There are gossamer cracks on my brain that drag me back to when I was fifteen, engrossed with someone else's boyfriend. He was like a big brother at first then was a monster that only wanted me when he was lonely. It wasn't abuse to me then, hell, it was never called abuse but I know a part of me is now broken. I hate going into detail, but he was someone I trusted with parts of me that no one else was able to know, and I paid a price for it that I'm still calculating.

I feel the cracks when I meet someone new and they get close and the wall automatically forms, creating a labyrinth around the delicate parts that have been cracked. No one is allowed in, yet I feel someone closing in on the final leg of the maze. No monster I send to scare them off will work, and I feel the steps vibrating along those cracks, threatening to affect them, make them bigger. I no longer cry because it hurts, I now cry because I feel someone coming and I can't tell if it's with a bandage or a pickax and no part of me wants to find out.

Tears slide down my face because I don't know who to trust because even these walls are starting to turn against me, protesting always keeping people out and always wanting to stay safe. Safety robbed us of a rebellious teenage phase and intensified drunken college nights. Every month of friendship with a boy seems like I am inching closer and closer to the cliff. Every flirt or casual suggestion of a date sends makes my mind numb and my heart calcify. It's been five whole years now, and I can't shake it. I can't stop thinking that every man will be the same as him, and I don't know that I ever will.

I currently have a problem. Two years ago, recently widowed "Stan" moved in next door. The brick house is a stone's throw from mine (In the past I built it to be near my aging mother.)

Retired Stan was frequently outside when I was. He would come out of his house and stand in his yard to start small talk. At first I welcomed him, feeling sorry about his lonely situation, but then the gut "he's a creeper" screamed in me.

I built a privacy fence. Unfortunately one of his windows is above it.

Last week for the first time having my dog in the neighborhood for a walk, he pulled up beside me in an isolated area to say, "You off today?" I answered and kept walking.

The other day he was in the grocery store when I was. I thought I had lost him but there he was, right behind me at the checkout (there were several checkouts) trying to make small talk.

He is bugging the crap out of me.

Once he told me that my new kitchen light was much brighter. I now have a cut piece of cardboard I place over the window under the bamboo blind at night.

Stan started walking in front of the fence near the street and across my lawn, uninvited, whenever I took my trash out, checked my mail or tended my flower bed. He knows when I come home from work. I thought I had put a stop to it explaining to him it alarmed me and that he must stop, but after about six months, he gave it another try.

This was just two days ago. Again I insisted he not just come over, I was serious, angry looking and firm. I walked into the house.

This geezer is 72 but healthy. He drives in front of my house to back into his driveway. If my blinds are open he can see right into my private world through the French doors.

He has a clutter of aged cement statues: gnomes, angels, deer and they look like shit in the tall grass.

He has a disgraceful United States Flag tattered to the blue and white faded square flipping in the wind like strips of a rag in the center of his front yard.

Part of me is afraid because I could not physically handle him. So I force myself to not "poke the bear" and I think he knows this.

My house and his are secluded in the back of a loop of homes.

I'll tell you how I feel about it, angry!! My home life is supposed to be a safe place. I should feel relaxed at home but I'm always looking over my shoulder, adjusting the blinds and listening for his vehicle so I can dodge him.

I feel like I have to be clothed "properly" during the days I'm home.

No one stops in front of my house but Stan to back his car. I am very frustrated.

I think I'll take this write to the local police. That's what my out of state brother suggested.

Your thoughts Prosers?

When I was younger, I dealt with mental, sexual, and physical abuse. I was neglected, and later abondoned by my ill minded mother. Both sides of my family are a bit wack. even after getting away from my mother, I still had to deal with an abusive cousin, aunt and uncle who would watch me when my father was out of town. He did not know this until I finally told him what was going on.

Usually I hear stories of how people never grew up with a father, or how their father poorly mistreated them and such. Instead it was my mother. She in a way also took my father from me when I was younger due to legal issues. She forced my father to spend every dime in court. He was making sure she didnt get custody of me.

