Continuing with the posting of my version of the Great American Novel, as I was encouraged to do so by my friend @VioletThunk on Twitter. Maybe this can become a regular thing and it'll inspire me to finish the damn thing. Here is Chapter 1.

Chapter One




The little eyes of countless figurines followed him into the family study as his father gently touched his arm and nudged him forward. William stopped in the center of the room, turning around to face his dad, who gently closed the door and paused to take a deep breath, his head down toward his feet before turning around himself and fixing his only child with a concentrated stare. The computer was on, a screen saver of flying toasters moving quickly across the monitor, so his father had obviously been working  at his desk when they had entered the front door.  William hated this room. He had been made to study in here and do his homework night after night, surrounded by his father’s plaques and medical citations and his mother’s collectables. The carpet was thick and there was a large, comfortable white sofa at one end, but neither of these things offered solace from the hours he had spent scribbling out essays or calculating math problems. A large wooden cabinet along the far wall, directly across from his father’s portion of the room, housed hundreds of glass figurines and crystal creatures, some from the Disney store, some purchased overseas, others on ebay or at flea markets. Soon his mother would need a new place to display them. They peered out at him with their blank but questioning glances, and he felt almost powerless to lie in their presence. This was a room which would never allow him to grow up, or be the man his parents so desperately thought they were preparing him to be. He took a deep breath and prepared for the worst. But he saw as his father began to speak that he was worried, not angry, and some of William’s defenses melted away. “I wanna know what’s going on, Billy. Right now.” he asked his son, his voice firm but still showing signs of distress.

“Dad…please, not Billy.” he replied, an argument he had thought long since won, but his parents still insisted on calling him his childhood moniquer.

“Never mind that!” he snapped, harsher this time. “You bring your friend in at six in the morning half-naked and with one foot frostbitten and you ask me to take care of him? For Christ’s sake, I should be calling an ambulance. His parents could sue.”

“They don’t know he’s here.” William had never noticed how small his Dad, a thin but powerful man who normally stood six foot two, became when he was frazzled. He seemed to shrink in the burgeoning daylight creeping through the half-closed blinds. He also noticed the strands of gray hair just starting to infiltrate his father’s bangs, and he wondered why he hadn’t seen them until now. His father laughed, more a mocking tone than a funny one, and ran a hand through his hair, spinning around as he thought about what his son was asking him to do.

He was slightly calmer, but still firm with worry when their eyes met again. “Are the two of you doing drugs?“

William allowed a look of offense to pass across his face. “No!“ he replied firmly.

“What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. He called me this morning and said he needed help. I met him at his place.” he answered, leaving out the part about finding his friend in the snow covered field with no shoes.

“Billy…” he began, but stopped himself when his son flashed a disapproving grimace. “…Will…” he corrected, “…I could get in a lot of trouble. He could lose the use of his foot. He needs a hospital. I don’t have the proper equipment here.”

William took a breath, mindful of the weight of his request. “Dad…Toby is my best friend. He doesn’t want a hospital. He begged me not to call an ambulance. You know about the troubles his family is having right now. I’m asking you…please help him, here.” An interminable moment passed, during which William avoided the glances of the figurines and watched the far-off gaze of his father, whose eyes darted all about the room as he considered the request.

“If I do this for you, you’ve got to do something for me.”

“What?”

“I don’t want you to hang around with this boy anymore. There’s obviously something very wrong with him. I don’t know if it’s drugs, or problems with the law, or what, but I’m not going to have it in my son’s life.”

“He’s my friend…he’s all right.”

“Will, those are my terms. And I want you to get back on the math team at school. You’ve fooled around for the past month. It’s time to take yourself seriously again.”

“Is this really the time for this?” he asked his father angrily.

“You tell me. The ball is in your court.”

He thought about his options, but decided he really had none since he could hear Toby gurning with pain as he tried to move in the hallway outside the door. “All right. Just help him.”

“Run a hot bath upstairs, get the heating pad and some menthol ice out of the medicine cabinet.” he told his son, as they both bolted for the doorway, ready for the task at hand.







