaps find a new book. I had not heard anyone use the slang I had learned.

"Pizza is great," the other boy said. "It has red, red sauce. As red as blood. Hot, salty blood with little chunks that are just like clots. Doesn't that sound irresistible?"

Now I was sure I didn't understand him well. This sounded awful. But I was eager to make friends. I walked with these strange Americans to the pizza store. Even in the darkness, I could see that Alaska was a lovely place, though very different from Romania.

The first boy was named Jonas. The other was Mack. Sometimes they called each other Captain Kirk and Lex Luthor. Other times, they called each other Chewie and Frodo. I think Americans have many nicknames.

"So, how do you like it here?" Jonas asked.

"It is very nice."

"And very convenient, wouldn't you say? Dark for days on end. No sunlight to ruin things? No chance of turning into a smoldering pile of ashes. Aye, Vlad?"

I smiled and shrugged, which works well when you don't understand something. When I smiled, I noticed that they both stared at my teeth. I will have to remember to brush more vigorously in the future.

The pizza turned out to be a tomato pie. After the waiter brought it to our table, Jonas held up a shaker and said, "Garlic powder?"

I nodded.

Jonas shook a lot of garlic on the pizza. He shook it so hard that he even got some on me.

"Too much?" he asked.

I brushed myself off. "It is perfect," I said, though there was more garlic than I would normally use. But I guess this is how Americans like to eat their food. The sauce was very tasty. It didn't make me think of blood. This was a good thing.

They both watched me when I took my first bite. Then they looked at each other and sighed, as if they were disappointed. I felt bad that I had failed to please them, but I didn't know what I had done wrong.

In the days that followed, I had many adventures with Jonas and Mack. They took me to their church. And to every other church in town. They splashed me with holy water. I didn't think it was right to waste such a precious thing, but perhaps this is another American custom. They even helped me put gel in my hair. We stood in front of the mirror for a long time. Jonas kept staring at my reflection and waving his hand behind my head. He was a strange boy, but I liked him.

They also gave me many nicknames. Nosferatu. Varney. Lugosi. Spike. I didn't understand any of this, but I believe it made them happy to call me these things.

One day, in our shop class, Mack picked up a piece of wood with a point on the end. "Does this make you nervous?" he asked.

"No."

He placed the point against my chest and stared into my eyes. "Not even now?"

"Of course not," I said. "You are my friend. Nothing you do would make me nervous."

Mack is also strange. But I liked him, too.

I noticed that they don't have any other friends. All Americans value their individuality, but some Americans do not value other people's individuality. Mack and Jonas are very individual. So is the girl who sits in the back. I wish she was my friend.

By now, my father had found a job. My mother started going to classes to learn better English. Both my parents were enjoying American food. We were becoming part of this country. I had even learned a word for it. We were assimilating. But I still had not talked to the beautiful girl, whose name was Zinah. Sometimes, she seemed to watch me. Other times, I was sure she was following me down the hallway. I never saw her speak to anyone. I wondered whether she was lonely.

"Does Zinah have a boy friend?" I asked Mack one day.

He shook his head. "She hasn't found Mr. Wrong yet."

I didn't know what that meant.

It has been dark for many days. But the sun will be rising for the first time tomorrow. Just for a little bit. I heard Jonas and Mack talking about it. They didn't know I was in the bathroom when they came in. I had rushed there before my classes started. I think my mother's first experiment with making salmon chili had not gone so well.

"The sun is the real proof," Jonas said.

"Yeah. Everything else could be wrong. Crosses, garlic, mirrors. That could all just be myths. Even the fangs. Writers are always inventing stuff. But the sun. That's the real test. If he's a vampire, he'll never be able to withstand the sun."

Vampire? I gasped, then held my breath, afraid they'd hear me. In my country, we tell those stories to children to scare them. I never knew Americans believed such things. Now I understood why Mack thought I'd be afraid of a stake.

"It would be awesome," Jonas said. "Vampires are so cool. And he's our friend, which makes us the coolest guys in the school."

"Or maybe in the whole world. I want him to be real," Mack said, "but I don't want him to get fried."

So maybe in America they have no fear of vampires. Not that it mattered. I wasn't one of the undead.

The next day, the whole town gathered to watch the sunrise. We stood on a hill near the apartment building where I lived. Even my parents were there. They felt much better today, though my mother has sworn she will never make salmon chili again.

I joined Jonas and Mack, who were standing off by themselves near the edge of the crowd.

"Are you sure you want to be here," Jonas asked.

"Of course," I said. "I want to be with my friends."

"You haven't seen the sun for a long time," Mack said. "It can be very hard on your eyes. And your skin. Maybe you should go inside. Get used to it gradually. Don't want to get all crispy, do you?"

"The ozone layer's been depleted," Jonas said. "There's a serious risk of exposure. Especially for people who are sensitive to light. You could burn real fast."

"I'll be fine." I was pleased that they were worried about me.

Far off, I noticed a glow on the horizon. Everyone became quiet. Jonas had told me that when the sun rose, the whole crowd would cheer.

