The house was very quiet when I got home. I knew the boys were there because Kyle's Mazda and Tim's Jeep were both in the driveway. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but it wouldn't have surprised me if they were all asleep. Trixie greeted me at the back door, and, once again, she acted like I was her long-lost best friend that she hadn't seen in years. I petted her, and she wiggled with joy. I grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl we kept on the counter and went into the den. Tim, Brian, and Denis were draped on the two sofas and an easy chair, reading. I knew Tim and Brian both read a good bit for pleasure, but I also knew they had pretty serious summer reading lists from school to get through. As busy as they had been all summer, they were probably reading books for school. "Hi, guys," I said. They hadn't heard me come in, and Trixie hadn't barked. They looked up when I said that, and they might have even been a little startled. "Hi, Kevin," they all said. "Where's Kyle?" "Hi, Kevin," I heard just then, from the study down the hall. He came out in a second to join us. "Did you have a good day, Big Brother," Kyle asked. "Yeah, it was good. It was busy, though, since I had been gone for two weeks," I said. "I'll bet, but you kind of kept in touch, didn't you," he asked. I had Web access to my email, so I had checked it a couple of times every day when I could while we were gone. There hadn't been any major crises for me to have to deal with, though. I talked to Mary Ann Pennington, my secretary, a few times, too, and she had been able to either take care of the little crises herself or tell me about them in enough detail for me to tell her what to do. She and I were a good team, and I thanked God every day for her. "Yeah. It wasn't too bad," I said. "What did you guys do?" "Kyle took me to school to register," Denis said. "I'm all squared away for the school year." "Brian and I have been reading almost all day," Tim said. "We met up with them for lunch, but then we came home." "I've been working on the pictures," Kyle said. "I've got some I want to print tomorrow." "Put them on a disk, and I'll print them for you," I said. "Thanks, but no. I want to do it personally," he said. "Suit yourself," I said. Rick came home about then, followed closely by Justin and Alex. Rick made a pot of coffee, and everybody but Tim and Brian had a cup. "I'm tired," Justin said, once the coffee was served. "I'm skipping my workout today." "What's the matter, pussy? You can't take it," Kyle said. "I've been on my feet all day, Kyle, lifting heavy suitcases. I haven't been sitting at a computer doing whatever the hell it is you do," Jus barked at Kyle. I knew they were setting up a "got you last." I just couldn't tell where it was going. "Sort of that, 'tote that barge, lift that bale' kind of thing," Kyle asked. "Sort of like, 'working in a coal mine, going down, down, down . . . too tired for having fun'?" Kyle started singing that song, and he knew every word of it. Trixie lent her voice to the singing, too, until Brian grabbed her and quieted her down. We all clapped when he was through. "Something like that," Jus said. Then he sang "Working on a Chain Gang." He was dancing, and when Justin got up to dance with him, they did a kind of line dance sort of thing. When that one was over, he started "I've Been Working on the Railroad." Most of us knew the words to that, so we sang along. We had a good time. "Kyle, you have a really good voice," Denis said. "Thanks, Denny. Trixie likes to sing duets with me, don't you, girl," he said, ruffling her fur. She loved the attention. "Yeah, and she's got a better voice," Justin said. "Good one, Jus," Tim said. We laughed. "Well," Justin asked Kyle. "Okay, you got me last, but that was pretty damn weak," Kyle said. "Just like your voice," Jus said. We all laughed. "Shit!" Kyle said, and we laughed some more. "Does anybody know how Blake is," Brian asked. "Yeah, Bri. I called Mr. Crawford this afternoon, and he said Blake is fine. They kept him in the hospital last night and did a bunch of tests on him today, but they couldn't find anything that caused the seizure," I said. "I'm glad he's okay," Brian said. "I think we all are," Kyle said. "Let's get in the water," Justin said after a pause. We went out to the pool and stripped down to swim. Rick and I had on dress shirts and ties, but we piled those up on a chair far from the pool so they wouldn't get splashed. I had my eye on Denis. He went out with us, but he sort of hung behind the rest of us while we were getting naked. We were all in the middle of the pool, and Justin was trying to flip Rick. We were in about five feet of water, and Jus made Rick get on the palms of his hands. He was trying to lift him out of the pool and throw him over backwards. All of a sudden, Denis was there with us. "Let me try you, Kevin. I don't think you weigh as much as that lard-ass," Kyle said. He came close to flipping me, but not quite. He tried a second time and came even closer. "Come here, Denis," Justin said. "Put your feet on my hands now, okay? I'm going to try to flip you backwards, and the object is for you to go in feet first, facing me." Denis did what Justin told him to do, and Jus succeeded in flipping him. "Whoa!" Denis said when he came up. "That was incredible." "Do me," Brian said to Jus. "Okay. Come here, but you're bigger than you used to be, you know?" Justin actually flipped Brian, but Kyle couldn't flip Tim. Tim was as big as Kyle, Rick, Justin, and me, and Kyle just couldn't do it. We might not have had a workout in the weight room that night, but they certainly did in the pool.
