Light Through the Cracks

Lucy froze as a low, drawn-out moan rose from the floor in the hallway outside of her room. Her father's steps were heavy and slow and deliberate, and the sound immediately turned her body to stone. She considered for a moment that she imagined the noise, but knew from the way everything in her mind seemed to tilt a little to the left that he was there. She knew he was making his way to her door, creeping like a cat toward an unsuspecting bird.

Lucy was not a bird, and she was not unsuspecting because she was awake and intensely aware of her surroundings. Falling asleep at night was not something that came easily to her. She regularly pulled her covers over her head and read by flashlight long after her mother insisted she go to sleep.

Reading her books carried her through the days, and very slowly and softly eased her into sleep at night. Her father's presence outside her bedroom door terminated this process, and Lucy was immediately at full alert, the stillest and most awake she could possibly be. She wanted him to believe she was sleeping, so she did not turn her flashlight off or close her book or roll over into a proper sleeping position because sleeping people did not do that.

She strained to hear the noises in the floor to determine where exactly her father was going in the middle of the night. It was not uncommon for him to wander the house at all hours, or to raid the pantry, binging on entire loaves of bread and entire jars of jelly and anything else he could get his thick, calloused hands on. He would then often fall asleep wherever he was sitting, usually on the couch in front of the television downstairs.

Lucy did not like it when he slept on the couch, exposed and out in the open. She always recoiled from the sight of his bloated and hairy belly, of his mangy white briefs, and of his hair sticking up all over his head on the mornings after his nighttime gorging forays.

She liked it when her father stayed in her parents' bedroom, or in his home office. These were his designated areas of the house, and as long as Lucy did not disturb him, he mostly stayed put, deeply engrossed in whatever it was that he did.

Regardless of his intended destination, the sound of him moving about in the middle of the night was cause for alarm. As Lucy sat perfectly still under her blanket, she heard the soft metallic sound that her door handle made when someone was trying to turn it. She was immediately grateful for her recent insistence on locking her bedroom door.

Her mother told her that she could not keep her door locked because the firemen would not be able to get her out if the house went up in flames. Lucy did not tell her mother that she had more immediate concerns than being trapped inside a burning house.

Her father's steps lingered in the hall. The flimsy lock on her bedroom door delayed his entrance, and also sounded a tiny alarm to warn her he was trying to get to her. Lucy knew he could easily get through her security system, but she also knew that it would be noisy if he did.

The only way he could get her door open without too much clattering was if he went into the bathroom across the hall and retrieved the tiny flathead screwdriver that fit perfectly into the groove that sprang the lock on the handle. But this would take at least a full minute.

Earlier that summer, Lucy took to leaning outside of her room through the dormer window after the smoldering sun went down and observing the predictable life occurring on her suburban street. On each occasion she did this, she removed the window screen—much to her mother's irritation. She initially replaced the screen each time she pulled herself back into her room, but quickly ceased going through all of that trouble and instead left it tossed aside on the roof of the front porch.

This allowed her to open her window and quickly spring from inside her room and out onto the top of the porch without hindrance, which is exactly what she did once she was certain her father was trying to get into her room.

There was a sweet gum tree that grew quite close to the house, and Lucy easily leaped into its waiting branches. She then shimmied down the trunk, unaware that her nightgown kept getting snagged along the way, but distinctly aware of the scratches being scraped into her inner thighs.

Lucy clung to the tree with her toes and fingertips to slow her descent. The moon was bright and the night was still and she fled into it. Her bare feet did not hesitate at the transformation between the end of the grassy yard and the beginning of the wooded area dividing her house from her neighbors'. And although she continued to feel branches and bark scratch her face and arms and legs, the stinging pain made her feel strong.

Lucy ran until she reached the neighbor's side of the woods. Years before, they had curiously built a small wooden bridge arcing over a shallow ditch that rarely, if ever, channeled any substantial amount of water.

Lucy liked the bridge—it was just the right distance from her own house that she felt far enough, but not too far, away. These neighbors did not have young children, and on the rare occasions they noticed her in their back yard, they made no attempt to discourage her from being on their property.

She became quite familiar with the bridge as she grew up. As far as Lucy was aware, her parents never knew she spent so much time beneath it, or if it was even there at all. Although they were neighbors for years, there was never any love lost between the owners of the bridge and the adults in Lucy's house, and therefore no concern over small changes to each other's property.

Lucy felt as though the space below the bridge belonged to her only, and retreated there often. She felt safe there, and that is where she went to escape the madness back in her bedroom.

It did not rain much that summer, and Lucy was pleased to discover that she did not feel any sign of wet mud seeping through her nightgown as she sat down in the ditch and crossed her legs and brought her knees to her chin.

She gingerly felt along the stinging bits of her skin, determining whether or not there was anything other than superficial wounds on her legs, feet, arms, face, chest, and neck. She found and felt nothing alarming, and having caught her breath after her sprint, Lucy again became perfectly still.

She had to sit slightly hunched over in order to fit under the bridge without banging her head, and her back began to ache after a minute or two. Lucy did not move, though, and acknowledged the pain in her back as just another of the discomforts that went along with any standard escape.

She continued holding perfectly still, because as she made her way across the roof, down the tree, through the yard, into the woods, and finally under the bridge, she imagined her father close on her heels.

Now she listened for him.

She heard frogs and bugs. She heard mosquitoes buzzing and felt them finding satisfaction by sucking her blood out through the tiny straws on their faces. She heard an occasional soft rustle of the trees as a light breeze passed over their tops. For a few moments, she heard her own heart beating in her ears, but that subsided as she continued to remain still.

Finally confident that her father—or anything else—did not come after her, Lucy scootched her bottom down and leaned back against the curve of the ditch, her face parallel with the underside of the bridge.

The bridge was wooden and old. Over time, parts of it splintered off and dissolved into dust. Other parts were separated by the elements and were in the slow process of falling and dissolving, too. There were even a few nice-sized chunks completely missing from the boards, knocked out and taken by the effects of nature over time.

The earth below the bridge held her firmly and gently. It was cool and dry, and as she rested her eyes on the weathered wood above her head, the tightness in her neck and chest and back fell out of her. Beams of light flowed from the moon and between the cracks of the bridge and onto her upturned face.

Lucy pulled her head back inside her room. She was leaning out the window, trying to determine if it was too hot to climb out and sit on the roof. It only took her a few seconds to make the determination that it was definitely too hot. It was early in the afternoon, on one of the listless days in the last weeks of summer before her sophomore year of high school.

She left her room and went restlessly down the stairs looking for anything at all that might distract her from the clock's slow ticking. She found her father in his home office.

Lucy said hello to him. He sat at his desk, his silver hair combed straight back toward her, his hulking shoulders hunched forward.

He was working at his computer on only God knew what, and he did not turn in response to his only child's greeting. As a self-proclaimed genius, Lucy's father demanded complete solitude in order to access his brilliance.

He owned a multi-million dollar manufacturing company that he started years before in the garage of that very house. Why his family remained in that very house, rather than upgrade in accordance with the progression of his business, was something beyond Lucy's realm of consideration, as she was not really even aware of how much money her father made.

When Lucy was in elementary school, he came home early one afternoon, backing a boat trailer—with a boat on it—up the driveway. Granted, Lucy and her parents used the boat quite often to go water skiing on nearby Lake Arbortown, but there was no preliminary discussion of the purchase of a boat.