She often locked me in a room, lied to me, left me in random places, and or with random people. She left me in bars, strips clubs, and god knows where else. She would yell, and though rarely, she would physically hurt me. It was small things, like holding me down, or cutting my hair. She once shoved her finger down my nose, hooked her finger and began pulling as hard as she could. I dont remember why she did this. Also, gross.

I was also often times neglected. I was not properly groomed or clean. -I was a young child and couldnt properly take care of myself, nor did I know how to- She would Often times ignore my horrible ear infections. The only time she would take me to the hospital is to get herself out of trouble, by using my infections as a kind of scapegoat. -I suffered from infections other then ear infections- I can remember to this day the time an ear infection got so bad, all I could do is cry is horrid pain. I was just wishing she would get fed up with my crying and take me to the hospital. I dont know what the infection was. No one really saw it except me and her. It was never treated. when I was five or six, I finally was able to get tubes put in my ear, and then later removed. I only deal with mild irritation now and itchyness. -I also know how to properly take care of my ears now-

She often left vodka around, which me thinking it was water, I would drink it. She would smoke around me, and often didnt feed me well. When she didnt want to deal with me, she left me in a room with only a tv, a crappy twin bed, and an old castle doll house with no toys. The only movies I had was "Highschool Musical," "Lost City of Atlantis," and "Fantasia." I would watch these movies so much that the tv would burn my hand when I touched it. The most upsetting part honestly, it trying to explain to a class of ass hole highschoolers why you dont want to listen to highschool musical songs, or why you dont want to watch the damn movie. Again. Why do highschoolers love that movie so much? The singing is constant. WHY. JUST WHY. YOU ARE 16-18. STOP.

I dont remember much of the sexual abuse. I can't tell if thats a curse or a blessing. A lot of what happened to me back then is supressed. Usually something tiggers a memory, which is then followed by crying and screaming, or just a full on mental break down. Anything can trigger me, and its hard to avoid these things because I dont remeber what they are.

Theres a lot more, things that effect me to this day, but it would take a long time talking about everything that happened. While these things do effect me to this day, I am also living a much better life. I have a wonderful step/adoptive family, a father who cares for me, a great new job, and my art. I do suffer from anxiety, anger issues, depression, and ADHD, but I am learning -though slowly- how to live with these issues. I am learning how to live a full happy life. I often find the idea of living a complete fullfilling life difficult. I cant marry people, I cant have intercourse, nor can I have children. Finding a job that I can work at is also difficult due to my ADHD and anxiety. But I try to remind myself that sometimes people live different lives. The most I can do is try to live my life the way I want, and the best way that I can.

My mother married a man that was the devil himself. He was so black that if you cut off the lights you would just see eye whites and teeth. He looked like a black Freddy Cruger and his name was Frederick. When she first started going with him, she would disappear for days, then weeks. She would call but sound so sad. We were teenagers and I just assume everything was fine. Then she finally came home after we started complaining and she told us she was getting married. We met him, and he looked spooky to me. I didn't like him at all so I didn't say much to him. My mom didn't seem happy to me but she said she was and she loved him.

At the wedding, I went to the restroom and stayed until it was done. I love my mom with all my heart. She was all we had to depend on and she was a great mom, but she loved her men friends too. After they were married, we could tell he was abusive. He never smiled and she always cried. One night she invited us over for a big dinner she made for him. It was huge. She seemed happy. He worked at the

cigarette company and they sent him two free cartons a week. He came into and

went in the bathroom. My mom said dinner was ready. He came out of the bathroom,

and through all the food in the trash can. Cursed my mom out and she collapsed.

He left. She said she would be fine, and for us to go home. I have never been so scared for anyone in my whole life. I felt uneasy about leaving, but I left, slowly.

We left my big sister there because he liked her. My sister said my mom cleaned up and went into the restroom and stayed for a long time. When she came out, she got in bed. My sister called us. She told us something didn't seem right. My sister

called the ambulance and took my mom to the hospital. She had overdosed on pills. We met them at the hospital. He never came. When they released her, we decided to move her out while he was at work. We got her an apartment and moved her out in two days. We took his guns just in case he was coming after her.