I don't know why she did it. Yes, I do. She needed money for drugs. I mean, she knew she was on probation and that she would go to jail for a long time, if she got caught. Well, she got caught. Six years behind bars. No parole. She had me when she was sixteen. She didn't know who my father was, but she had it narrowed down to four boys, all around her age. My grandparents weren't much better. My grandmother had been fourteen when my mom was born, and my grandfather was seventeen. They actually got married, but they didn't stay together very long. Each one of them had children by several men and women, respectively, so I had half-uncles and half-aunts all over the place. Even if I had wanted to marry a girl, I would have had to be very careful in Calhoun County to make sure I wasn't marrying somebody who was closely related to me, like even my half-sister. My mom was probably the worst of that crowd, though. She did drugs openly in front of me and anybody else who happened to be there. We were on welfare all the time, and I got a free breakfast and a free lunch at school. I had a record of truancy, but that wasn't exactly accurate. I showed up at school every morning for my free breakfast and every day at lunch time for my free lunch. If I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have eaten every day. I didn't go to class sometimes because I was picked on constantly. I was gay, and I had made the very bad mistake of telling my best, and only, friend when I was in the seventh grade. He said he was gay, too, but he told his older brother what I had told him. That was all it had taken. I was out to everybody, which meant I was everybody's punching bag. I never got hurt badly, physically. But I was marginalized. I was a pariah, someone to pick on and make fun of and laugh at. I was smart, though, and I knew it. I skipped school a lot, except for meals, so I did very poorly. That started in seventh grade. Just because you're smart doesn't mean you know stuff, so my grades were pitiful. I was never retained, though. I don't know why. I guess I actually went enough to fool my teachers into thinking I knew more than I did. I fell in love with reading in the third grade, and I would spend whole days, whole weeks, even, reading in the tiny little room in the trailer we lived in. I didn't have many choices. Torment at school because they all knew I was gay; squalor at home; reading books that took me to places I wanted to be. There was a very small public library in my town, but it was only open three days a week. Children were allow in only one day a week, and you could only take out two books at a time. I needed more books than that. Two churches in town had libraries, but they were for the members, really. One nice lady who was a volunteer at the public library gave me a couple of books a time or two, but that wasn't nearly enough. One day I was very, very hungry. I went into a convenience store to go to the bathroom, and I couldn't resist. It had the only magazine stand in town, with a few paperbacks, too. I stole two Snickers bars and a copy of a John Grisham novel. I was busted as soon as I walked out the door. I had a bad temper. I got into a lot of fights with guys who called me fag or homo or that kind of thing. I was a fag and a homo, and I knew it. But I couldn't stand them calling me that. So I fought them. One time the School Resource Officer got in the middle of it. He was twenty years old, blond, and really good looking. I hit him, though, and he arrested me. I never meant to hit him. He just sort of got into the way of my punch. So I was on juvenile probation for that. Then she got arrested. A large black man by the name of Mr. Williams came to see me on Friday afternoon, the day of her arrest. He had been called by the arresting officer, and he's the one who set it up for me to stay with a neighbor. During the course of our conversation, it came out that I was gay. It had to do with my always missing school and fighting there, and so on. He guessed it before I confirmed it, but he didn't seem surprised or upset by the fact. He said he thought he had a good foster placement for me in Emerald Beach, but he didn't say anything about the family other than that it was two men who took in boys in need. I spent the first two nights with our neighbor. She had four kids, food stamps, no job, broken down trailer, the usual. We had plain grits for supper the first night, and that was okay with