Freshmankind

By Gregory Attaway

Dreams. Friendship. The future. None of it may last...

Sarah and Adam have finished high school and are headed for the next chapter of their lives: college. After that, they plan to go to Hollywood together and test their fates - she as an actress and he as a writer.

But when one of their closest friends dies in a plane crash, everything changes. Her death ripples through their world, and when they arrive on campus, college isn’t what they thought it would be.

Their dreams, their friendship, their future– none of it may last.

Freshmankind continues the saga begun in Weston and Joe – the third chapter of Gregory Attaway’s The Great Ones. It’s a story that explores what is left once innocence is shattered. How far the strongest of friendships can go before it breaks. It’s a story of grief, guilt, and hope.

Get your copy today!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gregory Attaway
• Release date: Jun 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310872938

Gregory Attaway

Gregory Attaway lives in Irving, Texas (a suburb of Dallas), which suits his literary leanings well since the city is supposedly named for Washington Irving, famed writer of Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. He has lived in and around Dallas for most of his life, having also lived briefly on both coasts. A graduate of the University of North Texas, Gregory lives with his two dogs, Cara and Lois, and his imaginary friends.A writer since the second grade, Gregory’s completed projects include The Glen Headwood Show – exclusively available for free to subscribers to his e-mail list. Sign up at www.gregoryattaway.com!He has written three other books in The Great Ones series – Weston, Joe, and Freshmankind. The fourth book, Dreams, will be released on December 26, 2018. It started as a series of six screenplays written in the early 2000s, and there are more books coming in the next few years.Other stories are in the works as well. For information on upcoming releases and other updates, make sure to sign up for his e-mail list (and grab your free book).Feel free to follow him on Twitter, get in touch with him on Facebook, or send him an e-mail (through his website). He looks forward to hearing from you, and will answer all e-mails personally.

Book preview

Freshmankind

by

Gregory Attaway

Dreams. Friendship. The future.

None of it may last...

The Great Ones

Part III

FRESHMANKIND Copyright © 2016 by Gregory Attaway.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover Photography:

Image used under license from www.shutterstock.com

Image used under license from stock.adobe.com

Image used under license from gettyimages.com

For information or contact, go to gregoryattaway.com.

First Edition: June 2016

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Years

Part I Graduates

1997

MAY

JULY

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

Part II Freshmankind

1997 CONTINUED

SEPTEMBER CONTINUED

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

Part III Truants

1998

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

MARCH

More from Gregory Attaway

REVIEWS!

Reviews are the lifeblood of writers. Like the book? Hate it? Either way, if you have time, a quick review would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

For Sam and Natalie,

who got me there

NOW AVAILABLE

The Glen Headwood Show

The Great Ones Prelude

It’s not a sitcom. It’s an experiment.

1964. Benny Camden and his friends leave the University of Southern California with their newly minted master’s degrees and a project that was the talk of the campus. The Glen Headwood Show is fresh. It’s new. It defies genre and rifles praise from its critics. Is it a talk show? Variety? Sketch comedy? Drama? One thing it’s not: on television.

Now he wants to sell it to a network, and that’s when reality sets in. It’s not that no one is interested. It’s that Hollywood wants to commercialize his vision, and to see it come true he may have to give up the things that made the show great.

At what point does a dream turn into a disaster?

Before Weston, there was Benny Camden. The Glen Headwood Show is the prelude to Gregory Attaway’s The Great Ones, and it is available for free, now and always, at gregoryattaway.com. See the boy before you see the man.

Get your copy right now!

Available For Free Forever

Part I

Graduates

1997

MAY

May 16, 1997

Graduation attacks, childhoods slain

Ceremony indicted for 611 deaths

by Adam Archer, Staff Writer

I still can’t believe high school is over. It seems like only yesterday that I showed up at Big Winters Elementary in the fifth grade with my Superman lunch box, to the delight of all the bullies.

Of course, even back then I knew what I wanted to do with my life. However, since all my attempts to build a time machine and move to the Garden of Eden failed, I opted to become a writer.

But, as a mild-mannered fifth grader who would one day work for a great metropolitan newspaper (you’re reading it), I had trouble concealing my secret identity. Everybody figured out who I was and thought it was a riot the way I held my glasses to my face as if my life depended on it.