The midday chatter of an either grief-stricken or bedside weary crowd lulled Shelby Johnson as she sat criss-crossing a spoon through some God-awful tomato soup in the third floor cafeteria. The room was half full, yet still abundant with numerous conversations and the echoing miasma of lunchtime preparation. Plastic utensils scraped a tray here, uncharacteristically mellow line cooks re-filled bins of meatloaf and grilled chicken there, as people went about their business of eating and trying to forget why they were here in the large county hospital halfway between New York and Pennsylvania. It was a rather large room, but as this was the second largest hospital in the state, it did not surprise her. But size and the lovely beige window dressings did little to hide the institutional aspects of the room, as lab-coated doctors and technicians scurried with half-eaten lunches to rush to their next appointment, and just outside the main doors behind her, an unending line of admissions to the rehab ward were pushed past in wheelchairs or walkers. This room, and the parking lot, and her sister’s endless moves from ward to ward had taken up the bulk of the last seven months of her life, and Shelby was sure that the exhaustion was evident in her eyes. She pushed that thought aside, willing herself to take another sip of the less than appetizing soup so that she could tough it out here for the rest of the day and keep her sister company. Numerous families were trying to make the best of the cafeteria food around her, and she turned from a woman and her two small children  on her left, to a family of five, with varying ages and sexes, on her right. All were lost in the food and whatever conversation they could muster, hardly taking notice of the skinny blonde with her hair tied back and large circles under her eyes. A set of large picture windows suddenly splashed the sunlight across her face as the clouds changed position outside, and she glanced up, her eyes squinting in the oncoming haze, to take in the view, such as it was. What must have once been a pretty but nowhere near cathartic view of the small park and playground across the street had been blocked by renovation after renovation, until all that could be seen were air conditioning units and exhaust fans on the roof of the slightly lower research wing across the way, with just a tiny hint of long, snaking branches from some of the older trees in the park which stood high above the street. There was still blue sky, though, and clouds or not, it gave her some small measure of comfort as she took another half-hearted sip of soup.

It was nearly one, which meant that her sister’s lunch would have been served and retrieved by now, so Renee would soon be shouting for her ever-faithful sibling. She tore open the small package of crackers which had come with her soup, which, in truth, seemed heartier than the soup, and ate the first one in a single bite, wiping stray crumbs from her lips as the sunlight vanished behind some clouds once more. Shelby rubbed her temples, where the first signs of an imminent headache were making themselves known. Out of the corner of her eye, to the left, she sensed that she was being watched. Her eyes moved across the table, though her head stayed down in position and against her hands. At the table across from her, where the woman and her two small children were eating quietly, the young boy, seeming all of six, had stopped picking at his peanut butter and jelly sandwich to glance her way. Her eyes met his, and a dread filled his features briefly, and Shelby realized, for the first time in a long, long while, she had forgotten about her scar. A wide, jagged break in her facial skin started just above her left eye, stopped where her eye had miraculously been spared, and continued down to just above the corner of her mouth. The last six years had seen her suffer surgery after surgery, with countless skin grafts, and very little improvement. Still, her doctors remained hopeful. Self-consciously Shelby lowered one hand from her right temple to try to cover her scar up. She felt tears threatening, but fought them back with anger at her own insecurity, and for allowing this little boy to remind her of what she should never forget herself. She raised her head, and looked across the ten foot distance to where the boy sat, allowing him full view of her scar. She offered him the best conciliatory smile she could muster and allowed her hands to rest on the table. For a second more, his stare was blank but verging on fear, then, when he registered her smile, he began to smile as well, and they shared a beat of this stand-off without interruption. His mother, a woman of thirty with dark hair and heavy make-up, was occupied with the little girl on the opposite side of the table, who was putting her food into her mouth and spitting it back out again. A series of giggles, despite the mother’s protest, followed. Shelby raised her right hand and waved to the boy, still smiling and watching her carefully. When he raised his left hand and waved slowly back, their reverie was broken by the mother, who noticed the boy waving, followed his line of sight, and saw Shelby waving back. For a second, the woman seemed as if she would smile and do nothing as most parents would, but then the look of realization which Shelby had come to know and despise so well by now passed across her features, and she suddenly, almost angrily, pulled her son’s hand down to his side. “Stop that, Kevin. Don’t bother the lady.” she told her son, and he shamefacedly returned to his sandwich, while the mother, despite her best attempts, could not help but take one more subtly horrified look at Shelby’s scar before looking away and refusing to glance back again.

Shelby, tired and defeated, with still half a day to go, pushed her bowl of soup forward and stood up, giving the little family not a further thought as she walked out into the hallway and headed toward the elevator.