me. It filled me up. She did have some butter for the grits, and I put a healthy dab of it on mine. She told me the butter was just for her kids, but it was too late. She and my mom were good friends. She said she wanted to be my foster mother so she could collect the money the state pays foster parents. I didn't say anything about what Mr. Williams had said about taking me to Emerald Beach, though, and she was very surprised and angry when he took me away on Sunday. The house he took me to was magnificent. When we got there, the two men whose house it was weren't there, and we ended up talking to two boys. The older one, Justin, had sort of darkish blond hair, and he was ruggedly handsome. He had on a tank top, and I could see he was no stranger to a set of weights. The other one, Brian, had dark hair and eyes, and he was stunningly beautiful. I sat down after I shook their hands, and it was a good thing, too. I got an erection immediately. I was too shy and embarrassed to talk much. That is, until Brian asked me if I had read Lord of the Flies. I loved that book for the beauty of its structure and for the skillful use of symbolism. I'm not really into the outdoors very much, but that didn't stop me from loving that book. Brian and I talked about it, and I could tell Justin, who said he had actually read it, wasn't really following much of what we were saying. That was okay, though. Justin was extremely nice and very friendly, and as long as there was at least one boy there--Brian--that I could talk about books with, I knew I would be happy. After Mr. Williams left, they got a room set up for me, and then they all went swimming. Naked. Besides Justin and Brian, there were Kevin and Rick, the two men, Kyle, Tim, Alex, Cody, Jeff, and Tyler. Brian and I were the same age, but the others were older. They were all naked, and they seemed as natural that way as they were with clothes on. I had seen a few boys naked before, but not many. Seeing that many, and every one of them good looking and well built, overloaded my circuitry, and I kept an erection the entire time we were out there. I was so glad I hadn't taken my clothes off to go in the pool. Of course I knew that erections were perfectly normal occurrences and that all guys got them, but I got them with alarming frequency. And usually for no reason. I knew the reasons that afternoon, though, and they were all in the pool. I figured it would eventually come out that I was gay, but I wanted to keep that fact about myself secret at least until they got to know me. If they got to know me and like me, they might not be too quick to shun me and be mean to me, I thought. When Kyle told me the next morning that everybody in that house was gay, I didn't believe it. I figured he was telling me that to make me feel accepted or something. He was obviously in charge, and he and the others seemed really nice and kind. When they started rattling off who was the boyfriend of whom, and how long they had been together, I started believing them. I mean, no group of boys would say that about themselves just to make a total stranger feel accepted. It must be true, I thought. Then, when they explained the house rules about sex, I knew it had to be true. I relaxed a good bit at that point. Kyle took me to school to register, and I met my English-teacher-to-be. She was a very nice lady, and she let me check out three books. I knew I was going to enjoy that class. While we were at school, I almost blew it. Kyle made a comment about the size of my penis. It wasn't a cruel comment or a joke or anything, and it actually made good sense, once I thought about it. I was conditioned to react to anything like that by getting angry, though, and fighting. That didn't happen, thank God, but it was close. I promised myself that I wouldn't allow my temper to get the better of me ever again, especially at school and most especially with Kyle. We went swimming when everybody got home from work that afternoon, and I kept my eyes open for any signs of gayness in that group. We got into some pretty physical horseplay, but it was no different than with any other group of guys. The older ones seemed to be very strong, too. I was fearful at first about getting in naked, but they had told me that everybody got erections and that they just ignored them. I got one, of course, but nobody saw it because I stayed in the water until it went down. If they did see it, they didn't say anything about it. "Kev, we need to do some school shopping," Kyle said, once everybody was in the den with a snack. "I think we were about to blow it on the clothes thing again, Babe," Kevin said to Rick. "I know. I hadn't really thought about it. What kind of clothes do you have, Denis," Rick said. "He likes to be called 'Denny,' Brian said. "Oh, sorry. Denny," Rick said. "He's got shit for clothes," Kyle said. "I didn't ask you," Rick said. "I know, but I'm telling you," Kyle said. "And the last time I was at the warehouse, it was just about empty. You must be falling down on the job there, Bubba." "Very funny. It's