Lucy's mother was not altogether pleased about it, and although she enjoyed the luxury aspect, resented her husband's lack of consideration of the time and energy it took to maintain a nineteen-foot ski boat. Lucy's mother also resented the fact that he made no effort at all to assist her in doing so.

Over the progression of their marriage, Lucy's mother learned that her husband did what he did when he did it, and that he lived staunchly according to the philosophy of "my way or the highway."

He had a very different relationship with his daughter than he did with his wife in that Lucy always knew only he was in charge. Lucy's mother was petite and beautiful, intelligent and well put together and took pride in the notion of maintaining intellectual independence from her corpulent and wealthy husband. Unfortunately for Lucy, and for her mother, this notion only existed on a superficial level, one that did not penetrate Lucy's father's conscience.

The household was a battleground of constant manipulations, albeit in a very quiet way. The only one of them ever to raise her voice was Lucy, and the immediate response to that was stonewalling by both her mother and her father, a technique that hurt and frustrated Lucy immensely.

Rage became Lucy's friend at a young age, and although she feared physical violence, had no qualms about inflicting it upon herself. Lucy's self-harming behavior began at four years old with a violent tantrum. She pitched herself onto the kitchen floor and beat upon it so fiercely that her mother picked her up out of fear that Lucy would fracture her forearms.

The bruises lasted for almost three weeks on Lucy's little arms, but her father ended up using the stonewalling technique on his wife for breaking his cardinal rule of giving no heed whatsoever to irrational behavior, even from a four year old.

Lucy never stopped trying to break down her father's stone wall, though. As she entered his office on that morning, she dismissed his dismissal of her greeting, and sat down in a chair behind him. His desk faced the wall, and so he faced the wall, which was quite a difficult space for his wife or daughter to put themselves when they wanted his attention.

"So, what are you working on?" queried Lucy, using her interest in his work as bait, which was generally the best way to go when trying to engage him.

"A new project in Africa. A deal with one of the smaller country's governments." He still did not face her, but continued to stare at the computer screen.

"Which country?" Lucy was genuinely interested in the different places her father travelled in his work. They were primarily unheard of to her, and seemed quite exotic.

"I'm sure you haven't heard of it." Even this monotone, generic shutdown of Lucy's attempt at interaction warranted no eye contact, or even a turn of his head. She walked out of his office and went back to her room.

Lucy loved her room. It was not very big, but the window overlooking the roof of the front porch was one of her favorite places. She recently began to smoke cigarettes, and the roof was a perfect evening spot for this new hobby.

Both of Lucy's parents smoked when she was younger, and she hated it. She learned in school the dangers of smoking and how it made your lungs turn black. The thought of her mother's lungs turning black was frightening, but the biggest reason Lucy hated her parents' smoking was the way her fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Winship, flinched in disapproval upon smelling the stale cigarette residue on Lucy's winter coat.

Lucy asked Mrs. Winship for help getting her coat off because the zipper was stuck, and Mrs. Winship took a big breath through her nose in order to muster up the energy to yank the zipper down. She almost immediately recoiled in disgust from Lucy and her jacket.

"Do your parents smoke?" Mrs. Winship asked, in a pretentiously kind and condescending voice as she stepped dramatically away from Lucy and her stinky coat.

"No. They quit smoking before I was born." Lucy did not quite plan the lie, but it pretty much just jumped out of her mouth, and once she said it, she was not going to be taking it back. Besides, she was not going to give Mrs. Winship, the meanest teacher she ever had, the satisfaction of criticizing her parents.

"Lucy, are you lying? Because I think you are lying. Do you know why I think you are lying?" Mrs. Winship spoke out of the side of her mouth, and raised her eyebrows and lifted up a little bit on her tippy toes at the end of each of these questions.

"No." Lucy crossed her arms over her chest, indignation dripping from each of her balled fists.

"Because you smell like cigarettes. Your coat smells like someone smokes cigarettes around it, and I can only presume it is your parents who smoke the cigarettes." Mrs. Winship gave a satisfied little nod to finish off her closing argument.

"Maybe you smell cigarettes because you smoke them. I saw you smoking cigarettes outside in the parking lot bent down next to your car." Lucy was very proud of this rebuttal, and spoke loudly and clearly to enunciate her confidence, for this part of her argument was true. She forgot her lunch on the school bus one morning, and when she went back out to get it, saw Mrs. Winship crouched beside her car smoking cigarettes.

Lucy expected Mrs. Winship to bow her head in shame and apologize for making such accusations against Lucy's parents when it was, in fact, she who was the cigarette smoker. Mrs. Winship did not do what Lucy expected, but got flustered looking and told the class to get to work on their assignment.

For the rest of the year, Mrs. Winship was not hard on Lucy, but she was not kind, either. Lucy hated her.

Lucy never imagined she would one day be doing something as stupid and dirty as her parents and the frigid Mrs. Winship. Her friend Katie gave her one of her grandmother's cigarettes during a sleepover the previous year, and Lucy was a little surprised she smoked it.

However, she was also strangely excited by the forbidden nature of it.

Lucy loved smoking, and loved having the secrecy of the indulgence. On the roof outside her window, late at night, Lucy loved the solitude of her smoking time, and the slight nod a nicotine buzz gave to her state of mind. Especially in the summer, when the world was dark and soft and warm, and belonged to her, and she to it, and she felt safe.

But it was not night yet, and Lucy had the rest of the blistering summer day to get through before she could wallow in her aloneness.

Her mother was home, and gave Lucy a list of daily chores: clean the hall bathroom, weed the flower garden out front, fold laundry—all mundane, all boring, all supporting Lucy's theory that the only reason her mother had a child at all was so that she would someday have free housekeeping services, as she did now.

Lucy actually did not think it was a bad idea, and looked forward to the day when she could have a child old enough to clean her own house.

The inside chores did not bother Lucy so much, but the yard work was earnestly culminating into her personal version of hell. It was stupid and boring, and she had no communion with plants the way some people do.

She also did not have any pride in outdoor work. It was her parents' house, and she gave no consideration to what anyone would think if the grass grew longer than six inches, the length at which a city ordinance deemed "too long." Lucy felt laws dictating how long grass could grow were silly, and she was almost as smothered with disdain for her hometown as she was with the July heat.

Thinking of the word "July" —"Julio" in Spanish—while sweating and freckling in the flower garden, Lucy thought of the time when she was in Junior High and her father said they would all need to learn Spanish, because they were moving to Costa Rica for a year for some business project.

While Costa Rica sounded like a great place to visit, Lucy was not interested in moving anywhere she did not have friends. And as much disdain as she had for Arbortown, it was where her few friends—her refuge—were, and the only place she really knew.

About a week after her father's announcement of the big move, Lucy's mother asked for a timeline, and if they were going to fly out in advance in order to find some place to live. Lucy's father laughed, because he already forgot about the whole thing, and said it was not going to happen.

While she was relieved by the knowledge that she would still be living in Arbortown, Lucy flushed with embarrassment at the distress she suffered anticipating her going away.

Katie especially was very upset when Lucy told her she was moving for a year, and even began to plan a sit-in on Lucy's driveway so the moving van would not be able to leave. Lucy was touched and heart-broken by Katie's distress, and spent every night crying herself to sleep from fear and the anticipation of missing her friends.