Andrew felt as if his cock was a divining rod heading for the mother lode as he thrust into Monica repeatedly, grunting as he did, for he knew how much sex talk and the sounds of their love-making turned her on. He hadn’t felt this alive in months. They were sprawled across the bed in the presentation house, the blinds drawn to their naked bodies, intertwined on the four post frame in a large master bedroom decorated in a colonial style. The small television sitting on the bureau to their right was on, if only to help distract nosy neighbors from any illicit sounds they might hear, and the dvd player in the lower right hand corner was playing an endless loop of the company’s most recent advertisements. He had closed the office downstairs early, to the delight of all of the staff, asking Monica to stay behind to work on some figures with him. Though he regretted how unsubtle this most probably was to everyone else involved (he was almost certain that Jose, one half of the Mexican twosome who did landscaping in the development, had flashed him a knowing grin as he stepped past him to leave) he realized he was growing weary with inventing excuses which allowed him to steal away with her. The folly of it all, which had once amused him, now wore him down. He didn’t love his wife anymore, and hadn’t for a very long time. Should he feel guilty, as everyone else seemed to want him to feel? He didn’t. Instead, he allowed their lives at home to continue without disruption, following his head, and on the side, following his cock, which had been leading him to encounter after encounter with unhappy women, some married, some not, including a haphazard fumbling with a girl he had graduated high school with who was now in the market for a home, in the main bathroom of the house she was looking to buy. He had taken her right there on the toilet seat, from behind, with the drapes covering the little bathroom window open for all to see, though he knew that end of the development was uninhabited yet. But the danger and rawness of it had enthralled him. Monica seemed to notice this new, daring change in his personality several months ago, and after years of pleasant but seemingly futile flirting, she was coming on to him. Their affair had started slowly. Monica had always been, as far as he knew, a buttoned down office girl with glasses and a cardigan who never breathed a foul word about anyone in his presence. She hadn’t much interested him in the beginning. But she was pretty, and that was enough to keep his dick pointing north until, on their third date, they had decided to rent a hotel room in nearby Pennsylvania. When the clothes had come off, her real personality had been revealed. By day a quiet, unassuming office worker she may have been, but at night, lying naked against him, she was the freaky and perverted sex goddess who was willing to do anything for him or to him, something that his wife had never even come close to.

“Harder!” she ordered, flipping her auburn hair back against the pillow case with a low moan, afterward burying her face in his neck, kissing him as she held on tight to his back and he continued pushing his hips against hers, exploring the moist bit of heaven inside of her..

He glanced up for a  moment, catching sight of their latest commercial as it flashed across the screen. A smiling couple, late twenties to early thirties, were being led down the walk toward the front door of the new presentation house at the eastern end of Royal Fields. Andrew himself was playing the happy go-lucky estate agent, dressed in one of his best Armani suits and topcoats, holding a clipboard and brochures as he greeted the man and woman, both white, blonde, and blue-eyed and playing the perfect, least fear-inducing couple they could find. Andrew chuckled to himself. In truth, the woman was a butch lesbian with a wife and daughter who had come to the audition with a faux-hawk and multiple piercings, and the man was a struggling actor with five kids from four different mothers, or so the gossip hounds in the office had told him after shooting had wrapped. The perfect American couple indeed.  He was distracted for a moment by the actor version of himself on the screen as he led the couple inside the million dollar home. He was going to have to kick that director’s ass for assuring him they would film from his right side, where his bald spot was least noticeable and there was less visible grey in his hair. The camera had covered him from every angle, but what had been cut showed him to be the aging, balding but well dressed ex-jock with quite the noticeable paunch which he knew himself to be, but forever tried to disguise. Monica had noticed his lack of concentration. “C’mon, don’t stop yet.” she told him, quieter this time, to which he replied by looking down into her eyes briefly, then burying his face in her earlobe as his thrusts became harder and faster. He let out a low moan, and she knew he was close. “Cum on my face!” she commanded, her tone firm again. A few more thrusts and he would be home safe. He looked up, into the large mirror atop the bureau, glancing at their nakedness, and his sweaty brow. He couldn’t help but smile. In here, on top of Monica, riding her bareback, the aging ex-jock became the greatest lover on the planet. His smile widened, as he was content with this picture. He pulled out just in time, thrusting his hips and his dick forward just below her mouth as he continued stroking himself. And then, still smiling, the greatest lover did as he had been told.