almost empty by design," Rick said. "I'm not carrying over a big inventory of this year's styles, like I did last year. It was too late for me to do anything about it last year, but this year I could do something. So I did." I didn't know what they were talking about, but none of them asked any questions about it. I kept my mouth shut. "Take him to the mall," Kevin said. "You have our credit card. Just use that." "Okay, but Brian needs clothes, too. He's grown two inches in the last six months, and he's filled out a good bit, too," Kyle said. "I think he looks sexy in those tight tee shirts," Justin said. He grinned at Brian, who smiled back. A comment like that would have embarrassed me to death, but Brian didn't react except to smile. "What about you? Do you need any clothes for college," Rick asked. "Do I, Kyle?" There must have been some kind of private joke because Justin and Kyle started laughing when he said that. "Yes," Kyle said. "You heard him, but I can buy my own clothes," Justin said. "When was the last time somebody bought you a whole new set of school clothes," Rick asked. "They never did," Justin said. "That's why we're buying you a whole new set of school clothes," Kevin said. "We want our sons to look good, Jus, even if we're not very good about remembering to make that happen." "If you want your sons to look good, you need to see about getting plastic surgery for Kyle," Justin said. "Ouch! You got me last right here in the groin," Kyle said, grabbing himself. "Don't grab that. That's the best looking thing you got, son," Jus said. "Ahhh! You got me again! Brian, make him stop," Kyle said, and I thought he was about to cry or something. They all laughed. "Okay, are we ready for the mall? Or, a better question, is the mall ready for us," Kyle asked. "I think you'd better call your fashion consultant," Justin said. "Gage," Kyle asked. "Who else," Justin asked. Kyle called somebody and the guy evidently said he would meet us at the mall. It was about six o'clock when we left. We met up with Gage and his boyfriend, Chad, at the main mall entrance. Both of them were pretty flamboyant guys, and I felt a little bit funny about being with them. But the rest of those boys seemed right at home with Gage and Chad, so I went along with the crowd. They introduced me to them as their brother, and that sort of gave me a little catch in my throat. "We've got to do something about this immediately," Gage said. He flicked up the end of my hair, which I already knew was way too long. "I'd love to be able to get you in to see Antonio, my stylist, but he won't be available until next week. Regis will just have to do. I know one of the girls who works there. Let's pray she can take you right away." "See, I told you we needed the fashion consultant," Justin said. "Why don't you boys go do what you do best, and I'll get him taken care of," Gage said. "What are you talking about," Justin asked him. "Go eat, sweetie. It's what you do best in a mall without me," Gage said. They all laughed like that was the funniest thing they had ever heard. "Come with me, baby. We're going to get you looking good," he said to me. "Be gentle with him, Gage," Tim said, grinning. "Gentle? Never!" Gage said, and, again, they laughed. I went with Gage to the barber place, and it was really fancy. The girl washed my hair before she cut it, and nobody had ever done that to me before. "Do you think highlights," Gage asked the girl. "No. His hair is too light for highlights," she said. "God, wouldn't it look fabulous blue," he asked. "With just a touch of blue eye shadow?" She laughed, and Gage did, too. "You're terrible, Gage," she said. "No, I'm wonderful. Will you marry me?" She laughed some more. Having my hair shorter felt good, and I thought it looked good, too. I usually cut it myself, but I hadn't done it lately. Gage paid the girl for my haircut when she was done. "Thanks for the haircut," I said. "You're most welcome, but I owe Kevin and Rick so much, a million haircuts wouldn't even begin to scratch the surface," he said. "Do you go to high school," I asked him. "Yes, I'm going to be a senior at Beachside. That's where you're going, isn't it?" "Yes, sir," I said. I really didn't mean to say that, but it just came out. He sucked in a deep breath like he was about to say something about what I had said, but he didn't. "Let's go find the others," he said. We shopped for a good three hours, and we finally left when they were closing the mall. I had a very good time, and they got me everything, from socks and underwear to shirts, shorts, long pants, shoes, a jacket, and two pairs of shoes. Brian got a good many clothes, too, and so did Justin. Gage was definitely in charge of all of that. I expected him to want me to wear really wild things, but that wasn't the case, at all. One time Gage picked out a shirt that was kind of bright and not all that nice, in my opinion. He showed it to Kyle. Kyle shook his head "no," and Gage shrugged and put it back on the rack. We got home around 10:30, and Kevin and Rick were up waiting