When she heard her father scoff and treat the whole situation like a big joke, Lucy felt very foolish.

It was a common theme in her home, in her life, to be humiliated by her father. It was kind of like a sport to him, and Lucy could only conclude that he had to have some type of hobby. She hated his games, and she was terrified of feeling that humiliation, especially in public, and even more especially at school.

There were a couple of times growing up that she relaxed enough in class to assert herself socially, but felt she was made fun of by one kid or another, and this taught her to just keep her mouth shut and her head in a book. It was a wonder she had any friends at all.

Of course, she could be very social once she got to know people, which was a process further hindered by her tendency to be quite aggressive and intimidating, although these were not qualities of which she was aware. She was aware, instead, of the way people sometimes clammed up after she spoke, and gave her what she felt was the cold shoulder, and assumed this was because they did not like her.

Since she was raised under the prevarication that there were plenty of qualities not to like about her, Lucy did not find this terribly odd, but it was quite lonely at times.

Loneliness was a burden for her to bear, and she accepted it. She knew she was different, that there were no others nearby, if any at all, who were like her. It was something she detested and simultaneously cherished; she felt it set her apart from the bland sea of the general public, but she was still very lonely.

Lucy surmised it was the price she paid, though, to keep the balance struck. Her father explained this reasoning to her for as long as she could remember, telling her she was like him in this way, and that they must stick together, because only she could understand him, as only he could understand her, a philosophy that made Lucy feel significant.

Lucy did not cry in elementary school when she was not invited to birthday parties and sleepovers. She had books to entertain her, and the certainty of her specialness to bolster her in such times. She loved to read and spent hours of each day doing so.

She was only three when she learned how to read, and could remember vividly calling out to her mother from the back seat of the car to tell her what each sign, each billboard, each plate-glass window read as they rode by. It was a game for her, but also something she needed. She needed to know what those words meant, how to put the letters together, and then string them all into sentences that told a story and made sense not only to her, but to everyone.

Because not much that made sense to her made sense to everyone, and a lot of things that seemed to make sense to everyone, such as Barbie Dolls and cheerleading, made no sense to Lucy at all. Lucy longed for things that made sense, and she loved to be in the pages of those books, and thereby in those worlds—because that was what kind of reader she was, the kind who starts to read and gets completely lost in the story.

And those worlds, full of simplicity and complexity, of joy and pain, of love and hate, of peace and violence, everything of which those worlds consisted was fascinating to Lucy primarily because it was not her world.

As the weeding went on and Lucy's mind continued to wander, the sun got a little lower, and the mosquitoes found her ankles and the backs of her knees and her thighs, and she thought she would go insane with each bloody little bite. Although insect repellant was invented long before Lucy was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, she always, always forgot to spray it on until after she was covered in angry welts.

Many times it was also more important to her to finish whatever it was she was doing before she made the effort of applying the repellent, as it was at this moment when she was almost done with the weeding. Efficiency was important to her when it came to tasks she disliked, and so getting done with the weeding was a priority over her own comfort.

She fantasized about the popsicle she was going to have the minute she was done, and then about the cool, stinging feel of spraying entirely too much insect repellant all over each inch of her exposed flesh, and then of the heavenly feeling of swaying gently in the hammock out back in the shady section of the yard while reading her current novel, and possibly even dozing off for an unguarded moment or two.

Lucy pulled the last of the ugly little bastard plants by its pathetic roots and tossed it into the pile. She stood and grimaced at the feeling of dirt spreading across her face and mingling in with the sweat she was wiping off her forehead.

She knew she now had little mud smudges on her face, but decided they probably made her look as though she was working hard, and it pleased her to know she had something to show for her efforts aside from the dozen or more new mosquito bites.

Unfortunately, no one passed by at that moment to see this evidence and to appreciate her hard work, so Lucy went in the house via the garage, where she replaced the garden gloves in their proper spot on the metal shelving, and then went inside for the popsicle.

After her delicious and satisfying icy treat, Lucy went upstairs to take a cool shower.

She disrobed in her room, then wrapped a towel around her for the trip across the hall to the bathroom. Once there and safely behind the locked door, she stooped to run the water, and then dropped the towel and glanced momentarily at herself in the mirror.

The stark difference between the tanned and very white skin was what she always noticed first. Her natural skin color was paper-white, and she was not fond of it. Dissatisfaction with her appearance, and with her body as a whole, was not a foreign awareness for Lucy.

She wasted no more than one and a half seconds examining her naked reflection. Lucy was always a little shocked at the differences her body experienced in the last few years, and she could not say she was happy about them.

On the one hand, she was glad she did not look like a child anymore, and felt proud about the rites of passage she went through, because they were the same things other girls her age experienced, too. However, she was not at all comfortable with the idea of herself as a "woman." She did not even like the word as it did or did not apply to her.

As with the many things in her life over which she had no control, she viewed the maturation of her body as inevitable, and accepted it; but also as with many things in her life, she did not necessarily like it.

In the semi-cool shower, Lucy rinsed the dirt from her face and shampooed and conditioned her hair. She shaved her legs, as she did every day, because there was always the chance someone might brush up against her and she was mortified at the thought of the feel of her legs being anything but smooth.

Actually, she was mortified by pretty much all body hair, but was too self-conscious to shave anywhere but her legs and under her arms. When she first got the beginnings of the hair between her legs, she mentioned it to her mother, who seemed to need to know such landmarks, though certainly not in any detail—just enough information to determine if Lucy was maturing on course, which she was.

But when Lucy mentioned the hair thing, her mother inexplicably became alarmed, and with a horrified look on her face, lambasted, "You don't shave there … do you…?"

Lucy, feeling something akin to a fifty-cent whore, blushed deeply and vehemently denied any such act. Apparently, shaving one's privates was a disgusting and deplorable thing to do, and even though the gradual covering of that area by that weird, thick, wiry strangeness made her feel dirty, her mother's look of horror at the thought of shaving it made her feel even dirtier.

So there the hair stayed, and the bikini-brief underwear Lucy wore covered it all up. Out of sight, out of mind.

After her shower, Lucy dried herself, thankful that the mirror was fogged and left only her blurred image exposed, revealing no detail. With the towel, she went over and over the little nicks in her legs around her knees, ankles and shins, where her shaving removed bits of skin.

Lucy literally could not recall a single shaving of her legs that did not include at least one nick to the only part of her body with which she was comfortable. It was maddening, and it seemed as though the slower she went and more careful she was with the razor, the deeper and longer the cuts it produced.

Still, her mother's electric shaver did not get her legs nearly as smooth, and her one attempt at a chemical hair remover ended up in hours of agonizing, burning pain. So the razor it was, and so too was the putting up with the little nicks.

After going over them three or four times with the towel, they stopped bleeding. Lucy then generously applied lotion, satisfying the thirst of the raw skin. Her legs were the only part of her body she actually enjoyed taking care of, and she loved to wear very short shorts, even though her father hated them and said she looked like a slut.

After brushing her hair and pulling it straight back wet (it was too hot and too humid to make any effort, and it always ended up being ridiculously frizzy and unruly regardless of the time she put into it), she pulled on her bikini-briefs, strapped the largely unnecessary bra over her practically nonexistent breasts, and put on one of her many pairs of very short cut offs.