Then there was the time in seventh grade when, out of sheer apathy toward nuclear power, I opted not to do my science project. When Mrs. Stewart confronted me, I told her I turned it in with all the others. Feeling bad about the idea of flunking a kid who lost his project, she gave me an 85. I was pleasantly surprised.

I was always fairly unamused by movies, specifically that really blah Mel Gibson stuff. What’s the deal with that? Lethal weapons, angry Scotsmen, and men without faces. Oh yeah, that’s really cool.

To understand my life is to understand that feeling you get when your friend announces he is going fishing.

The highlight of my life was that rainy Saturday afternoon in the early summer after fourth grade when, for the first time, I tasted a drink called Sprite.

Then there was the time I met Charlton Heston. He said to me, Adam, one day you’re going to be living in the wilderness, protecting sheep from bears and other predators, and you’re going to see a bush that burns from within. When that happens, fall down on your knees and cry, ‘That bush is burning! It’s...burning...’

Soon afterward, my ping pong team got to visit the White House, so I went. Again. And I met the President of the United States again.

High school meant a lot to me, because that’s when I learned to count. Suddenly, my math grades skyrocketed, and I looked to a promising career as a math-using-type person. But then I got drunk on Sprite and barred from the Magda Ferrar Institute of Mathematics, so I decided to become a writer again.

As I sat back a few weeks ago and watched the sophomore and junior classes participate in the student council elections, I found a certain irony in the fact that although I am now eighteen, I could not vote.

And so my days as a journalist here come to a close. And when I’m sitting in an auditorium at the University of North Texas, surrounded by strangers, I’ll look back on LaMont and miss you all, even those of you I’ve never met. I will most assuredly miss you all.

I never got along with school. I loved coming because all my friends were here. Some people believe that with time and patience anything is possible. Even if that were true, it wouldn’t be necessary. We don’t need doctors to paint sunsets, nor artists to perform brain surgery. To me, this is what school expects of us.

One of these days, in the future, you’ll be at a bookstore, browsing through the bestseller rack, and you’ll notice, to your surprise, a book written by me. One of these days you’ll be at a movie, watching previews, and by Jove, there’ll be one written by yours truly. Or maybe this will be the last thing I ever write. That’s the point of everything we’ve done: the future is ours now.

Winston Churchill said: This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

This is the dawn of everything – the dawn of freshmankind.

At long last we are alive.

JULY

Bethany Graham was dead.

The trees swayed in silent wind. Their leaves spoke in soft percussion. They cast down shade over the row of graves in Restland where Adam Archer sat. He sipped the last of his thermos of lukewarm coffee. An ant crawled up the side of the stone, and he brushed it away. It was smooth and cool, but soon it would soak up the warmth of a Texas summer afternoon. Everything would grow hot. Everything would grow. Everything was alive.

But Bethany Graham was dead.

Her tombstone was small but significant. Straight, sharp edges rounded to the top. Indistinguishable from all the others – just another monument to just another life. Only a few weeks had passed since everyone who loved her gathered around it in silence. Now they were gone, back to their lives, moving on without her. The sun rose and it set. The moon arced through the sky every night.

But Bethany Graham was dead.

He traced the granite lines that spoke her name. The lawn crunched under his jeans. The soil that covered her had grown fresh grass, bright and green. Even the dirt had moved on.

Bethany wanted to be a reporter. She wanted to travel the world and tell its stories. She’d landed an internship at the Columbia Daily Tribune and left Dallas behind the day after graduation to go to Missouri, for college and the summer job. She’d known for years what she was going to do with her life.

He was sitting with her on the steps of the school, as they always did. They were leaning over the Collins overpass in the chilly New Year’s Eve air, watching the cars below and the fireworks sparking out constellations of color in the sky above – just the two of them. She was wearing one of her fabric flowers behind her ear – maybe a carnation, maybe a sunflower. They were sitting side by side in the Lamont High School journalism room. Lois and Clark. They were leaving the prom in that dark limousine, sitting on opposite sides, her hand grasping his, tears smearing her makeup. Elton John serenading them amidst her soft sobs.

They were at the airport the morning after graduation.

And now Bethany Graham was dead.

He traced her name again. Then Adam collected himself and ventured back to his blue Toyota Tercel. His McDonald’s uniform lay rumpled in the passenger seat. He turned the ignition and the radio welcomed him with the news. A bomb in Algiers had killed twenty-one. More talk about Mike Tyson being banned from boxing for biting Evander Holyfield’s ear. Another Plano teen dead from heroin. First there had been the black tar. Now dealers were cutting it into a powder form and calling it Chiva. It could be snorted or taken as a pill, and Plano police were stumped as to how it was getting past them and into their neighborhoods.