for us. They wanted to see everything we had bought, and they seemed delighted with everything. I felt real love in that room that night. Brian had said that morning that there was an awful lot of love in that house, and I had a sense of it for the first time that night. There was everything I had never had in my life: excitement, enthusiasm, joking, teasing, and, most of all, normality. I was overwhelmed, and I started crying. God! I was so embarrassed. Justin noticed. "Kyle! Get on it, dude," he said. "What," Kyle asked. "Friends in Low Places." Kyle started that song. His voice was beautiful, deep and smooth. He sang it better than Garth Brooks, I thought. They all knew it, too. They were all singing, and they all got up. They picked me up and held me over their heads. My God! "And I'll be okay," they sang, and they bounced me a little. I was crying, but I was laughing, too. I was so happy. I knew for the first time in my life that I would be okay.
Thursday morning I woke up at 5:30. That was totally ridiculous. I didn't have to give my speech at freshman orientation until 10:45, but I was so damn wired about that I had to be up early. Tim was so beautiful in bed when I woke up, but, for once, I had other things on my mind. I had to give my speech in that big-ass fine arts auditorium at school, and I was nervous. Everybody was coming. My parents, Kevin and Rick, Doc and Sonya, Justin and Brian, Tim of course, Alex and Cody, Denny, Chip. Jesus Christ! Why? I was sitting at the breakfast room table drinking a cup of coffee when Rick and Trixie came in from their run. They drank a large amount of water, and then Rick got a cup of coffee. He sat at the table with me. "Are you ready?" "Yes, sir, I think so," I said. "Are you nervous?" "I'm up at five fucking thirty when it starts at 10:45. Yeah, I'm nervous." Rick laughed. "Does Denny know who you are at school," he asked. "No, sir. I don't think so. I haven't told him, and I doubt that anybody else has, either," I said. "He's going to shit when he sees you up on that stage," he said. "I know." Finally, my time came. Tim rode with me. "You're going to be okay with this, right?" "Yeah, Babe, I'm going to be okay," I said. "Thank you for coming with me." "Kyle, do you think there will ever be an important occasion in your life when I won't be there with you?" "No, I know you will be," I said. "But I still want you to know I appreciate it." "I know, Baby. I know," Tim said. Then I gave my speech. "Hi. I'm Kyle Goodson, and I'm the president of the Student Government Association. SGA. I'm a senior this year, but don't be scared of me or of any seniors. I've got two little brothers in your class, and I'll be watching their backs. And yours, too. I'm going to ask them to come up on the stage right now. Denny Morgan and Chip Rooney. Come up here, guys." They clapped them up to the stage, and that surprised me. I made both of them stand next to me, and I put an arm around each of them. "These guys are my brothers. And you are my brothers and sisters, too. All of you who have a brother or sister who goes to this school, stand up." About a third of the group stood up. "Give these people applause," I said. "This is a family school. We might be Beach Rats, but we're a family of Beach Rats." They clapped hard when I said that. "Y'all know what a Beach Rat is?" The whole auditorium said "yeah." "Well, I'm a Beach Rat. My daddy was a Beach Rat. His daddy was a Beach Rat, and my granddaddy's daddy was a Beach Rat, too. There have been a lot of Beach Rats, including Mrs. Sally Ortega, our principal. Oh, yeah. She's as much of a Beach Rat as I am. "But you know what the thing about being a Beach Rat is? A Beach Rat has to be smart. That's right. Breach Rats are smart." Some of them laughed. "This school is all about academic achievement. That means studying hard and doing good on the FCAT test next spring. You are going to get an upperclassman assigned to you and a time for him or her to see you. It's all about academic achievement. We ain't running a dating service, so the boys will get a boy, and the girls will get a girl. What they're going to do is get you ready for that test. "Y'all have been taking that test for years now, just like I did. And you're going to do well on it. That's a rule here. I want to wake up one morning next spring, look at the paper, and see a big ole headline: Marlins Make an A. "How many of y'all want to go out for sports? Stand up." Quite a few of them stood up. "Okay. Sit down. That's real good, and I wish all of you luck. We're a little bit smaller than the city high schools, but we beat them or hold our own against them every year. That brings praise and glory to the school, and that's good. But that's not what gets us an A. It's what goes on in here that gets us an A." I tapped my head when I said that. "Nobody's going to care that the football team had a winning season or the volleyball team won all their games. They are going to care if you went to an A school, though. You know why?" They didn't say anything. "Come on. Say 'why.' You