After her religiously thorough application of antiperspirant/deodorant, Lucy put on her softball shirt from when she was in elementary school, and it was skin tight, just how she liked, even if she did not have any sort of chest to show off.

She took her novel from the floor beside her bed, which is where she left it the last time she slept at home two or three nights before. Lucy could not keep track of how often she slept in her own bed during the summer because she spent the night out at Katie's house as often as possible.

But now she was eager to get back to the tragic novel and the misery that was not her own. She forgot to bring her book with her on her last leg of overnight visits, as she usually did wherever she went, which was the exact reason she carried large handbags.

But this time out, she forgot to pack it, and while she was fine without her book for those few days, the separation made it even sweeter to get her hands on it now.

Lucy went to the screened-in back porch and took the aerosol can of insect repellent and sprayed it liberally all over her. It really, really stung the recently exposed skin on her legs, but it felt good in a weird way, a way that was in accordance with Lucy's belief that the only things worth having were those that hurt you to get to them.

She walked out the screen door, down the cement steps, and into the back yard. She cautiously climbed into the hammock, although she never fell out of it, because it felt so precarious until she got to the exact right spot where the rope would all balance out and hold her securely enough to swing back and forth.

She undid the loose tie of the bit of ski rope she attached to the top of the hammock, with the other end around a nearby tree, so that she could pull it and easily swing herself back and forth until she got so involved in her book that she no longer noticed the lack of movement.

Lucy fell hungrily, yet softly, into her book, and as she did, everything real slipped away.

When she was about seven, her father taught her how to hold her breath for long periods of time under water, and she practiced this religiously. When first submerged, the calm and cool and muffled sound of underwater was very peaceful, and Lucy welcomed it. But the longer she held her breath, and she eventually was able to hold her breath under the water for well over two minutes, the more difficult it became to relax.

Even as she knew she could easily emerge from under water for more air, she felt her body begin to panic as more time without fresh oxygen went by. With her determination to go as long as possible without taking a breath, Lucy waited until her lungs felt as though they were being crushed before she slowly eased her way out of the water.

That first inhalation of sweet summer air was a freedom from the pressure and the pain and the fear of death by drowning, and this is what Lucy felt when she left her world for whichever one happened to lie between those two covers of a book.

***

Lucy began the second semester of her sophomore year of high school in the same way she spent the beginning of every second half of every school year she had so far. She was a little excited about seeing her few friends again, and to show off the new clothes and shoes she received for Christmas, but mostly she was disappointed she was back in school.

Lucy actually always was a very good student. She was in mostly gifted classes her freshman year, but dropped them to be in the classes with her friends for her sophomore year.

She enjoyed getting good grades, but not enough to actually study for tests and do the other extra work necessary to pass a gifted class. Passing was the main priority, because it was all she needed to get to the next level, and the closer she was to getting the hell out of that place.

It was strange how much she grew to hate school, because before the second grade with Mrs. Winship, she really loved it. She loved the order and consistency of each day, and how all she was required to do was be quiet and sit still, and she was treated like a princess. It never even occurred to her that schoolwork was in any way difficult—she always did very well in each of the subjects, and was placed in the highest groups when it came to math, and of course, reading.

She really loved it. However, as she progressed through elementary school, she got angrier, and as she got angrier, she was less likely to sit still and behave as was expected of the good little child she once was.

Lucy's fourth grade teacher really should not have been teaching young children at all, as she was very intolerant, and even somewhat shocked, at any wayward action, such as looking out the window instead of paying attention to what was being presented to the class.

Lucy took an especially high interest in looking out the window for long periods of time, although she sincerely did her best to pay attention.

It simply did not happen—the window, although just a glass-covered foot-wide slit running from the ceiling to the floor, was the porthole to fresh air and no walls. Not that Lucy particularly loved being outside, which she did not when the weather was uncomfortable, or when it was for the purpose of playing any type of sport that involved running.

It was more that she felt so heavy and chained down in the classroom that she longed for the opportunity to breathe in the outside air.

It was during one of these window-staring moments that Lucy was startled by a sharp pain between her neck and shoulder. She was shocked to find her teacher standing over her, pinching her.

Lucy did not even see the teacher coming, she was so wrapped up in her daydream, and was startled terribly. As her teacher continued to pinch, which really hurt, she whispered through clinched teeth that Lucy better pay attention at all times or she would be going to the office.

Lucy was petrified. She did not really love her fourth grade teacher as she did other teachers, but she never expected to be physically hurt by her, either. Her only response was to stare, stunned, as her teacher released her grip and returned to the front of the room to continue class.

That incident changed Lucy, broke something in her, some fundamental trust of adults, especially the ones who held positions in which they were assumed to protect others. There was a shift in how she thought of school, from it being a place of safety and predictability to one more arena in which she was powerless and at the whim of whoever was in charge.

It was very scary, and in response Lucy began to put up her walls and to take preemptive measures against another sneak attack like that one.

She began to "act out," according to the school administrator who first called Lucy's mother in for a conference. Lucy was sitting right outside of the door while they discussed her "defiant behavior," and could hear every word they were saying, even though the door was closed.

The administrator indicated that Lucy suffered from an "oppositional defiant disorder." That label fell heavily on Lucy's shoulders, as if an official diagnosis of "bad kid" was etched onto her. She did not like it, and was shocked once again at the idea of not only being seen as bad, but also defined so succinctly as such.

Lucy's mother apparently did not think of her daughter as bad, either, but noticed she behaved differently than other children her age. Her mother did not know what to make of her daughter's strangeness, and when she was told Lucy had a type of disorder, she was actually relieved to have a name to put on whatever it was that made her child so different.

Lucy's mother grasped that diagnosis, and ran with it, and that was where her mind went whenever Lucy did anything disturbing or upsetting.

What Lucy's mother did not know was that Lucy did the same thing.

Her mother was not aware that Lucy overheard that conversation with the administrator, and afterward she never addressed the disorder thing with her daughter. Lucy took that as a cue not to ask about it. However, whenever she was frustrated or feeling as though she had skin made of lead, and needed something—anything—to break the monotony of that deep abyss, Lucy thought of her disorder, and so became defiant.

She defied all kinds of things and people and laws and social norms. She still did not like violence, though, and so stayed primarily under the radar, except when she threw things, and especially except when she threw things in classrooms.

Lucy started throwing things in her eighth grade Social Studies class. She did not like the teacher, was not terribly interested in the subject, and generally found it very difficult to pay attention to her schoolwork or the lecture.

One day, the Social Studies teacher, apparently fed up with Lucy's blatant not-paying-attention behaviors (she was reading a novel in class at the time), spat out Lucy's name in the middle of a sentence. Lucy was again startled, then angry, and then she threw her book at the teacher.

It was only a paperback, and did not hit her, but that teacher was pissed off all the same. And Lucy, who was previously terrified of any conflict or punishment or general negative attention, felt a type of thrill hit her belly when she realized what she did.

She threw a book at a teacher while in class. It was kind of a crazy thing to do, but damn did it feel good. All of the irritation that squeaked out of that idiotic teacher's mouth and into Lucy's brain evaporated, and was replaced with a warm, calm sense of power. It was awesome.

What was not awesome was in-school suspension. In-school suspension sucked. However, Lucy found that she was very productive while in ISS, and read entire novels and wrote entire research papers, and did more schoolwork in that condensed period of time than the rest of the year combined.