He shut it off and sat in silence, watching the trees shift in the wind. His mouth was parched despite the coffee. His eyes were dry and cracking. He put drops in them, blinking until they felt normal. The Tercel dragged itself out of the cemetery and back toward Richardson, where the breakfast shift had already started.

- - -

Jeff Haley had a lot of fond memories of Finehoff Park: stealing gravel two pocketfuls at a time to try to make his own playground in the backyard, his concussion, the time he was going for a grounder and it tagged a rock and popped up and hit him in the jaw, his first kiss (ah, Casey Wilkes), that Saturday morning he tried to jump his bike over a skateboard and ended up underneath the bike. Good times.

It was always great to have such a place so close. He never needed a car, or even his Rollerblades.

Sarah Swingle approached from the parking lot as he pulled off his second Rollerblade and dropped it on the creaking picnic table. She’d let her hair grow longer these last few months, but it had darkened a little as well – a sandier blonde than before, more like his own. She had that look again, the one she’d had since the funeral. It was a softer variation of Adam’s.

Haven’t seen you drag those out in a while, Sarah said.

Jeff scraped some mud off one of the wheels. Taking them with me to college. I bet I can get around campus a lot faster with these babies.

I’m sure everybody’s going to love having to dodge you. She had that Good old Jeff twinkle in her eye. She flexed her lips like she was smooching the air, making him notice her pink lemonade lipstick, and for a moment he remembered when they were going out, that whole month of eighth grade. She still had the same aqua eyes, same two freckles by her left ear. She was hot back then, but college-freshman Sarah had budded in all the right places.

Gotta dodge the Comet! He made a swooping motion across the surface of the skate. He’s gonna knock you down!

I had breakfast at Mickey D’s this morning, she said. Thought of you and Todd.

He and his old buddy Todd had downed all those french fries, all those sodas, for all those summers, just to win McDonald’s Monopoly. They’d come so close. His mouth watered thinking about it. How is he?

He barely talked to me. Smiled like I was just some customer.

He thought of Adam in that cheap uniform with the plastic belt. At the funeral, eyes fixed on the coffin, never looking away. Never shedding a tear. Like he was somewhere else. Adam hadn’t come out since that overcast afternoon in June after they’d brought her remains back home, the first cloudy day in a month, when they’d buried the girl who always helped Jeff out in German class even though she knew he could do the work himself if he just focused a little. Maybe I’ll go with you next time. We can camp out and play cards or something until he’s off, then we’ve got him!

Yeah, sure. She sat down opposite him. His girlfriend Marcy had the same short shorts. They looked better on Marcy, but Sarah always did have nice legs. You know the hardest part about all of this?

What?

Sarah glanced past him at the building where their friendship began, Caruth Junior High. It had seemed enormous back then. "I miss her so much. You never think the first person to leave’ll be the first to really go. He’s taking it so bad though, it almost makes it harder to think about her sometimes."

Jeff watched a couple of little girls walk past on the other side of the playground, each with a Black Lab puppy on a leash. When I was a kid, we had these two dogs, Shiloh and Hannah. Best dogs. I wanted to run away in the third grade, but I stayed because of them. Then one day Shiloh started acting funny. Pacing, not eating. Kicking over her food bowl. My parents took her to the vet, and I don’t really know what happened, but that was it. We woke up that day like every other day, and hours later we had to put her down. I was so sad, I didn’t know what to do. I missed her so much.

Sorry.

Funny thing, though. Hannah went crazy after Shiloh died. She wouldn’t sleep, she wouldn’t play fetch, she drooled everywhere, always panting. Wide eyed. Nuts. And pretty soon we were so concerned about Hannah that we weren’t crying about Shiloh anymore. The memory didn’t affect him as much as he thought it might, but it did shake loose a few moments he’d filed away over the years. When he was dating Backstab Bonnie, the only person in the world Bethany didn’t like. The funny way Bethany’s face would wrinkle whenever he mentioned old Bon Bon. Standing there a few spots behind her at graduation – the last time he ever saw her. Bethany so nervous when they’d all convinced her to sneak into an R-rated movie with them – The Shawshank Redemption. Those flowers she always wore in her hair. Her at the prom with Mark Cullen, that waste of space.