Nearby, I saw Zinah. She was watching me. But my thoughts weren't on her. At least not all of my thoughts. I was thinking about my friends. My good friends Jonas and Mack. I finally had a gift I could give them.

I pulled up the collar of my coat and clutched Jonas's sleeve. "I have to go," I said.

He reached out with his other hand and squeezed my shoulder. "I understand."

I turned and ran. I needed to make sure I got away before they saw that I was smiling. Jonas and Mack wanted so much for me to be a vampire. They wanted to believe. This would make them happy. This was my present to them. Later, I would have to tell them the truth. But for now, they would feel special. And maybe, even when they knew the truth, part of that feeling would stay with them.

I went to my apartment.

A moment later, someone knocked on the door.

It was her.

"I've been watching you," she said. "From the day you walked into class."

She closed the door behind her, then reached up and touched my cheek. "You are so cold."

Of course I was cold. I'd been standing outside. But I didn't speak. I was too nervous.

"What a long trip you've taken to get here."

I nodded.

"I've come prepared." She thrust her hand into her purse.

I stepped back. In my mind, I could see her pulling out a stake and plunging it into my heart. That would be a bad way to start a friendship. Instead, she pulled out lip gloss. "I get so chapped sometimes," she said after she'd spread a bit of gloss on her lips.

She put the container back in her purse. I still hadn't found my voice.

"I knew some day someone like you would come. You're so strong. So silent. So powerful." She moved her face close to mine. "So irresistible." Then she kissed me. I kissed her back.

It was a long kiss. A warm kiss.

When we finally moved apart, she said, "I could tell you were special the moment I saw you."

I ended my silence by repeating her words.

From far off, the sound of cheers came through the closed window. The sun was up. Briefly. I was eager to see it, but I left the curtains alone.

Zinah touched the side of her beautiful neck. "Do you want to kiss me here?"

"Maybe later," I said. I wanted to kiss her everywhere. But I knew she'd be puzzled if I kissed her neck without biting it. And before I kissed her again, there was something I had to say. A man of honor never lies to a lady. I had to be honest with her. "I am not a vampire," I said to her. "I am just a young man of flesh and blood. Vampires are not real." I spoke the truth to her. Every single word. In Romanian, of course.

"I don't know what you said, but it sounded very sexy." Zinah sighed and put her arms around me. "The boys in school — they're so boring. So dull. Not like you, Adrian."

I sighed too, and put my arms around her. Today, the sun would only be up for a short time. But in the months to come, there would be sun all the time. And I would have to tell Zinah the truth. In English. Or meet her only indoors. In nice dark places, where we could hold each other and whisper secrets in our native tongues.

There is a phrase in my book. Tomorrow is another day. Perhaps, by then, she'll like me for who I am, not what she thinks I might be. Maybe Jonas and Mack can help me figure out the best way to tell her. Surely they understand American girls better than I do.

It will all work out. Before, I pulled up stakes. Now, I am putting down roots. In this magical land of dark and light.

Thank you for sending me here, Uncle Ian. I forgive you. Because Americans are forgiving people, with warm hearts. And I am an American.

# About the author

David Lubar grew up in Morristown, NJ. The son of a school librarian, his lack of athletic or social skills allowed him to begin polishing his literary talents and love of reading at an early age. He credits his passion for short stories to his limited attention span and his even-more-limited typing ability. He sold his first short story in 1978, two years after graduating from Rutgers. Armed with a degree in Philosophy and no discernible job skills, he spent the bulk of the Carter administration as a starving writer before accidentally discovering he knew how to program computers.

He's written more than two dozen books for young readers, including _Hidden Talents_ , _Flip,_ _Invasion of the Road Weenies, Punished!, Dunk,_ and _Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie._ His novels are on reading lists across the country, saving countless students from a close encounter with _Madame Bovary._ His short stories have appeared in the collections of such respected anthologists as M. Jerry Weiss and Don Gallo, and in a variety of magazines, including _Boy's Life, READ, and Nickelodeon_. He has published an eclectic body of humor pieces in both national and regional publications. In a former, geekier phase of his life, he designed and programmed many old-school video games, including _Home Alone_ , and _Frogger 2._ In his spare time, he takes naps on the couch.

He lives in Nazareth, Pennsylvania with his wife and a trio of felines. He also lives online at www.davidlubar.com.

# Other books by David Lubar

Novels:

Hidden Talents

True Talents

Flip

Dunk

Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie

Story collections:

In the Land of the Lawn Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales

Invasion of the Road Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales

The Curse of the Campfire Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales

The Battle of the Red Hot pepper Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales

Attack of the Vampire Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales

**Chapter** **Books:**

_My Rotten Life: Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie_ , book #1

_Dead Guy Spy: Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie_ , book #2

_Goop Soup: Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie_ , book #3

_The Big Stink: Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie_ , book #4

_Enter the Zombie: Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie_ , book #5

Punished!

Dog Days

eBooks:

It Seemed Funny at the Time: a large collection of short humor

See them all on his book page: <http://www.davidlubar.com/mybooks.html>