He did. He hunted her down but following her from her job. We told him that we were all moving in with her. He was upset for a while and harassed her on the phone, and then he stopped. I prayed to GOD that he would take him back so that mom could live again. Well, three years later, he called my mom and told her that a deer died in his driveway. She told him to call the city to come to get it. They told him to put it in the street and they would come to get it. He did. Two days later, he started spitting up blood from the cigarettes. He had put blood all over his house. My mom called the ambulance to go to his home. They took him to the hospital where he died. I hate to say it but I was relieved, he was finally gone. He left all his money to his drinking buddy. My mom buried him and got the house. When we went to clean the house there were cigarettes in every drawer of his house by the cartons.

He had cigarettes in the closet stacked up and in the Pantry. Blood everywhere.

It was gross. When we went to the garage to clean it, I tried to open a window and at the time I was saying why I hated him and was glad he was gone, and just then

the window slammed on my finger. I shouted and I knew he did it!

I am not sure if it qualifies as mental abuse but for me, it adds up to be just that.

I struggle everyday with my ADD. Life is really hard living lke this.

My family always believed that my medication was enough to help me. And I thought that was true. They would get mad at me everyday for me not being able to remember things. They told me I would never be enough and that I will never succeed in life. My mom told me I could not have possibly gotten a boyfriend and since I did, it must have been a mistake and he would never want someone like me. I try to explain to them what is going on but they never listen. They constantly batter me about how stupid I am, how annoying, immature, ugly, crazy and everything else I could be. They question my well being. This has torn me down and I do not know where I stand anymore. I do not know why I have to get up every morning. Do not know why I am here other than to cause them pain. I do not know if this is mental abuse but it feels like it is to me.

When I met Wade I was homeless. I didn't have my own home but I had plenty of friends so it wasn't that bad. He had an apartment on the route I took to go shopping. He was sitting on porch drinking invited me to join.

Beginning of the end. So we started hanging got along famously. ( Narcist put on the charm) it didn't take long and I was hooked. He is from Georgia ( I'm in Missouri) . His sister called needed him to do some work. He's a heavy equipment operator. So he went home. I stayed. So now we have a long distance telephone romance. He's telling me he wants to get married all that. Well I'm thinking why not. We are the same age have common life styles. So Id been widowed for like 32 years. Hadn't met anybody worth marrying.

So December 2014 we get married. Oh boy. He is not what I signed up for.

He had an addiction to finding sneaky ways to cheat on his wife. The more dangerous the better.

So my life from 2014 until 2016 was a systematic calculated premeditated effort on his part to conceal every part of his truth from me.

He met his girlfriend in Missouri. We had a big fight summer of 2015 and he took off. I had no idea where. Finally somebody told me he went back to Georgia. I had no idea it was with someone else.

We get a hold of each after three days or so. I'm like what now.

Oh your my wife I'm sending for you. Oh boy lucky me. Well this sending for me does take some time. I getting impatient. But he's getting laid. Soon enough he wires me money for a bus ticket.

Fun starts now. Unknown to me at the time he all ready has a place a whole different life with Tabby her name that's all I know is Tabby. So this is pathetic. Now here starts his brain washing and abuse not physically just mentally. He has a completely different life I know nothing about.

He comes home from work but he's not really there. He's pleasant but not connected to me. all he's doing is playing the husband until he can get back out. Some days he didn't even really go to work. His employer was his sister with the family business. They sold Georgia dirt. I'm not kidding people would drive miles to get that stuff. You know flint River Georgia red dirt. I had no idea what he was doing until he busted himself.

Now see ever since I got to Georgia I hadn't drank smoked nothing

Thought he was doing the same. His family didn't like him drinking. So I figured we were both sober. Nope not at all. So one day he says hey let's get some beer im no your sister will get mad. He's like oh who cares. So I think ok I guess a few beers won't kill me. So ok. Next thing I know he's saying let's get some"go fast" meth Hell no that's stupid besides where in the hell are you gonna just come up with some dope? Well low and behold twenty minutes later here he comes dope and all. RED FLAG I'm all no way you don't just one minute decide to get high after not doing it then all of a sudden you have the smooth hook up.

So here's where all fun begins. From July of 2015 until fall of 2016. He had this girl friend and I knew.