Going out to TCU tomorrow, he said. He needed to remember to bring the skates.

See the new digs? Her voice wavered as she took a pass at her running mascara.

"Meet the roommate. He’s a Daredevil fan, but I can teach him. She nodded, but her eyes didn’t follow. Probably thinking about how it would be when she went off to UNT with this weight dragging her down. He was kind of glad Adam wasn’t following him to Fort Worth. Wanna tag along?"

Marcy coming? she asked.

Yeah, but I’ve got a big old backseat.

She looked up at his trusty Ramcharger, with its faded white roof and dull brown paint job. At least once a week, the air conditioning would go out, and he could get it to come back on again with a good hard kick to the fuse box. It was the ugliest thing in the parking lot, but he loved the old rust bucket. Just wish you had some big old back seatbelts, she said.

- - -

The timer beeped and Adam lifted the hash brown tray out of the fryer, brown grease dripping from the wire mesh and sizzling across the surface of the crispy ovals. The rough scratch of the headset on his ear shifted as he went back to the drink machine to finish off the extra large Coke. A quick pass of a lid, pressed down securely, and he slid the drive-through window open with a soft smile. Here you go, he said to the pretty lady in the driver’s seat – bright green t-shirt, white sunglasses resting in her hair. White shorts, tanned legs. He looked away. She handed him her credit card, and he resisted the urge to peek at her name. Swipe – approved. She reclaimed the card and cruised off toward the street, right blinker flashing. Behind him, the counter was empty. The ice machine in the lobby needed to be refilled.

The radio buzzed in his ear as another car pulled into the drive-through lane. Welcome to McDonald’s, he said. May I take your order?

The voice came through with a pop of static. I’ll take a Sad Meal, please.

Adam pressed on his earpiece. I’m sorry? Rap music was playing from within the vehicle. Bad rap music. Familiar.

You know. A crappy little burger, crappy little order of fries, crappy little drink, crappy little toy. What do you call it, a Happy Meal?

Adam glanced at the manager, frowning beneath her thicket of black hair, and they both turned to the security camera. A gold Ford Explorer lingered beside the drive-through menu board. He turned away from his boss, lowering his voice. You’re holding up the line.

The Explorer pulled up to the window, and James Constantine flashed a cocky grin from behind his shades. He’d showed up to school every day dressed like he was ready for a catalogue shoot, and even on a sunny summer day, his shirt was tailored and pressed, and he wore a shiny black silk vest that matched his ponytail. You almost off? James asked.

Five minutes.

James leaned forward, glancing past Adam, addressing his boss. I’ll have a martini. Shaken, not stirred.

Eight minutes later, Adam came around the corner into the frigid lobby with his dirty work shirt flung over his shoulder and made his way to the corner booth where James sat, reading the Dallas Morning News. As he did in most places, James stood out in his Dolce & Gabbana wingtips. Adam dropped into the opposite seat, unwrapping a chicken sandwich.

You keep eating here, you’re gonna pork up, James said. Adam shrugged and took a bite. So why’d you bail on me?

I was busy. A little boy was throwing a tantrum in the play area as his mother glanced around, embarrassed, trying to calm him down.

James lowered the paper to the table and removed his sunglasses. Doing what?

Stuff. He broke from James’s gaze, pretending to glance at the headlines. More drama about the heroin crisis in Plano. Mayonnaise drummed out the taste of the chicken. You’ve got to stop doing this to yourself, James said. It’s creeping me out.

Adam snuck a glance at him. Sorry.

Lay off with the graveside chats. It’s worse than having an imaginary friend. Adam shifted in his seat, gripping the sandwich, scanning the newspaper but not processing any of it. I just don’t want to see you turn all antisocial, James added. That’s the last thing you want to be when you’re a freshman.

I’m fine. Adam’s stomach turned as the mayonnaise coated it.

Maybe I have something to get your mind off...whatever. Screenplay idea.

OK. Lately every fifth sentence that came out of James’s mouth was a screenplay idea.

It’s about this lesbian journalism student who messes with the minds of all the guys in her class. The fact that she’s a lesbian is the twist at the end.

Didn’t you already have that idea? Like a year ago or something?

Did I? James rubbed at his chin.

