

### Death Tennis

### Sherry Wood

### Copyright 2015 Sherry Wood

### Smashwords Edition

Death Tennis

#horror #comedy

In loving memory of William "Billy" Pittman Jr

In the jungle

Welcome to the jungle

Feel my, my, my serpentine

Ooh, I wanna hear you scream

-Guns N' Roses, Welcome To The Jungle

Part 1

Milk Maids Die Slowly

Part 2

Banana Shoulder

Part 3

They Left Us, We Leave Them

Part 1

Milk Maids Die Slowly

1

"Don't!" Donna shrieked. "Stop!" Donna was yelling at her five-year old sister, Randi, as Randi ran around the kitchen, her wet feet making slapping sounds against the tile floor. Randi was always loud in the morning and since it was the bright, early hour of nine am, she was just getting started – running in and out of the house.

"Is Eric coming over?" I asked once it was quiet long enough for me to. Eric Dorfman coming over was the only thing that mattered to me. My long summer of 1987 would consist of me asking this question so Donna really needed to learn to deal with it.

Donna was about to answer when Randi ran back through the house, leaving more wet footprints from playing in the kiddie pool as she went flying by us. The slapping noise it made was kind of intense. I waited for it to die out and looked at Donna for her to answer me.

"No, I don't know, oh my god," Donna rolled her eyes. "I know you like him but you really need to get a grip. It isn't going anywhere."

Clearly. I didn't need her to tell me that. Eric came over, helped out in the garage with Dwayne and then got drunk and passed out on the sofa. He maybe would wake up at midnight to smoke and watch MTV. In between all these events, he never even spoke to me once or looked my way. But, given this, it had so many places to go – because it hadn't gone anywhere yet. Wait for the cigarette smoke to clear, wait for his pale blue eyes to look at me. I would wait.

Donna was very irritated by her sister, along with the summer heat, which was only beginning. And while I understood this, she really needed to understand that my crush on Eric Dorfman, her stepdad's nephew – who could really be Axl Rose's long lost twin he looked so much like him – only swelled by the minute and when I didn't know for sure if he was coming over, it created pure agony all inside of me.

"I wasn't obsessing," I lied. "I'm just curious."

Donna sat down, exasperated. The summer did terrible things to Donna's red hair, which was already thick and unmanageable as it was, but 90 degree heat just turned it into a gigantic frizzy mess.

She leaned across the table so her face was right in front of mine, looking about three shades of pink from too much sun – it kind of reminded me of a strip of bacon.

"Are they still there?" she pointed to her forehead where she was breaking out from too much sun. She also got pimples because she was sixteen, and she said that was usually when teenage girls really broke out.

"Yes."

She rolled her eyes and sighed. Randi came flying back through the little house with her favorite doll, feet slapping against the tile floor again.

"Oh my god, calm down!" Donna yelled at her as she got up and went back to the freezer. Most days we made it until noon before we attacked the box of popsicles but today would obviously be different.

Randi and I stood behind Donna as she took out a dented box of cherry-flavored popsicle sticks out of the freezer.

"Give me!" Randi said, jumping up and down. "I want banana!"

"There are no banana – you know these are cherry." Donna handed Randi one and she ran off with it along with her doll into the hot, sunny backyard. Donna handed me one and put the box back in the freezer.

"Dwayne!" Donna called for her stepdad. Her abrupt yelling was unnerving. I needed to get out of the house for a minute. I took my popsicle and went out to the backyard. Randi was pulling her long blonde hair up in a hairband and trying to fill the pool up herself. Around here, you kind of fended for yourself.

Donna's backyard was my refuge from everything. We definitely spent more time out here than in the house during the long, hot days. There was a kiddie pool that was big enough for five people, four lawn chairs, a grill, a picnic table and a tire swing that hung from an oak tree big enough to almost provide shade for the whole yard. The neighbors kept a fancy vegetable garden and every now and then, a bunny rabbit would appear in it.

Dwayne worked from his garage, taking cars apart and selling the parts. The garage looked more like a shed, and he'd ripped the door right off of it. Sometimes a friend would drop off a car for him to fix. He made his own money, he was his own boss. Eric came over and helped him on the weekends. Since today was Saturday, my anticipation for him to come over was high. The garage was in the backyard too, over by a grey cement wall that divided Dwayne's yard from the apartment complex behind it.

The tire swing hung on a thick rope from a sturdy branch. I loved to play on it while Dwayne worked on cars and Donna lied out and Randi played in the pool. Everyone had their own favorite little thing. We kept a boombox that Donna and I played mix tapes on, usually consisting of songs by Bananarama, Poison and Expose.

"Let's go play tennis!" Donna shouted from the backdoor. Behind her was a pile of clothes on top of the washer and dryer, which took up the tiny back room between the back porch and the kitchen. Sometimes, since I never wanted to go home, Dwayne talked about turning the little back room into a little room for me "because who wanted to do laundry?" but it was one of those things he never got around to doing because he always got too drunk.

Ugh. I didn't want to play tennis. Donna already had her little tennis outfit on though, and brand new white sneakers. It was too hot to play tennis. We always played at the depressing courts between the community center and the grocery store called Lion's Land. The grass behind the grocery store and pretty much all around the tennis courts was overgrown and wilting. There were abandoned shopping carts in the field, too, but the grass was so tall they were barely noticeable. Just down the street from it all was the only homeless shelter in all of Lilyworth, North Carolina. Sometimes a person who was too late to sign up for a bed at the shelter would turn to the tennis courts for a spot on the bleachers to nap.

"Can't we just stay here and hang out?" I smiled, trudging up the steps that led into the dark, messy house. The steps were basically broken piles of cinder block.

"No, come on!" She yelled as she turned from the kitchen into the little hallway where her and Randi's bedrooms were, along with the only bathroom in the house. I knew it was pointless to argue with Donna. Her whole family was stubborn and high-strung. They did whatever they wanted. They were hellions, but she was my only friend and it was better than just staying home – anything was.

"Hey there Louise," Dwayne greeted me in the kitchen. He gave me his usual wink as he came strolling through the house in nothing but his jean shorts. Dwayne talked in a slow, southern accent that made me feel relaxed even with all the Saturday morning ruckus occurring. Dwayne was in his early thirties and sort of looked like the blonde guy Bo Duke from The Dukes of Hazzard, only somewhat haggard and sunburned with a mustache. While he was Donna's stepdad, he was Randi's biological father. They both had the same mother, but I had no idea where their mother was. I also didn't know where Donna's real dad was because she never spoke of him. She seemed totally happy with Dwayne and referred to him as Dad. I did too, pretty much. There were women that would come over sometimes, usually Dwayne was dating one of them because he was "kind of a catch" as Donna would say.

Dwayne ran his hand through his wavy blonde hair and put his hand on my shoulder.

"Good to have ya for 'nother weekend," he warmly spoke.

"Thanks." He always made me feel so welcomed. I sometimes got worried that I was here too much, but Donna insisted it was fine. I didn't feel welcomed in my own house. Plus food was always a problem. We had to ration. I got so sick of that word – ration. Mom always put little red stars on the food we had to make last – like the bread and the milk. If I didn't listen and took an extra slice of bread or drank too much milk, I got tied up (usually to the faucet sink and my ankles to the kitchen table so I was kind of spread out) and beat with the dishrag until I had welts on my back. Sometimes she put a rock inside the rag first.

When I became friends with Donna, I felt like I'd been rescued. I could practically spend all summer at her house – no one cared. Once Dwayne saw the big red marks on my back and found out why I had them, he pretty much insisted I stay with them, too. I had blonde hair and blue eyes, so it was easy to convince people that I was his daughter.

We were all the blonde, blue-eyed American clan.

Dwayne took a beer out of the fridge. The sound of the tab being pulled back and a little air and foam being released was a sound I'd gotten quite used to. He started to head outside when Donna ran after him.

"Dwayne can we go to the tennis courts?!!!" she begged.

"Yeah sure." He always said yes to whatever we wanted. We could ask him if we could get a giant snake and keep it as a pet in the bathtub and hire monkeys to take care of it and he would say sure, why not.

I followed Dwayne, hoping Donna wouldn't come outside and just get over her desire to play tennis. Dwayne made a pitstop at the kiddie pool on his way to the garage.

"Need some help?" he asked Randi, who was trying to pull her bathing suit up because it was falling down around her skin and bones physique. He took the hose from her so she could get herself together. She had a very determined frown on her face as she reached back to fiddle with the strings, eventually tying them into a hard knot. Once there was enough water, she jumped right in to make a splash.

"Careful now," he told her. He handed her the hose and lifted me up next, situating me in the big tire hanging from the tree.

"On there okay?" he checked.

"Yes," I said, shy but grateful. Then he started to push me. This was all I wanted – to feel okay and be on this swing – coasting from the shady side into the sun, and back again. I felt safe. Dwayne gave me a few more big pushes before returning to his garage to work. Dwayne was a handsome guy so it was clear where Donna, Eric and Randi all got their looks from. Dwayne was in his mid-thirties, a Leo, and was always working on something outside. Unfortunately, the inside of the house went uncared for as a result, especially where cleaning chores were considered.

I turned and watched as Donna came back out, on some sort of warpath but it was just to play tennis.

"Come help me make chips," she told me, just as I was really starting to enjoy my swing. She came over to help me climb down. She'd ruined my afternoon. We could just play my mix tape – I'd just put a bunch of cool stuff on it, it was the epitome of all summer mix tapes and I was excited to play it loudly so everyone could hear what I was into. I was kind of shy, so that was a why of me expressing myself. Then all I would have to do was swing along to the music and wait for my bad boy Axl Rose lookalike (aka Eric Dorfman) to ride up on his motorcycle and turn my world to dust and confusion like boys do. Then we'd all have a cookout and wait for scary movies to come on USA. That could have been my fun, rad, awesome day. But no. I had to go play stupid tennis.

2

Donna brought down a huge blue plastic bowl and dumped some Doritos and Pringles into it. She tossed a few chocolate pretzels in it too, making her own trail mix.

"Let's have lunch and then go," she decided, opening a small container of ranch dip. I watched her dip a chocolate pretzel into the ranch dressing and tried to not look horrified. But ew.

There was no getting around it – I was going to have to play tennis with her after I watched her eat gross food. I could only hope Eric would still be here when we got back. Eric had a baby face and long dirty blonde hair. He was tall and slender with blue eyes like Dwayne. He was gorgeous and such a bad boy. He carried himself like his shoulders were switchblades and his tongue spat venom. He liked the more aggressive bands like Guns N Roses and ACDC while Donna and I liked Poison and Cinderella. I wondered what he thought of me, or if he did at all.

Every time he came around on his motorcycle, he was drunk and smoking cigarettes. He rarely looked my way, but when he did, he tended to stare at me intensely while he leaned against the kitchen sink. I didn't know why he would stare at me sometimes – I didn't know if he hated me or what. I'd almost prefer to be hated by him than to not be on his mind at all. His hair was straight like Axl Rose's, stopping just at his shoulders. He had a tattoo of a motorcycle on his right bicep, and it had flames shooting out behind it like it was speeding right outta Hell. On his left bicep, in about the same spot, he had the words Death for All tatted. That one he got in a youth detention center and it was pretty obvious too as it wasn't the best work ever, but I could read it well enough.

I looked at Donna with puppy dog eyes, pleading silently, Is he coming over? Just tell me, please. But I'll be playing dumb tennis with you so it won't matter.

"Get a spoon," Donna bossed, ignoring my sulking. People just didn't understand that when Eric Dorfman walked in the same room I was in it was like seeing a rock star somewhere totally random. It would be like seeing freaking Slash at the Lion's Land grocery store! Picking out grapes or something! Such things were magical and deserved to be celebrated.

I sighed and lollygagged over to the silverware drawer, mistakenly diving my hand in and forgetting about all the cockroaches. The silverware drawer was basically their favorite home. There weren't just a few – there were layers. They were piled on top of each other in hibernation mode, completely still until they sensed me and then their little shiny bodies scattered everywhere. I panicked and slammed my finger in the drawer when I shut it too fast. I bucked up and pretended like nothing happened.

"Oh god, move," Donna fussed. Donna wasn't afraid of anything. Whenever I saw a rat here at night, she just pointed at it and laughed. If I felt a cockroach in the bed we shared, she would pick it up with her bare fingers and throw it across the room and curse, "Little fuckers!"

I watched her dig a spoon out of the drawer and rinse it off.

"You're worse than Randi," she swore. "Such a baby."

I didn't say anything and I wasn't hungry anymore. I went back out on the tire swing, managing to climb up onto it myself, and listened to the heavy metal music Dwayne played in his garage – those fussy guitars always carried across the yard no matter how low the volume was.

He eventually came out of the dark garage with some pliers in his hand and looked over at me.

"What's Donna doin? She ready yet?" he asked me. I could tell Dwayne had a temper, but on most days – as long as he had his decent supply of beer – he was fine.

"I don't know..." I shyly replied. He gave me a big push on the tire swing before going into the house. He put his fingers inside the tire, grabbing it to pull it back and then he let it go so I swung down and back up on the other side, the sunny side of the yard. I thought of Eric and yearned for the time of day when his Harley Davidson was parked in Dwayne's driveway. Where oh where was he right now? Was he riding around on his motorcycle? Was he at band practice? Was he still in bed? Oh god, to be that bed...

3

Dwayne drove a grey van. It was pretty old, from the 1960s. He worked on it enough so it drove well and he and Eric had ripped out all the seats in the back and put down a hippy rug and a beer cooler. It would be a great tour van and maybe Eric was eventually going to use it for his metal band, Ataxia. For now it was nice and roomy for me and Donna and all of our tennis crap. It was a cool summer car for us to pile into and go to the lake, which we did every now and then. Maybe one day we could go to Royal Cove – a cute little beach town a few hours from here where I dreamed of running away to. I always wanted Donna to ask Dwayne to take us there, but she said he didn't have enough money to put us up in a motel.

We drove through the small town of Lilyworth as Donna stared me down, tossing a tennis ball up in the air. She was obviously ready for a long, hard match.

I turned and gazed out of the window. There wasn't much to see – churches, discount stores, a creepy bus station and – before the disastrous fire that burned them all to the ground – a slew of fast food restaurants that existed on Fray Street – if you didn't want chicken, you could get burgers. If you didn't want burgers you could get tacos. Well now you couldn't get crap because it was all just a huge black pile of charred rubble. It looked like a war zone and still smelled of smoke. For this reason, most people that lived on Fray Street had temporarily relocated.

"Now them some well done burgers," Dwayne joked as we drove past the disaster zone before blasting some ACDC. I laughed because I thought it was funny and hated this whole area. I didn't really even care for Lilyworth. When the fast food places finally burned down, my parents thought it was the biggest tragedy, bigger than the Chernobyl disaster. I was so sick of hearing about it.

The Premier Community Center was in the heart of Lilyworth, North Carolina, with the tennis courts up on a hill where the grass desperately needed to be mowed. The community center was a rundown brick building with an American flag out front and usually a Volkswagen or two in the parking lot. Inside, old people gathered to play bingo. There were wooden benches in the hallway for people to rest, I guess, when bingo got too intense for everyone. It smelled of Ben-Gay and the sound of sneakers and old people shoes constantly squeaked against the marble floor.

There was a long flight of white stairs that snaked along through some bushes and climbed on up through overgrown, wilting grass, connecting the tennis court's entrance to the community center's side entrance. Beyond the tennis courts was the creepy, snaky-looking field behind Lion's Land.

The tennis courts were surrounded by a huge beaten up chainlink fence, as if to protect them from the tall grass and whatever crawled around in it. There were three vending machines that still somehow worked along with bleachers where bums would sometimes sleep. I hated it here, it felt too secluded, it was beyond creepy. I always checked to make sure there wasn't a homeless man sleeping in the courts. Sometimes they would roam through the woods nearby. I often wished Dwayne would stay with us and keep an eye on us, but he always just dropped us off. Donna thought the courts was the greatest thing ever – no one else dared come up here – there weren't exactly a lot of Lilyworth residents dying to play tennis anyway. Donna pretty much saw this land as hers. Well then she should look into some upkeep.

Just like with cockroaches in the drawer and rats that ran across the living floor at nighttime, Donna was fearless of the squalor conditions of the tennis courts. She acted like it was paradise. Maybe if I triggered my imagination enough, I could pretend the onslaught of overgrown weeds and frightening looking trees were palm trees and Blue Butterfly Bush. I could pretend the sagging tin roof of Lion's Land was the ocean. Ha! Who has that big of an imagination though?

Donna ran around like crazy once we were here. She took her duffel bag that was crammed with her racket and tennis balls and flung it over onto the bleachers. I supposed these surroundings inspired destructive behavior. She also brought the boombox so we could listen to my mix tape while we played. The next thing we did was open all of our pockets to count our change to buy sodas and snacks, spreading the coins along the hot surface of the bleacher. I thought about what kind of snack I wanted. I avoided the cheese crackers because one time I got one from the vending machine and the cheese was green.

"So you will be happy to know that Eric is spending the night tonight," Donna let me know as she picked up her quarters.

"Oh my god! Really?" I was ecstatic.

She nodded. "Yeah, but you're not his type," she quickly added. "I mean he's seventeen and you're fourteen, for Christ's sake. You are so innocent – so inexperienced – that's why he doesn't give you the time of day. Boys his age only care about one thing."

"I'll be fifteen soon though," I said.

"Yeah – and he'll be eighteen," she said. "September first."

Donna was constantly hurting my feelings with her bluntness, but at least she never sugarcoated anything.

"What's the thing?" I asked, following her over to one of the vending machines. I tried not to look out at the fence, at the creepy grass and trees. "The thing...that they care about?"

"Oh my god," she sighed as she dropped some coins into the machine. She bent down and took out her Mr. Pibb, pulled back the tab and just when it made a hissing sound when it opened, she said, "Sex."

"Oh. Right." Sex was definitely something I knew nothing about. I knew it involved putting on lipstick. I knew it was what all those dirty songs were about – the stuff the guys in the MTV videos sang about. High heels clacking on a sidewalk at nighttime. Fog machines. But I didn't really know anything else about it.

"Everyone says it hurts," Donna said. "And it does, but you get used to it," she said, dropping more coins down the little slot of the green machine. "I mean, unless the dude is really big." She took her cookies and stepped back so I could have my turn.

"Big?" I wondered as the hollow thunder of my chocolate brownie drink dropping from the machine occurred. "Big like the Incredible Hulk?" I guessed, taking my chocolate soda over to the bleachers. "Because he could crush you?"

"Huh?" she frowned as she unzipped the cover of her fancy new tennis racket. What the heck?

"Is that a Wimbledon racket?" I asked, amazed, as she lifted it up in the air like a torch. She had a proud glimmer in her eyes just then. Nobody I knew had a Wimbledon racket – to play with here? Why on earth would you need one to play at these old tennis courts? Meanwhile I had a Wilson racket, its handle held together by a massive amount of duct tape since it was falling apart.

"Yes," Donna boasted over her expensive racket.

"You think you're Martina Nar...vratilova...?" I said, messing up the name and failing epically on insulting her.

"Dare you to spell it," she sassed, walking over to her usual side of the net. Behind her was the backdrop of the roof of Lion's Land. It was sagging after a slew of bad southern thunderstorms. That sort of damage was often unrepairable. From here, it looked like we could walk a while and then jump down on it.

I didn't like having my back turned to the vast field behind me. I was always afraid something was going to creep up on us. But at least the community center and grocery store were nearby, I told myself.

4

There was hardly anything more terrifying than playing tennis with a hormonal teenage girl, and now she had this racket built for pros – built to deliver the hardest of swings and win medals and trophies. This was war.

Donna loved to hit the ball really hard. I usually ducked so I wouldn't get hit. I didn't have enough confidence in myself to think I could actually hit it with the racket – that I could actually play the game. This was more like dodgeball for me.

She pushed play on the boombox to really get things going. And baby! Talk dirty to me! Bret Michaels sang to the backdrop of a cat-cry of a guitar.

Whack! Donna hit to kill. I ducked again, doing a quick check for zombies off in the field as the ball slammed against the chainlink fence. Maybe if zombies did come out to eat us it would be better – that way I wouldn't have to try so hard at not getting hit.

"Damn it, Louise! Play!" Donna squawked.

"Can you just calm down a little?" I tried to reason with her. She just looked at me like she didn't understand english all of the sudden.

As I prepared myself for the next round of Death Tennis, I noticed something over in the tall grass behind the fence on her side. It was something white, something small and hardly noticeable but my eyes were, for whatever reason, attracted to it. I knew I couldn't keep looking at it if I wanted to save my life, because Donna was about to hit the ball over to me once she was done fingering the red netting of her racket that made up the letter W.

She tossed another pretty yellow ball up and WHACK!! she hit this even harder than the last. She hit it so hard I was amazed the ball didn't split open. What was she so mad at? Why did she take it out on these poor little balls? On me?

I avoided the ball once again and went over to my soda.

"This is so annoying," Donna complained. "How can I play without a partner?"

"If you wouldn't hit so hard I wouldn't be afraid to hit back," I explained. I glanced over at the white thing in the grass again. It wasn't a rock – it was bigger. It was the only thing white in the green surroundings. Curiosity pulled me along until I was standing right in front of the fence so I could see it better. It was a white sneaker, which led to a leg, which led to a white skirt. A body.

"Donna?" I called out in fear and kept looking at it, and a wind pushed a horrific scent over to me. It was overpowering – a kind of sticky sweet smell like blood smothered me. I covered my nose when the sweet smell took a putrid turn. I felt like I might throw up.