A pattern emerged in which Lucy would have one of her outbursts and get ISS for three days or so. Following that, she would get A's for a month. The good grades were not really a good trade-off for her isolation though, because of the fact that while she was trapped in a cubicle in the ISS room, everything went on as normal just on the other side of the door.

Her friends, her classes, and pretty much her life went on without her participating in any meaningful way. It took quite a toll on her shell of sanity, and that shell already had a lot of cracks in it.

When she started high school, Lucy consciously reserved the right to throw things at teachers in only the most extreme instances, limiting the time she spent serving in-school suspensions.

She never did anything to warrant an out-of-school suspension. That was a line Lucy was not willing to cross because it would necessitate too much of her parents' involvement, and that was something Lucy attempted to avoid at all possible costs.

Her father usually did not acknowledge much concerning Lucy, good or bad, but when she got into really big trouble, as out-of-school suspension would have inevitably been considered, her mother became overwhelmed and handed Lucy off to him.

Lucy's father loved punishments. He took great pride in thinking them out, seeing how creative he could be, analyzing what unexpected action might provoke what desired result, and what he could add to his already long résumé of exceptional parenting skills.

He actually believed he was an exceptional parent. He believed so deeply that Lucy believed it, too. As much as she hated and feared him, she loved and revered him, too, and if anyone criticized him to her or even within earshot of her, she became very defensive about it, even if she agreed with the criticism.

But she definitely did not want to be in his line of fire, and by the second half of her sophomore year of high school, Lucy already accumulated the limit of in-school suspensions allowed in a year before she got out-of-school.

Therefore, on the first day of the second semester, she was trying to be on her best behavior, which she was finding difficult during English Lit because she already hated the teacher. He was young and full of promise and wanted to change the world and relate to kids, and was basically a jackass.

There was a new girl in the class, a very small, very cute, very obnoxious-looking girl. Lucy knew immediately she was new because she was in school with the same kids her entire life, and new people, even in a school as big as hers, stood out like sore thumbs.

And this girl definitely stood out. She had a drippy southern drawl that definitely did not originate in Arbortown, Georgia, a town founded forty years before when a bunch of real estate developers from Ohio got together and set up camp.

This new girl also wore very preppy clothes, a lot of makeup, and seemed to flirt just by breathing. Lucy decided she hated her. However, when the class broke for lunch, the new girl walked straight up to Lucy, who was sitting alone, and sat down.

Her name was Darla. Lucy initially thought the girl was making that name up, but Darla pulled out her Mississippi Driver's License, which she already had because fifteen was the legal driving age over there, and showed it to Lucy, who promptly burst out laughing.

Darla was not fazed in the least. Lucy was impressed, and intrigued. She never before met anyone even remotely resembling a real Southern Belle, and here was one right in front of her. A ballsy one, too.

Since there was not another soul in their English class Lucy wished to have anything to do with, she decided she was going to break the mold and be nice to the new girl for a change.

Lucy and Darla had a very contentious relationship. Darla drove Lucy insane. She was very pig-headed and feminine, and had very deeply rooted beliefs about manners and other things of that nature. She was critical, but did not blink a single curled eyelash when Lucy told her to fuck off, which was often.

Lucy appreciated this, as she tended to run people over pretty easily with her straightforward, too-honest approach to conversation. It did not yet occur to Lucy to make a stab at acquiring some tact, and she figured there were just very few people in the world who could handle being friends with her.

Darla could definitely handle it, on top of the fact that she was more entertaining than any television show Lucy ever saw. Lucy supposed it evened out, although she found herself almost daily questioning why or how she could possibly be friends with someone who fit much more closely into the stereotype of people Lucy hated: normal people; flouncy, bubbly, sporty, cheerleading normal people.

For example, Darla was the "manager" of the football team. Lucy had absolutely no idea what the hell that meant, but it kept Darla occupied on a regular basis after school, so she and Lucy's relationship primarily consisted of English Lit and lunch, although they did exchange phone numbers.

Darla's only free day of the week was Sunday. She was involved in so many activities at school, Lucy did not know how she could possibly maintain her sanity. Lucy's only day of the week when she was not free was Sunday.

This was because she did not participate in any school activities (unless smoking cigarettes in the parking lot counted), and because she was routinely forced by her parents to attend their church's Sunday morning service, and the Youth Group gatherings on Sunday evenings as well. Her parents both taught adult church classes on Sunday nights, and so it seemed they spent all day and all evening every Sunday at church, which was one more thing Lucy hated about her life.

Lucy did not always hate church—well, she did always hate Sunday school, because all of the other kids seemed to have some sort of standard uniform of frilly dresses and pseudo-suits they wore every week, and Lucy had only bland and conservative clothes her mother picked out for her.

The other kids also naturally distanced themselves from her, as was the practice in elementary school, but they did not all go to the same junior high or high school as Lucy, and therefore never realized she became a sort of legend because of the whole throwing-things-at-teachers thing. Having missed out on that reputation-changing event, the church kids maintained their disinterest.

She did not mind youth group, though. She started attending the youth group meetings for high school-aged kids when she was fourteen, and she was very fond of the youth pastor.

His name was Joe, and he was about ten years younger than her parents. He was hired by the church to start the youth group program a couple years before, and singled Lucy out before she was even in high school. He approached her one night at a dinner type of church gathering, and said,

"You're Lucy, right?"

She was very flattered that he knew her name, as she truly believed she was one of the plainest wall flowers that existed in that group of beautifully adorned and shoe-shined kids. He was very straight forward, and also was immediately and completely non-threatening, and Lucy felt very comfortable around him almost right away.

The night he singled her out, he only introduced himself, said he looked forward to seeing her at the youth group meetings the following year, and moved on. But he still remembered her name when she did get into the youth group program, and he picked her regularly to participate in the very goofy and entertaining activities he conducted at each of the meetings on Sunday evenings.

Under his wing, Lucy began to feel confident about herself in a group of people for the first time without having to do something shocking and that would get her in trouble.

It was a strange situation to Lucy, but she thrived in that group. The other kids often made her uncomfortable, but with her newfound acceptance of herself, she was able to interact and relax, and generally have fun. She never laughed more than she did at those meetings, and even enjoyed the occasions on which Joe played his guitar for sing-a-longs because he was so goofy about it, and the music he chose was from a collection of old rock songs that Lucy loved.

The youth group thrived with Joe as their leader, and they took ski trips and went hiking, and did things Lucy really enjoyed.

And she cherished being a part of Joe's inner circle, one of the core groups of kids in the program. Joe also somehow knew when Lucy was not doing so well at home, and it was on those occasions that he would take her aside and ask if she was okay.

She never spoke with him about any of her worries or concerns, but was comforted nonetheless, because he told her he would be there if she needed him, and she believed him when he said it.

After her freshman year, though, Joe tried to become more involved with Lucy's family. She did not realize how easily he recognized that her home life was not so great, because she herself did not realize it. She simply believed her parents were stricter than most, especially her father, and that being unhappy was a normal part of childhood.

Her father was not wildly violent; he was always very controlled and calm and methodical in carrying out the physical elements of his punishments, and rarely, if ever, left any marks on her body. Her mother was not doped up or drunk all the time, either, so Lucy had no cause to believe there was anything exceptionally wrong in her home.