I figured it all out little by little. My biggest hurdle was knowing when he met her. At first I thought it was his first wife's daughter. Somebody he all ready had in Georgia. Didn't figure it out until it was over. He didn't meet her in Georgia he brought her from Missouri to Georgia.

When he left me in Missouri they went on a honeymoon to Florida. Bought her a diamond ring and everything. It's crazy. The stuff he did. So now my life is going bonkers. I told his sister about my suspicions not the boss sister his younger sister. She told other people. Oh boy that pissed him off. He can't have that story it will ruin him. So he tells me to leave get on the next bus. Boy don't they wish. But I'm scared I have no place to go. If I left Georgia. Staying there was better than the streets in Missouri. So my decision to stay was my own. But the bull shit never stopped. He's out having a yee haw time with his gf swimming doing what ever and I'm stuck at my house with nothing. But I'm doing ok didn't really understand the mind manipulation he was doing to me. Didn't start to feel that until I got away.

Ok looks like his girlfriend is getting a little tired of the he has a wife game. Now don't get me wrong she had

Just as much fun messing with my head as he did. It gave them a bound so to say.

But she must have got mad about something probably because he was on vacation got paid and bought a big bunch of drugs. He had to come home and she can't come to my house. Although I'm sure there were plenty of times she did . He starts talking to me he says there is something I have to tell you. So out comes his story but of course he denied all of ten minutes later. He's sitting there all crying saying she wants me to pay her rent. I'm not paying her rent. Funny. So now we are packing up and going back to Missouri. Of course I think she is staying in Georgia because she's from there. Nope not my luck. It turns out she actually followed us back to Missouri. Then it just keeps being stupid. We stay together all three of us. Well me him and her. Wade and I are living in a trailer his boss owns. I've been fighting with him since we got back from Georgia. All I want is some place safe to go. Like impatient it halfway house something. Because I'm stuck in the country no job no drivers license. And putting up with his crap. I fighting all the time now. Well thank God she does something or I don't know. All I do know is this he comes home says that's it pack up the stuff we are leaving. I said oh did you and the little girl friend have a fight. He said oh she's just using me.

So off we go. Only I can tell she's following us. It makes me mad but. I figure getting out is better either way. Well we finally ditch her. He gets his phone wet and I break it in half. Now we are driving we get so far and he's like well I don't have any money blah blah. We decide to go back to the town we passed. Try to get gas money some food. Stuff like that. Well that little town is where I am today without him. We stayed at a shelter for a while. This and that happened. He out if the blue decided we should go back to Georgia. We will wait for a resource for some money like about 500 dollars his boss owes him . So we get the money. Back to the town we started in. We fill up the gas tank. I set the odometer to see how many miles we get on the amount of gas. He's looking for a way to ditch me. Of course he finds. I wait all day for him to come back. Finally so now we are headed out of Missouri. I say hey let's check the odometer. Well we'll there are Just enough miles unaccounted for to go to the town the shelter was in and back.

STOP this van take me back you have been doing drugs awhenawhenthe what ever the whole time. I'm not going back I'm staying here. He eventually leaves and goes to Georgia. I get my way back to the town with the shelter. So we are officially sperated. I've been doing the best I can on my own. I have a hard time I don't have any friends. The only people I know are homeless. They all smoke dope. I get good jobs but my mental faculties really aren't the best. So my employers usually find a reason to not like me. Then I'm back to looking for a job.

And now we have this covid 19. Stuff. I try I really do. It's getting better. I have given up hope in him ever doing anything to validate the stuff he did. He say it never happened. It's strange because you don't realize how your mind becomes stuck when you have been conditioned to think say and do what somebody else is orchestrating you to do. I feel frightened because my mind hadn't been my own. Not one decision I made that wasn't of his agenda I was doing what he needed me to do so he could sneak around and lie to me.

Now I am afraid of every situation. My personality has to be brought back up. I don't know how to act. Emotions are in strict check. Don't let myself feel anything it will hurt.

Top all that off my parents passed away over the last two years. They died of natural causes. I mean they had good life's just everybody's ends. My mom was my rock. My little brother passed away January this year. That was a shock. So I just can't seem to stay on track.