I turned around and leaned against the fence, making it shake.

"God, what is that smell?" I knew Donna noticed it too, even though she pretended everything was cool. She just wanted to play the game. She bounced the ball along the court with her racket.

"Something died," she simply said. "The cycle of life or whatever. Get on your side," she snapped, ready to serve.

"No," I called out. I turned around and, despite, the smell, looked again. "Come over here! Look..." I pointed with dread at the body. "There's...someone..." I didn't want to keep looking but I couldn't help myself. I looked over at Donna as she stood next to me, looking too. She frowned as she saw the leg of the dead person, and looked around – behind us and off to the side – before looking back at the body.

"Maybe it's a...homeless person..." I could tell that even though she said it, she didn't believe it.

"They wouldn't sleep in the grass like that," I said. Besides, no one slept that still.

"Maybe they...passed out drunk. I seen Dwayne do that sometimes." She was in denial. She was crazy.

I turned and walked across the courts, through the chainlink fence and through a little path between the weeds until I was a few feet away from it. I was so close I could see her brand of sneaker, Saucony. Then I saw her up close. She was lying on her side – almost on her back, but turned slightly so her right arm was slung over her left shoulder in an awkward manner. Blood trickling from her mouth had dried into a paste on her cheek. There were leaves in her curly black hair and her brown eyes were wide open in a look of distress as if what happened to her out here was still happening to her. Her white dress looked like a nurse's uniform and was flipped up across her thigh to prove that she didn't have underwear on. There was blood on her inner thighs too.

"Donna," I started to cry. I was now mortified. Flies were around her, making an angry swarming noise. "Help her – we need to help her."

Donna was next to me, staring at her too. Donna's mouth hung open as if someone was telling her an unbelievable story and she was waiting to respond. But Donna didn't say anything.

"Help her," I begged. "Oh my god..."

"She's dead, " Donna whispered, frank. Then she took my wrist and pulled me away from the gruesome sight.

I looked around as the breeze made the tall grass and trees around us blow in the same direction. I followed Donna down the path, back to the fence door but I turned to look at it again. She was still there, staring at the same spot forever because that was what the dead did.

We could close her eyes, I thought, at least. I wondered if, since her eyes were still open, she was forced to see the last thing she saw before she died – the person who did that to her. What secrets the dead knew.

Donna quietly packed up her stuff once we returned to the bleachers.

"We should go meet Dwayne," she said in a somber voice. I'd never heard her talk so low. "Eric's probably at the house by now," she added, knowing if there was anything that would get me to speed up, it was that.

5

Lion's Land was extremely cold but after our walk through the messy grassy field in the afternoon summer heat, I could appreciate it. We stood at the magazine rack as Dwayne went up and down the aisles, feeling the cart with things like beer, popsicles and charcoal.

"I can't believe you're just looking at magazines after what we just saw...I can't believe you're acting like everything is fine..."

"Just forget it, okay?" Donna snapped. "It's none of our business. I mean, are you friends with a nurse? Do you know her?"

"No, but I feel like we should report it – she's just lying there...rotting in the sun."

"Yo, she's dead," Donna coldly pointed out. "She doesn't care where she is." She took a Metal Edge magazine, a thing of Pringles and a big jug of Pepsi and headed towards Dwayne's shopping cart and threw it all in.

"Want anything Weezy?" Dwayne asked, giving me a wink. He was drunk – he smelled of booze like he just took a bath in it. He walked funny too, running into people with the cart and politely excusing himself. I think while we were playing tennis, he parked his van and drank a few beers in the back of it. Sometimes when he drove us around, the van swerved into the wrong lane.

Donna tossed a thing of tampons into the cart.

"You can get whatever you want," Dwayne let me know. That was wondrous. Whenever I went grocery shopping with my parents, I could only get the absolute most necessary items. Never fill up the cart! Don't be such a spoiled brat! Mom would spat. Snacks weren't necessary and therefore I could never buy them – no potato chips, no kool-aid, no cookies.

I took down one of those fancy variety packs of cereal. I grabbed a big carton of strawberry, vanilla and chocolate ice cream. I grabbed a six pack of chocolate soda.

"You're going to be fat," Donna scorned. "Louise is a fat girl's name."

"Donna's a name for girls with yeast infections and pimples," I muttered.

"What!" she snapped. I heard Dwayne chuckle.

"Now, now," he managed to get his laugh under control. "Cut it out you two," Dwayne said. "Ain't gotta worry about that yet – enjoy being kids, eat junk food if you want."

I seriously loved Dwayne Cooke.

Okay then. I grabbed some Crunch bars and tossed them in, too.

"Hey Donna?" Dwayne called us over, stopping by the cigarette stand. I looked at the girl working the register. She was wearing a ton of makeup and her nails were a pale blue color. She was blowing bubble gum and listening to that Madonna song, Crazy For You. She had plastic charms hanging on her chain necklace. I had the same necklace and a few charms on mine, but she had so many. She had the pink tennis charm I really wanted. Life was not fair.

"Ae," Dwayne greeted her before looking at Donna. "Does Eric still smoke Marlboros? I'm thinking for some reason he switched to Camels."

"He did," I said, looking away when they both gave me a funny look. Yes, I observed the boy's every move.

"Okay then – let me get a pack of Marlboro Reds and Camels please..." Dwayne asked the girl behind the counter. Then he looked at me. "Camel Reds?"

"Yup," I informed. Dwayne took the smokes, thanked the girl and pushed the cart onward, running into a corn chips stand.

"Eric still drink bud?" Dwayne was asking me everything now that pertained to Eric. It was kind of embarrassing. I just shrugged.

"Beer is beer," Donna always argued, reaching down to pick up a bag of chips that fell when Dwayne's cart rammed into the stand.

"It's not though. Soda's not soda is it? You got a favorite, doncha?" Dwayne argued.

"I guess," she just said, always moody. Meanwhile, I tried to keep my mind off of it but anywhere I looked I just seemed to see her face – her big brown eyes staring out at something – something we couldn't see. The truth. Who did that to her? Who left her like that, half-naked in that awful tall grass?

"Now how was tennis?" Dwayne questioned.

Ugh.

"She doesn't hit the ball back," Donna just said. I couldn't get over how she was acting like everything was fine.

I rolled my eyes and grabbed a packet of Bubble Yum at the checkout. The yummy grape gum gave me a brief but awesome thrill as we placed the groceries in the back of the van and got in. I glanced over at the vacant tennis courts as we drove off, at all the boscage where we'd seen the body. I had a horrible feeling in my gut that we shouldn't just leave that woman there to rot. I knew she was dead, and it was too late to save her – but to leave her?

6

When we got back, Dwayne went to work in his garage and Donna and I quickly changed into our swimsuits and filled up the pool with fresh, clean water. I put my mix tape on – I did everything possible to forget what I saw by the tennis courts.

"Donna?" Dwayne called her over into his garage. He told her to go find Randi, that she'd ran off again. It wasn't a big deal – she was always going off to the convenient store, which was a very short trip across the vegetable garden. Besides the convenient store called Robbie's, the popular bar and grill called Smokey's was also on that street, along with a liquor store and a Woolworths.The street was called Koludomay Street and it was about the only cool street in all of Lilyworth. I wasn't even sure if it deserved the title "cool."

"Look," Donna started to tell me something in a serious tone of voice once we were in the vegetable garden and Dwayne couldn't hear us. I spotted a rabbit. I wanted to point it out, but I didn't dare interrupt her. It was just nice to see a fluffy white rabbit around here instead of a rat.

"You can't say anything about what we saw, okay?" she said. "At the tennis courts."

"Why?" I had to wonder.

"Because you just don't want to get involved in things like that – what if...what if whoever killed her comes after us. What if they were still there, watching us? Just leave it alone."

Now I was terrified. What if the killer had been there while we were playing, lurking in the woods? What if he followed us back here??

I'd stopped walking but she grabbed my wrist and pulled me along.

"Okay." I swatted at a bee. It was so hot. When was all this running around going to be over so I could just relax?

"I'm serious – you like spending time at my house right?"

Woah. Was she threatening me? My eyes started to fill up with tears. "I don't wanna go home, I don't, I don't," I swore.

"I know. You like Eric – you like spending time at my house so you can see him and go swimming and have burgers and ice cream every night, so just act like you didn't see anything. Trust me, it's better this way."

"Okay."

We walked on, nearly at the parking lot of the store.

"Wanna watch Psycho tonight?" she asked about a minute later, her tone now relaxed. "It's on Double Creature later."

"Oh my god!!! Yes!" Double Creature was a double feature of horror films on the USA channel. One movie came on at ten pm and the next at midnight.

"With Eric?" I asked, rather breathlessly as a cheerleading squad in my head went off: Horror movies with Eric on the couch! Horror movies with Eric on the couch!

"Yeah, he likes that movie," Donna replied.

I smiled, even though Eric usually passed out on the couch from drinking long before we got around to watching the second movie, at least he would physically be in the same room and I could stare at his wispy blonde hair as it fell over his baby face and his dirty jeans dipped way below his jutted hips...

7

The little cow bell on the door of Robbie's sounded off as we pushed our way in. The store smelled of mopping fluid and overworked machinery. It wasn't that cold inside, but the air conditioner was on and water dripped from it into a bucket someone had placed under it.

The cashier, Davey, always flirted with Donna because she wore halter tops to show off her giant breasts. I didn't have big breasts – I had what Donna called "mosquito bites." She did say I had a nice ass though. She said maybe I should turn around and have my back to boys when I talked to them and they'd talk to me more. I suddenly wondered if Eric had ever noticed my bottom.

We found Randi over by the ice cream cooler, staring down at the frozen banana pops the same way I always looked at Eric.

"There you are!" Donna yelled at her and took her by her arm. "You can't just run off like that!"

"You guys are always running off and leaving me behind," Randi pointed out. Then she sulked, "I just wanted ice cream."

I felt bad for her.

"We got some at the store," Donna assured her. "And we already have more at home! Come on."

"I want my own!" Randi yelled right back. I couldn't really blame her. She was right – everyone was always taking off and leaving her alone. "You always get your own ice cream, you always get to go to the store and pick out stuff you want! I never do."

"Randi, I got banana," Donna informed.

"I want orange now," Randi said. Donna sighed.

"You don't have any money anyway, and I'm not giving you any of mine."

While they stood there and argued, I picked out some sherbert ice cream, now craving it instead of chocolate. Dwayne gave me an allowance as if I were one of his own kids and I was good about not spending much – though I desperately wanted to buy new plastic charms from Woolworth like that girl at Lion's Land had.

"Look, I'm sorry you can't have the ice cream but we don't even have room for it in the freezer," Donna was still lecturing.

"So we eat what's in there now and make room," Randi gave her adorable response.

"Oh my god, Randi, you are way too stubborn. We can always come back – we come here like freakin' ten times a day."

Randi slowly surrendered the ice cream, watching it drop into the icy cooler like it was her own heart.

"I can get it for you," I whispered to Randi once Donna walked off to flirt with the nasty cashier. He had a mustache and belly hair. Ew.

I opened the cooler and took out the ice cream Randi wanted. I could wait another week to buy those charms. I went up to the counter and Randi stayed next to me this time instead of Donna. I felt bad for Randi. She could end up in Mexico and it could take a month for anyone to notice. She was always left at home alone and I had no idea who or where her mom was. I could relate to her loneliness when it came to family.

"Got a show comin' up," the cashier told Donna in his groggy, weird voice as he pushed aside some comic book about hair metal bands called Loud and Unclear.

"Oh cool," Donna flipped her frizzy hair over her shoulder. It wasn't much different from watching a ball bounce.

"Damn, you need some Dep," I told her, flat out. She gave me a look that stung.

"I have Sun In!" she snapped, looking back at Davey and regaining her flirty smile. She put her hand on her hip and stuck her chest out.

"Where's your show at?" she asked.

"Smokey's," Davey answered, his eyes falling like walnuts down her top. I rolled my eyes. All bands that sucked played at Smokey's. Smokey's had a little stage set up on Friday nights for "up and coming bands" aka "bands that played in their mom's basement until they all got married two years later and forgot about their whole rock star dream." There were guys born to be rock stars – destined to be legends – and there were guys who could pretend but the fire wasn't there. It was that simple.

I turned away as Donna flashed her tits so Davey would let her buy the smokes even though she was underage. His face was apple-red but he tried to look all cool and casual, with a stupid grin on his face.

"How come you never go to Smokey's?" He asked her, giving her the pack of Marlboro Reds and some matches.

"I don't know, Dwayne always cooks out," Donna shrugged. "Maybe one day we'll get over there."

"You should," he said. "Come Friday, that's when my band plays."

"Oh, brother," I muttered, causing Donna to jab me in the side with her elbow pretty hard.

"Yeah? Cool." Donna pretended to be excited. "What's it called?"

Davey rose a fist into the air and roared, "Fountain of Blood!"

I tried very hard not to laugh.

"Cool, maybe we'll come and check it out," Donna said, heading towards the door. Finally.

8

"You can't be serious," I said, surly, as we headed back to her backyard. I could smell the meat on the grill and it was really starting to make me hungry. I could also hear Come Go With Me by Expose playing on my boom-box. Randi was dancing in the pool to it.

"Serious about what? And never tell me to fix my hair in front of a guy!" Donna was outraged. "That's so embarrassing!"

Donna's hair was either always flying around in an unruly manner or felt like wallpaper from all the hairspray she used.

"Serious about seeing his band – I'd rather slice my eyeballs with glass," I swore. "I'd go see Ataxia if they ever played there – but Eric's band is too good for that place."

"Ha!" she gave a cold, sarcastic laugh. "Like you'd know – you've never seen his band play."

"I can tell – I can tell by the way Eric carries himself. Davey is a dork."

"You always say you want to go to Smokey's," Donna argued. "I was gonna see if Dwayne would take us – it would be nice to eat without getting eaten alive by mosquitoes for once, but never mind if you're gonna be a snob. I mean maybe his band is good."

"Okay well I'll just wait until Fountain of Crap debuts on The Ball then," I said, referring to Headbangers Ball, a late night show on MTV that showed all the loud, crazy bands Eric and Dwayne liked.

"Like you would ever watch that. Wimp," Donna threw out yet another insult.

I rolled my eyes and then I looked into Donna's backyard and stopped. I stopped walking and basically working altogether. My brain turned to slop. If I talked, it would just be a slobbery ball of nonsense. He was here. His virile energy. His Harley. Eric was here. He was walking from the house to the garage as we walked through the garden. Today he had on a weird pinstriped buttoned down shirt but it was all faded and he had it unbuttoned and the wind blew it back off his shoulders like the trees wanted to undress him. He had on jeans ripped up at the knees. They fit him perfectly, a little loose but they seemed a little tight around his crotch where there was an impressive bulge that interrupted his slender physique. That was a place I thought I'd never get to explore. Let's just call it Area 51.

He wore black motorcycle boots and a blue and white handkerchief hung out of the back pocket of his dirty jeans. His tattoos bled through the thin fabric of his shirt. He was walking to the garage to help Dwayne, taking a puff off his cigarette as he made his way over.

"'Bout two hours damn late," Dwayne fussed at him. Eric offered no apology. He just got to work.

"Where you been?" Dwayne asked him.

"Band practice," Eric replied in that deep voice of his, before spitting on the ground. A string of spit hung from his lips until he wiped it off on his hand and then he wiped his hand on his jeans.

"Your Romeo's here," Donna said, walking on to deliver them their beer.

"I know," I whispered after she'd gone over there. I never knew what to say to Eric. I just wanted to watch him. I wanted to figure him out too – which seemed impossible. I turned the music up.

When the day begins to end, then you're mine, Come go with me, make you feel alive, This night will last everlasting through the time, Come go with me, have no fears

My eyes widened as Eric walked back out of the garage with Donna. He was right next to her and she was just as calm as ever. To her, he was family, just a boy who came around all the time, but to me he was so much more than that – an Axl Rose clone or something. His pale blue eyes looked at me for just one second, yes – in this big universe of, like, other things happening in it all the time – Eric's eyes happened to look over at mine – but he didn't nod or smile. It was as if I were the tree next to me and wouldn't be able to say hey back so why bother.

They went into the dark house together, talking in hushed voices. He had that rare Jim Morrison walk certain musicians mastered. God. Why couldn't I ever speak to him? Why was I such a dork?

Donna came back out and sat down next to me on the steps. I wasn't going to ask her anything about Eric, even though she was looking at me with a smirk, teasing me and waiting. Then she pinched me.

"Owe!! Stop it!" I shouted.

Eric came out and barged down the steps right between us. He didn't say anything and if we hadn't moved to accommodate him, he would have stepped on us.

"Dick," Donna muttered under her breath. He walked back to the garage, picked something up and came right back over to us. He was looking at me now, pale blue eyes right on my bigger, darker blue eyes before he dropped something small and plastic in my lap. Donna snatched the cassette tape up before I had the chance to even look at it. I looked up at Eric and pressed my lips together before trying to smile. He walked back up between us and this time I was ready, turning to the side to allow him the space.

"I have to pee," I said, even though I didn't because I rarely bothered to drink anything. I guess popsicles were a form of liquid, though.

I pretended to have to go to the bathroom. I did this all the time when Eric came over. I had to go see what he was doing.

He was standing in front of the kitchen sink, lighting a cigarette. He had taken his shirt off and his amazing, beautiful tanned body poured into his tattered jeans. He was what beautiful sinful heartbreak looked like.

He gave me quite a stare as I walked by, like he was daring me to say something. I thought I heard him snicker when I dashed off.

9

I locked the bathroom door and stayed in there for a while, trying to let some of the day slide off my shoulder. I liked Donna and her family, but sometimes I just wanted to hide from everyone. Everyone was so weird.

I watched Donna and Randi from the bathroom window. They were playing around in the pool until Dwayne came over and started yelling at them.

"Don't jump from the tire into the pool," he told them. "Can hurt yourself."

"Yeah the water's so deep we might drown," Donna smart talked back. Randi laughed and Dwayne shook his head as he went back to the garage.

"To hell with ya," he muttered.

I turned around to go back out when the door opened and he walked in. We both paused and stared at one another. Eric's blonde hair was over his blue eyes. He was already unbuttoning his jeans before he even opened the door. He stopped undoing them when he saw me, leaving them unbuttoned and pushing his hair out of his face.

Then he grinned. "Oh. You didn't lock the door."

"Sorry." I got the heck out of there and tried not to think about what he was going to do in there, which surely involved taking his pants down and peeing.

Have you ever watched a boy pee? Donna once said to me. She obviously had. They have to hold their thing. They look so funny doing it, like their gods peeing on someone's land. If he's dominant, he will let his head roll back while he does it, and if he's unsure of himself, he will watch it leak, she gave her theory.

I tried to breathe as I paced the kitchen. I took a banana popsicle out of the freezer and went back outside.

"Yeah don't bother bringing me one," Donna fussed when she saw my cold treat. She had a right to be mad, I guess. She always got everybody else whatever she got for herself. If she went to get a popsicle, for example, she grabbed one for everyone else in the yard. But if she saw a dead body in the grass, she just walked away.

I started to go back and get her one when Dwayne waved me over into his garage. I always got nervous when he gave me any attention.

"How you like your burgers, doll face?" he asked once I was in the garage – a manly dungeon of beer, grease-stained rags and giant car parts and stuff.

Thick smoke rose from the grill and it made a hissing sound.

"Oh...uh...in...a bun...?" I coughed at the smoke and gasoline aromas. It made the air a lot hotter too.

He laughed. "I mean bloody or medium or well done – how you like 'em?"

Bloody. Why was there blood on her inner thighs?

I looked up and saw Dwayne frown when I didn't respond right away.

"Uh, medium." That sounded like the right thing to say.

I walked back over to the steps where Donna was staring down at the sleeve of the cassette tape Eric had thrown at me earlier. I stared down at the vexing artwork on the sleeve. There was a weird demon in the sky that sort of looked like a sun – a big angry orange sun that wanted to burn the world into a black hole. On the sidewalk beneath the angry sun was a woman who looked like she'd been attacked and her underwear was down around her knees. She looked like she was in pain – possibly taking her last breath. Her head was bent back and one of her breasts was popping out of her shirt. She still had her socks on but no shoes. In front of her was an evil looking robot offering her flowers. It also looked like he had a gun. His head was just a giant display of metal teeth. All around their feet were rose petals.

"What the heck is that?" I blurted.

"Isn't it crazy?" Donna said to me. "It's the Guns N Roses tape. Have you heard it yet?"

I shook my head. I wasn't sure if I wanted to hear it.

"Eric won't shut up about it. Our conversation goes like this, 'Oh hi, Eric, how was you day?' Then he goes, 'Dude have you heard this band Guns N Roses?'"

I never get that far, I thought. Then his voice appeared above my head like God.

"Tryin' to ban that shit already," he informed. I looked up. I saw his blonde hair falling down around his face, his adams apple thrusting forward, his pale blue eyes. Who constructed such a beautiful boy? It seemed almost wrong.

I moved over, nearly falling off the step, so he could sit between us. In my attempt to move, my burger fell off my plate and I pretended nothing happened, leaving it in the grass for the insects to have an immaculate feast and awkwardly setting my paper plate over it.

Eric didn't notice, thank god, he just looked at his beloved cassette tape.

"It's the dopest shit," he said. He had put his shirt back on but left it unbuttoned.

Donna put the sleeve back in the plastic tape for Appetite for Destruction and then she put the tape in it and handed it to him. Once he had it in his hand, he jumped up and stood so he was facing us.