Joe believed there was something exceptionally wrong in her home. He came over for dinner one night, and after the meal, stayed to speak with Lucy's parents.

This was not unusual in her house—often men from church came by to see her father. He successfully portrayed himself as some sort of sage, and glowed when men from the church came to seek his counsel about their wives or children or jobs. It was not unusual for him to sit around the kitchen table with these men, sometimes talking for hours.

But it was unusual for her mother to start screaming in the middle of one of these sit-down sessions.

Lucy said goodnight to Joe and retired to her room to read before going to sleep, and was comforted by the thought that he might become close to her father, and maybe be around more. She did not anticipate that her father would threaten Joe with a baseball bat while insisting vehemently that he get out of their house, which was the scene she arrived at upon running down the stairs after her mother started screaming.

Joe looked shocked and hurt, and was asking Lucy's father to please just talk to him, and that he was not trying to hurt anyone.

Joe and Lucy's father were about the same build, which was big and thick, and Lucy was terrified of what her father might do to Joe with the unfair advantage of that bat. But Joe quickly saw that Lucy's father was not going to be doing any more sitting down and talking that night, and he backed away, and left though the front door, looking very sad.

He did not see Lucy crouching at the top of the stairs on his way out.

Not long after that, Lucy and her parents left that church.

They actually triggered quite a split in the congregation, because Lucy's mother and father somehow accumulated a loyal following, although neither held any official church position. Lucy suffered the fallout of this split whenever she saw anyone around town that remained with the original church.

She deeply resented the accusatory looks, as if she had anything whatsoever to do with what happened, which she may have, but not in any way she could be blamed for. It was her asshole father's fault, and she knew that better than she knew her own name.

Nonetheless, Lucy was heartbroken. She loved Joe and the normalcy he brought to her life and to her view of who she was, and his ability to make her laugh and laugh and laugh. As with the incident in fourth grade with the teacher hurting her shoulder, this broke something in her, and Lucy hardened up a little more.

Ever since she was a small child, there were occasions when Lucy would try to go to sleep at night, but instead would cry and cry and cry. She never really knew why she was crying, only that it needed to come out, and after the incident between her father and Joe, these occasions increased in frequency.

A large number of the members of the congregation that split, led again by Lucy's parents, joined up with a small, budding church and made it big, too.

In response to the rapid growth, the new church moved to a new building that would hold the larger numbers of people, who on Sundays passed around brand new brass-plated platters that would hold the larger amounts of bills in the weekly offering.

Joe's success at Lucy's old church inspired a kind of youth-group revolution, and the programs were being started in most, if not all, of the other big churches in town.

Lucy's new church hired a youth pastor, who was a complete dork, and Lucy tried to give him some benefit of the doubt, but it did not hold. And she really, really did not like going to church, or to youth group, or to anything else that had to do with being good and learning how most of her thoughts and actions were sins.

One Sunday night at the church, Lucy's parents hosted some sort of event in order to accomplish something Lucy had no interest in, but was stuck being there anyway. She sneaked into the church office to call Darla, since it was Sunday, and Darla's free day.

Lucy was initially just looking for something to do, and figured talking on the phone to someone interesting would pass the time, but when Darla answered the phone, Lucy was surprised to hear Darla was trying to track her down.

Darla, being the "manager" of the football team, made some pretty strong acquaintances with the players. One of those players was at her house at that very moment, and had one of his friends with him. Darla's parents were out of town, and she was looking for someone to hang out with the football player's friend so the football player could turn all of his attention to her. Lucy asked who the friend was, and it turned out he was someone she knew, an older guy from her old church.

Lucy was immediately intrigued, because this guy was very cute, and being a few years older, very exciting. Lucy turned the wheels in her head and figured out a story for her parents, as she knew they would not knowingly allow her to go hang out with boys at someone's house unsupervised.

Her parents ended up being busy enough with their own function to not pay too much attention to what Lucy was doing anyway, and her mom agreed to let her go as long as she was home by nine that night.

The guy came to the church to pick Lucy up. Darla was not with him, and this made Lucy a little nervous. The way he smelled like beer and then drove through the field next to the church trying to find his way back to the road made her nervous, too.

Lucy shrieked at him to stop the car mere inches away from a ditch. She authoritatively told him to let her drive, and although she did not have her driver's license, was irritated and scared enough to let that slide in order to further her self-preservation.

Lucy was surprised at how easily the guy acquiesced. She did not yet have much experience with alcohol, and in fact was embarrassed to be the only one of her small group of friends to have never gotten drunk, but she knew enough to know right away this guy was shit-faced.

Lucy took the wheel and very cautiously drove to Darla's house at the slurred and inefficient direction of the guy. She was aware that all of her senses were screaming at her to just go home, but this guy really was cute.

She actually even had a little crush on him from afar, and now she was going to get to hang out with him by herself, an opportunity she was not willing to give up easily. Besides, she did not want the guy to ridicule her should she immediately demand he take her (let her drive his car) to her own home. It was important to her that he see her as calm and mature and collected.

So when they arrived at Darla's house, Lucy ignored her gut feelings and went in.

The first thing Lucy did was try to find Darla, and accomplished this when she knocked on the locked door of what she assumed was the master bedroom. Darla answered the door wearing a red negligee type deal, with the football player in her parents' bed in the background.

Lucy realized at that moment that she was in way over her head. She hardly made out with a boy before, let alone had sex with one, and she was not about to lose her virginity to some drunk guy she just met, never mind how cute and exciting he appeared to be.

Darla directed Lucy to take the guy into a different bedroom, and just sit there and watch TV with him. The guy followed Lucy up the stairs, so that is what they did. Lucy immediately informed the guy she was not having sex with him. He laughed. She reiterated. He shrugged.

They watched TV for a while, and then the guy leaned over and began to kiss her. Lucy almost threw up from fear, but tried to just go with it. The guy got up and locked the door, took his shirt off, and got back onto the bed next to Lucy.

She told him she did not want to. He did anyway.

***

Darla was still in the master bedroom with the football player at 8:50 p.m., and Lucy started to panic about getting home. She finally asked the guy to take her; he seemed to have sobered up quite a bit by then.

He was pissed off, though, because she put up quite a fight in the bedroom upstairs, and he showed his irritation by refusing to give her a ride. As the minutes crept by, Lucy almost started crying with fear at the possible punishments her father would come up with for not being on time. The guy finally said he would take her home.

Once in the car, neither of them said anything, and when she got to her house, Lucy simply got out of the car and went inside.

Her parents were not home yet, and Lucy was so thankful for that miracle. They would have been so incredibly angry if they knew what she just did with this guy. They made it very clear how bad sex was, and if they ever found out she was having it, or anything close to it, she would be kicked out of the house.

At fifteen, this was a formidable prospect, and Lucy did not consider for a moment that her parents would be in any way sympathetic to her plight, not even her mother.

Lucy went upstairs and started a hot bath. She was not in too much pain, but there was some burning, and her underwear was spotted with blood from her torn skin. She got into the bath, wincing as she sunk in, and stayed until the water got cold.

Then she got out, toweled off, put on her pajamas, turned all of the lights off, locked her door, lay down in her bed, and stared and stared into the infinite darkness.