I just quit my last job. Now get this the Director put a night deposit bag in my backpack then had his assistant take it out I saw the whole thing. So I denied unemployment because I quit this was before covid19

I have a telephone hearing April 3:been researching on what to expect and what I should and shouldn't do. So hopefully. Called my landlord yesterday told her I might not have the rent. I do have the rent was just trying to buy another month. She said look for another job. Ok does she read the news or watch TV. We are in a 10 people or less restriction.I really do have my head and heart in the right place I am beginning more and more to let myself experience life remember what it feels like to get excited or find some joy. I'm afraid that if I let myself feel happiness or deep joy it will come back and sting me again. But I am still trucking on. Can't or won't give up. I know it's getting better. No husband that's for sure. Ok so that's a little if my abuse. If you call it that.

Hey in the house! Dave! Your sheep are in the road again.

David pulled back the short curtain tacked above the trailer window. The thin mustard-colored cotton bespeckled with brown flowers, like most of the things he had pieced together since his wife left with the children, was not something he would have chosen. Not that he noticed the colors. He tried not to notice most of the things about his life now. You’ve got the kids back, he’d tell himself, that’s what matters. And the land here is nice. The twenty-eight acres on which the trailer sat really was beautiful. Two fields divided by a rocky copse of birches stretched away from the paved road that rose toward the mountains. Beyond the fields lay a forest, interrupted at times by bouldered glacial erratics and ridged eskers, between which ran a clear, cold stream where beavers had once taken up residency, damning a small waterfall and creating a wide, muddy pool. The swimmin’ hole David liked to say. Groves of sugar maples and american beech gave way to a rockier terrain of hemlock, bane of ancient wisdom, whose decomposing needles swirled in mountains of foamy ecru along the banks of the stream.

The sheep were still in the road. So much for homesteading. In the winters, snow and ice blanketed the land, echoes of the glaciers that once lay miles thick above. They were gone, the cold remained. Snowplows, attempting to stave off ice formation, saturated the asphalt with crystals of salt. Farmers knew to herd their livestock quickly across the roadways. If they discovered this great river of black streaked with yellow and white was a lickable surface of the salt they craved, they would stop at nothing to return to it. This was David’s dilemma.

Pulling himself up from the brown armchair, whose springs had broken years before, he navigated a path through piles of clothes, shoes, firewood, garbage bags, and books rising like cairns in the small living room. Brushing past stacks of untouched theologians, where the second edition of Raising Sheep the Modern Way mocked him smugly, he shouted to his children.

Sheep are in the road again! Rory heard the screen door slam against the green aluminum siding of the trailer as his father stumbled down the makeshift stairs towards the road. Sliding of the top bunk, he slipped Tevas on his socked feet and gingerly made his way down the hallway herd path between piles of accumulated junk hiding a carpet stained like overripe avocado. Hoarding had not become a household word, but Rory would remember picking his way along that faux wood-paneled trailer of detritus years later when, flipping through the channels, he came across a house tour that took him back to this moment. He assumed that his father behaved this way because they were poor – he could never resist an object on the side of the road that said “free” – but hadn’t they always been poor? When his mother lived with them, it hadn’t been like this.

Sorry, sorry Tom. I know, I know, but it’s the salt you know. I gotta fix the hole in that fence, getting right on it. Rory half-listened to his father as he lifted a flap on the broken skirting that partly lined the gap between the trailer and the ground. He half-filled an empty Maxwell House can with dogfood. If there was one thing the sheep liked more than the salt of the road, it was dogfood. Walking towards the road, he rattled the can. A shamanic rainstick. At its sound, three motley sheep lifted their heads, licked their lips, and scrambled back through a gap in the mesh fence David had hastily cobbled together.