"You leaving?" Donna asked him as the wind blew smoke from the grill over at us.

"Yeah," he said.

"No," I blurted. He looked at me calmly, blue eyes so wide and alert. I could hear Donna titter.

"Yes," he said. I could tell he found me very amusing. "I'll be back though." He looked over at Dwayne as he flipped some burgers.

"Just gotta go take care of some shit..." he said, looking back at us and pushing the tape into the back pocket of his tattered jeans. God. To be that tape.

"You just don't wanna help Dwayne," Donna said to him. He leaned over to talk to her in a low voice.

"You know he don't charge people enough – I ain't wastin' my time," he let it be known before straightening back up. I couldn't help it, my eyes flew down to Area 51. Wow.

"Psycho's on tonight," I said to him. "On...Double Creature." I made it sound like a national event.

He just stared at me. Oh my god, I was an idiot.

"Oh yeah?" he replied. I was relieved he wasn't going to make fun of me. "That's a cool fuckin' flick. Hitchfuckincock."

"Yes." Hitchfuckincock. How did he do that? Sneak in a curse word like that and make it sound so natural? Then I mumbled, "It's the dopest shit." Then I wondered, would I ever be cool? When Eric cursed, he did it so coolly, like "fuckin' flick" was all one word or something. Oh my god.

"Yeah, you should watch it with us." There you go. It was almost a date. I couldn't believe I said that. I was amazed at myself.

He shrugged. Eric acted like he had all the time in the world. "Maybe, yeah."

Maybe yeah. Maybe or yeah? What did that mean? It was two answers.

"What's the second film?" he asked about a minute later, after taking a drag from his smoke. Oh my god, he just asked me a question. This was it. This was a full on conversation. Say something great. He was easily distracted. He looked over his shoulder at Dwayne again. He had a Harley Davidson in the driveway waiting for him. He took another drag of his smoke before irritably tossing it in the grass and stomping it out with his black motorcycle boot. He smoked just like the bad boy in those anti-smoking commercials, the one standing in a dark alley, the sound of glass breaking, graffiti on the building. Gunshots, mayhem.

"Milk Maids Die Slowly," Donna responded, sounding a bit bored. She took my chance! She stole it! He'd asked me what the movie was. I wanted to rip her hair out.

"Where the hell you goin?" Dwayne asked Eric as he came over with food, offering Eric a burger. Eric looked at it like it was cyanide and waved it away.

"Got shit to do," Eric said.

"Your ass just got here," Dwayne fussed.

"I know." Eric flashed a little grin so the dimple in his right cheek showed. He was such a pretty boy and bad bad boy all at once.

"Ae, ya'll hear 'bout that liquor store got held up a few nights ago over there on Koludomay?" Dwayne said to us.

"No, which one?" Donna asked. "Hop In?"

Dwayne nodded.

"No – really?" Donna seemed amazed. "We pass by there all the time."

So what? I thought, irritably. Did she think she blessed places by walking by them ? I just wanted some time alone with Eric, to get to know him, but there was always someone else around.

"Yup," Dwayne said before taking a gulp of his beer. Eric turned around to walk off and his jeans were slipping down so low that the top of his bottom showed and I could see where the tan on his back stopped and the soft white flesh of his bottom started. Whoa, was he not wearing underwear?

"Pull your pants up, boy!" Dwayne fussed at him. Then Dwayne looked down at Randi, who had ventured over from the pool. "He dresses like he overslept and couldn't finish puttin' himself together," he said to Randi, making her laugh. Dwayne laughed too. "Like ain't got time to button his shirt, ain't got time to pull up his pants!"

Randi's laughter turned into a delightful shrill. Dwayne offered me the burger Eric turned down. I took it since my other one was in the grass. We ate our food as the sound of Eric's Harley revved up before he took off.

"You eat funny," Donna made fun of the way I ate. I didn't think it was really that funny. I ate really cautiously because the burger was hot – a few seconds ago it had been in flames.

"I do?" I just asked, putting my burger down because now I was too self-conscious to eat. What did that robot do to that girl, I wondered about that sinister artwork for the GNR tape. The image was stuck to my brain like a stamp. I compared the image to the horrific body we saw earlier today.

I went over to the tire swing and climbed on and Dwayne, without even asking if I wanted him to, started pushing me.

Randi came back over and got in the pool and dropped her burger in the water. Donna started laughing crudely at her. Randi started wailing and Dwayne went over to pick her up.

"Well why you eatin' in the pool for?" he asked, in a loving manner, before fixing her another burger.

10

No one bothered to remove the meat Randi dropped in the pool. By sundown an antsy cloud of flies and mosquitoes hovered above it as it drifted along in the water. It made me think of her. Everything did.

As it got darker and the bright light bulb in the garage created monstrous shadows and attracted big insects, I wondered if her body was still in those bushes, just lying there, unnoticed, as night grew around her. No one cared but the insects and whatever else stalked that grassy field. I shuddered and tried to make my brain stop working.

It was almost nine at night and Eric had not returned. Double Creature was minutes away from starting and he would probably miss half of it. Oh, Eric, just come back and be on the couch in the same room I'll be in.

I bet he would spend the night somewhere else – surely he had a girlfriend even though Donna claimed he didn't. He must have some girl somewhere that would let him sleep over. Why would he want to come back here? He could just ride around on his motorcycle all the time.

I joined everyone in the living room, where everybody had found their favorite spot to settle in and watch the grotesque films. The only streetlight on this street pressed its glow against the bare windows behind the convertible sofa, offering a calm yet ghostly glare over the dark living room. All the lights in the house, and even the ones out in the backyard, had been turned off to provide the right ambiance. This would be perfect if he were here.

At last, I heard him pull up. The motorcycle was so loud I could feel it in my heart. It seemed to get louder when he was in the middle of parking it, then it slowly fizzled out into tiny but ferocious popping sounds and then silence. This was the part when he got off of the bike, legs met and feet were firmly on the gravel driveway. Okay, now he was walking around the back of the house. Up the steps. Through the kitchen and then...

There he was. Boom! Thunderous applause in my heart.

"Psycho time?" he said to me before collapsing on the couch. His blonde hair fell across his face and stuck to his lips. He didn't bother pushing it out of the way.

"Yes." My reply drifted across the room and I wondered if he heard it. Where had he been all day? What did he do? I wanted to know every single thing about him.

He sat up and leaned forward, his arms resting on his legs and his hands joined together – he looked like he was about to say something of huge importance to me. Yes baby, please do. His chapped lips parted, his blonde hair still in front of them. He looked gorgeous, he deserved the cover of Metal Edge!

"Care if I check out The Ball for a minute at midnight?" he asked me. He asked me that – no one else in the room.

"No...that's fine," I smiled. Could he see my smile in the dark room?

I could feel Donna's eyes roll into the back of her head.

"Okay everybody, settle down, this is Hitchcock," Dwayne pointed out. "Gotta respect." Alfred Hitchcock was pretty much looked upon as God in this house.

As Dwayne committed his gaze to the TV, me and Eric and Donna went into the kitchen to get snacks. Donna took a Mr. Pibb out of the fridge and Eric lit a cigarette. Everyone had something in their hand. I felt like I needed something in mine.

Eric detached himself from the kitchen counter, cigarette smoke rising from his right hand, as he walked over to us.

"They call me Mr. Pibb, you know why?" he said to no one in particular. He kind of sounded like he was rehearsing something.

"Why?" I softly asked.

"Because I go down good," he grinned at me and then took a sip of Donna's soda. I didn't know what he meant, but Donna laughed so loud Dwayne fussed at her.

"Hey hey! Keep it down now."

Dwayne's command made Donna start singing one of my favorite songs.

"Keep it down now...voices carry..." Donna actually had a nice voice, it was almost creepily good.

"If you sing that song again I'll knock your head off into last year," Eric told her.

"I like that song," I said. Eric looked at me and stayed quiet.

11

Here we were again, on various weathered sofas.

I stared at Eric's tattoos and wondered what it was like for him in that youth center. I noticed the lump in his jeans, a few inches below his zipper. Oh my god, was that his...

Donna kicked me when she caught me staring so I placed my eyes on the woman getting stabbed in the shower.

"This is where he stabs her titties," Dwayne said, I guess just in case we couldn't follow what was going on in the film.

I looked back at Eric's milky gaze as he watched the gory scene go down. He seemed incredibly unaffected by it, like it was that commercial for Doublemint gum with the twins or something.

"Who wants popcorn?" Dwayne asked, once the blood went down the drain.

"Me!" Donna shouted. Dwayne got up and went through the dark house. The living room was at the front of the house, along with his bedroom. He went to the end of the house where the kitchen was. The room between the living room and the kitchen was a dumping ground for dirty clothes that could no longer fit in the little laundry space where there was already loads of dirty laundry waiting to be cleaned.

"Hey, where did you get money for that new racket?" I asked Donna all of the sudden – the question just popped into my head. Eric looked at us like he listened with his eyes.

Donna, meanwhile, looked at me like I was crazy for asking. She didn't answer me, instead she looked at the dark doorway and hollered, "We got butter?!!"

Eric lied down and turned so his back was to us. His jeans were really drifting down on him, and I could see the sweet curvy top of his cute bubble butt. God. What if I were on that couch with him? What would he do? Would he put his arms around me? Would his hair be on my face?

"You should have a beer," Donna told me. "I hope you're not thinking about it. Stop."

"It what?" I wondered. I was grouchy. Eric was falling asleep on me. I thought this was his favorite movie?

I got up and headed towards the kitchen. Maybe she was right – a beer would help. I walked through the pitch-black middle room. If someone had been sitting on the messy couch in here, I wouldn't be able to see them. The room was as dark as the night that pressed against its windows.

"AND MAKE SURE DWAYNE ADDS BUTTER!" Donna shouted.

"Shut the fuck up!" I heard Eric yell at her. This made me like him more.

I was almost pushed out of the way when Dwayne came storming out of the kitchen. The sound of his loud footsteps scared me and I had to pause in the really dark room for a minute as he went into the living room.

"Ya'll all need to be quiet now." Dwayne had the ability of talking loud and frightening without having to yell. He rarely got mad, but when he did, everyone had an immediate reaction to it which usually involved growing intensely quiet and staring at the floor. "Gonna wake up Randi," he said, furthermore.

"I'm sleeping," Eric said back. "She's the one yellin' like a crazy mental whore," he said of Donna.

Oh my god. I wanted to laugh but I held myself together and went into the kitchen.

"You're the only one good," Dwayne told me as he came back in the kitchen, placing his warm hand on my shoulder. "You know that?" Then he just looked at me for a minute with a funny, relaxed smirk on his face before messing up my blonde hair. His eyes had a strange twinkle in them as they remained on me.

"You're a little angel in my world," he said before going over and taking a plastic bowl down for popcorn. "You can always stay over – I'd love to kick everyone else out sometime. I kick your parents ass too if you want."

"Thanks..." I said, somewhat uncertain.

"You're welcome." He was quiet for a minute and then he went on a tired rant. "I try with 'em, you know?" he held his hands up so his palms faced the ceiling and shrugged. "I try with everybody. I tried with my ex-wife, oh, but it wun't ever good enough. I bought her a tennis bracelet – the real kind. I took her dancin, but it just wun't good enough."

I looked out in the backyard, because the garage light was flicking on and off, on and off again, like someone was playing with the switch. It was incredible to watch because the rest of the yard was pitch-black and then the bright yellow light would come on. Off. On. Off.

I looked at Dwayne to see if he noticed, but he was still ranting, his bloodshot eyes aimed at me and a scribble of a smirk on his face.

"People think kids are brats but I think people grow up to be brats – greediness comes with age...I can't just keep givin' people shit, you know?" Then he pointed out at the garage but didn't look. Look, look at the flashing light! Look. He just kept looking at me, growing quite angry. "These people want me to fix their shit and then they don't wanna pay me – like I go get my shotgun is what." His eyes widened and seemed to clear of the red. He was no longer sloppily smirking at me. He was very angry.

I was actually relieved to hear Donna walk in.

"Dwayne what you goin' on about? All we want is popcorn, god." Donna's banter proved for comic relief just then, but Dwayne was not amused.

I looked out at the garage but the backyard was plain dark now – no light was coming on at all. I know I saw it though – I know I did.

Dwayne stormed out of the kitchen. "Fix it yourself," he told Donna.

"Someone's outside," I simply whispered to her, hoping she'd see it. She looked but nothing was happening and I looked like a liar.

"Keep looking," I begged. "Just wait."

Then, after twelve long seconds, the light in the garage came back on.

"YES! See?!" I shouldn't be happy about it, but I just wanted someone else to see it so I would know I wasn't crazy. The light stayed on now.

"It's still on," I said. "Someone is out there."

Donna looked at me and for once had nothing smart to say.

"How long...has it been doing that?" she asked.

"Like a couple of minutes. What should we do?"

"I don't..." Donna started to say something when Eric started screaming and we both took off running to the living room in a panic. We raced through the dark middle room just in time to see Eric being dragged off the couch. It looked like something was grabbing him by the back of his jeans because they were being pulled away from his body as he was taken off the couch and dragged along the floor.

"NO!! STOP!!!" I screamed but couldn't see what had him – nothing appeared to be there – but something was obviously attacking him – something stronger than him.

Eric screamed and struggled as his body was pulled over to the coffee table – then his body was lifted up into midair.

"STOP!!!" I shrieked. Donna started screaming too when Eric's body was slammed down on top of the coffee table and he moaned in pain.

"NO! ERIC!" I howled. Eric tried to cover his face but the invisible force grabbed his wrists and seemed to pin them down over his head. The it started slapping him in the face.

"NO!!! WHAT THE HELL – DAD!!!" Donna screamed.

"HELP!" Eric shouted, squirming around, trying to move, but it really seemed to have him pinned down good. He could only bend his legs at the knee. Then his head fell back and his legs flattened out so he was spread eagle and he let out the most mesmerizing scream I'd ever heard.

"What's it doing to him??!!!" I sobbed. Then I ran over and felt like I'd ran right into fire. My whole body burned. I jumped back so I hit the front door and looked down at my body, expecting to see fire. I was not on fire but it burned.

"NO!!!" I howled. "STOP!!!" I felt very agitated. "Stop!" I started slapping myself and watched as Eric's shirt was pulled up to his neck and his chest was bright red.

"AHHHH!" Eric writhed about, trying to squirm away but his head turned sharply to the right as if he'd been slapped.

Then something hissed, "Stay...still...boy."

Dwayne finally came out of his room, still in the middle of putting on a shirt. He looked entirely irritated until he saw Eric sprawled out over the coffee table. Eric was no longer fighting. He'd become very weak and his head hung off the edge of the the coffee table, his blonde hair barely touching the floor, his arms were being pinned above his head and his legs were spread wide apart. His shirt was around his neck like he was being choked by it.

"DO SOMETHING!" Donna and I begged, stomping out feet. "DO!! SOMETHING!!!"

Dwayne looked dumbfounded before he ran back in his room and proved that, in fact, he did have a shotgun. I'd never seen a gun in my life, except on TV. I stared at the long barrel of the 1970s Beretta.

"DAD, BE CAREFFUL, DON'T SHOOT ERIC!!!" Donna was in a crazy panic. Something came over me though. Maybe it was my innate ability to drift off into a fantasy when reality got too harsh, but in that moment I imagined Eric getting off of the table, managing to overcome the demon that held him down. He came right over to me. He took my little fingers in his hands and asked me if I was okay, even though he'd been the one attacked. "I won't be okay until you kiss me," I said. Then he did it – his lips were strong and warm and dry just like I imagined, under all that soft blonde hair, and he kissed me soft at first but then it turned hard and he had me up against the wall...

The sound of the shotgun miserably tore up my fantasy. The screaming. The sweeping restless pugnacious energy that always existed in this little messy house but never quite built enough to explode. Maybe tonight it finally exploded.

I looked at Eric. He was sitting up now and thank god, he wasn't shot. He didn't look as scared as I would have been, he just bent over himself, grabbing his stomach and moaning.

He lifted his shirt to show the red marks all over his stomach and chest. Five vibrant red marks were on his body, just below his belly button. The marks seemed to go further down, disappearing under his jeans. He folded over himself in great pain, moaning.

"Fuckin' burns...it burned me..." his hand was on his stomach before drifting down to Area 51. He got up and rushed off to the bathroom.

"Eric?" Dwayne called after him, his shotgun still in his hand. "You alright, man?"

"Something was out in the garage," I eventually managed to say. "Playing with the light..." I looked up at Dwayne. He should take care of this – he had the gun. He stared at me, shook his head and marched through the house to the back door, cocking the shotgun.

"Stay in your room, Randi," he ordered before going outside. Dwayne didn't seem afraid, which was good. He just seemed entirely ticked off.

12

Dwayne came back in, running his fingers over the mustache he'd been sporting lately, and placed his shotgun down on the coffee table.

"Ain't nuttin out there," he swore, taking a cigarette out of his pack of smokes. Donna was on the convertible sofa, in her Pjs, looking up at him. This was the only time I'd ever seen Donna vulnerable. It actually made her attractive.

"Eric still in the bathroom?" Dwayne asked.

"Yes," Donna whispered. The house was so quiet we could hear the water running. He was trying to soothe the burn the same way I did, pouring cold water down his heavenly stomach, down to his...oh my. Raining on Area 51 tonight.

"Look, I don't know what happened," Dwayne let out a little baffled laugh. "I remember when Ize like seven or eight..." Dwayne wiped his eye before continuing. The fact that he didn't sound afraid made me a little braver. "Somein' weird happened in my house, somein' chased my little sister down the hallway – she swore up and down it did," he was actually laughing. "Middle of the night. She said she thought somein' was hiding in the shower, behind the curtain while she peed. And when she left it damn just took off after her. But it never happened again. Just one of them things." Dwayne shrugged. Yup, just one of those things. You get attacked, throw on a coffee table and burned, and then you just move on.

We looked up when Eric made an appearance in the doorway. He looked wiped out. His hair was wet and out of his face for a change. He had his shirt off. The front of his jeans were soaking wet. Jesus.

"You wet yourself?" Dwayne made a joke, and it made us all laugh except Eric who just shot his pale blue eyes at him with a cold, distant look.

"Shut up," he muttered. "I was dousing my stomach with cold water." Eric looked back at the coffee table, obviously in a state of shock.

"Get ya a beer," Dwayne offered, walking down to the kitchen.

Eric collapsed on the couch and looked down at himself, at his wet jeans, and the way he moved just then, so the center of his perfect body lifted just a little from the couch in some mild adjustment, was the sexiest thing I'd ever seen and would ever see.

"You okay?" Donna asked. Wow, she sounded genuinely concerned. Eric finally looked up from the wet front of his jeans.

Donna sat next to him. I decided to sit next to him on the other side. Donna was rubbing Eric's back to comfort him. I wanted to do that but was too shy.

"What the hell happened?" Dwayne asked him, coming back with cold beer for all of us.

"I was lyin' on the couch," Eric spoke slow and soft, his voice plenty deep enough to be heard. Then he gave Donna a heated look. "Waiting for Donna to shut the fuck up."

Whoa. He sounded very mad just then. "But...like..." he looked down at the beer can as he slowly pulled the tab back and foam collected on the rim. He slurped it up and took a swallow before placing the beer on the table next to the couch. "'Til I felt something tug at the back of my jeans, I thought it was one of ya'll," he looked at me and Donna, "But I turn over and don't see anything and then it just lifts me up from the couch! I just fuckin...crazy shit has happened to me but usually I can see the asshole doing it."

I just stared at Eric, not knowing what to say.

"Well what do we do?" Dwayne asked, sitting down on the edge of the convertible sofa. "In a case like this? I don't know what to do."

"We call ghostbusters," Randi's sweet little voice made its way over to us. She was standing in the doorway, sleepy and holding onto her doll.

"Randi?" Dwayne was surprised to see her, and a little upset. "You supposed to be in bed now."

Eric called her over, sounding like he needed her to be here. "Come here, Randi," he called out for her and she went over to him. He picked her up and placed her on his knee. "You okay?" he looked at her and she nodded.

"What happened?" she wanted to know.

"I don't know, really." Eric reached over for his beer. Everyone was very quiet. Dwayne smiled at Randi in a doting manner before making sure to take his shotgun so it was out of her reach.

"Look...we try and get some sleep and figure something out in the morning," he said. "I gotta get some sleep anyway." He haggardly trudged off to the bedroom and shut the door. I knew why he took his gun but I kind of wished he'd left it out on the coffee table.

13

We missed The Ball. I woke up long after everyone had fallen asleep. How could they just sleep after what occurred? The night didn't seem to have an ending, it just got longer and darker. I bet Donna took sleeping pills – I was sure I saw some in the medicine cabinet.

Well I couldn't sleep and I didn't want to take anything to knock me completely out – not in this house.

I slowly looked over at Dwayne's bedroom. His door was shut. I often wondered what went on in there, I just got a feeling there were things in there he didn't want us seeing. There was also a big, strange metal box in the garage that always had a lock on it.

Stop thinking about things. Stop.

I looked at the bright red digital alarm clock. 3:03 am. I turned the TV back on but it wasn't up very loud. I just needed something else happening in this house – it was way too quiet and I felt something was here, watching us, waiting to take advantage of someone in their most vulnerable state again. It seemed to want Eric.

The TV threw dancing flashes of grey light against the wall by Dwayne's bedroom door. I muted the woman's scream in the film and got up, cautiously heading towards the middle room, where seeing anything was impossible.