Adam drove home after lunch in the blue Tercel that used to be his mother’s but had been passed on to him for college. He plopped down in front of his computer as the chalkboard scratch of the modem crackled to life. His stomach grumbled from the sandwich.

Carissa was online, as were some of his other Internet friends, and so he leaned back and spent the next several hours in chat rooms. Carissa still hadn’t sent him a picture of herself, even though they chatted every day and had even talked on the phone once.

Clothes and garbage hid most of his bedroom carpet, and his desk was strewn with dirty dishes. His parents stopped in to check on him from time to time, and they always found him in front of the computer. They were used to him being glued to the screen, writing his stories, and they left him to it.

And so the evening passed.

When Carissa went offline and everyone else disappeared from the chat rooms for the night, he shut it all down and pushed his dirty clothes from the bed to the floor. His parents were asleep and the house was dark, but fatigue hadn’t found him yet. He cleared his mind, refusing to answer the questions it raised as he pulled open a cluttered desk drawer and sifted through to the back, retrieving a small packet of papers that he stuck there every night, hoping he wouldn’t take it out again but knowing he would.

Eden’s Wilderness, the title read, and beneath it, by Bethany Graham.

Four summers ago, just after sunset, he sat on the back porch and read the secret story that he’d had to beg her to let him see. The last one she ever wrote. After this, it was only the newspaper for her, always the newspaper, even though she had so much more in her to say. She’d taken it all with her that morning when she boarded a plane without telling anyone, heading back to Dallas from Columbia without a word. So much that no one would ever know.

He hated her story because it was a lie. It made promises that it couldn’t keep. He knew halfway through that she’d written it about him, put down her understanding of him in prose in the hopes that he wouldn’t notice. He did the same thing when he wrote Mist of Midnight, his play, but he did it better. They’d put it on stage for the whole school to see, but she didn’t know the truth of it until he told her. Until he quoted the play to her before she boarded the plane.

She understood. She left him there and never spoke to him again.

He hated the story because it was a lie. And he tucked it back in the desk drawer, knowing he wouldn’t be strong enough to leave it there tomorrow.

Lights off, room dark as the rest of the world. Eyes wide. American Airlines, flight 1202. Engine malfunction. Sarah coming to tell him. Mark lingering on the outskirts of the funeral, never venturing any closer. I can’t come with you. Eating ice cream with her. Talking about college. Afraid she’d think less of him if he didn’t go. Hating school, dreading college, wanting her to be proud of him. Minister speaking. Mark in the background. Peyton there too. Clouds in the sky. Clean room. Dirty room. Filthy room. Avoiding friends. Discovering chat rooms. Making new ones.

I can’t come with you.

Eyes closed.

Adam stood at the funeral again. Familiar faces, strange ones. People he knew, people he knew were just a dream. He couldn’t let them bury her. She wouldn’t be able to breathe if they did. They needed to get her out of the box. It had to be so dark in there – she wouldn’t be able to see anything. He couldn’t remember her name.

One of the strangers stepped up beside him, watching the coffin. He turned to look at her, and she wasn’t a stranger anymore. She was the phantom girl that had peppered his dreams for months. He knew he was dreaming when he saw her, no matter how real it felt. She was always there, always his. He knew nothing about her, and yet every time she appeared in a dream she became the focus of it, the reason he wanted to stay asleep. Her face was never the same, nor her voice. The only thing he knew about this girl of his dreams was her name.

Lisa stood beside him as the other girl, the one in the box, descended into the ground.

- - -

Jeff loved his summer job at Brook Mays. Spending all day around musical instruments, sheet music, and fellow musicians suited him. A steady stream of his old friends from the LaMont band passed through, mostly the underclassmen, but they all looked up to him as the god of the trumpet, and he did tend to push trumpets on the new kids, elementary age usually, coming in to pick out their first instruments. He’d dazzle them with bars from Les Miserables or West Side Story. He’d tell them he was headed for TCU on a music scholarship, mostly to toot his own horn, but it helped him push the product.

It all escaped from his head when he left for the day, like German or precalculus after an exam, because Marcy Lynch was waiting outside to pick him up in her sister’s black Mustang. She had the top down, and her velvety brown hair floated in the breeze. When she saw him, she broke into one of her killer grins and cranked up the music. Cindy Godby. If Marcy had one flaw, it was her love for pop singers. He did have a thing for the Spice Girls himself, but that wasn’t anyone’s business.