Ok, sorry for the trouble, Tom, hope it won’t happen again. The subaru drove off and Rory dragged an old pallet to block the hole in the fence. David, sighing, went inside to nuke some tuna noodle casserole Rory had made the night before and drink one of the Bud Lights he hid from the kids in the cabinet above the fridge. The sheep were restless, having finished the dogfood, wanting more. They trudged in a tight circle around the trailer, shitting as they walked under grey skies. Over time, their excrement had formed a moat around the trailer. A bleating siege of the beleaguered trailer followed each sojourn to the salty road and dogfood rattle. Soon, Rory would add another layer of pallets to the walk from the front door, above those now sinking into mud and excrement. He did not wonder why that task would fall to him. That is how it was. Tonight he would make grilled cheese for dinner. He listened to the wind, watching the new buds sway on the birch trees, bark stripped bare by deer and sheep over the winter. There were still Kraft singles left over from the missionary lunch at church, and Wonder Bread bought just past expiration. He wondered if his father had remembered to get the tub of Country Crock. Could they use oil instead? Friday they would go to his mother’s. Jean’s parents had rented a small house for her in town, just off Main Street next to the railroad tracks. At their last visit, she said she was going to make baked ziti while she and Rory had laid warm mulch smelling of cocoa around freshly-planted impatiens. This mulch costs more, but I like the smell. The house was small and rattled when the trains passed, and there was no yard to speak of. But it, too, was warm and smelled like cocoa. And Yankee Candle vanilla, which does not really smell like vanilla.

Rory walked through the gathering darkness towards the trailer. The sheep bleated as the sun retreated towards the west and wood smoke began to drift down from the chimney pipe. He did not hate it here, though it was hard. One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it. Someday he would live differently, but here, now, he would enjoy the wind and the smoke and the big dipper glowing steadily in an inkblue sky.

In the motel room at the banks of the St. Lawrence, at the edge of the country, at the precipice of tragedy and transition, Rory could not see the sky. Even if the curtains were not drawn tightly shut, which they were, the windows faced a parking lot where Super 8 - Free Breakfast - Monthly Lets blocked the November sky. It was a Tuesday afternoon, and Rory should have been in school. They all should have been. Steps shuffled outside the door, followed by three short knocks, a pause, three long knocks, and another pause. Rory got up from the bed where he was reading and stepped over his brother and sister, who were crayoning monsters and hearts in their notebooks on the floor.

He stood on his tiptoes to slide the chain out of the latch and heard his mother fumbling for the keycard in her purse.

I said wait to the count of 10, THEN open the door. She whispered this against the door, still searching for her card. She found it, and cracked the door open, sliding along the wall and furtively glancing outside before closing it behind her. She wore a visor usually used when canoeing, and hoped that her sunglasses did not make her conspicuous. She didn’t know what she would do if she was spotted. Her picture was on the news. Next time she would send one of the children to the store, thank god privacy laws didn’t allow the local network to publish their pictures. She just needed more time, gather evidence, prove once and for all what a fucking cunt liar her husband was. Hitting the boys, she had seen the bruises, how dare he. But the final straw. Abusing their daughter. For fucks sake, their own daughter. She was only eight years old. But she knew, she knew it had been going on for years. Years. No one would fucking believe her. But she knew. That’s why she had to take them. She wished to god she had planned it better. Gotten the evidence. But how could she let that keep happening? That god damn social worker. He must be fucking her. Bet she likes that, the kids in the next room. Afternoon fuck. And shit fuck child protective services. Who the fuck were they protecting? Had he paid someone off to get them taken out of the safe house? SAFE HOUSE? They were supposed to be fuckin’ safe. The kids liked it there. They could watch tv, and they played with Janet’s two boys while she and Janet talked in the kitchen, a bag of peas pressed against Janet’s eye to stop the swelling. Jean remembered what that was like. He couldn’t fucking get away with it anymore. But that woman. That fucking woman. Coming to the safe house, telling the kids they were going home in the morning, just when they were getting used to the place after the first week. They were terrified. Couldn’t she fucking see that? They needed more rooms available, was that it? More beat-up women running from their fucked up husbands? So her kids would get thrown out? Back to their abusive father? You don’t want that kids, do you, you are terrified of going back there? Tell her, show her where he touched you. Isn’t that what they say? Show her your bruises, here, see this? Don’t tell me I’m hurting my kids you cunt, you fucking whore. And don’t tell me to calm down, Janet, don’t tell me to fucking calm down. You left, you left. That’s exactly what I’m doing. Fine, we’ll see you in the morning. Nine am sharp you fucking cunt. That’s why . . . that’s why I had, why I had to, why I had to leave. They know that, the kids know that. They’re better off here. Entenmann’s danish in the morning, cheese, apple, plain. The kids love it, they really do. This room is starting to smell. We’ll be okay. We’ll wait it out. We’ll wait, then we’ll go. Across the river, like the underground railroad Rory said. Yes, honey, just like the underground railroad. Feel the moss on the trees and know we’re heading north. Then just get across the river. It’ll freeze. It always freezes. And then just drive, just drive right across. People do it, right? People do it all the time.