I stopped at the doorway. I felt very uncomfortable all of the sudden, like someone was watching me from the couch. Maybe that was where it liked to stay, wait, and eventually evoke.

I didn't want to touch the wall in order to turn on the light because I knew roaches were everywhere. I decided finally to just go, and took a sharp right down the hallway to the bathroom. If I didn't get there in a few seconds I might have an accident because the pressure to pee was so bad.

I turned the knob and opened the door and walked right in and Eric immediately turned and looked at me while his fat cock was in his hand with urine spurting out of it into the toilet.

"Oh god!" I ran out of the bathroom and felt a little pee leave me and wet my panties. Oh my god! What a crazy night!

Eric strutted out of the door about a minute later, a slight smirk on his face. His jeans were zipped back up and his hair flopped about happily in his pretty face.

"We keep meeting here," he said, by the little end-table between Donna and Randi's room. His voice was always deep, but at night it was so raspy and sexy I could hardly take it. His blue eyes seemed paler too, and he seemed amused by something.

I stayed where I was and we gazed at one another with boundless curiosity about one another. He leaned his head against the wall and kept peering down at me.

"Maybe it should be the place we go on our first date," he playfully suggested.

I didn't know what to say. My mouth opened for words to come out but they didn't.

"Anyway...crazy night..." his voice trailed off as he moved and held his hand out to demonstrate the bathroom was all mine now.

After I peed, I went into the kitchen and saw his fingers – the same ones that had been holding his penis – digging through the popcorn someone had made after all. He held the bowl out for me and I took some of the popcorn he had touched and put the buttery pieces in my mouth. I watched him lick his fingers as we studied each other for what felt like a minute. His eyes were the same color blue as lit up swimming pools at night – the nice ones at the expensive hotels.

"So, I hope this ain't rude but how come you never go home?" he suddenly asked.

"I...don't like to..." I said, surprised he'd inquired.

"Yeah well if this is better, I hate to know what your home's like," he said, looking back down into the popcorn.

"You don't...like it here?" I asked him. Oh my god, we were having a full on conversation. There was no one else to interrupt us.

"I do but...hell, yeah I guess it is my best option too, huh?" He glanced up at me. "I'm trying to get my own place but like it's hard because they do all these background checks and shit and also," he moved his hand around, excited about what he was about to say. "Guns N' Roses are doin' a show in L.A. at The Whiskey and shit. I gotta go. Money's out there – don't let people make you think you gotta work for some scum to get it."

"Yeah," I said, like I already knew that. "You should go...to that show." And you should take me.

He gave me another glance. God, he was so sexy and mysterious. I watched as he picked up some more pieces of buttery popcorn and held it out to me. I started to take it with my hand and he pulled his hand back in a sly motion and gave me the most playful grin.

"Nah, I wanna feed you," he said, his voice low and scratchy. Oh dear god. My legs were jelly. I felt a strange warm feeling down there. "Open your mouth," he said.

I parted my lips for his hand. My lips were a little chapped from sun and licking, and my mouth was dry in anticipation. That dirty hand he'd just had his thing in was inches from my mouth and a few pieces of popcorn shiny with butter were between his fingers.

"Wider than that," he said, his voice as deep as ever. I opened my mouth some more and felt him slip in two fingers and a thumb, dropping the delicious popcorn on my tongue. I put my hand on his sturdy wrist to keep his fingers in my mouth. The look in his eyes hardened. We stayed like this for a little while. When he finally took his fingers out, he did it slowly.

"Good?" he asked, never taking his eyes off of me.

"Yes."

He picked up the can of Mr. Pibb and I remembered what he said earlier about going down good. He handed me the drink.

"We're doin' this all wrong," he said, watching my every swallow. "You're supposed to eat popcorn while you watch a movie not after the movie."

"I know right?" My laugh was embarrassing. Jeepers, I was nervous. I put the soda back down on the table and reminded myself to be quiet during what was the most exciting night of my life.

"Wanna go see a movie sometime?" He hit me with those baby blues as he carried the conversation with great ease. I bet it worked every time. That face. He had a nice nose – and that dimple. How could girls say no to him? He was perfect danger. I could not feel my feet on the floor. Talking to him was like being on an airplane. You were just up now, it was too late to go back, you hoped you didn't crash.

He ran his hand through his blonde hair as he waited for my answer. Then he reached out to touch me. I felt his thumb brush my cheek. Somehow I was still standing up, I was expecting to pass out already.

"Yeah, sure," I whispered.

"Okay." It was really, really dark in the house but I think he was smiling. "I know where to find you," he chuckled.

Part 2

Banana Shoulder

14

I had trouble sleeping that night. I couldn't stop thinking about Eric. I had his hand on my mouth. The taste of his skin along with the popcorn left the best salty taste in my mouth I'd ever tasted. I knew he was too old for me, but the way he walked, that unbendable look in those blue eyes. That mischievous smirk he always had on his face. Those jeans he wore, his body...

And no one was here to tell me what I shouldn't do.

Oh god. I might never be able to stop thinking about the moment I walked in on him in the bathroom. How he was just standing there with it, as urine flowed freely. It looked kinda fun. When I went to the bathroom, it was boring. I had to sit down. I didn't have anything to hold. It was just really boring. I just sat there and stared at the floor. Once again, I didn't have anything in my hand when it seemed everyone else did.

Oh my god! I suddenly remembered what Donna said about if boys stood with their head back when they peed, they were dominant. If they looked down at it, they were not. What was he doing? I tried to think. All I knew was when I flew in the room my eyes went directly down at it. His hair. His head had been back, eyes up at the ceiling. Ah.

I felt warm down there when I thought abut Eric now, like something bit me. I looked over to make sure Donna was asleep. It was hard to tell because she snored when she slept and she wasn't snoring. The convertible sofa was so uncomfortable it was like sleeping on a pile of rocks.

I kept listening to the strict silence of the house and thinking about him. He was sleeping in Donna's room and I wondered what would happen if I went in there right now. I wouldn't, of course! But the thought...

I wanted a glass of water and wished I had gotten one while I was in the kitchen before, when Eric was there.

"She's here," Donna mumbled all of the sudden. I looked down at her and she looked like she was sleeping. Her face was pinched with a subtle frown and her head tossed and turned on the pillow in distress.

"Donna?" I called out her name, wishing she'd open her eyes. We could go back to watching movies because there was no way I could sleep now.

I thought I heard the oddest sound – like a sucking kind of sound – coming from the kitchen. It was almost like someone had turned on the garbage dispenser. Maybe Eric was still in there, but I thought I'd heard him go to Donna's room and shut the door.

"She's here," Donna repeated in her sleep. "She's here," Donna said again, in a low mutter, her face bent in a frown. Eventually she turned over and quieted, her sleep so peaceful now that it made me jealous.

I decided to try and rest my mind, my body, and eventually found sleep too.

15

I woke up to the sound of a rock station blaring on the radio when the alarm clock went off. Then the racket of Randi running around the house took over. Dwayne was up to, his bedroom door wide open and a little sunlight trickled on so I could see the things on his dresser – his pack of smokes, leather belt, van keys. The sound of a lawnmower a few houses down made up the morning soundtrack.

I sat up, glad the sun had made its way into the house for another day – proof that I had made it through the night. It was Sunday. On Sundays Dwayne always did a lot of work in his garage. And Eric usually stayed and helped out. Cool, I thought, obsessing over our talk in the kitchen last night. The popcorn feeding. Oh wow, that was amazing.

Then I felt the burn. It was on the right side of my neck and over my shoulder. It started to hurt very suddenly, radiating like someone had spilled hot coffee on my skin.

As I sat up, it got worse.

"Owe," I couldn't help but whine. Donna sat up and looked around in confusion. I think tidbits of last night were coming back to her.

"Eric...have you seen him?" she asked.

"Not this morning..." I tried to see my shoulder. "Is my shoulder red?" I asked, not really wanting the answer.

"Oh my god, I slept so hard," Donna said, pressing her hand to her forehead. "I have the worst headache."

"Donna?" I pleaded. "Look at my shoulder – it fucking burns – just like Eric was burning last night."

"Oh wow," she said after glancing at it. "Yeah, it's pretty bad." Then she touched it, which only made it worse.

"Stop!" I cried out. "It stings – I'm not kidding."

"Okay, chill, we'll see if we have anything for it in the bathroom," Donna informed.

I stared down at my shoulder. It was red and raw and a little swollen.

Dwayne came into the living room and charged into his bedroom. He seemed like he was in a bad mood today, maybe because he didn't get a lot of sleep last night with all that happened. He came out seconds later with his treasured pack of smokes. Some mornings he said hi to us and others, he acted like he was completely alone and looked a bit out of it. This morning was the latter. He lit a cigarette and went off into the kitchen.

"Randi, stop making so much noise, goddamn it," he scorned. The house seemed to fall silent under his command. When Randi's wet feet stopped slapping against the tile floor, it was kind of heartbreaking.

"What's his deal?" I whispered.

Donna rolled her eyes and shrugged. "Who knows. Once he gets a few beers in him, he'll be cheerful again."

We sat there for a minute and my burn started to flare up again.

"Owe," I could barely keep from crying. "I have to do something about this." I crawled off the bed and went straight into the bathroom. There was no beautiful, half-naked Eric, just the sun warming up the tile floor, which was uneven and rose in certain places like dough in an oven.

"Okay..." Donna was still sleepy as she entered the bathroom. It took her a while to rummage through the crap in the medicine cabinet and I didn't have the patience to wait for her to find something for the pain. I turned the water on and splashed cold water over my shoulder.

"It fucking burns," I complained. The water only seemed to agitate it. "Like someone poured something really hot on me."

"Yeah, I got it. Chill." She took random things out of the medicine cabinet. Now that I was in the room with her and no one else could see, I allowed myself to cry. I hoped she wouldn't make fun of me for it and say I was worse than Randi.

"Okay, just stay here," she said, walking back out into the hallway. "HEY DAD!!!!" There came the screaming, and the fact that Donna was being loud seemed to trigger Randi to start running around again. "WE HAVE ANY ALOE??!" Donna's voice rocked and echoed.

I took a washcloth and wet it with cold water and left it on my shoulder. I didn't understand why this was happening – was it after me now? Whatever was here last night?

I went out to find Donna. Dwayne was standing against the kitchen sink, running his right hand up and down his left arm. His shoulders were tanned and covered with freckles. He was in his usual cutoff jean shorts and converse shoes. He never wore socks or shirts. Those clothing items just didn't seem to exist in his world.

"No, I think we did have some," he finally responded. He seemed in a better mood now – much more relaxed...almost as if he'd been sedated. There was an open can of Bud next to him as well as an ashtray and brand new smoke rose from a cigarette in the notch. He winked at me as I opened the freezer and took out the banana popsicles. I took two, one to eat and one for my shoulder. I pressed the frozen treat on my scorched skin. Ah. Yes. Screw water, this was much better.

"She got sunburned yesterday," Donna said.

"No," I shook my head. "Remember what burned Eric last night? This is not sunburn."

"Look, it'll be okay, just keep applying something to it," Dwayne said.

"What if it...has something to do with whatever attacked Eric?" I said. I hated to bring it up, but it was something we should be talking about anyway.

"Yeah, where is Eric?" Donna wondered. "Maybe we should call a...paranormal investigator."

"That's bullshit," Dwayne shot down. "They come in here with their gadgets and stay up at night and act like they know something – what makes them be able to tell what's going on more than us? And then they wanna get paid. Bull...shit. Plus, what the hell they do when they find out – if they find out – there's a spirit here? Waste a time."

"They'll bless the house," Donna said.

"Nawe," Dwayne shook his head. It was clear by Dwayne's response that no paranormal investigator would ever set foot in this house.

"Ya'll wanna go play tennis again today?" Dwayne asked, walking back over to retrieve his smoke. He smoked it as he looked at us with those blue eyes of his. There was a stillness in them sometimes, as if everything inside of him stopped working.

God, no. I never wanted to go back to those tennis courts. I looked at Donna, remembering her threat. The popsicle was soothing but sticky and it started to drip down the front of my shirt and was way too cold on my barely-there breasts. At least the burn was somewhat better.

"We can get some aloe from Lion's Land," Dwayne added, looking at me.

"That's o..."

"Yup," Donna interrupted me in a snappy response. Was she serious? I couldn't. I couldn't go back there.

I went back to the bathroom and tossed the washcloth in the sink, annoyed. When I returned to the kitchen, Dwayne was not there. He went to the backyard to do his usual backyard things. I could hear Randi yelling at him to help her fill the pool.

Donna and I were alone, and Donna's eyes were blazing with threats.

"We're going to play tennis," she let me know in a stark cold whisper. "So stop acting like such a weirdo and get over it." Something wasn't right with her. I could tell she was nervous because she was trying too hard to sound calm.

"Why would you want to go back there?" I whispered. "After what we saw?"

"Why wouldn't I?" she scorned, her cold tone reminding me that I was supposed to pretend nothing happened. Like, we didn't see a dead nurse in the grass or anything.

She slowly came over to me, arms crossed so her already big breasts were about to pop out of her bikini top.

"Remember what I said – if you want to keep spending every day and night here – you cannot say anything about what we saw."

What a terrible morning. I just stood there and nodded until she walked outside, screaming her dad's name for attention.

My popsicle was melting everywhere and now my shoulder was a sticky mess. But the burning had stopped, at least, maybe because I froze my shoulder. So what was it? I wasn't out in the sun that much yesterday and I had used some of Donna's Banana Boat sunscreen.

Whatever. I felt very discouraged now. I went to Donna's room to get my bathing suit, determined to play in the pool before we had to go off to those deplorable tennis courts. Death courts. Death tennis, I thought, darkly.

I shut the door to Donna's room for privacy and looked around for somewhere to put my melting pop. The sun brightened the room enough to not need to turn a light on. I reached into my duffle bag – which I basically lived out of – and took out my one-piece. Donna always flaunted her figure in a two-piece, but I didn't really have anything to flaunt.

I started to take my shirt off when I heard the bed creak from movement and turned around to see Eric still in bed. Holy heck! He looked naked, too. He didn't have a shirt on and the sheet was barely up to his hips. His hair was in his face and his arm was up, resting across his forehead. He was looking right at me, eyes slightly sleepy but there was also something about them that was very aware of his surroundings. It was like coming across a sleeping lion and watching it wake up.

"Continue," was all he said, waving a few fingers lazily. It was so amazingly quiet in here that his groggy soft morning voice was easy to hear. I just stood there, barely breathing. My mouth had gone dry. I bet he could hear the sound of my slamming heart.

"No..."

"Ah," he sounded disappointed. His voice was so hoarse and sexy sounding. I stared at his sharp Adams apple. He didn't take his eyes off of me except to quickly glance at the popsicle I left on the window ledge to melt.

"Does your shoulder taste like banana?" he asked.

"Probably..."

"Come on," he pressured. "Take your shirt off, it's all sticky anyway. You got to see me naked yesterday, didn't ya?" he pointed out. He sounded so much older than the boys at school. Because he was, you little Banana Shoulder idiot.

"Come on," he kept on. "Donna shows her tits to total strangers – you know me. I think you like me too."

Yes, of course I liked him. That was the understatement of the year. And Donna couldn't really like Davey – and yet she showed him her tits. Eric had a point.

I was incredibly shy and had never even gone out with a boy. I certainly had never gotten naked in front of one. I told myself it wasn't a big deal – if Donna could do it in the middle of a convenient store on a Saturday afternoon, then I could do it here when it was just me and him.

I pulled my shirt off, my heart slamming around in my chest. He kept staring at me, eyes falling to my small breasts. He didn't blink and he didn't say a word, but his hand moved down under the sheets.

"You're very beautiful," he said. I watched as his hand moved around, making the sheet above it move too.

"They're small," I said of my breasts, wishing my blonde hair was long enough to cover them, but they stopped a little above my nipples. "They're not like Donna's."

"I like yours." He really sounded like he meant that. "Hey? Could you turn around?" he asked, very sweet. He wasn't bossy like Donna. He was calm, confident. Alluring. He walked through his days like he didn't give a damn if night would ever come, or tomorrow. He was just so cool and detached. Time meant nothing to him – he didn't acknowledge it.

I turned around, my shorts I slept in were still on. I knew he was going to ask me to take them off, and I tried to think of what kind of underwear I had on.

"Pull 'em down for me?" he asked. "I'm not gonna hurt you, I just want to see." I heard the bed move a little. I think he was sitting up. "I'll stay right here, I promise."

My whole body shook with some kind of strange fear. It wasn't the same fear I felt last night, or at the tennis courts. It was a sort of damp fear.

I unsnapped my shorts and faced the wall as I wondered what he was doing. I turned and looked over my banana shoulder at him. His eyes were on my bottom and he'd moved his hair out of his face to get a better look. His hand was still under the sheets, moving a little. I saw something else too – and it made the sheet stand up funny. My shorts fell to my feet and his hand moved faster and his head bent back a little.

"Good girl," he said. "Stay like that, okay?" His voice sounded a little strained.

I nodded and faced the wall and just stood there.

"Oh...oh..." he started moaning. "You wanna get in the bed with me?" He sounded out of breath.

Oh my god. I couldn't believe he asked that. I was way too scared to do it, even though I wanted to. Kind of. Just how confusing could this get?

"I could lick the sticky banana off your skin," he said. "I bet you taste good..."

Oh my god. The thought of me in bed with him, him licking me. Oh my god. A very dark voice went off in my head: Just climb in bed with the lion and let it kill you.

I felt my heart sink to my stomach and I felt like I had been stung down there again. I couldn't really move my legs. My brain had gone off to some foreign place. My body wanted silly things done to it. What was this???

"Okay, it's okay, just stay there then," he said. "Please...oh..." He made a strange sound, an mmph sound like he was about to scream but didn't, and the bed shook a little. Then it all fell quiet.

I turned around and he looked a little woozy, like he just stepped off of a roller coaster, his hair in his face, then the door whipped open – oh my god – everything happened so fast – the most important series of events ever in my life – just kept rolling on in.

Donna's crude laughter erupted.

"Shut the door!" I cried out, reaching down for my clothes while trying to cover my "mosquito bites" with my hands – which should have been easy given the fact that I was so small up top, but it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be.

"Jesus, fuckin' ever knock?" Eric fussed at her. He didn't sound desperate or embarrassed like I did, just straight up pissed. His hand made a grand appearance from under the sheets and a frowzy little smell took over the room. He stared at Donna like an insect that might eject putrid poison.

"Fuck you!" Donna said, angry but still laughing. She sounded like a nut. "This is my room! Oh my god," she turned to me, this brazen smile on her face. "Can't believe you, you little whore! Were you about to have sex??"

Huh? Oh my god.

"No! Shut up!!!" I covered my face as tears burst from my eyes. I was also still trying to pull my shorts up. And my shirt! Where was my shirt? The floor seemed so far down from my hand now. I tried to cover myself up as I reached for it.

"Please," I begged as if I were asking the shirt to somehow jump up and meet my hand. I studied the look on Eric's face. He still looked entirely annoyed with Donna. He reached over for her Metal Edge magazine she bought yesterday and threw it right at her face.

"Fuck you!" She screamed in pain and covered her face as if she'd been shot. She removed her hands to reveal a deep cut on the bridge of her nose, right between the eyes. "You fucking scratched me!" She ran out of the room, probably to inspect her injury in the bathroom.

Eric looked at me and his frown slowly changed into a sexy sulk.

"We still going to the movies?" he asked as I got dressed. I was so floored by everything that had occurred. I was nervous as he watched me put my clothes back on.

"Uh...yes..." But really? What were you going to do with him? I didn't know what to do with him. He scared me in every way, and excited me too. "What movie?" I nervously asked. I was dressed now. The banana pop was now yellow ooze in a ray of sunlight. Then the sun went under a balloon-shaped cloud.

It was bright in here one second, and dark the next.

"We'll decide when we get there," he said, his tone nice and steady.

"Okay," I said, quickly rushing out of the room.

Donna blocked me at the hallway's entrance. She had her arms crossed and the cut on her nose was glossy with ointment to stop the bleeding.

"Okay, slut, now – if you say anything about what we saw at the tennis courts, I'll tell the world about what I just saw," she let me know.

"I'm not gonna say anything," I swore, trying not to whine.

She had this gruesome grin on her face. Haha, her face was bleeding – I tried not to laugh but Eric got her good. His aim couldn't have been more on. He was fire when he threw it too, he didn't care how much he hurt her.

Donna caught me staring at the cut and touched it before dropping her hand, all flustered.

"Come on, we're going to the tennis courts."

16

I knew it was dramatic, but I felt like I'd been kidnapped. I really didn't want to go back to the stupid courts. Why would anyone ever want to go there? I definitely didn't want to see the body again, which by now would probably be even more grotesque. She would look more dead, there would be more flies. I imagined insects eating her eyeballs out at night. I imagined seeing it in a movie on Double Creature.

But I was in the van, and Donna was fingering the fancy net of her stupid Wimbledon racket and everything sucked. Fittingly, Dwayne was listening to ACDC's Highway to Hell.

He dropped us off, set to meet us in an hour at Lion's Land to get groceries and aloe, but my burn had completely faded. Sunburn didn't fade that fast. Plus I didn't peel and didn't have a tan – my skin was normal now. The burn was clearly caused by something else besides the sun.

Donna liked to go through the community center and make fun of the old people playing bingo. I thought it was mean-hearted and always walked way behind her so no one thought we were together. The place smelled strange today and was terribly depressing.