    Sullenly he sipped from a chipped coffee mug as the rain angrily pelted passers-by on the street and washed the remnants of snow away slow and methodically. Connor watched the busy activities taking place outside, relishing the warmth of the greasy spoon he had been frequenting for months now every Thursday afternoon. He had discovered it one day while walking home from the school while his car was in the shop having it’s muffler repaired. Before that day, he hadn’t even considered going on foot to work. The loss of his transportation, and consequently, an extra thirty minutes of sleep in the morning and possibly breakfast, would have been a minor catastrophe. He was, after all, a very meticulous person, high strung to the point of fault like his father before him, or so his mother often admonished. His co-workers had even coined a nickname for him, “Rain Man”, after the character Dustin Hoffman had played in the movie with Tom Cruise, after he threw a small tantrum in the teacher’s lounge one day because someone had moved his belongings to a different side of the room. But he was never rude due to his inadequacies. Difficult maybe, but he was sure that none of the few friends he had made on the staff would think of him as anything less than a “nice guy”. How he hated that term sometimes. Some people wore niceness as a badge of courage while others who might be termed a “mean person” spit on you while they stepped over you to be the first one out the door. In truth, he knew that everyone who called him a nice person was merely seeing but one facet of his personality, either because he did not know them all that well or they purposely ignored any other traits because it was much safer for them to see him that way. He was much more cynical than them, and he realized that humanity took its toll on everyone in the long run,. He had days where he would silently curse that bitch in the principal’s office who was slowly working her way up the board of education ladder cock by cock as much as the next guy, he simply kept those thoughts to himself most of the time instead of sharing them at the coffee pot the way everyone else did. The thought had never occurred to him before that perhaps his shy and guarded personality was what kept him seeming “nice” to  everyone else, and he half-smiled at the perverse thought of it, sipping his black, still steaming coffee tenderly.

    And popular culture was no better as far as “being nice” went. Everyone had been told from day one that “nice guys finish last”…or that some girls would treat “nice guys” like dirt and let themselves get trashed a hundred times over by a “bad boy”. How much he had wanted to be a bad boy for just that reason when he had attended high school in this same dirt water town where he was now slumming as a guidance counselor. If only he had worn the leather jacket, or smoked, or hung with the druggies and the burnouts, or whatever else he might have done to remove himself  from the burden of niceness. Alas, he knew in the end that he was destined for that part. He smirked, sipping his coffee once more and sitting back as a massive garbage truck sped by just outside the glass window before him. The rain blurred his view somewhat, but he’d been staring into the rivulets of water running down the pavement and thinking, not for the first time, about his life and how he had gotten to this point. He laughed at the vast absurdity of the question, and decided to recall how he had ended up in this diner, at the very least. It was the name, he decided, looking up at the funky lettering that covered one side of the glass window and read “The Haven”. It had called to him that overcast day several months ago when he was weary after a long day with questioning teens and the PTA. He needed some sort of haven, and though it looked dingy from the outside, and regretfully also from within, he entered, and upon seeing the large, aged jukebox in the far corner of the room, knew that he had found some solace in the place. He’d made the diner his Thursday afternoon haunt now, thankful that he was able to make the small change in his routine. How he longed sometimes to be on a beach far away, skipping shells across a blue-green surf. But he was his own worst enemy as far as change was concerned, he knew that in retrospect of years of circumspection and angst coupled with almost complete inertia. That didn’t mean he would ever stop trying, or yearning.

    The jukebox’s needle scratched its way into a new record, and he recognized the quiet, plaintive sound of Jefferson Airplane immediately. He smiled at the memories it dredged up, though he was too young to remember the summer of love when the Airplane first took off. The music instead reminded him of his first year at college, when his dorm mate, a vegan pacifist forever stuck in the sixties, would play Janis and Jimi and the Doors and the Airplane and any number of obscure rock bands from the era well into the night as they sat smoking pot, laughing over Monty Python lines, and lethargically plotting world revolution. But the words struck him now, as he sat here in the winter of his thirties, amidst a plethora of self-doubt  and poor self-esteem. “Wooden ships on the water very free…easy you know, the way it’s supposed to be…silver people on the shoreline, let us be…very free, and easy…” He sat back, almost ashamed that the simple message of peace behind the words was causing his eyes to well up with tears. He felt his usual cynicism wash away briefly, and he wiped his eyes, afterward sitting forward again and sipping the last of his coffee, thankful for the moment’s reprieve from his problems.