Did you get the books from the library? Jean emptied her bag, books and pens, cheerios and lipstick, spilled onto the polyester bedspread.

I can’t go back to the library again for a little while, honey. So this book, it’s about Indians, right, it’s long enough, isn’t it? Rory inspected the book. Six hundred and sixty two pages. A woman with waist-length flowing blonde hair clutched a spear beside a bearded man clad in fur, surveying wooly mammoths marching before a distant shelf of ice. The last entry Rory had in his history notebook, three weeks before, was on the Iroquois confederacy. It would have to do. I don’t want you to fall behind.

Rory stretched out on the double bed. He hated sharing it with his brother. He hated more that he would definitely fall behind. In Ms. Shaver and Ms. Ward’s “alternative program,” seventh and eighth graders took all their subjects together. Everyone was mixed, so it was easy to tell the smart kids and the dumb kids. And there were dumb kids, but they weren’t supposed to call them that. They were special. Rory figured that they chose all the smartest kids in the sixth grade and put them with all the dumbest kids. The ones that needed Ms. Flores to sit with them at lunch and wipe the ranch dressing off their mouth when they stuck their face in the lunch tray. But that was only Sharon. The rest were just, well, dumb. Ms. Shaver would hold both her hands to the sky, her wrists wrapped in hemp bracelets and henna tattoos reaching to her hairy armpits, and remind them all are special when we come together. She taught English and History, where they studied native americans most of the time, or watched Pocahontas. In the next room, separated by an accordion screen, Ms. Ward rolled her eyes during the science lesson in a thirteenth answer to whether she had heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon. But Rory always brought his cafeteria tray to the classroom to eat, and they were always sitting at one of the many round tables and laughing together, so Rory figured they must be friends. Ms. Shaver wouldn’t mind him missing so much school, but Ms. Ward would definitely be angry. He didn’t know what he was going to say. He’d have to be one of the dumb kids now. He took out his notebook.

Title: The Mammoth Hunters

Author: Jean M. Auel

Main characters: Ayla, Jondalar, Ranec

Summary: Not about native americans. Descriptions of animals, and plants, and

About halfway through the book, Rory stopped taking notes. Lying on his stomach on the bed, the book open in front of him, Jean talking to herself in the corner and writing on her hand while his brother and sister played on the floor, Rory felt his pants press tighter against the sheen of the acrylic bedspread. His warm mouth . . . a flush of heat throbbing in his loins . . . his manhood . . . she pushed herself up to him, wanting, and shuddered when he answered with a deep pull . . . his manhood . . . He drew back and plunged deeply . . . He drove in again, and again, with unrestrained abandon . . .

Dinner! Jean opened two bags of potato chips. When Rory rolled over, his pants were wet, staining the bedspread. I’m not hungry. He wasn’t. You have to eat something. What had happened? Later. He didn’t care about the girl Ayla. He wanted to take her place. To be held like that. And his body felt achy thinking about it. Did he pee? He wasn’t scared, like the time he peed in his dark bed when he heard something scratching at the edge of the trailer. He sat on the bed, his butt hiding the stain and holding the large tome carefully over his lap. He would wait until it dried. Just let me finish this chapter.

The next morning, housekeeping was able to clean the room. Did you hear? The police had to break down the door. Sirens and handcuffs. This place is filthy. I mean, look at the stains on this bedspread. Jesus. At least those kids are back home.

Jean screamed as she was handcuffed and put in a squad car. All Rory noticed was the nightsticks swinging at the officer’s sides. And the bulge behind the zipper of the one who took his hand and led him out in the glow of the Super 8.

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