"Come on!" Donna yelled as I trudged along, watching a middle-aged janitor ring out a mop. Donna turned around and bumped me on the head with her racket when I didn't speed up.

"OWE STOP IT!" I'd had all I could take from her. She just stared at me.

"What? You're not having fun? Wanna go back home and give my cousin a blowjob?" I was pretty sure I knew what a blowjob meant and no, I didn't want to – the idea of putting that thing he peed with in my mouth was beyond disgusting.

"No," I said, completely livid. "I want to get bombed with tennis balls by you like I'M PEARL FUCKING HARBOR!!"

The janitor dropped his mop and ran off. The whole center fell quiet after my outburst– even the squeaking sound of sneakers had stopped. The bingo number announcements had stopped. Everything had stopped. I'd finally stood up to crazy Donna.

She stared at me, eyes wide and for once nothing smart came out of her mouth. My throat burned from screaming those last four words so loud.

"Okay dude, chill," Donna said, after a long minute dissolved. We stood for another minute or so, staring down at the shiny marble floor as senior citizens poked their head out of the bingo room at us. "Are you, like, about to get your first period or something?" Donna quipped.

I just tightened my eyes and glared at her.

"Maybe I am," I warned. This was going to be a hell of a tennis match.

I looked up and saw some weird hallway monitor type of person. He looked in his fifties with a little grey fuzz for hair on his head and a whistle around his neck. I bet he was about to tell us to get out. No problem, dude.

"Creepy adult alert," I mumbled, turning to the side exit at the end of the hallway.

17

I followed the long path of stairs through the bushes and on up to the courts. As we entered, the creaky fence door shut behind us and I grimly looked over at Donna's side of the net, where I had spotted the dead woman's tennis shoe. I didn't see it today – I didn't see anything clean and white anywhere. Those were brand new sneakers she had on. She died in brand new sneakers.

"Where are you going?" Donna asked when I walked over to the fence to get a closer look. It was gone – the body was gone. Where did it go? Did someone take it? How come it wasn't on the news?  
"What are you doing?" Donna surly asked as she got her usual beverage from the machine.

"It's not there," I said, walking across the courts to the fence door. I walked around the fence and up the little dirt path to where we saw the body, right where we saw it. It wasn't here. How could that be? Where had it gone? It wasn't on the news. I hadn't heard anything about a dead nurse. My stomach felt weird – I felt sick with worry. I looked all around to see it, but why – how – would it have moved?

Donna crept up behind me. For a minute, I thought she was going to do something to me – she was being that hideous today. I spun around to find her staring down at the spot where the body had been, perplexed.

"Where did it go?" I asked. "Did someone take it?"

"Maybe..." she looked off into the woods, where the trees swayed together as the wind blew. "Something...took her away, you know, for food."

"Donna!" How could she think so gruesomely, and yet talk with such ease. She was crazy. She was crazy and I didn't want to be here.

"You need to chill – you don't want Dwayne finding out about you and Eric. He wouldn't want to know you were having sex in that house with his nephew. He'd flip...out."

"I didn't have sex with him! And why are you bringing that up right now?!"

Donna turned and headed back down the dirt path.

"You shouldn't tease boys his age by the way, they're animals."

"Shut up. Donna!" I snapped, walking back to the courts. If she wanted to play death tennis, we'd play death tennis.

I made my way back across the hot courts. I reached for the tube of brand new bright yellow tennis balls. I flung my tennis racket across the net. Who needed a cheap old racket anyway? I was just going to throw the balls at her with my hand.

"What the hell are you doing?" she asked when my racket went flying over the net. She was mumbling though, I think she was actually scared.

I threw a ball at her while she bent over to tie her new sneaker.

"HEY! FUCK OFF! JESUS!" She grabbed her shoulder where the ball had hit her. I'd meant to hit her in the tit. I had a stern look in my eye, I wasn't blinking. I wanted to be like Eric – I wanted to be able to hold an intense stare like he could.

"Seriously? Calm down," she urged before throwing a ball in the air and slamming it with her racket. I didn't try to catch it, I let it bounce and roll off before I went to get it and hurled it back at her.

She ducked seconds before it was set to hit her in the head. Damn it.

"THIS IS NOT HOW YOU PLAY, YOU PSYCHO!" She hollered.

"YES IT IS – SURRENDER YOUR RACKET! FIGHT LIKE A REAL MAN! WITH YOUR HANDS!" I hurled another ball her way – it felt really, really good to express my dark feelings. This time it hit her in the back and she looked down at it, shoulders hunched back and for a minute she walked like a chicken. Ha ha. I threw another one really hard and it bounced off her head.

"STOP!!!"

I stopped for a minute, long enough to wipe the sweat off of my face. I felt a little crazy – it was easy to feel a little crazy out here. It felt like the world didn't exist – just tall grass and dead people.

Donna stopped pacing back and forth. She stopped bouncing the ball with her racket. She just stood there and gave me a creepy stare.

"Donna?" I said, because she didn't seem like herself at all. The way she paused – the look in her eyes. I was stuck out here with her, too, all alone. "Donna?" I said, when she wouldn't stop staring at me.

Finally she walked over to the net and wiggled a finger for me to come over to her. I was hesitant.

"Come here – I want to tell you something about Eric." She spoke in a very low voice. "It's a secret," she added. I made my way to the net and fidgeted with it, slipping my fingers through it. The look in Donna's eyes was still and her smile was all scribbly. "It's something I've been wanting to tell you for a while – and after this morning I realized you should know."

Oh my goodness – this sounded good. Well, bad. Actually. It sounded bad. But I had to know.

"You're not mad that...I just threw balls at you?" I checked. It was so quiet out here that even though I was speaking softly – out of breath – it seemed loud.

"No, I deserved it I guess. So, you wanna know my secret about Eric?"

"Yes," I said. I wanted to know every secret about Eric.

I prepared myself – my head that would carry the secret, my heart that would know it – and leaned even closer to hear it. I waited. I was ready. Then my head jerked down towards Donna because she'd pulled my hair then she slammed the handle of her racket right against the top of my head so hard I didn't even hear myself scream – it was all a blur. I stumbled backwards once she let me go.

"Owe..." I sobbed in shock and confusion. The hit was brutal. Was she going to kill me out here? Why?

"I should fuck you with this racket, little whore," I heard someone say – it kind of sounded like Donna – it had to be Donna, right? Who else was out here?

I sat down on the pavement and pressed my hand to the top of my head where it was throbbing.

I looked up at her. "Why did you say that?"

"Said what?" she stared down at me. "Are you okay?"

"NO! I'm not okay." My face was a slobbery mess and when I took my hand away from my head, there was blood on it. I tried to hide my face behind my blonde hair so she couldn't see, and all my emotions and fears seemed to boil over and now tears were streaming down my face like crazy. It was so hot out here, and no one really cared about me. I felt so sad all of the sudden, and so alone. I started sobbing hard – I didn't care who heard me – they didn't care anyway. No one did. I let the tears stream down my face and soak my neck.

"Are you gonna kill me?" I asked, rocking back and forth. She could – no one was out here to stop her.

"What? Oh my god, you're so dramatic. Get up."

"No," I moaned. My head was throbbing. Then the rage poured out of me again. "DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!!"

I think my screaming and hard cry scared Donna. She didn't know how to react. I heard her come over to me, making her way around the net to my side. The same roaring voice emerged again.

"LEAVE ME ALONE!" I cried. I went over to the bleachers, wanting someone to hold me. I wanted to be comforted. I reached for my Chocolate Brownie drink and took a sip.

"Jesus," she muttered, completely beside herself. "Look, I'm sorry."

"No you're not," I sobbed, looking up at her through blurry eyes and blonde hair n my face.

I calmed down after a minute and looked around at the tall grass swaying in the wind. The drink calmed me down a little. It was my favorite drink. Back when my mom was nice to me and my dad had a job, my mom would take me to the park and I would get this drink from the vending machine every single visit. It reminded me of happier times – riding the mechanical horse, sipping this soda. The grass smelled sweet at that park. My mom actually smiled. My dad would pick us up in his green Ford Bronco. But those days were gone and sometimes memories could be facetious – making me think those days could happen again.

Donna was sitting down on the bleachers now, looking defeated. Why did we fight like this? Why couldn't we just be normal friends? I hated fights because someone always had to apologize, and it always seemed like it was the person not at fault.

The sun was beating down and it had to be close to a hundred degrees.

"We could play for a prize," Donna eventually spoke.

"It's too hot," I said. At least we were no longer screaming at each other. "And my head hurts."

"I'm sorry – but you were being really mean."

"You were mean first," I scorned.

She grew quiet again. She reached down for her Mr. Pibb and opened it.

"So what exactly did you do with Eric? I know he jerked off."

I blushed and was unable to speak for about three minutes.

"I didn't do anything, really," I said. Then I wondered, was Eric really of any relation to Donna if he was Dwayne's nephew and Dwayne wasn't Donna's real father? Did Donna like Eric, like, in the same manner I did? Maybe she was jealous.

"Okay, let's make the game more intense," Donna announced, getting up, as if she'd found her second wind. "If you win, I'll tell you a secret about my cousin."

"No," I refused. I had a side to me that was feisty, she just didn't come around much. "You lie, you're a liar. You'll hit me again." I wiped away a tear I swore would be my last, sipped my chocolate drink and tried to look tough. Like Eric.

"Come on," she just said, bouncing the ball with her racket. She was so good at this – I swear she just wanted to show off, that's why she wanted to come here with me.

"I really do have a secret about my cousin though," she let me know, in a mild tone.

"Eric?" I asked.

"Yeah, air biscuit, who else would I be talking about? Yes, the one you stripped for this morning," she giggled. She glanced back at me. "Look – I'm being serious – but you'll never know if you just sit there and pout."

At last the fire in me shot down through my legs and I felt it in my feet and I got up and went over to my side. Okay then, let's fucking play.

So what if this was a Wilson racket, it was my racket, and I'd rock it, I'd make it play right. I would hit the ball as hard as I could and maybe it would explode midair. I'd hit it, I'd hit the damn ball.

"Send it over!" I demanded. Then I realized something. I might not win. "What if you win?" I dared ask.

She smirked, making me wait a minute. "You have to make out with me and Davey."

"OH GOD NEVER!!!" I shrieked. The horror.

"You better play then – meaning hit the ball back."

Donna picked up the fuzzy yellow ball. I'd never been so scared or anxious in my life. I had to win, but I rarely even played. I watched as she threw the ball up in the air and whack! it came right my way.

I tossed my racket up and hit it but I closed my eyes while doing so and it didn't make it over the fence. Donna snorted at this and sent another ball right over. This time though, remarkably, I hit it and it went right back to her. She swung her racket almost effortlessly, making the hollow "bop" sound, and the ball came right back to me and I hit back. This went on for a few more minutes until she eventually missed. She acted like she didn't care, stared at her racket net for a minute before looking over at me.

"Wanna take a quick break?" she asked. I shrugged and we both trudged over to the bleachers. I think we wore ourselves out by fighting all morning.

Nothing moved out here if there was no breeze. It was eerie how motionless it was. Once we stopped playing tennis, there was no sound at all. It was as if this little part of Lilyworth had been removed from the rest of the world and frozen in time.

I took my hand and wiped some sweat off my face and sipped my soda, which was warm by now.

"Do they ever call?" I hated to ask. I lightly bumped my tennis racket against the ground, kind of mad at myself for having asked. I should just forget them.

"Who?"

"My parents. They ever call to see...see how I am? See if I'm ever gonna go back home?"

"No. Anyone who calls my house is usually Eric's counselor," Donna said. "Or some woman for Dwayne...or someone wanting their car fixed. I don't know."

I wanted to stop crying. I wiped the tears away from my face and drank my soda, forgetting that it was too warm to enjoy. I threw it down. I was starting to understand why Donna got mad a lot.

"They probably can save money with...with me not being around," I realized. I shouldn't have even brought it up.

"You look so pouty right now. I feel bad," Donna said. I moved my blonde hair out of my face. Not many people in this world liked me. Dwayne liked me. Eric liked me. I doubted ninety-percent of the time that Donna liked me. Maybe Randi did.

"I'm fine," I said, but in a tone that pretty much meant the opposite.

"Hey? Fuck 'em," Donna shrugged. "You think I ever hear from my mom? Maybe I bash you up a bit to get you to actually play tennis – I figure if you get mad, you'll actually hit the damn ball. You know, it could make it easier when it comes to other stuff. Are you going to dodge everything that scares you in life?"

"No." I wanted to believe I wouldn't, anyway. I could see Donna's point. I was a wimp.

"I'm sorry I hit you, I been pmsing pretty bad – and no sleep last night."

"That stuff with Eric was crazy," I said.

"Yeah."

"What attacked him like that?"

Donna didn't answer. I stared at the tennis ball on my side of the court. I swear it had moved from where it was after we came over to the bleachers.

18

Donna must have really felt bad for me now because her tennis playing calmed down and she was playing like a normal person. When Donna was calm, she was really good at things. The whomp sound of the ball against the courts was hypnotic.

The best thing of all? I was winning – which meant a dirty little secret about Eric would soon be mine to know. I assumed it was dirty because Eric was a bad boy – and there were never any nice secrets anyway.

"Dude, see?" Donna pointed out. "See how much fun it is when you play?"

I nodded and smiled and waited for her to start the next round, hitting the ball.

"I'm not keeping score, are you?" Donna checked.

"Yes," I informed. Of course I was keeping score. It was my turn to serve, and serve I did. It went right towards Donna and she lamely hit it back. I think she was tired – I think she was giving up. I ran up to the net, happier than I'd been in months. Time was up – we had to go meet Dwayne now. That meant I officially won the game!

"Okay tell me tell me tell me," I skipped along, waiting for the Eric secret as she fingered her beautiful racket's net.

"I was lying – there is no secret," Donna snorted.

"No! I know there's something – Eric has done a lot of bad things." That much was true. The boy was only seventeen and he'd already been sent away to basically a prison for youths.

"Okay, let's head back to Lion's Land and I will tell you."

"YES!" I grabbed my racket and headed out to the steps and back down towards the field behind the grocery store.

19

I followed Donna through the creepy field that led to the grocery store. I was feeling a little lightheaded, probably from the heat and all the activity. Or maybe Donna gave me a head injury.

It was a hazy day and the insects were screaming about it.

"So?" I said. I was trying to be patient, but we were almost at Lion's Land so she needed to fess up about Eric's secret. I watched a huge grasshopper that blended in perfectly with the grass suddenly hop up on my shoe and back out into the grass. This made me smile. I liked grasshoppers.

"So what?" Donna replied.

Oh my god, was she actually going to play dumb now?

"What were you going to tell me?" I anxiously spoke. "About Eric..."

"He robbed that liquor store," she said, low and fast. "The one Dwayne was talking about."

I didn't know what to say. I knew Eric was bad news but now he was literally bad news. That story was in the papers.

"Hop In?" I gasped. He was badder than I thought. "He robbed Hop In?"

Donna nodded.

"He broke those windows too?" I gasped.

"Yeah, I guess. I think he did it with a rock – I saw him walking around the day before with this huge rock in his hand and I said to him, Eric, why are you walking around with that stupid rock? And he didn't answer." She got quiet. It seemed to get hotter the longer we walked, but we were almost there. Soon we'd be in the freezing grocery store.

"I can't believe he did that, you know?" she said.

"How do you know he did?"

"Davey saw him," she said after a few seconds of hesitating. "He was closing up the convenient store, heard the windows shatter, he said he saw Eric walking around the store."

"Oh...is he going to tell the cops?"

"I doubt it," Donna replied. "Some people are scared of Eric. He's unpredictable."

"How much money did he get?" I asked.

"I shouldn't be talking about this," she said, shaking her head in regret. "I don't know. I know he wants to get his own place and he's also been talking about going out to L.A." The more Donna talked about him, the more I could see she cared about him. "He's so stupid – like, I think he thinks he can just rob a store and run off to L.A. and people will forget. He refuses to get a real job – he thinks it makes people look weak when we do that – god, he's gonna have a rough life if he doesn't stop this."

"Oh man, I don't want him going to jail," I said, bent about it.

"That's the thing – he needs to watch out. He'll be eighteen soon – he can do some serious time."

The doors to Lion's Land automatically opened and we walked on in. Debbie Gibson's Only In My Dreams was playing and it was insanely cold in here. Donna walked ahead of me, her racket hooked under her arm as she went to the cereal aisle.

"You can't tell anyone what I told you about Eric," she warned.

"I won't," I said. More secrets, I thought.

I looked up and saw Dwayne's curly blonde hair and not too far away from him was Eric. Oh my god. I was never quite prepared to be around him, especially after this morning.

I couldn't believe he had come with Dwayne – he never went anywhere with us because he always had his bike and his own agenda.

I was about to head over to them when I felt the bone and flesh of Donna's fingers hook around my wrist and yank me back. The sudden and aggressive move left me shocked.

"Owe!" I hollered.

"Look me in the eye and promise you won't repeat what I said." Donna was speaking in a low, mean voice. She could be so nasty sometimes.

"Of course I won't," I said. "I don't want him to get in trouble."

My skin was burning from her clutching me so hard. After a few seconds, she let go and I quickly walked off, training myself not to tear up. I wanted to look cool and calm for Eric – my liquor store robbing Romeo.

Dwayne and Eric were staring down at an arrangement of lox, both looking bemused.

"When do people eat lox?" Eric was trying to figure out. "Like what time of day?"

"Uh..." Dwayne thought it over as he ran his hand through his hair. "I think for breakfast and stuff."

"Ew, really?" Eric didn't understand such a thing. Then he noticed me, grinned and threw his arm around me. It was amazing. There was no better feeling in the world than that feeling of someone glad to see you.

"Well hey little stinker," he said. "Got your racket," he pointed at it with a mischievous grin on his face. "How was tennis?" I felt like my face was on fire from all of his attention. I stared at the pink, cold fish. Eric was in a playful mood – I was surprised, too, after what happened to him last night. He had a shiner from being hit in the face by whatever it was that attacked him. I honestly thought it made him even sexier – the black eye fit his bad boy appeal.

When I didn't respond – because I didn't know what to do – he messed my hair up. He was wearing a black Cubs baseball cap backwards. He looked really hot today as he sported all black – black jeans, black shirt, black motorcycle boots. The only thing not black was the word CUBS on the cap, which was white.

"What's up with you?" he asked as we made our way back up to the front of the store. No one was really buying anything. No one even had a shopping cart or a basket.

"What do you mean?" I replied. I guess I was acting weird. Then he got a good look at me and stopped in the middle of the aisle, blocking a poor lady with a walker. "Why is there blood in your hair?" he blurted. Oh my god. I was mortified. I reached up and felt the few sticky strands knotted with blood and my anger rushed back to me.

"She hit me," I pointed at Donna. I was glad we were near the newsstand too – maybe he could cut her face up with every single magazine. Metal Edge that shit. Bop that shit. Teen Beat that shit.

"Why the hell would you do that?" he confronted her.

"It's between us," Donna just said. There was just something wrong with her. It took having someone else mad at her for me to see it. She was just too mean sometimes. I had red marks around my wrists from where she grabbed. Her heart was black and cold and if it melted, it would just be runny poison. I was close to tears. I imagined Eric holding me, protecting me but instead he looked at Dwayne and the whole topic seemed to be over.

"So are we getting lox?" he asked.

20

I told myself to cool it when it came to fighting with Donna because I didn't want Dwayne to end up telling me I couldn't stay with them anymore. These last few days were crazy and I could tell he was on edge.

I also didn't want her so mad that she would tell him what happened between me and Eric this morning.

"How you feelin'?" Dwayne asked Eric in the van, on the way back home.

"I'm okay..." I think Eric wanted to say something else but he didn't. He sipped a cold beer he'd gotten from the cooler in the back of the van. The wet can left a ring on his jeans and I wanted to go around and around its circle until I disappeared.

I think he was scared about last night – and the fact that another night was upon us – but decided to drink his fears away. There were tons of empty beer cans in the back of the van, and the stale stench of it took over. But soon, their cigarette smoke took care of that.

Dwayne suddenly slammed on his brakes and everyone's body flew around in the van. It took a few seconds to look up and do a headcount. Thankfully, everyone was still in the vehicle.

"Oops," Dwayne said. His response didn't exactly match up to the near-death experience we just had. I looked out at a tractor trailer we almost ran right into when Dwayne missed the red light. "Everybody okay?"

"Yeah, except for my beer," Eric said, licking his thumb of beer and looking down at some of it that spilled in his lap. God, to be that beer.

"You drunk?" Donna simply asked Dwayne.

"Nah..." Dwayne was a terrible liar.

Highway to Hell played on the way back too.

Back at the house, we unloaded groceries. Donna did the dishes while Randi and I put stuff away and Dwayne started preparing tonight's feast – pasta with garlic bread and chocolate pudding for desert. I couldn't believe we were going to have something besides hamburgers.

Everyone pitched in with kitchen chores except Eric, who headed off to the garage, back in his own cigarette smoking, strutting around in slacking jeans debauchery. We eventually went outside too, where I could study Eric up close. His black jeans were falling down around his hips, but his perky butt kept them from slipping off completely as the sun loved his tanned skin some more. He had his shirt off but his baseball cap was still on, turned backwards. Even all of his tattoos, dirty clothes and dirty mouth couldn't take away from the fact that he had a baby face that seemed to promise sweet innocence. But no, that was not the case. He was bad, so bad, and I tried to tell my heart that, but it just sputtered on with its obsession. It didn't care that he was reckless and capable of slashing up a thousand girl hearts.