   
    The fifth floor was quiet this afternoon. Though Shelby had heard several nurses talking about a patient they had lost earlier that morning, she hadn’t seen any evidence of the drama, except that now, when the wing was usually alive with the nurses’ chitchat, it was deathly still, except for the sound of Renee’s various machines at work beside her bed. One resembled a lie detector readout, with a steady stream of paper falling to the floor which a technician would come and check every hour or so. Shelby hated the constant reminders of her sister’s ill health, as if the sight of the pale, emaciated woman who had once raised her would not be enough to drive home that fact. At least the past several days had been quiet, as her roommate had been shuttled into an ICU bed, leaving only Renee and a ghostly, empty, turned down bed in the other half of the suite. The window was open, winter be damned, as the room was stifling hot for some reason, and the breeze did much for Shelby’s headache, which continued to throb in both temples.  She glanced out at the slightly better view this wing of the hospital afforded of the park and small man-made lake, now half frozen over, across the street, the blue in the sky long since banished as an icy rainstorm coated the building and brought with it gray skies and an imposing darkness. She looked back to her sister, still sleeping with her head to one side, seemingly at peace. A quick check of the watch on her right wrist told her that it was getting close to the end of her day here. Ray would be by any minute now, and she hoped to spare Renee any extra stress, so quietly she began gathering up the few magazines she had brought with her and shoving them into her purse. Renee stirred despite the subterfuge. Shelby stood stiff beside her bed as her sister slowly turned her head, pulling some of the tubes attached to her body with her as she shifted. Shelby was overcome anew with how much weight Renee had lost in the last seven months. She was down to 115, which didn’t seem so bad if you were a supermodel, but looked like hell on this housewife and PTA member who had once clocked in at just over 165. Her blonde hair, longer than Shelby’s, was stringy with sweat and lack of care, and her face showed all the attendant signs of pain which the disease had put her through recently. “Ray should be here soon. I’m gonna go meet him.” she said, clutching her sister’s frail palm softly.

    “Ok.” Renee replied, nodding slowly. “Will you check on Andy and the kids for me? Make sure they’re not at each other’s throats.”

    “Tomorrow.”

    The familiar look of disapproval flashed across her sister’s face, and even now, in the throes of weakness, it carried much weight with it. “I don’t think I’m asking all that much.”

    “I’ve been here all day. I catch enough hell from Ray. I’ve gotta spend time with him too.”

    Renee relented. “I know. I know. I’m sorry. I just…worry about them.”

    “Tomorrow, sis. I promise.” she said, leaning in and pecking her on the cheek before turning and heading for the door.

    “Shelby…” she called, and her sister stopped and turned, her feet half in and half out of the room. “Thanks.”

    Shelby nodded, half-smiling, then turned and headed quickly for the elevator, mindful of the fact that Ray did not like to be kept waiting. Her pace quickened as she approached the elevator doors, but then Ray was stepping out of the car, and she halted instantly, fixing a smile on her face. “Hey sweety, you didn’t have to come up.”

    “Hell girl, I ain’t got all night to wait. That lot’s costing me 2 bucks to park.” he answered in that Southern drawl which Shelby found seeping into her own voice sometimes. Gently his fingers closed around her arm and led her back into the elevator as he pressed the button for the ground floor. In the moment before the doors closed once more, he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, which one of the nurses at the main desk happened to see, smiling in their direction as the doors closed shut, leaving them alone and Shelby with an uncomfortable look on her face. “Five o’ clock, Shelby. I told you I wanted you down in the garage at five o’ clock.”

    “I know. I’m sorry.  Renee’s been…”

    “I don’t wanna hear about your sister. You spend all fuckin day here with her. Nighttime is my time.”

    Shelby watched as the indicator above her head slowly worked its way down to the ground floor, hoping desperately that it would get there, to the company of other people, before an argument broke out between them. She knew that she should stay quiet, but something in her, the tiny bit of defiance which hadn’t been killed after years of marriage to him, spoke up. “She wants me to check on the kids.” There was a pause, during which his face remained stoic and unchanged. When he did finally turn his head, she knew a line had been crossed in his mind.

    “Fuck her kids. You gotta a family o’ your own…namely, me.” he told her firmly.

    “Ray, she’s dying and…” she began, her voice defiant and loud. His palm, slapped hard across the side of her left cheek, disrupted her outburst. Her face turned with the blow, and she held a hand to her reddening cheek meekly, fighting back tears as he turned his head back to the doors.

    “Don’t raise your voice to me.” he said, and that was the end of any discussion. Then the doors opened on the bustle of activity in the main floor waiting area, and she noted with disdain that he was smiling for the uninterested masses as he led his wife by the arm out toward the parking lot.