Shortly after, her parents returned home. Her mother came up and knocked on the door, and left when Lucy yelled out that she was sleeping. Lucy did not know when she actually went to sleep, or if she did at all. She got out of bed when her alarm clock went off, took a very careful shower—she was terribly sore, but no longer bleeding at all, and got ready for school.

When Lucy got to English Lit class, she sat down next to Darla and asked her why she left her alone with that guy. Darla did not have an answer, and after that, she did not seem so interesting to Lucy anymore.

***

A few months after that thing with that guy (this is how Lucy defined it in her mind—she tried not to define it at all, or to even acknowledge that it happened, but it kept coming back to her, and so she needed to define it somehow, or it was going to make her brain melt), Lucy was going through the lunch line, trying to figure out what she was going to be able to eat out of everything displayed before her.

She did not eat pork, so the ham was out; she did not eat anything that came out of any body of water, so the fish sticks were out; she did not eat salad, so the salad bar was out. Lucy usually could find something to eat from the three daily options, but sometimes the three were all pre-exempted from her limited range of acceptable food.

She decided she would pick some sides from the salad bar, and as she was heading down to spoon out some cottage cheese, she happened to look up and make eye contact with a blond guy she recognized as a junior at their school. He was going in the opposite direction as she, and they held each other's gaze for longer than would be considered indifferent.

As Lucy turned away, she allowed a little smile to sneak out of the corner of her mouth, and then it was back to the business of food.

Lucy was always what could be described as a "picky eater." As a child, she was the kid who required peanut butter and jelly sandwiches specially made by the kitchen staff in fancy restaurants, or she would just starve.

Starving was not such a bad option to Lucy, and certainly was her choice over any food she did not recognize, or not already approved through previous experience. Although her menu grew some as she got older, it was still very limited, and very strict.

When Lucy was a child, her mother refused, at times, to back off when it came to what Lucy ate, or more often did not eat, for dinner. She knew Lucy hated lima beans, but for some inexplicable reason, regularly made them and added them as a side to hot dogs and macaroni and cheese. On these nights, Lucy refused to eat the lima beans, and her mother refused to let Lucy leave the table until they were gone.

Lucy would usually make some sort of attempt to eat the lima beans, but literally gagged as the disgusting, dry paste hit the back of her tongue. Although this became standard fare for lima bean nights, Lucy's mother would gape in horror and surprise anew each time Lucy spat the rejects out of her mouth and back onto her plate.

Lucy would then be condemned to her seat at the table until every last lima bean was gone. Sometimes Lucy could manage to get all of the beans completely ingested during dinner, but more often it came down to when the kitchen was cleaned and the lights were turned off and her parents were in the next room watching TV, and still Lucy would be sitting at the table with the lima beans.

To end this torturous marathon battle with her mother, Lucy would finally put all of the lima beans in her mouth at one time, tuck half into one cheek and half into the other, then announce to her mother through pursed lips that she needed to go to the bathroom.

Of course, her mother allowed this, and as soon as Lucy locked the door, she would grab a wad of toilet paper and spit the remains of the lima beans into it. She would then tuck the wad way in the back of the cabinet under the sink, being very careful not to allow any noise when she closed the cabinet door.

After waiting the appropriate amount of time it would have taken her to pee, Lucy flushed the toilet, washed her hands, and returned to the kitchen.

Lucy would wait five minutes exactly (as timed on the kitchen clock), and then announce that she was done with the lima beans. Her mother would come in the kitchen to inspect her plate, and would then tell Lucy to clear her dishes and go to bed.

Lucy did not understand why in the world her mother would try to make her eat those damned lima beans time and time again. It was not as if she would be developing a taste for them, as amply demonstrated by the gagging, which was not feigned. Lucy, for whatever reason, had a legitimately difficult time eating them. It was traumatic.

Because she possessed such specific standards for what she would eat, and because those standards were not typically met in the school cafeteria, Lucy preferred to prepare her lunch and bring it with her.

However, when it came down to ten more minutes of sleep or preparing her lunch, Lucy always chose to hit the snooze button one more time, and then be in a mad rush to get to school, thereby leaving no time for anything but grabbing lunch money from her mother's wallet. Once lunchtime came around, Lucy was kicking herself for not getting up earlier and making her own lunch.

It would occur to her at this time that she should just prepare her lunch the night before, but by the time she got home forgot the whole issue, and in doing so, perpetuated the vicious cycle.

Her mind was in the midst of this madness the following day when she saw the blond boy again at the salad bar. By some fluke, the other two lunch choices were pork chops and tuna salad (two days in a row of pork and fish—what the hell?), and Lucy was back picking at the cottage cheese. She added a spoon of chocolate pudding to her tray, and she and the blond boy did a replay of the previous day.

But this time, he smiled at her. And she smiled back. And then she turned and went on her way to her usual spot to eat her lunch. This time, however, she did not get caught up in her discomfort with making it through the meal because her mind stayed on the blond boy. She thought of the day before, when they made eye contact—he had kind of a stunned look on his face, as though he was caught doing something he should not have been.

Lucy knew that when a boy looked at another girl that way, and the girl was very pretty, it was because he was stuck thinking about how pretty she was, and not how he might look staring with his mouth open.

But that was when a boy was looking at another girl, not at her. It occurred to her this may have been what happened when this boy looked at her, but dismissed that thought as improbable. Lucy did not consider herself pretty, but also did not consider herself ugly—mostly she just did not consider herself. She assumed the stare was because he thought she was some kind of a freak, which, for all intents and purposes, she fully believed she was.

Lucy then considered the look from today—he smiled. That definitely meant he did not think she was too much of a freak. Her mind began to direct her toward the possibility that he was laughing at her, but that smile was a little too blatant to be discounted on that note. And when she smiled back, he looked very pleased. She went ahead and allowed herself to consider that he liked her.

When Lucy was younger, her mother would very occasionally take her shopping at the big indoor mall close to Atlanta, taking back roads instead of the interstate. There was one spot on one road that rose rapidly into a little hill, and then dropped suddenly back down on the other side.

Lucy loved it—the motion made her belly drop and spin and would take her breath away for just a moment.

That is the feeling she got in her stomach when she thought about the possibility that the blond boy could like her. For the rest of the school day, her mind would go back to that smile, and her stomach would do the big dip thing, and she would smile a little, and allow a little light to shine in her heart.

***

The blond boy's name was Will, and it turned out he lived across the street from Katie's boyfriend. Katie's boyfriend lived within walking distance of Lucy's house.

One Friday night (when Lucy's father was out of town) Katie arranged to spend the night at Lucy's. Before it got too dark out, they walked over to Katie's boyfriend's house. He was a pretty nice guy, and when he asked Lucy if she would like him to introduce her to Will, he was completely serious, and not at all teasing or taunting.

Lucy was okay with that. So was Will.

They spoke back and forth on the phone for several nights, and met briefly after school in the parking lot. On the fifth night after first being introduced to Will, he asked Lucy if she would like for him to give her a ride home from school the next day. His friend would let him borrow his car, if she would like him to do that.

Lucy's heart swelled a little at how awkward he was, and told him that it would be very nice if he gave her a ride home, which is just what he did the next afternoon.

Lucy met Will in the parking lot as usual, but instead of hanging out for a little while with their friends, he immediately asked her if she was ready to go. She was. She got into the older, boat-like sedan that belonged to Will's best friend, and Will began to drive her home.