"God, stare much?" Donna caught me gawking at that heavenly tan line where Eric's jeans drifted so low I could see his white bottom. The boy just never bothered with underwear. Oh my.

"What's on Double Creature tonight?" I wondered, my drawl as dawdling as the breeze. Donna was testing the water in the kiddie pool with her feet.

"I don't know, let's check." Donna took her foot out of the water and went off into the house and I followed. Donna came back with a warped TV Guide. It looked like it had been used as a coaster because it had drink rings on the cover. She tossed it on the kitchen table and took out the pops from the freezer.

I flipped through the TV Guide to the USA schedule. My plan was to con Eric into watching movies with us again so hopefully the Double Creature lineup was something awesome.

Evil Escalator was the first film – Horrific accidents keep occurring at the same mall at nighttime an hour before the stores close, all involving pretty blonde girls and boys that get eaten alive by an evil escalator!

The second film was a classic – Motel Hell, a parody of Last House On The Left.

Perfect! I raced outside the share the exciting lineup with Eric. That was when I saw him lying down flat on the ground, unconscious, arms spread above his head and his jeans down around his hips.

"ERIC!" My screech filled up the sky with panic as I ran towards the garage. His Cubs hat had fallen off him and was under the work table. He just lied there, not responding to my screams.

"ERIC!" I dropped to my knees. I saw a little grease rag in his hand. He'd been working on something beforehand, the dirty cloth stuck out between his fingers. "Eric?" I touched him, I touched his shoulder and tried to wake him.

"DWAYNE!!! DONNA!!!" I cried when I realized he was not going to come to.

Dwayne rushed out, a look of worry on his face as he ran over.

"I came out and he was just lying here," I sobbed. Dwayne didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It was sort of funny to see Eric with his pants down, I guess, which made a bemused Dwayne chuckle.

"Damn son," Dwayne muttered. "Ae?" he grew more worried when Eric didn't wake up. "AE BOY!" Dwayne actually popped Eric on the bottom!

Eric started to moan and wiggle about. He almost turned over without pulling his pants up. I stared in amazement, not blinking my eyes. My mouth was wide open.

"You might wanna...pull your pants up 'dare," Dwayne suggested. Eric reached down and wiggled into his jeans before turning over. He looked fine – no visible injuries. I stared at his smooth chest, his nipples, the trail of hair leading down under his jeans.

Donna came traipsing over. "Yo, what happened? You pass out drunk already?"

"It's not funny!" I hollered at her. "He was unconscious for like five minutes."

"Okay, chill out, Erica Kane," Donna told me.

Dwayne laughed a little, bemused. "You okay?" he asked Eric. "Told ya one day them pants were gonna fall right down."

"It happened again," Eric whispered, looking around the sunny backyard. Clearly no one anticipated an attack in the middle of the day. I looked around too, terrified.

"What did it do to you?" I asked, looking back at him.

"Same thing...but this time...no one was here to see."

"I believe you," I wanted him to know.

"Came up...grabbed me from behind, slammed me on the ground – that's all I remember," Eric told me.

"Are you okay?" I asked him. I couldn't help but touch him, I put my hand on his arm as he started to get up. He leaned against the work table.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm okay." He frowned after he lit his smoke and tossed the light on the table.

"Maybe you should come inside and lie down," Dwayne suggested. "Let's just take the rest of the day off – try and have an uneventful day for once."

"Nah," Eric eventually said. "I'm alright." I could tell Eric was just trying to be tough but he was really freaked out. "Look...just don't worry about it. I just passed out." He went back to toying with things on the desk, shutting us out.

"When was the last time you had a glass of water? Somein' to eat?" Dwayne questioned.

"I'm fine," Eric said, stubborn.

21

Eric went back to work and everyone else went back to their favorite summer afternoon pastime. I went over to the tire swing. The afternoon played out as usual – Randi in her kiddie pool and Donna reading magazines in her lawn chair, but I couldn't shake this terrible feeling that something was wrong with Eric. Something had happened to him in that garage. Why was something after him?

Around six pm, I retired to the kitchen. It was that strange somewhat somber time of day when it felt like it should be dark but it wasn't. Time seemed to stand still. I had no idea what happened to the big dinner plans, but no one was in here making pasta, that was for sure.

I looked up as Eric came in. I watched how his straight blonde hair rolled off his shoulder in a screw you motion as he turned his back to me at the kitchen counter and opened a can of beer. I waited for him to say hi. He didn't.

"You feel better?" I asked after long awkward moments of silence.

"Uh, yeah, yeah I guess." He sounded blue. He looked red hot.

He turned around and stared at me for a minute. I couldn't take his pale blue eyes sometimes, going through me like daggers.

"Are you going to watch Double Creature tonight?" I asked, sweetly. Please say yes. Please stay. I don't think he had a clue how hard it was for me to talk to him, and I'd just said eight whole words to him.

"Nah, I gotta go...some place." Oh, the mystery. Why? "My band's trying to cover Megadeth, hardest shit I ever done."

"Oh wow." Megadeth scared me, but I didn't say that. I got nervous when he pointed at me, about to ask me a question. Maybe he was finally going to finalize our plans to go see a movie.

"Hey...let me ask you something – you think I should change the band name back to Clobberhead?"

"Oh, um...yeah, I kind of like that."

He nodded and some hair fell in his face. He crumpled his beer can up like paper and tossed it in the trash.

"See ya later," he muttered to me before walking out.

I slept in Donna's room that night, next to her, with visions of bodies being eaten alive by the metal teeth of escalators and that gross wet sound effect as their bodies burst like bubbles and blood poured down the moving staircase. I had watched Double Creature alone. It was sad – waiting to hear the sound of his bike pull up and it never occurred.

He asked me if he should change the name of his band, though, which was huge. He valued my opinion. If he actually changed the name back to Clobberhead then I would know he really liked me.

Donna snored on and off but during the precious moments when she was quiet, I was able to find sweet sleep. I woke up from it at 3:07 am, not because of Donna's snoring, but because of another sound – a slow rickety sound. I opened my eyes, because it sounded like something about to collapse – like something old and rusty and metal – was going to fall on top of me. But there was nothing in this room of that nature.

I stayed still and the room fell silent, making me think that maybe I'd dreamed the strange sound. Then the sound occurred again, very close to me, and it sounded weirder and weirder as it dragged on, chirring. Then I realized it was saying a name.

"Errricccc," it chirred. "Errr-rrricccc..." I saw something standing at the end of the bed, slowly taking shape. The shadow was thin, and it was pointing at me. "Errrrr-rrrric." Why was it pointing at me with its long spaghetti-thin finger? Did it think I was Eric?

"Don...Donna...Donna! Donna!" I shouted, trying to wake her up. As soon as she did, the strange shadow vanished and the noise stopped.

"What?!" she grouched.

"Something was in the room! Something was here..." I reached for the light and some roaches on the wall scattered to the nearest available crack as soon as it turned on.

I stared around at the mess – bathing suits, magazines, bottles of suntan lotion and hairspray – but no creepy shadowy intruder.

"Nothing's here," Donna pointed out before turning the light back off. "Go to sleep."

22

The next morning I woke up to the sound of Randi coming in and taking my boom box to play outside. I recalled what happened last night and was positive it wasn't a bad dream. Something was here and it was after Eric.

I got up and went out in the kitchen and looked through the blinds at the driveway. His bike was not there. I turned around and watched as Donna dragged her feet across the floor to the kitchen table. She didn't say anything until Dwayne walked in from outside, his skin already sporting a fresh sun-kissed glow.

"Donna, tell Randi to stop puttin' the pool in my garage at night," Dwayne fussed. "Gotta drag that thing out before I get started on shit."

"Yeah okay." Donna seemed unbothered by anything today. I wondered what had her in such good spirits. "Dad, can we go to Smokey's tonight?"

I panicked, thinking we were going to have to hear Davey's sucky band but then I realized it was Monday.

"Smokey's?" Dwayne asked, sounding a little surprised. He shrugged as he stuck his arm into a loaf of bread.

"Yeah, I guess."

"YAY!!" Donna clapped and jumped up and down. Why was it such a big deal? I felt like she was up to something.

"Be nice to get out of the house," Dwayne mumbled as he put a sandwich together and looked down at me. I guess he was right – it would be nice to go out for a change, Like to the movies with Eric – that would be nice too.

"How you this morning?" Dwayne asked me, giving me his usual wink.

"Okay. Have you seen Eric?" I asked, making it sound like small talk.

"Nah, he might drop by later – it's Monday – who knows," Dwayne shrugged, his voice trailing off. "Who knows what that boy does on Mondays."

"He's supposed to talk to his counselor on Mondays," Donna said.

"Then he probably does something else then," Dwayne chuckled.

Oh man. My heart dropped. It was Monday – what if I didn't see him until the weekend? What if I had to go through all week without him?

"I bet he passed out yesterday because he never eats," Donna weighed in.

He didn't pass out, I thought, disgusted. Something was after him – something knocked him out.

"Yeah, well, know why that is," Dwayne said.

Why? Why didn't he ever eat? My eyes jumped from Dwayne to Donna for more info. Lost in Emotion by Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam was blaring from outside as Randi listened to my mix tape and danced alone in the pool.

"He needs to get help for that – he can't just not eat because of his mom," Donna commented.

"What?" I finally said.

"His mom used to make him eat for punishment, when he was a kid," Dwayne looked at me to explain. "She would just make him and eat and eat even after he was full, and beat him if he didn't."

"Yeah, and then after he ate she would give him an enema."

"What?" I made a face of horror.

"Donna," Dwayne motioned for her to be quiet. "Let's not discuss it, it's too disturbing."

No. Where is he? Where is he, so I can put my arms around him.

"He's almost eighteen," Donna went on. "If he cleans up his act and gets an apartment and then therapy – he could be okay."

"Yeah well that's what his counselor's for," Dwayne raised his voice, sounding annoyed with the topic of Eric. "His mind ain't on that though," Dwayne said, "His mind's on rock n roll...and girls." Dwayne tossed his empty beer can into the trash and waved dismissively. "I'm only one man. I can't raise the world."

"Oh, is Eric Dorfman the world?" Donna quipped. Dwayne aimed his blue eyes at me. "Might be, to some people."

"OOOOHHH! SNAP!" Donna goofily teased me. I had to get out of this house. I headed for the sunny backyard, embarrassed. The music washed out everything, and I spent the next five minutes struggling to get up in the tire swing. Donna came along and grabbed me before I could run. I was terrified of her touching me after she almost killed my brain with the handle of her tennis racket, but she was strong and pulled me up on top of the swing almost as effortlessly as Dwayne could.

Once she had me up there, she wrapped her hand around the rope and pulled me out into the sunny patch of the yard and let me swing back into the shade.

"So now you know," she said as I swung through the sun and back across into the shade again, closer to her. "Eric wouldn't want you to know what we were just talking about."

"I did notice he never eats," I muttered.

Donna shrugged. "Yeah."

"So why do you wanna go to Smokey's tonight?" I asked.

"Just wanna check it out," she shrugged before walking off.

That night everyone got dressed like we were going to a disco or something fancy like that. It was fun – no one ever got dressed up here – usually we just put on comfy clothes and all piled on the couch in the living room to watch TV.

Donna's door flew open and Eric walked in. Eric. He was here. I spent a few minutes just gazing up at him.

"Knock much?" Donna fussed at him.

"Shut up," he grumbled. He had come for his Guns N Roses tape, which he'd left in her bed.

I kept looking at him and wanted him to at least glance at me but he just walked out of the bedroom.

"Where is he going? Is he going with us to Smokey's?" I asked Donna in a panicky banter.

"Oh my god, listen to you." Then she turned to look at me with a serious look on her face. "Desperation is so not attractive and don't bother trying to get to know a guy – you never really will. My mom told me that. They're secrets in walls."

Huh. Okay. I stared at the floor for a minute, confused of what to do next. A crush did that to you.

Donna went over and picked up her fancy Wimbledon racket and held it out to me so the handle, wrapped in fancy leather, was a few inches from my face. Was she giving me her tennis racket?  
"Can I have it?" I asked.

She snorted. "No, air biscuit, but you should start sucking the handle to get some practice if you seriously want to date Eric." She shoved it closer to my mouth – any closer and she might have knocked my teeth out. "Open wide too – I'm sure you've seen his by now."

I blushed and pushed the racket out of my face.

"You foul mental whore!" The words flew out of my mouth. I almost laughed at what I'd said.

"You're the whore – stripping for him."

"YOU'RE A POOR EXCUSE FOR HAIRSPRAY!" I hollered. Then she just started laughing and then I couldn't help but laugh too.

"It's sweaty," she put the racket's handle back in my face and kept her tone soft and perverted. "Sweaty leather tastes like cock."

I screamed and ran out of the room and into the kitchen, nearly knocking Randi over.

"Hey, hey," Dwayne warned me. "Ya'll need to calm down now or we ain't goin' no place."

I just stood by the fridge, soaking up his lecture. "Ae, come here," he waved me over before turning to put his cigarette out in the ashtray. I tiptoed over to him. I never got a lecture. Donna did and Randi did. Maybe I wanted one – so I really felt like family.

Once I was standing next to him, he put his arm around me, bringing me close to him. His clothes smelled like cigarette smoke and sweat – the warm sin of summer.

"You know this is your family right? I'm glad to have ya." He gave me a hug, bringing me awfully close to his dirty jean shorts. Then he pointed at me, keeping one hand on my shoulder. "But don't let Donna's brattiness rub off on ya, okay?" he cupped my chin in his warm hand and I smiled up at him, nodding. "That's my baby girl." He moved some of my blonde hair out of my face and I went outside and played on the tire swing.

By now it was dark out, but the light in the garage provided enough light for me to see the things in the yard. I worked hard and was up on the tire swing within minutes. I typically didn't swing at night, mostly because of giant insects that tended to stay in the tree – the big kind that made a lot of noise but couldn't be seen. Or the spiders with the spiderwebs thick as sweaters. I was always afraid they'd fall on me. Tonight, though, I was feeling brave. Maybe it was excitement, maybe excitement made me brave.

Remarkably, I was managing to swing pretty far and high on my own without needing someone to push me.

"Hey! Freak!" Donna called from the bathroom window. "Come here and I'll do your makeup!"

I didn't really like to wear much makeup but Donna piled it on like those girls in the rock videos.

"Okay," I called out, anyway. I tried to slow down, but I could not. In fact, I was going even higher. Then I felt the force of someone pushing me. Someone – or something – was pushing me. The push was so hard I went flying up so high I almost hit a branch.

"HELP!" I called out as I went flying in the other direction. I felt like if I went any higher I might wrap around the big branch I was hanging from. Someone was pushing me with great vigor.

"STOP IT! STOP!!!!" I felt like I slammed into them and they angrily pushed me away. This time I did hit a branch. I couldn't control where I was going. The branch scratched me in the chest and I went flying back – back towards the thing pushing me.

"HELP!!!!! MEEEEEEEE!!!!" I screamed as I felt something like fingernails clawing my legs as I got pushed back again.

"HELP!!!!!" I screamed as loud as I could when I heard someone screaming back.

"WE CAN'T GET THE DOOR OPEN!" Eric screamed.

I stared up at the branches and thought I saw someone sitting up there. I started crying and looked down at the ground, knowing the only way I could stop this was to jump, when something suddenly snapped and I went flying down. I heard glass shatter and saw Eric had actually punched the window in the door to get out. He came running over to me as I lied there on the ground, on my arm, the giant woolly rope collapsed over my sore body.

"It was here!" I screeched as he scooped me up in his arms. His hand was bleeding from breaking the glass to get to me.

"It's okay," he let me know. "I'm here now."

"It's in the tree," I whispered. "It's in the tree!"

I think maybe I was crying harder now because he was going to comfort me – and the more in pain I seemed, the more he would console me. He held me as he gazed up in the tree but it was too dark to really see anything.

"Something kept pushing the tire and then it fell," I sobbed in disbelief. I felt his arm squeeze me so I was so close to him I inhaled his scent. His hair was in my face and his neck was warm and smelled a little of nicotine and sweat. I never noticed before that he had his ear pierced with a little upside down cross in the earlobe.

He had used Donna's raspberry-scented Suave shampoo. I wondered if he used her soap too. The thought of him washing his naked body took over and eased my pain somewhat.

All I smelled right then was raspberry and sweat and it seemed to wash my fear away.

"Did you hurt yourself?" Eric looked me over.

"I don't know, just hold me." I was being a bit dramatic, but when was the last time someone held me? I couldn't recall. If I had to fall from a tree to get this kind of affection, so be it. He was really good at it too – really patient and protective.

"Okay then, I gotcha." Those four words really eased me, traveling down my ear to my heart.

But then they came traipsing towards us – Donna and Dwayne – long after I'd been rescued by Eric.

"We couldn't get the door open," Donna explained, she didn't exactly sound worried. I moved around a little in Eric's arms. He kept his eyes on me as I looked up at Dwayne.

"The tire fell," I said.

"Damn, really?" Dwayne looked perplexed as he stared up at the massive tree. "You okay, darlin?" Dwayne asked, looking down at me.

The way Eric looked at me at that moment was amazing. He was very communicative with his eyes, waiting for my answer.

"Yes, I think so."

"Scraped her elbow," Eric said. "Let's get you cleaned up."

He stood up and I followed him into the house, dazed and confused. And about to go back in the bathroom with him.

23

Eric put some things on the bathroom sink he'd taken out of the medicine cabinet. He was quiet and focused as he washed my elbow and applied Neosporin and a bandage.

"My counselor died," he suddenly revealed, in a very soft tone of voice so no one else heard. "Don't tell anyone," he looked up at me to get his point across. "If Dwayne finds out he'll try to find me some other guy to talk to and I just don't want to. He was kind of creepy anyway, my counselor."

I was very quiet. Eric was sharing a secret with me. I felt like we were getting really close.

"Anyway, I'm almost eighteen." Eric put the stuff back in the medicine cabinet. "So it doesn't matter what some old fart in a recliner has to say." He shut the cabinet and leaned against the wall. "You know what's fucked up? Like everything in this world is so fucking weird, I swear. Like if I was a fucking Reagan supporter and worked a job and did all this miserable shit, I'd be okay with everybody – I wouldn't be a loser. But because I play in a band and refuse to give in to fuckin' society's idea of what's right – I'm a loser. Isn't that fucked up?"

"Yes," I wholeheartedly agreed. I caught Eric looking at me in a way he never did before. He lifted his hand and touched my chin. He was going to kiss me. And I might die – because it would be the greatest moment in my life and those were sometimes hard to handle – but then her voice interfered my world again.

"LET'S GO!" Donna screamed from the hallway. "Smokey's ain't a twenty-four hours joint!"

Eric seemed unfazed by her as he stared down at me and put his hand on top of my head.

"You're okay," he softly spoke, smiling before nodding at the door. "Come on, let's get this over with."

34

Smokey's consisted of men in their forties at the bar and a few women in their mid to upper-thirties flirting with them. There were a few families in between, their kids restlessly squirming around on booths or knocking over highchairs. There were about five TVs in various corners, all on a sports channel. Eric mumbled some nasty comment about the Motley Crue song playing when we entered, obviously not a fan. Dwayne was trying to look like he belonged here, but I could tell he felt just as out of place as the rest of us. It might have been just a beer and bbq place, but Smokey's was considered one of the fancier restaurants in Lilyworth, NC. He seemed nervous about spending money here – but Donna wanted to and she always got her way with him. I smiled bigger than anyone in the place – possibly the world at that moment – when I felt Eric's hand on my shoulder.

"It doesn't hurt, does it?" he checked, remembering that was the shoulder I fell on. I shook my head and shyly looked down at the floor. A cute girl who worked as a hostess took us over to a big, comfy booth in the corner and once we were out of the loud crowd near the bar, everyone seemed to relax a bit.

We browsed the menus – getting used to not having burgers on paper plates handed to us. Here, we had options. Hot dogs, pasta, tacos.

Suddenly a man came over, middle-aged and bloated, with a little black and grey hair left on his head – just enough to need the comb sticking out of the front pocket of his shirt.

"Jimmy?" he said, looking at Dwayne. Dwayne looked up at him and frowned.

"Name's not Jimmy," Dwayne said in a flat tone of voice before looking back down at his menu.

"I'll call you whatever I want 'til you fix my car right," the man informed. At this, Eric hid his face as if embarrassed. Then he just gazed out of the window for an extremely long amount of time without moving or blinking. It was like he just shut off.

Dwayne gave a cocky laugh but didn't seem to have anything smart to say to back it up. The silence that captured the air was awkward.

"You hear me?" the man accosted Dwayne. "You don't never fix 'em right – that's why you ain't getting anymore people comin' 'round to fix their shit – you don't know what you doin. Got kids to raise and can't..." Then the man leaned over out table, putting his paws down on the edge of it. His mouth was open enough for me to see he was missing some teeth. I looked at Eric to do something, but he remained still as the wall next to him, staring out of the window into the parking lot. Then the man said, in a low voice but loud enough for me to hear, "That's why you gotta do other stuff in that garage to feed your kids." He was right in Dwayne's face and I expected a fight to break out but Dwayne didn't say anything and eventually the man backed off.

A few minutes went by while we all sat there, uncomfortably quiet.

"Well, ya'll know what you want to eat?" Dwayne eventually went back to his menu and Eric looked away from the window and over at me like he was trying to tell me something.

"DAVEY!" Donna called, spotting the cashier from Robbie's up at the bar.