    The sound of her urine splashing against the side of the bowl led directly into the scratchy Tammy Wynette single emanating from her mother’s turntable in the living room. Believing in fairy tales, as Miss Tammy sang about, seemed to Callie to be a dusty notion of an era long ago when her mother was a girl much younger than herself and the world had never heard of hip-hop or the internet. Callie, clad in platform heels and a leather mini with a hot pink tube top, flushed the toilet and held the small applicator up, waiting to see what color it would turn and therefore, which direction her life would be taking in the next hour. Much as she despised her mother’s outdated torch and twang songs, she had found herself poring through the record collection tucked away in a dark corner of the attic, since the illness robbed her of her presence in the house. The fact that most of her friends had no idea what a record album was gave her some small sense of pride. There had always been plenty of music in the house, vinyl or not, which probably led to her brother’s interest in the chorus and Callie‘s being able to name every one hit wonder of the past three decades. Though Callie and her mother had never been close, she would have been lax to deny that part of her yearned for her mother, even if she sometimes wrote the woman off as merely a buffer between her and her overbearing but uncaring father. She sighed, moving into the living room where she began humming along absent-mindedly as Miss Tammy sang of not wanting to play house. Indeed, she thought, giggling, still getting no answer from the small stick in her hand. Callie loved this room. With a cathedral ceiling rising past all three floors of the house and a massive set of gothic picture windows looking out onto the back of the McNulty farm, it was an atmospheric place to while away the day when the sun was shining. Sadly, it was pouring down rain at the moment, and her view was marred by wind and a blackened sky. The storm was doing much to clear the backyard of the previous day’s snowfall. Still, with such a high ceiling, the room was great for acoustics, and Callie moved to the stereo, turning up the volume so the little speakers on either side of the big screen television could blast her mother’s music heavenward. She sat down on the black leather sofa and put her head back, still holding the pregnancy test aloft in front of her face as the moments passed. The needle scratched its way into a new record, and as Suzie Quatro began singing about the pleasures of Devil Gate Drive, the tip of the applicator turned blue, and Callie let out a long, steady sigh. She knew that she was playing with fire every time she had unprotected sex, and yet, even though Sean sometimes insisted on wearing a condom, part of her longed for the danger, and asked him not to. She knew that stronger men might tell her no, and though Sean was not exactly what she would call a weak person, he was definitely malleable. But she had never mistaken the dates of her cycle before and had such a close call. She told herself that it would not happen again, but even as she thought it, some of her will evaporated as she pined for the feeling of Sean being inside of her.

    She got up and moved to the kitchen, humming along to the seventies’ rock in the background as she took pains to bury the pregnancy test, back in its box, way down in the garbage beneath the sink, underneath her brother’s tossed away sci-fi geek magazines and her father’s old newspapers. She was stepping back into the living room, dancing slightly to the music, her hips gyrating back and forth as she managed to stay aloft on her heels, when she caught sight of herself in the decorative mirror hanging above a small end table off of the front hallway. Her long, curly blonde hair was  pulled back, as was her custom once she came home from school for the day, and her blue eyes shone brightly against her pink top. If anything made her unhappy, it was the sight of her skinny arms. She had been trying to gain some weight all summer, but the stress of her mother’s stay in the hospital and ongoing problems between her and Sean as to where they would be going after graduation had been taking its toll on her, and she often found herself either not eating at all or throwing up what she had eaten out of worry. She was just sitting down on the couch again when she heard her father’s car pull into the driveway. She thought about a quick exit to her bedroom upstairs, denying him either a conversation or an argument, but she was too tired to scurry away, so she lay her head back once more and waited for him to enter.

    Andrew stepped through the doorway, dressed in one of his power suits and a raincoat, shaking some water from his hair and closing the door as his face registered both her presence and the sound of the music. Surprisingly, he smiled a bit, moving forward once he had hung his coat in the hall closet to lean against the smaller couch opposite Callie. His shirt was untucked and his tie hung loosely on either side of his neck. She thought he looked rather like he had rolled around in bed after getting dressed, then realized that he quite possibly had and chuckled to herself at the thought, deciding to let him believe that he was still fooling everyone, though in truth, both she and Toby had noticed the late nights and reassembled suits lately. Though she and her father acknowledged each other with glances, neither of them spoke for several moments, during which the Bee Gees began asking how deep was your love. “Did you dig that stuff out of the attic?” he finally asked.