Jeff almost hopped in, but he knew she hated that. He opened the door and fell in beside her. Marcy pulled off her sunglasses. Hey, babe, she said with a quick peck on the mouth. Moist lips. Cute wrinkle of her nose. Perfect tan. How was work? she asked.

Model employee, right here! he said as she pulled off with a jolt. The motor under the hood had as much thrust as the driver. I sold a piano today. And by sold, he meant rang up. It still counted.

Is that hard?

That’s what she said, he almost let out. He snaked his arm around her, leaning in over the gearshift, and she leaned forward to help him get comfortable that way. Hard enough.

I was hanging out with Jennifer earlier. He couldn’t hear her so well now that they were cruising at ten miles over the speed limit. She bought like a hundred dollars of phone cards for when Jason goes off to Tech.

Yikes. As if Jason would be sitting around by his phone all day when he was off at college. Jeff glanced at his girl, those bare tan shoulders underneath those silky black straps. Marcy wasn’t the type to sit by the phone either, but maybe a few phone cards wouldn’t be a terrible idea. The only bad thing about heading off for college was leaving her behind.

I know, right? Marcy said. Chick’s torched. I’d have to break up with you if you were that far away. No offense. I don’t do phone tag.

He had no clue how far away Lubbock was. Fort Worth was an hour, so Lubbock had to be at least double that. He didn’t like to think about it, especially when he was with her. Jeff had known this was coming eventually when he’d first asked her out. Part of him wished he could stay behind with her at LaMont, but he didn’t think he could take another year of high school, even with Marcy Lynch as arm candy.

By the way, big surprise, Adam bailed on the movie, she said. It’s just you and me, and Jason and Jennifer.

What the hell? Every time that summer, he’d pulled out of their plans. The guy was turning into a hermit. What, he’s gotta work again? If Adam was telling the truth, he was putting in about sixty hours a week as a McDonald’s cashier.

Marcy pulled to a stop at a red light, sliding her shades on again, and her flirty grin shifted down to straight lips as she gave the steering wheel a tighter grip. Apparently he’s got an Internet girlfriend.

What the hell is that? he asked.

He’d never noticed until the sag of her shoulders there that Marcy cared about Adam. He was just Jeff’s buddy, her friend by association. But he knew from the dodgy twitch of her cheek that she was just as worried about him as the rest of them were. Some girl in Iowa or somewhere. Met her in a chat room, and they talk every day now.

He leaned back without retracting his arm. His eyebrows went stiff as he chewed on that. Marcy’s shoulder was soft and warm, and having a relationship over the Internet made about as much sense as having one over the phone. I don’t get it.

At least he’s got someone to talk to.

His brow went stiffer. He thought of all the Guys’ Nights they used to have, just the two of them, or with Jason and Adam’s cousin Will sometimes. Lying awake until the sun almost came up, just talking. Lying with Sarah in the field with where they’d all carved their initials in the dirt. Looking up at the stars. Just talking.

- - -

Mark Cullen shifted slowly onto the carpet in his room, leaning his back against the unmade bed. His sheets hadn’t been washed in a while, and they gave off the faintest of smells, like the air in his gym locker every year on the first day of school. He kicked his old, scuffed up Reeboks from his feet, wiggling his toes against the sweaty socks. He took a deep, shuddering breath.

His fingertips traced the bump on his arm that used to be the hole, the brown, infected splotch of skin that smelled over any cologne or deodorant. Not much remained, of the hole or what it left inside him, but he could still feel it. He could still taste it. It whispered to him in his low moments. He’d claimed it was six but it had actually been eight, and he didn’t know what he would have done if it had been more. He didn’t let himself think about that.

He slipped out of his pants and sat in his boxers on the floor of his filthy room. His mom was on her second shift, his high school diploma lay bent up and torn a little underneath his other pair of sneakers, and that was pretty much it. He had no job, no future, and no Bethany Graham.

He couldn’t stop hearing the last time thing she sad to him, in the parking lot after graduation, I’ll never forget you.

The summer was ticking away, day after day passing since Bethany’s kid brother Jordan gave him the news. She’d hopped a plane back home to Dallas without telling anyone. Mark hadn’t heard from her since graduation, but Jordan insisted she’d seemed fine on the phone, par for the normal loneliness from leaving home. Nobody – not her parents, her brother, nor any of her friends – knew why she was on that plane when it sank itself into a