"Eew," I muttered. I didn't think anyone could hear me, but Eric did.

"Yeah, guy's a dick," Eric commented. Ah, so we were on speaking terms! I looked up at him. Yay! It seemed the awkwardness of that strange, unsatisfied customer had vanished.

"I know!" I looked up at Eric and he had a sweet smile for me. All I wanted was him. Be my warm, fuzzy nightmare.

He was wearing the same thing as before – same Cubs baseball cap and black jeans and boots – but tonight he sported an ACDC t-shirt with the words ARE YOU READY? on the front along with an ugly monster holding a weapon with a pair of red panties hanging off of it.

We kept our eyes on each other like we were dangling off of skyscrapers and our gaze was keeping us from falling to our death.

"How ya'll tuhnight?" A waitress appeared, her relaxed, southern twang seemed to calm everyone down.

"Good, doll, you?" Dwayne flirted with her. Dwayne was a good looking guy, and his flirting was easily reciprocated.

"Oh, busy," she winked at him. "But not too busy for ya'll now ya'll need more time with the menu?"

Dwayne looked at Eric and seemed determined to get him to eat tonight.

"I dunno, yall ready?" Dwayne looked at us.

Eric and I finally stopped admiring each other and looked back down at the menus.

"Think we need a little more time," Dwayne told the waitress. "Got a lot of different brains here thinkin' 'bout different things."

The waitress giggled. "No problem, I'll be back in about five, how that sound?"

Dwayne was completely charmed by her.

"Okay, thank ya," Dwayne told her, glancing at her butt as she walked off.

Eric looked at me with a smirk. "I don't think what Dwayne wants is on the menu."

"Oh leave me alone now," Dwayne moved around in his booth, all flustered. "Haven't really had much luck this summer with the ladies."

"What happened to that one chick?" Eric asked, moving his hand a little as it rested on the table. I loved his relaxed mannerisms. Everything about Eric was awesome. Nice job, Lord Jesus. "The one with the black hair?" Eric added.

"She's always busy working," Dwayne shrugged. "I guess...hadn't heard from her for a while, like she dropped off the planet. Feel like people should get two lives – and one they get to spend making all the damn money they need and the other to enjoy spending it – goin' on vacation. Goddamn it, that's how it should be – we should get two hundred years. Each life we start over, too, as a baby. You know what I'd do?" Dwayne's blue eyes widened with excitement. "If I didn't have to work all the damn time? I'd get a car – like fuckin' James Dean had..."

"The one he died in?" Eric filled in. Dwayne nodded. Eric nodded and glanced at me. He put his hand on the back of his neck. I think sometimes he thought Dwayne was a hopeless cause.

"Yeah, yeah," Dwayne went on, anxiously. "And get me a beautiful woman and just drive to the beach and just stay there, I'd spend my life there."

Randi looked up at her dad with big eyes and pushed her blonde hair behind her ears.

"What about us?" she worried.

"Oh I'd take you too, sweetheart," he made sure to say.

Eric's eyes were aglow with unruly suggestions. I couldn't stop looking at him, I had a feeling tonight was going to turn into something incredible.

"How's your elbow?" he asked, thoughtfully.

"It's okay," I softly replied. I wanted to rest my head on Eric's shoulder, but I knew how that would look to everyone.

"Eric, what you getting?" Dwayne asked, nodding at the menu.

"Not hungry." Eric's tone was flat just then and his smile ran off.

"Eric, you need to eat – that's why you passed out."

"Stomach's in knots – got a show coming up."

I looked up at him, wanting to know more.

"More reason you should eat now," Dwayne was getting stern. The waitress returned to take our order. Eric looked out of the window, ignoring her.

"Where the hell's Donna?" Dwayne asked, looking around the restaurant.

"I'm hungry," Randi whined. "We're taking forever doing this." Randi had a point. I looked back down at the menu. It was all greasy food, it really didn't matter what I got.

"Eric?" Dwayne waited. "Wacha want, boy?"

"I don't want anything," Eric clearly stated, projecting his voice instead of mumbling as he looked right at the waitress. Then he motioned for Randi to move and stormed off.

"That's one stubborn son of a bitch," Dwayne said, rolling his eyes.

"Moody teenage son to deal with?" the waitress guessed.

"Nephew," Dwayne corrected.

"Oh," the waitress just smiled, not knowing the emotional storm brewing. "I woulda guessed son because he's so good lookin'," she winked at Dwayne again, managing to put that smile back on his face. Then she looked at all of us, sporting a charming, nurturing appeal. "You all are so good lookin, make all my other customers look like they just climbed out from under a rock – insects with clothes on!"

Dwayne laughed that time, and it was nice to see the smile back on his face and the twinkle back in his eye.

"Well, alright now," he blushed and showed his shy side. "It's just he hardly eats – trying to get him to eat more." Dwayne nodded at Eric, who was standing outside now, smoking.

"Well that's why he's so skinny – I tell ya what," she said, all cheerful. "I'll throw in an appetizer on the house – tater tots and potato skins stuffed with our famous volcano cheese – it's a little spicy with jalapenos and bacon too."

"Well ain't you sweet?" Dwayne smiled grateful. "He won't be able to resist that. Thank you."

We finished ordering and Dwayne went back to wondering where Donna had gone off to.

"I'll go find her," I said, snatching up my excuse to leave the table and go check on Eric.

24

Eric glanced up at me as I sat down next to him on the bench facing Koludomay Street. It was hard to tell if he was annoyed that I'd joined him. I could never tell if he wanted to be alone or if he wished he had someone to talk to.

"They told me...about your mom...why you don't eat," I bravely spoke. I wasn't going to listen to Donna anymore. I wasn't going to be a slave to her tongue and the words that dropped from it. "I'm sorry."

Eric didn't say anything. He looked a bit shocked, but not upset.

"My parents are abusive too – that's why I never go home," I shared. He took a drag from his cigarette and then he let his hand holding the smoke drop between his knees.

"I'm sorry," he said, almost looking at me. I watched the smoke trail up from between his legs. "But that's not even it – I just don't like to eat," he softly informed. "I feel sick after I eat, every time. I was gonna talk to this nurse that Dwayne was datin' but she just disappeared."

"Oh." Then it registered. A nurse. That disappeared. "Wait, what nurse?" I asked, trying to sound calm.

Eric shrugged. "Some chick. Dwayne dates a lot – he's, like, a serial dater. That's why Donna's mom fled to Florida. Like she's just gonna stick around while he puts it in every woman that comes around? The heart rules over all rational decisions sometimes. And it's fucked up cause...he don't pay me what he's supposed to 'cause you wanna date a woman then you gotta have cash, and that guy..." Eric nodded behind us at the window, "That come up and said all that shit to Dwayne? He's a hundred percent right, Dwayne don't know what the fuck he's doin. He don't know how to fix them cars. I try and help, but I don't know much about cars – I try and learn – I even go to the library sometime and read up on the shit, but he don't. But yeah, I don't know, she seemed okay – that nurse, like nice and shit. I thought I could finally talk to someone about my stomach problems but Donna didn't like her though."

"Why?" I asked, finding it hard to breathe or swallow. Oh my god. It was all starting to unravel, all starting to make sense.

Eric shrugged and turned his pale blue eyes up so he was looking right at me. "Just, I don't know, Donna's mean. It's usually hard to describe people in one word – but not her. She's just mean – she doesn't deserve any other words or like, redemption. She doesn't want others to be happy – she wants the attention to always be on her. She doesn't even care that her mom left because she gets Dwayne's attention – and she wants it – all of it. You've seen how she prances around the house."

"What did she look like?"

"Who?" Eric frowned. Maybe he was getting over this conversation. It was hot and loud here.

"The nurse..."

I almost didn't want to hear his response, but I had to know.

"Black hair...I don't know, she always came around when I was drunk so I can't really say...like...she was cute though." He smiled, almost like he was trying to apologize for saying that.

"Did she have brown eyes?" I asked. I remembered that the most – the way her brown eyes were just open in shock as she lied there in the tall grass, eyes still looking at the evil that put her there. It was something I would never forget.

"Uh yeah – yeah. I think so," Eric replied. "Dwayne likes them, like, foreign lookin' chicks." Eric pointed at the window to Smokey's behind us. "He's only flirtin' with that bimbo waitress because he's so horny."

"Oh...was the nurse foreign?"

I could tell my questions were making him suspicious. "No, she looked it though – just like dark looks, I guess." Eric shrugged and stood up. "Hey, come on," he tossed his smoke to the ground and tugged on the sleeve of my t-shirt. "Let's go back in, you need to eat anyway," he said, even if he wasn't going to eat.

25

I tried to eat, but my appetite was gone now too. All I could do was stare at Donna as she talked and smiled and laughed along with Davey. What did she know? Why did she just not care about the body we saw? Was it the nurse Dwayne dated?

I didn't hear the loud Smokin in the Boys Room song playing or even the collective voices as conversation went on and on around us. I just heard this hum of confusion when it came to someone who was supposed to be my best friend as it became apparent that I really didn't know her at all – she was just a person I chose to be around so I didn't have to go home.

Eric stared at the basket of hot, greasy appetizers before finally taking one. The look of relief on Dwayne's face was truly lovely. Then something by the bar caught his attention.

"Hey uh...who's that guy Donna's talking to?" Dwayne asked no one in particular.

"The shit basket that works at Robbie's," Eric informed. "She's always flashing her titties for him."

This fiery rage lit up Dwayne's eyes. I couldn't believe Eric just said that. This was bad. Dwayne slapped his hands down on the table so loud it made Randi jump. A few seconds later he got up and went over to the bar.

Eric stared down at the table and mumbled, "Welcome to where time stands still, no one leaves and no one will."

"What?" I asked.

### He looked at me but didn't answer. I looked over my shoulder at Dwayne having heated words with Donna.

### "I want juice," Randi informed, wanting out of the booth. I let her out and watched as she went over to the juice, which was close to where her dad had gone. I think she just wanted to be near him.

### I was very nervous over what was about to happen. "This is not okay – Donna's going to be so upset now."

### "Yeah well," Eric's eyes glowed with detest. "It's not okay that she fingered her little sister either."

### "What?" I blurted. "What..."

### "Yeah, Randi told me. That's why I come around all the time – Donna is not right in the head. I didn't report it because Dwayne would freak if someone took Randi away." He shrugged. "His weak ass would probably kill himself. Families are messes you never get over."

I stared at the table and moved my feet and felt little tater tots and stuffed potato things smash under my shoe. Eric didn't eat them, he threw them down on the floor. He straightened up when Randi came back over with her juice and put his hand on her back to help her up in the booth then he looked over his shoulder at the bar.

"Here comes the bar fight," he said, smiling and reaching for the pitcher of beer as if he were watching it all go down on TV. I could kind of hear Dwayne ask Davey if he'd seen Donna's "titties." Then he raised his voice so I could definitely hear him, along with everyone else in the restaurant.

"I SAID DID YOU SEE HER TITTIES?!" Dwayne roared, his southern rebel tone obviously had Davey shaken up. Eric handed me a cup of beer. It was beyond easy to drink in this town, it didn't matter if you were five years old.

Davey was pale with fear as he stuttered. "I d-didn't...just...I..."

"I DUH-DUH-DUH," Dwayne mocked him and then POW! Davey went down faster than I could blink. I pressed my hands down on the booth to push myself up in order to get a better look. This was better than Death Tennis!

Eric threw his fists in the air and hailed, "HOLY NUT SACK YES!!! Shit basket goes down!"

It seemed no one in Smokey's was really upset that Davey went down. But when he tried to get up, Dwayne delivered another blow, grabbing him to hold him still and ramming his knee into Davey's gut. Davey fell over again and Dwayne followed his last hit up with a kick in Davey's face.

"Oh shit," Eric didn't cheer that time, because this was getting quite serious. These blows could do a lot of harm.

"DAD!!!" Donna was freaking out, crying and trying to stop him. Some guy tried to play hero and got in between them and Dwayne pushed him out of the way. I always knew one day the sleeping lion in Dwayne would wake up. This was that day.

"Shit – cops," Eric said, standing up and grabbing my wrist. "Let's get the fuck out of here."

I tried to go with him when he wanted me to and nearly slipped on the grease from the smashed appetizers he'd thrown on the floor. Dwayne and Davey were still fighting and some drunken buffoons at the bar cheered them on. My whole world had suddenly erupted into chaos and I was about to run away into the night with Eric Dorfman.

Part 3

They Left Us, We Leave Them

26

Randi ran after us, refusing to go back to Smokey's so we took her with us.

"Why were they fighting?" Randi wondered as we walked towards an even darker street.

"Because Davey's a shit basket, and Donna's a shit basket. And sometimes, Dwayne is a shit basket."

I tried not to laugh but Eric could be amazingly blunt and sometimes what he said was so funny. He suddenly lifted Randi up and gave her a big fart-sounding kiss on her cheek before putting her back down. Her giggle brightened up the dark street. I wanted Eric. I wanted to be with Eric. I needed him.

This was Fray Street, the street where that disastrous fast food fire took place. The homes around it were dark and quiet. Eric took my hand in the dark.

"This street is peaceful because no one lives here," he said. "The houses were like abandoned because of the fire. This is where I've been squatting."

He headed up the driveway of one of the houses. There were no lights on inside, no sound of life. There was no car parked here and the door to the little mailbox in the yard was open. Randi ran straight for the swing set in the backyard.

"You think Dwayne will get arrested?" I asked Eric as he headed up to the porch.

"I hope not, Donna's honestly not worth the trouble. She would love the spectacle though."

I followed Eric up the stairs to the vacant dark house before he turned to say something of utmost importance to me. "Always know who's worth fighting for."

He took my hand, about pull me inside the dark house when I stopped.

"What about Randi?" I asked.

"She'll be fine," Eric spoke. Whenever Eric said something, I had the excruciating habit of believing him.

"Hey Randi?" he called out while my body rocked with excitement at the thought of Eric dragging me off to a dark room to do who knew what. My mind was charged with fear, my heart hammered with hope. "Stay right there, okay?" Eric pointed to the swing set and Randi obediently nodded.

Eric took my hand again and simply opened the door and walked in as if it were his house.

"So you've been in here before?" I asked him. Was this where you came the night you robbed the liquor store?

He sat on the floor of the house, which was empty with the exception of a dusty blanket on the floor and a little statue of the Virgin Mary up on the window ledge. He looked up at me with puppy dog eyes and a playful grin. The boy was up to something.

"Sit," he said.

I sat down next to him.

"Yeah," he answered once I sat down. "I came here last night."

"You just walked in?" I was always amazed at his nerve. "What if someone had been here?"

He looked at me and I thought he was going to laugh at my question but his smile faded.

"I checked it out first. Louise..." Oh my god, he said my name. That was the first time he'd said it. "I do this kinda a lot, crash in empty houses. I don't always like to stay at Dwayne's – the fucking roaches and mice – and I hate my mom, an empty house has a lot to offer."

"Yeah, it is very quiet here," I said. My house was never quiet – my parents were always fighting. Dwayne's house was never quiet either. "Do people...just turn into noise?" I wondered.

He looked at me with a hard stare. "You're not...noisy." He paused to light a cigarette. "Yeah," he said in a low, husky voice. "You and me got a lot in common I think."

"Yeah," I softly spoke. "I really like you....I know you're older than me and I'm not supposed to but...I do..."

"I mean who made those rules?" he tossed his hand, cigarette smoke drew circles in the air between us. "They didn't know us anyway."

I hesitated for maybe twelve seconds before I threw myself in his lap and our mouths crashed in a crazy kiss. I didn't know what I was doing really, it was kind of messy, but he taught me how to slow down and then he took the lead.

"That's it," he said in the sexiest voice as his thumb stroked my cheek. "I'll teach you."

Oh...dear...god...

I felt like I was melting. I couldn't believe he put his tongue in my mouth. I put mine in his and it was a wonderful feeling. I pulled at the handkerchief he had around his hand, to cover the cut he got earlier tonight when he smashed that window. I don't know why I was tugging at it, it was one of those things you did I guess when you were caught up in a minute. I wanted to tug at something of his. He giggled a little and helped me take it off of his wrist. He was lying on the floor, splayed out for me if I wanted him, and he handed me the bloodstained handkerchief. I put it in my mouth and he made an "oh my" expression. Our bodies got closer in the dark room. Then he started whispering in my ear.

"I'm going to put my hand up your shirt," he let me know. I nodded and watched as he placed his hand on my hip. I still had his handkerchief in my mouth and for a brief moment he put his hand over my mouth and then he moved it and we started giggling. This was the getting to know each other stage – what we liked and what we didn't like. I wasn't experienced enough to know what I liked and didn't like yet though.

The handkerchief fell out of my mouth and we started kissing again. His hands were so warm, his body. My body was alive with this strange warm charge I'd never felt before, too.

I was laying down on my back now and he was on top of me. Oh my god, I couldn't believe this. In my fantasies about him, I always knew what to do – how to move right, how to kiss right, but I felt awkward here. In fantasies, we were professionals. In reality, we struggled but the moments it came together were like magic.

"Relax," he said, his hand slipping over my tummy, nice and slow. I felt something on my leg and realized it was his thing. It was swelling in his jeans.

"Oh...oh my god..." I sighed as I felt his warm hand slip over my right breast. "Oh..." he really knew how to touch, proving his strength but not being too rough. "Oh..." I couldn't stop moaning. My body lifted from the ground to meet his. My goodness.

"You're beautiful," he whispered. "I shoulda already told you that."

Oh my god, he was being so sweet.

"I never thought you even liked me...?" I said as he kissed my neck. I felt a little bit of stubble against his face. I guess it was invisible because I'd never seen it but I definitely felt it. It was rough, but I liked it for some reason.

He took his hand out of my shirt and had both hands on my face, my leg was in between his legs and I felt his thing getting even bigger.

"I did, I just didn't know how to be around you," he admitted.

Aww, he was shy too. This might be the greatest moment ever in my life.

"I didn't know how to be around you either," I said right before he kissed me again. I loved feeling his stubble. I loved how he smelled. "Mmm..."

"You wanna touch me?" he whispered in my ear, kissing my neck now.

Oh my.

"We won't get a chance like this again – only while we're here," he said.

I put my hand on his stomach. His skin felt warm and clean. I imagined him in the shower earlier. I felt his hand slip up my leg, from my knee to my thigh.

"I wanna touch you," he said. "Can I touch you?"

I put my hand up under his shirt as we kissed harder, tongues pressed together. His hair was in my face. Oh, that smell. Raspberry and sweat.

"Yes, you can," I permitted. I felt his thumb press against me down there.

"Oh..." I was awake with a strange feeling now. I looked into his eyes and he kissed me even harder – it rocked every part of me.

"You can touch me anywhere," he said, suggestively. The way he said it was kind of cocky, but he had a right to feel like he just gave me permission to do something amazing. He knew he was hot.

When I kept touching his chest – which was plenty erotic for me – he took my wrist and guided down towards his waist and almost put it there when a scream erupted from outside. He sighed in disappointment when I jumped up from under him.

"Randi!" I scrambled up in the dark room, tripping over something on the floor before running outside. "RANDI?!" I ran around to the side of the house to find the swing she was on empty, swinging back and forth in a confused motion like she'd just jumped off or been grabbed.

"Randi!" I yelled again in a panic. Eric came outside eventually, toying with his shirt.

"I don't see her," I told him. "Something's hap..."

"Someone's here," her voice interrupted from the corner of the dark porch.

"Who?" Eric frowned, moody. "I told you to stay on the swings." He went over to pick her up.

"A lady! I saw a lady! She was about to go in the house!" Randi was terrified as she pointed to the front door of the house. Eric carried her out into the yard and put her down.

"What lady?" he said, still upset we'd been interrupted. I looked around to see if anyone else was around but it was too dark. I suddenly hated Fray Street.

"There's no lady," Eric told her. "Calm down, sorry we left you alone, okay?" He took her hand and we walked out into the street. I looked over my shoulder at the house. I could feel someone there on the porch, watching us, lurking. They didn't need to run after us to get us, they would get us eventually on their own.

"Eric..." I muttered as we headed back to the light of Koludomay Street. "Something's been attacking you..."

"Everything's okay," he said, looking at me. I could tell he didn't want to frighten Randi.

"But there was a lady," Randi hastily said as we walked down the street. "With black hair – she was about to go in the house! She was watching you through the window – she said your name! She said your name, Eric!"

Eric didn't say anything. He just kept walking but I could tell he was scared.

"What did the lady look like?" I asked Randi.

"Just don't worry about it," Eric told me, surprising me with his tone of voice. He sounded moody. I got that he took me there to make out with me, maybe more.

"She had black hair and a white outfit...like a doctor," Randi said.

"Or a nurse," I whispered.

"Yes!" Randi immediately hollered. "A nurse."

"Randi," Eric shook his head. Then he stopped walking and appeared to be arguing with himself.

Randi nodded. "Yeah, yeah a nurse. She had something in her hand – it had blood on it." He looked back at the dark street we had been on that still smelled like smoke from ruined buildings. He started pacing back and forth nervously.

"What?" I asked him, seeing the concern all over his face.

"That sounds like who I saw...when I passed out yesterday." He finally looked at me. "In the garage. This is weird," he admitted. "I saw her, she was like, leaning around from the side of the garage just looking in at me – looking me all over like she wanted...it was really freaky. I thought I was just imagining it because I haven't been feeling well. I turned around and felt something hot on my back and then it pulled at my jeans again just like on the couch – like it was trying to undress me. Next thing I know you guys all over me, trying to wake me up."