    She nodded. “Makes me think Mom is still home sometimes.” she told him, surprised by her own vulnerable admission.

    “She hasn’t played these records since you were a little kid.” he said, bursting her bubble somewhat callously. “Where’s your brother?”

    She shrugged her shoulders. “Not here.”

    “Are we going out to eat tonight, or do you want me to try and make something?”

    She thought about it briefly. “The Olive Garden.”

    “Ok. Call your brother so we can get a move on then.” he told her, starting up the stairs to the second floor when he stopped  halfway on the landing. It was fairly dark in the room still, and he hadn’t noticed her clothes before. “Callie, what the hell are you wearing?”

    She rolled her eyes then let them close for a moment, hoping that the argument would pass, familiar as it was to both of them. “It’s a tube top, Daddy.”

    “Your mother and I didn’t buy that for you.”

    “I bought it myself with my own money. I’ve been working at the perfume counter for almost a year now.”

    “I’m trying not to be the kind of Dad who doesn’t understand…but I’m having a hard time with it right now. I don’t wanna have to do a dress code check in the morning, but you can’t go to school dressed like this anymore. I can’t believe you left the house like this.”

    “I’m going to be 18 in six months. I don’t need your approval for what I wear.” she said, her voice getting louder.

    “You do if you’re gonna continue living in my house.” he shot back, his own voice getting louder as well now. “Your mother is on the board of the PTA, and I’ve got the Homeowner’s Association to deal with. I’m not gonna have you leaving the house like this.”

    “What’s wrong with it, Daddy?” she shouted, standing up.

    “You look like a goddamn whore!” he spat back.

    “Maybe I wanna look like a whore.”

    “All right if you wanna look like a whore, then I’ll treat you like a whore. Get those clothes off, go upstairs, and get into bed.” he told her angrily, then added, in a quieter tone, “Dinner’s off.” Her face registered hurt momentarily, then her anger came flooding back, and she pulled the pink top up over her head. He saw with alarm and rising anger than she wasn’t wearing a bra. He hated himself for noticing how developed her breasts had become, turning his head to avert his eyes. “Callie, put something on.”

    She moved closer to him, the cast-off pink top in her right hand, a breeze blowing across the small of her back, her nipples hardening in the wintry room. “What’s the matter, Daddy, don’t you think I’m beautiful?”

    “Don’t do this.” he asked her, his voice softer now, his eyes still looking away from her.

    “You didn’t know how good of a whore I really was, did you, Daddy?” she asked him, the anger and reproach in her tone of voice causing him to flinch despite himself.

    He did finally turn his head back, and his eyes were weary as he responded to her. “Just get out of my sight, Callie.”

    She smiled slightly, realizing that she had won this encounter, and stepped past him to move up the stairs toward her bedroom on the third floor.





    Toby put his head back against Will’s pillow and closed his eyes, exhausted after a day of worry over what he had done the previous night, what he had seen in the snow that morning, and how much trouble he would get in once he finally went home. That wasn’t even taking into consideration that he had been a witness to a murder, a particularly savage and nasty one, and had left footprints and who knows what else behind at the scene. Will had an amazing bed, he thought to himself, one much better and more expensive than his own, but then again, as a younger child, he was constantly getting Callie’s hand-me-downs instead of something new, and never had he been given a queen size like the one Will, an only child, had been afforded. Still, he was almost embarrassed to find himself on Star Wars sheets, even though he could sometimes be a bigger sci-fi geek than Will . But lately, as his interest in girls and hopefully having sex with one of them eventually had become paramount, he had been clearing some of his more youthful indulgences from his bedroom in an effort to “grow up a bit”, as his father was always stressing he should do. But Will would have none of that. A large and morbidly lit poster of the creature from the Alien series of movies covered one wall. Directly across from it was a Marvel comics who’s who mural which he had paid someone to paint for him at a convention they attended the previous year. And lording over the entire room, hanging just beside the doorway, was a massive, body length poster of rocker Jansen Feathers, dressed in a jet black leather outfit, his hair dyed black with orange streaks, wearing yellow snake eye contact lenses and shouting the lyric to one of his hits into an antique microphone.