know why?" "Why," a few of them said. "Y'all ain't paying attention. Now come on. You know why?" "Why," about half of them shouted out. "Once more. You know why?" "Why," they screamed. "Because no high school in this county has ever been an A before. We're going to be the first one. Let me try something. Every time I say the word marlin, you say 'splash.' The marlin is our mascot, in case you didn't know that." There were a couple of boys on the front row who were laughing and cutting up, not paying attention. "You two. Come up here," I said. They were kind of scared, but eventually they came up on the stage. "What's your name?" They said Billy or Tommy or Jimmy or something like that. "Did y'all go to the billfish tournament last month?" "Yes, sir," one kid said. "Did you see that big ole marlin that man caught?" A few kids said "splash" like I wanted them to. "Yeah," the kid said. He seemed pretty excited about it, too. "Did you see the marlin," I asked the other one. "Splash," more of them said. "No, we left before the weigh-in," he said. "Too bad. That was a huge marlin," I said. "Broke the state record." "Splash," a lot more of them said. "Okay. Y'all can sit down." "Stand up if you want to join the Marlin Band?" "Splash," they screamed. Some kids stood up. I was having fun, and they were, too. That's what I wanted. Audience involvement. "How many want to be in the Marlin Drama Club?" "Splash," they screamed even louder. It doesn't take much to amuse a freshman. I kept it up throughout the rest of my speech, and I knew everybody was having fun. Then it was time to quit. "Okay, it's time to move on, but I'm going to end this with the first quiz of your high school career. I'm going to say the question, and you shout out the answer. The first one is a fill-in-the-blank. Listen close. 'A Beach blank has to be smart.' Answer?" "Rat," they screamed out. "Good. That's right," I said. "We want Beachside High School to get the grade blank." "A," they all screamed. "Right, again," I said. "What's a sound made in the water by a marlin?" "Splash," they screamed even louder. "That's it. Thanks." They really clapped hard. Almost none of that was in the speech I had written and practiced, but I knew those kids had had fun. Hell, I had had fun, too. That was the last of the orientation activities, and they all left to go home. "Kyle, that was incredible," Miss Sally said. She was grinning big. "Did I cover everything," I asked. "Yes. Everything. They're going to remember this the day they graduate," she said. "Thank you, you Beach Rat." Everybody was laughing, and I knew my parents were really proud of me. "You wore me out, son," my dad said. "Sally and I were screaming out every time you wanted us to, and this place didn't even exist when we were in high school." "Your speech was totally different from the one I heard you practice, but it was ten times better," Kevin said. "I really liked it that you got Chip and Denny up there with you for the whole thing," Brian said. "That sent a powerful message, too, Kyle," Miss Sally said. "I got on you the other day about saying we're Beach Rats, but you're right. That's exactly what we are. We're a family of Beach Rats, and Beach Rats do have to be smart." "What happened to him," Justin said in that chip-dry Alabama accent. Everybody laughed hard, especially me. "Miss Sally, this is my brother and best friend, Justin Davis. He keeps me straight," I said. "Ain't nothing could make you straight except . . . " "Whoa! Guys! We're not at home, you know," Kevin said. Miss Sally busted up laughing, and everybody else did, too. "This shoe leather I'm chewing ain't real good," Justin said. "Let's go get us some lunch." "Sally, come with us," my dad said. "I'd love to, Gene, but . . . " "No excuses. Come on," Dad said. "Oh, okay. Let me go tell my secretary I'm going to be off campus for a while," she said. "Tell her you're going to be in the restaurant at the Boardwalk Hotel," he said. That was the best restaurant we had in any of our places. My dad pulled out his cell phone and called them. He told them he needed a table for sixteen in twenty minutes. He said two eights would do, if they couldn't do sixteen, but he wanted it all in a private room. When we got there, in lots of different cars, they had a sixteen top set up for us. It was in a private dining room. The table was set up in a square, so four people were on each side. I took notice of the way they did that because I could probably use that idea sometime. Lunch was really good, just like I knew it would be. The general manager of the damn hotel came in to make sure everything was alright. He looked nervous as hell, but my dad made him feel okay about us being there. Those GM's were just too skittish. If we didn't like their place, we damn sure wouldn't be there. They needed to get a clue, starting with that guy. That morning must have taken a lot more out of me than I thought it had. When we got home to Kevin and Rick's house, Tim, Brian, and Denny started reading. I took to my bed for a nap. I was bushed. |