"Oh my god..." It was happening. It was following us – that's why it was no longer out in the grass by the tennis courts.

27

I ran off to the house, which wasn't that far. I could see the crowded Smokey's parking lot from where we were. From there, it was a straight shot across Robbie's parking lot and the vegetable garden. I was furious – stomping on tomatoes – I was really going to let Donna have it. I tripped disastrously on the stupid tire now on the ground. I fumbled and it was ugly. I had a new scrape on my knee that would make me long forget the one of my elbow. Whatever – I was too angry to feel the pain.

"WE SHOULD HAVE GONE TO THE COPS!" I shouted as I flew in through the kitchen. Everyone was sitting there talking rationally – Dwayne, Donna and that stupid guy Davey. Shit baskets. The room was filled with cigarette smoke. Ugh.

"Calm down, Weezy," Dwayne said, turning to dip ash from his smoke into the ashtray. "He's not pressing charges," Dwayne pointed to Davey. "We worked it out."

Did he really think this was about Davey??

"That's not what I'm talking about." I went over to Donna who was staring at me like I better shut up. Her eyes were swollen from crying earlier when the fight happened, and her frizzy hair was more of a mess than ever. She still had that cut on her nose too.

"It's following him!" I lashed out. "Eric! It's gonna hurt him and you don't care!"

"What?" Donna snapped back, making an ugly face like I was crazy – like I made no sense. "What is wrong with you?" she made me sound crazy.

"YOU KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT! YOU KNOW! YOU KNOW WHAT WE SAW! HOW DID YOU GET THE MONEY FOR THAT RACKET?!!"

"What racket?" Dwayne was amazingly lost. His confusion actually looked like it was sobering him up a bit.

"Nothing, it's nothing. I got a new racket with the allowance you give me." Donna made that sound reasonable – but there was no way she got enough allowance to afford such an expensive racket.

"Allowance for what?! Like you even do anything around here!" I was so angry my knees were shaking.

"Maybe you should get an allowance for being a whore – being a prostitute – like what you were going to do with Eric," Donna said. She wasn't yelling like I was – she sounded calm, cool and collected. Ugh.

"Hey now," Dwayne called out. "What's she mean?"

"Tell him about the body," I ordered.

Just then, Eric came in the backdoor, carrying with him a world of testosterone and mayhem. I heard some guys out in the backyard and a bike revving up. He literally handed Randi over to Dwayne and just walked out.

"Looks like someone has better things to do than hang out with you," Donna coldly pointed out to me.

I had to admit I was a little hurt that Eric just left like that after I just let him put his hands all over me in that dark house, but maybe he was scared. Maybe he needed his crew of bad boys and bikes to try and scare that nurse away.

28

I stayed in the kitchen that night after everyone else went to bed. It had been an exhausting night for everyone, and everyone wanted to shut their brains down and go to sleep and find better things in dreams.

So did I – but I wasn't about to sleep in this house. Sleep with Donna? While the woman she probably killed waited in dark corners to hurt me? Or maybe it was going to find Eric tonight. Oh god.

I took a sip of some very old soda left on the table when I felt something struggling in the pool of flat soda on my tongue, trying to survive. A roach! I spat the soda out and scrambled to my feet. This was it. I couldn't stay here anymore.

I didn't understand why I went – maybe I was just curious. I wanted to know why they never called to check in on me.

I hadn't been on my street in so long I forgot the order of the houses. First was the rotting white house with its paint chipping off and a giant hole in the woodwork of the front porch. The second was a house with a bunch of trash bags in the yard that had been ripped open and rummaged through, maybe by possums or squirrels.

I finally got to my house, which was the biggest on the block. I used to think it was a good thing that my house was the biggest, until I realized it just meant there was more room for bad things to happen in it. What was it that Eric said? An empty house had a lot to offer.

I saw the sign out in the yard. There was just enough sparse light from the streetlight for me to read the words FORECLOSURE HOUSE FOR SALE

I didn't do anything for a few minutes. I just stood there. My dad's car was gone. The driveway was empty, with big dips in the gravel from the tires when my dad had parked his Bronco there.

They were gone. This might as well have been Fray Street. They just left. They just left me.

"What?" I moaned in tired confusion as I walked up the steps to the old porch. The porch was dark green – the color of rotten avocados – and it was peeling back to show the real color underneath, which was a blood red.

I tried the door but it was padlocked. I looked in through the window where I used to sit and watch TV. There was nothing left – there was no furniture in the entire house.

"IT'S NOT FUCKING FAIR!" I yelled, the rage getting the best of me. I beat on the door but I knew no one would answer. The difficult thing was not wanting them around but needing them still. I was still a child.

I went around to the back and sat down where the potted plant used to be and started to drift off to sleep. I was so tired. I never slept well anymore at Donna's house. I'd sleep now because I simply didn't care.

I woke up to the careful sound of footsteps. It was impossible to be quiet while walking on rocks in the driveway, but whoever they were was trying.

I tried to adjust my eyes but it was too dark to see anything out here. The sound seemed to stop once I woke up. I felt someone standing right there, just out of sight, looming in the dark. I knew if I leaned forward on the porch a little, I could see them though.

It could be Donna. Or it could be that thing – it could be the nurse. I didn't know which was worse.

I finally found the courage to lean forward and saw her just standing there, in her nurse's uniform, her black hair all ratty, her brown eyes screaming out for something.

I moved back and reached for something to defend myself with but there wasn't anything. I fumbled around in the darkness until I fell on the porch.

"Errrricccc," it called out.

"You can't have him – why do you want him?" I wanted to know.

It didn't respond right away, but I heard the crunching sound of it walking towards me. I needed something to throw at it.

"I didn't do it," I finally said, after I heard another footstep. Why couldn't there be any other sound tonight? Usually crickets were out or fireflies, but nothing tonight. No sound and no lightning bugs, it was as if they were all afraid of her too.

"She did it – my friend did it. She did it! Go get her, leave Eric alone."

"Errrricccc," it just said in that horrendous croaking sound. "I want...the boy."

I had to look at her again. I leaned forward to find her eyes big and sad, as if pleading for something.

"She did it," I said again, retreating again against the back door. "Donna did it." But did she? I really had no idea what happened.

"Errrricccc?" she said in that guttural voice of hers.

"Why do you want Eric? He didn't hurt you."

"Errriccccc," she just said, rather demanding that time. Then it got all too quiet. Nothing made a sound at all. Did all the neighbors move too? Why was it so quiet? Did every single house on the street get foreclosed?

Then she spoke in a voice that sounded confident and cheerful. "I'll find him." Then she started humming. After a minute, I got up enough courage to lean forward and look in the driveway but I didn't see her. I didn't see anything at all. Was she behind me? I panicked and turned around but there was nothing there but the backdoor of the empty house that used to be my home.

29

I woke up on the hard cement porch, relieved once again to have been found by the morning light. If there was anything that ever saved me, it was that.

When I sat up, I realized two things – my neck was incredibly stiff from sleeping so unconventionally, and a blue flannel blanket had been wrapped around me. I stared at it in confusion as it slipped from my shoulders. Then I smelled the burning Camel Red. Then I saw him. Eric was sitting on the back porch with me, staring out at the driveway where his Harley Davidson replaced the cruel vacancy that was there last night. That was when I knew it would all be okay.

"Eric," I softly called out to him.

"Hey," he said, his voice as gruff as ever. Had he been out all night smoking and raising pure sin? It surely sounded like it.

"How did you find me?" I asked.

He shrugged. "It's not hard to figure you out...we're a lot alike. I go home when my mom's not there too."

"I don't know where mine went," I said.

"Yeah well...I don't know where mine did either," he pointed to his head. I got that he meant that she was crazy.

All of the sudden, he looked at me with a shy morning smile like he was capable of erasing the past. We could start over in a world that actually wanted us.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," I smiled. He tossed his head, his way of telling me to come over. I moved so I was sitting next to him.

"Got kind chilly last night..." he aimed his hand towards the blanket. "So."

I picked the blanket up and cradled it appreciatively. "Thank you. How long have you been here?" I asked.

"Uh..." his gravelly voice dragged and then he took a puff of his smoke.

"Since like six in the morning?" he guessed. "Is that when the sun comes up?" He told time by the brightness and darkness of the sky.

I didn't know what to say, he could be so sweet sometimes.

"I didn't mean to leave you last night," he let me know, shaking his head. "I was, like, freaked out. And that house..." he shook his head. "There's an energy stirring – I don't know what's been making shit happen, but, even before...it was a lot to handle."

"Yeah." I understood.

"So your parents moved," he took it.

"Yeah, I guess...they got kicked out or something..." I had no idea.

"That's fucked. The sign says foreclosed," he said.

"I know." I fought back tears but I didn't know how long I could keep doing it.

"Hey," he stood up and held his hand out for me. "Let's get out of here."

I followed him up the street. The sky was brightening and the sun was starting to warm things up into one of the final days of summer. No one walked like Eric. He walked so cool, like nothing got to him. Time didn't weigh his shoulders down and his wispy blonde hair fell carelessly off his shoulders. He was born with that rock star thing, no doubt.

We crossed the street to Donna's house. I knew I needed to tell him about the nurse but if I saw the body and didn't report it, what did that make me?

The house was very quiet, I guess because it was still early. Eric sat in the big rocking chair and I sat over in the swing. His bike was parked behind an ugly 1981 blue Toyota Celica.

"Whose car is that?" I wondered.

"The future mother of another damn kid of Dwayne's," Eric explained. I loved the big black Ray-Bans he was wearing. I saw a similar pair on Axl Rose once during an interview. Eric could seriously be his twin, only they had different tattoos.

"Look," Eric suddenly spoke up. "It may not seem like it now, but this is a good thing, your parents moving...wherever they went. In the end...you don't wanna be with someone don't wanna be with you." It was just insane how cool Eric sounded and what he said and how he took a drag of his smoke after.

Dwayne came outside and I was very embarrassed that I was crying. I certainly didn't want to have to explain why. Eric whipped his sunglasses off and handed them to me and I slipped them on just before Dwayne turned and leaned against the porch's pillar to look at us.

"Well last night was all sorts of holy mess," he said before lighting a cigarette. His voice dragged, hoarse and beat. He got a funny look on his face when he saw me – probably because Eric's sunglasses were enormous on my face.

"Yeah, I say today we fuggin' take it easy," Eric said. Every time he cursed I blushed. It was such a rosy automatic reaction.

"Where the hell did you and the boys go last night?" Dwayne asked him.

"Band practice."

"Band practice? At three in the morning?"

Eric gave a cool shrug and leaned forward so his elbows rested on his knees. "You gotta do it when you can do it. One of them boys works all day and the other just got out of jail," Eric reached for his smokes on the porch's railing. "That asshole Davey ever leave?"

"Yeah, yeah, we worked it out," Dwayne answered. "I had to give him a good ass whopping though, shit ain't right, what he was lettin' Donna do – she's still a child, and she's my child, not to mention." Dwayne pointed at his chest, his voice raising with anger. He shook his head. "By the way, ya'll seen Donna?" he asked us.

"Nope," Eric couldn't care less.

"You should just kick his ass because he sucks though," Eric said. "Davey. Hate that guy. His band sucks sour hours too." Eric flung his smoke over the porch's railing and stared out at the street before us. His eyes seemed to go empty.

"Well, gonna go check on Randi, got some shit to do in the garage – might need your help later," Dwayne told Eric.

"Yeah, okay." Eric didn't exactly sound committed.

After he left, it was just Eric and I again. We watched a nondescript car pull up and park in front of the house. A lady in a business suit got out. She had a beige briefcase with her. Eric stared at her intensely, not moving at first. Then he slowly straightened up, his eyes flickered with alarm as she neared the porch.

"Social services," he whispered to me. "Get up, get on my bike. Now."

I didn't waste time. I got right up and went to his Harley. I knew the lady was here for me. I was going to to be taken away if I didn't go right then.

Eric got on his bike after slipping on sexy black motorcycle gloves. I got on behind him, wrapping my arms around his waist. Everything suddenly felt different once I was on the bike. I felt in control and yet didn't give a damn about anything at all. The social services lady was walking across the porch to get to us but the sound of the bike's motor overrode whatever she was saying.

"Ready?" Eric checked, looking over his shoulder.

"Yes..."

"You have to hold on tight, okay?" he made sure to tell me over the loudness of the bike. "Hold on and just don't let go."

"Okay, okay." The lady was stepping off the porch now to get to us.

"Go, go, go!" I shouted. Then we took off. I felt like in that moment we could create out own world of chaos and not be the victim of anyone else's.

30

Being on the bike was amazing. It was also scary, especially when Eric took sudden turns and the bike dipped down to one side and I was really close to the road, and felt like if I didn't squeeze the life out of him I would slip off the seat and die, so I did squeeze him, I held on for life – for our new life together in whatever town we were heading to.

"You okay?" he asked in between stops, when the revving sound was reduced to sudden, spaced out pttt sounds. I didn't ease up on my hold on him though, even when we stopped at a traffic light. He smelled so good, he drove so fast, and he was going to save me.

"Yes," I answered, my chin resting on his shoulder.

Lilyworth was a boring town. It just was. The most exciting thing that happened in it was a massive fire that destroyed those fast food restaurants on Fray Street.

But that didn't matter now because we were no longer in Lilyworth. We were in an awesome little beach town called Royal Cove. Royal Cove was just south of Surf City, a beach town of bars, rundown motels and surf shops. Royal Cove, despite its name, was even less fancy than Surf City. It was the town a lot of kids went to who wanted to learn how to surf without embarrassing themselves around all the badass surfers who went to Surf City. Royal Cove was also popular with the biker community, and it was recently rumored that a biker gang called Skwad was trying to take it over but their rivals, another biker gang called The Hades, was going to stop them.

I wasn't sure about that, then again who knew if that was why Eric wanted to come here. We went to a surf and turf restaurant called Underwater Treasure. It was pretty nondescript from the outside and hard to tell if it was a house or a struggling business from the outside until you caught the small wooden bar with the blue letters on it that spelled out UT, its initials.

There was a sign posted on the wall behind the bar that exclaimed WE ASK ALL BIKERS TO BE CONSIDERATE OF OUR FAMILY-THEMED RESTAUARANT. The bartender, a middle-aged man who looked like he could be the owner, gave Eric a nervous look when we walked in. Eric simply wasn't the kind of boy you wanted in a family-oriented restaurant.

"Howdy," he eventually greeted us anyway. He looked out at Eric's Harley, none-too-pleased with that either. Then a guy came out of the bathroom that looked like a seasoned biker. He had a helmet too, which Eric never wore. He had silver buckles around his boots and a little blue human skull tattooed to every knuckle on both fists. He had brown eyes that spelled years of darkness, decades of trouble. His jet-black hair spilled down to his shoulders, neither straight nor curly, just somewhere in between. He smelled like turpentine. He nodded at us at last and grabbed a vacant stool. Maybe it empty because it was only three in the afternoon, but this place seemed dead. It was really nice though, with blue leather cushions on the bar stools and chairs. There were blowup mermaid dolls hanging from the ceiling and a weird alien/fish looking statue on the back patio that looked out at the beach.

"What's up, man?" The older biker said to Eric, like he knew him.

"Gettin' the fuck outta dodge," Eric said back. The older biker held his fist up in a pump of approval.

"This is cool," I muttered to Eric as we got situated on the bar stools. Things felt so exciting here – being out of town – away from everyone. And why shouldn't I be? No one wanted me around anyway.

I was a bit nervous around Eric still, especially during the day because we rarely hung out at that time. He was always busy with Dwayne's garage or running off some place. Now it was just us, and it was like a date. No one was here to keep an eye on us or tell us what to do. I didn't have Donna's crazy bossiness and Eric didn't have Dwayne making him sweat it out in the garage for little to no pay.

Eric fished out his black leather wallet and looked completely cool as he flashed his fake ID to the bartender.

"What about her?" the bartender pointed to me. Wow, he actually thought Eric was twenty-one. I guess he sort of looked like the guy on the ID, only I didn't think their nose was the same. I guess Eric carried himself like he was twenty-one. Trouble old enough to drink. I guess bikers were intimidating that way.

"Hey man, chill," the biker at the end of the bar with the skull tattoos told the bartender. "They're your only customers, give the girl a drink."

"Mind your own business there, Bobby Sway," the bartender pointed at the biker, who was definitely rough around the edges but also very handsome. "And they ain't my only customers either. There's you and a lady in the bathroom."

"I'm always here so I don't really count," Bobby Sway chuckled, proving to be a charismatic guy. "And I bet that lady in the bathroom is just a figment of your imagination." He made the bartender laugh and lighten up. Next thing I knew, he was pouring a golden ale into a glass and handing it over to me.

"Thank you!" I said, surprised.

"Don't act so grateful," Eric whispered to me after the bartender walked off. "He might think you're really under age." Eric sliced the space between us with his hand. "Just be cool. Sometimes when you act too appreciative, it's almost like you're saying you don't deserve it." Wow. The logic of Eric Dorfman.

"Right. Got it. Thanks for bringing me out here."

"Yeah," he mumbled a response. Then he nodded at the patio. "Let's go out there, doll."

Doll. He called me doll. Whenever a guy called you a sweet name it definitely had to mean things were getting serious, right?

31

"I used to come here a lot when I was a kid – your age," Eric said, tossing a hand out to point to me. He made himself sound a lot older than me, more than he actually was.

The water was really pretty today – bluer than I ever imagined the ocean could be.

"Really?" I said.

He nodded and reached for his beer. He had his white and blue bandana around his head still, and his black Cubs cap was crammed into the back pocket of his worn out jeans.

"How would you get out here?" I wondered.

"I'd hitch rides," he said, no shame. I could tell every time he told me something a bit crazy, he was excited to impress me. It was cute.

"Wow."

His eyes glimmered with happiness. "Yeah, every once and a while I'd get some weirdo but for the most part it was cool."

"Was it because you didn't want to be around your mom?" I blurted without thinking. His smile vanished and he looked over at the water.

"Nah, well yeah, but I've always just wanted to go on my own." He was speaking in a quiet voice. I looked up when that biker Bobby Sway came out. He went over to the edge of the patio and looked out at the water, setting his beer down on the railing. He acted like he wasn't listening to us, but I could tell he was.

"My dad split and then she split – but in a different way," Eric told me of his mom. "She went down, like..." Eric made a motion with his hand, pointing out at the water and whistling. "She went nuts," he said. "Started taking things out on me. First I was the man around the house – at age ten. She'd go, Eric do this, Eric do that." His imitation of her was funny, but I didn't feel like I should laugh so I didn't. "I was supposed to do all the shit he did – get a job, fix up the house if something went wrong. Then all of the sudden she starts cooking all this food – I mean all this food," he said, expressing himself with his hands by holding them up and shaking them. He paused to sip his beer. "I come home from school one day and it's like...two in the afternoon and she's made enough food for, like, three Thanksgivings." Bobby Sway laughed proving he was listening. Eric didn't seem to mind – they seemed pretty comfortable in each other's presence. "I'm not shittin you," Eric continued his story. "I asked her why she made all this food, and she told me my question upset her, that I wasn't appreciative. She tied me to a chair and made me eat it until I started throwing up. Then she beat me up. Then she..." he started to say something else but stopped. "Never mind. I didn't bring us all the way out here to talk about my crazy mother."

"Then why did you?" I asked. I think I knew why. He wanted to be alone with me. I wanted to be alone with him too.

"I mean..." Eric's voice got soft. "They left us – we leave them."

I glanced over and found Bobby Sway just staring at us. It didn't seem to bother him when I noticed, either, he just kept staring. Then he looked at Eric, fixated.

"To get away from it, them, everyone," Eric said. I knew what he meant. "We can't go back," he let me know. I was relieved but also curious as to how we'd do on our own. Then Bobby Sway came over.

"Ae, uh, I don't mean to interrupt but I noticed your bike out there," he said to Eric.

"Yeah," Eric smiled a little, his mouth lifting up in one corner and his dimple showed. He sat up a little, obviously having respect for the biker.

"You 'member me?" Bobby asked Eric.

"I do – yeah. You came to my show." Eric's eyes lit up and smiled, so proud.

"You guys are fucking crazy – sitting a blowup doll on fire and shit. Uh – Ataxia! That was your name." Bobby seemed a bit drunk, but he could handle it.

"Yeah, just changed the name back to Clobberhead though." Eric looked at me and winked. Oh my god, he took my suggestion.

"Anyway, I'm Bobby Sway," Bobby introduced himself like the name carried weight, like he was famous or something. "Hades," he said.

"No way!" Eric was amazed. "That's your MC?"

"Yup." Bobby glanced at me and smirked and looked back at Eric. "Headin' out to L.A. tonight – you interested?"

"Holy shit!" Eric exclaimed. "I been wantin to go out there. Fuckin' Guns N Roses are playing at The Whiskey."

"Yup." Bobby started to light his cigarette. "Gonna check that out and take care some business," Bobby informed.

Wow, I was sure life could not actually be this good. Bobby was still looking at us and I knew then he was our ticket out of here – and our golden ticket into straight up mayhem.

"Couldn't help but...overhear what you were sayin...'bout your situation," Bobby said. "You know, we could use another rider."

Eric looked at me and nodded. "Could I bring my girl?" he asked Bobby.

My girl. He just called me his girl. I was swooning in Heaven.

"Of course, wudn't expectin' you to just leave her here," Bobby chuckled.

Eric looked at me with a devilish grin. "Wanna go to L.A., doll?"

I nodded. I wanted nothing more.