    Will’s father snapped him back into reality. He was seated on the edge of the bed, running some basic tests on Toby’s left leg and foot. They had submerged his leg in the main bathroom’s large soaking tub in extremely hot water for some time first, all the while massaging the skin vigorously. Finally they had moved to Will’s bedroom, where Toby was placed on the bed and given several jars of topical cream and a heating pad. The heating pad still sat beside him though it was unplugged now, and David DeAngelo was shaking his head slowly as he glanced at Toby’s still blackened pinky toe. The color had returned to the rest of the leg, and Toby could still feel a dull ache along with pins and needles, though they were far off and distant now, as if his leg were still asleep. After testing the reflexes with a small medical hammer like Toby had seen several times in his pediatrician’s office, Will’s father began gathering up the many jars of topical cream and the heating pad, a grim look on his face. He stopped midway through his tidying, letting out a deep sigh and looking Toby firmly in the eyes. He really didn’t need to speak. His eyes were heavy, and told the story pretty much on their own. “How do you feel?”

    “Just achy.” he answered quietly, sensing what was about to come.

    David nodded. “Pins and needles a little bit?” Now it was Toby’s turn to nod. “That should go away in a bit. I called your house when you were in the bathroom earlier. The machine picked up.”

    “Dad’s at work. Mom…” he trailed off.

    David silently scolded himself for bringing up, inadvertently, the subject of Toby’s mother’s illness. “Sorry. I left a message and told him that you were here. I could only call Will out of school, so the school probably left a message for your Dad as well. You’re on your own there.”

    “I know.” he replied, already trying to think of what he would give as an excuse for disappearing for the day. “My toe’s not gonna get better, is it?”

    “No.” he said, as matter-of-factly as he could manage.

    “Dad?” William asked from his place at his desk on the other side of the room.

    “I’ve done all I can do here, Will.”

    “What if we take him to the hospital?” he asked, sounding alarmed.

    “It’s too late for that. It was probably too late when he got here.” An uncomfortable silence ensued. “You should really get some rest.” he told Toby. “I’d offer to have you stay here, but I don’t want your Dad to worry. You should really be getting home.”

    “I know.”

    “I suppose I wouldn’t get a straight answer if I asked how this happened?”

    “I don‘t wanna talk about it, Mr. DeAngelo.” Toby responded softly. “But thank you for helping me.”

    “Fair enough.” he said, gathering up his items and standing. “Are you going to tell your Dad about any of this?”

    “Probably not.”

    “Toby, I’m a doctor, if you need to see somebody that you can talk to, I can find somebody really good for you.”

    “I know.” he answered, followed by another silence during which Toby fixed his friend’s father with a gaze of quiet acceptance.

    David DeAngelo waited for his son’s friend to say something, then saw that no explanation would be forthcoming, and allowed a look of defeat to cross over his countenance before turning to leave the room. He stopped in the doorway, turning around and looking down at Toby once more. “You don’t think your Dad will notice that his son’s lost a toe to frostbite?”

    “He doesn’t notice much of anything anymore, Mr. DeAngelo.” David simply nodded, then turned and entered the hallway, heading off for his bedroom.

    “I’ll give you guys a little time, then we’ll be off.” he shouted from somewhere down the hall, his voice trailing away as he left their general area.

    Toby put his head back once more and closed his eyes, feeling on the verge of tears. He was still dressed in his sweats and the skimpy white t-shirt from the night before, though now it was black and filthy from lying in the snow and mud all night. He was weary and starving, and his mind was racing in a million different directions as he tried, in vain, to move his left pinky toe. Will got up, looking tired and worried himself, his jeans still wet from splashing water as he massaged Toby’s leg frantically, his brow damp with sweat. Though his friend’s dark brown hair was close cropped, Toby could still see it going in several different directions from Will running his hands through it all day long. His glasses, rounded frames surrounded by gold metal, were fogged up a bit, so he removed them and wiped them on the front of his shirt before replacing them and pushing them up on the bridge of his nose. He moved forward, stopping to close the bedroom door before sitting down on the bed where his father had been moments before. “Dude, what happened?” he asked quietly.

    “I can’t…” was all he could muster. He lowered his head, lost in the visions of the girl with the blonde hair from earlier that day. Her eyes had still been open, locked on some point just beyond where he had been standing, frozen in terror. Her skin had been pale with death, but her eyes were bright blue, and still shining against the sunlight, though any sense of life had long since gone out of them. Though he gritted his teeth and fought against tears, they came suddenly, along with big, wracking sobs. He forced them into silence, though he could not get them to stop altogether, simply putting his head in his hands and letting them overcome him. Will sat in shock for a moment, then leaned in and put his arms around Toby, offering what help he could