They made light chit-chat type of conversation, and about halfway to Lucy's house, the car stalled. Will, immediately alarmed, started shouting startled and panicked obscenities, from which Lucy gathered the car was out of gas.

As he was squeaking out his agitated diatribe, Will managed to get the coasting car aimed at a gas station, which was thankfully very close by. He steered it into a space by a pump, fortunately on the correct side of the car's gas tank.

Lucy, although concerned about Will's distress, found the situation pretty funny, and considering their luck at being right by the gas station as the car stalled, and then rolling right in there like the whole thing was staged, she began to giggle.

Will, allowing some relief to sink in that they made it not only to a gas station on a completely empty tank, but to an actual gas pump, looked over at Lucy and turned a very lovely shade of pink.

He was angry with his friend, and a little freaked out about stalling in the middle of the road, and embarrassed that this was all during his first encounter alone with Lucy, but as he kept looking at her, and she kept giggling, he could not maintain his ill humor. While not yet seeing anything quite comedic about the situation, he let out a sigh of pent up breath, and gave Lucy a big smile, and leaned in toward her.

Lucy initially felt a jolt of panic, and a blur of nausea. She was not prepared at all for Will's physical advance. But when she saw him pause inches from her face, and wait for her to decide whether or not the kiss was going to happen, she relaxed.

And she leaned the rest of the way to remove the space between their lips, and stayed for a moment. Lucy felt the surge of excitement in her belly creep warmly downward, and then pulled her mouth softly away. Will smiled at her again, and got out of the car to fill the tank.

***

With Will, Lucy experienced a fairytale of interactions that lived up to every one of her expectations of what it would be like to have a nice boyfriend.

A month after that first kiss, Lucy turned sixteen, and Will met her in the parking lot before school with a small bouquet from his mother's garden, and a card with a picture he drew, and the words, "Happy Sweet Sixteen."

Lucy did not even think about the sweet part of turning sixteen, especially since her father already told her she would not be getting her driver's license, but Will's home-picked bouquet and handmade card made it the sweetest birthday ever.

Will was very patient, concerned and considerate about the issue of having sex. Lucy was very sketchy about it, and Will believed it was because she had never had sex before. Lucy allowed this misconception to persist because she could not bear to associate that thing that happened with that guy with losing her virginity, and she certainly was not going to tell Will—or anyone else—anything about it.

Darla knew what happened that night at her house, because Lucy slapped her in the face with it that day at school when Darla could not come up with an answer for leaving Lucy alone with the guy. They did not discuss it, except for Lucy to instruct Darla to never tell anyone what happened.

Lucy and Will came close to having sex on several different occasions, but he asked her each time if she wanted to go farther. When she said she was still scared, he told her that it was okay with him to stop, and she believed him.

And then the time came when she said okay.

And they were off to the races.

Anytime and anywhere, they had sex, and more sex, as only teenagers are physically capable of doing. It was not necessarily great sex, but they did not know that, and it was just fine with both of them, and so they did it. And it was fun, and each time they were having sex, Lucy was not thinking about anything except how much she loved Will, and that he wanted her.

After about six months, though, Lucy began to wonder if they were going to do anything other than have sex all the time. They began to hang out as a couple with Katie and her boyfriend, and with another of Lucy's friends, Malcolm. Malcolm had a girlfriend named Brittany, and she began to hang out with them, too.

By that summer, they were a regular group. Being with her friends was the only time Lucy and Will ever just hung out. The only thing they ever did when they were alone, the only reason they were ever alone, was to have sex. And Lucy felt it was getting old.

Not that she wanted to stop seeing Will, because just the idea upset her greatly. She imagined they would get married one day, because she could not conceive of not being with him.

Her life changed so dramatically since he came into it, and she kept hoping and trying to get back to those first few months of simple amazement with each other, but Will did not seem to go along with that.

Lucy knew his close friends, but she never hung out with them the way he did with hers. She did not think it was wrong for him to hang out with his friends, but she was resentful that he did not want her to hang out with his friends as he did with hers.

Although Lucy would occasionally hang out with her friends without Will there, he was still a part of that group. It was very frustrating, and really very frightening, to analyze too much.

Lucy did not want to rock the boat with Will, and if he primarily wanted to just have sex with her, she felt she would do what she needed to do and make the best of it. It was difficult, though, because when she was hanging out with her friends without him, all she could think about was what he was doing and wishing he was with her.

And then one day Malcolm announced that his brother was moving back to Arbortown.

Lucy met Kieran, Malcolm's brother, once before, during a thrilling episode of sneaking out of Katie's parents' house in the middle of a summer night. She did not remember much about Kieran, but still, the memory of that night brought back warm feelings, and she was pleased to know he was coming back.

She tried to remember exactly what he looked like, but could only vaguely recall his face. It was, after all, pretty dark out that night, but she did remember that he was beautiful.

Her memory served her well, for when Lucy was reacquainted with Kieran, she saw that he was indeed beautiful. No taller than she, but with much more to his build than her too-thin frame, Kieran was very nice on the eyes. Not in a way that made Lucy uncomfortable—as she felt around boys who were just too precise, too pretty—but in a way that she could look at him and drink the sight of him right up.

His hair was long, and he kept it tied at the nape of his neck. He was a skateboarder, just as Malcolm was, and he was fascinating to watch. He possessed a fearlessness and comfortable ease in his movements that Lucy found very foreign, but that intrigued her. Kieran almost always wore his big, pearly smile, and Lucy could not help but smile back every time.

Lucy considered Kieran to be a friend, and as she spent more time with him, regardless of whether or not Will was around, she considered him a very close friend. He was terribly easy to talk to, and there was an intimacy between them, however platonic, that did not exist in her relationship with Will.

Will did not seem to mind that Lucy was friends with Kieran, and in fact, appeared to enjoy the fact that Lucy had someone else on whom to focus her attention. Will knew that Lucy would not cheat on him, and in that confidence, her friendship with Kieran aroused no threat.

Will, however, was not too fond of Kieran. It was not that he did not like him, for there was very little not to like. Kieran was easygoing and friendly, and although Will could not pin down what it was that bothered him about Kieran, he could not deny he did not like the guy.

Kieran was much more of a diffuser than an instigator when it came to verbal or physical confrontation, except where Malcolm was concerned. Lucy, and every other one of the people in that core group, was astounded the first time they witnessed Kieran taunt Malcolm to the point of violence. No one Malcolm knew in Arbortown, and many people he did not know, would dare to provoke him. He exuded anger and violence just beneath his charming and easygoing manner, and could be extremely intimidating.

Malcolm was not in many actual physical altercations at their school, because his reputation preceded him. That reputation was established early on by one or two bouts, and he was a fierce fighter hand to hand.

And Kieran? Well, he just was not viewed in that manner, and it did not even occur to anyone to consider the idea of him as violent.

Kieran was Malcolm's older brother, though, and Lucy saw and heard things from people who had siblings that it could be an endless battle in those homes. Kieran prodded and goaded and poked and teased until Malcolm could no longer physically contain himself, and he would hurl himself at Kieran with all the ferocity of a gladiator. Kieran would simply smile his smile, and within seconds, have Malcolm in a headlock.

Then he would taunt and tease Malcolm some more. It was fascinating.

But in the end, after Malcolm's ego was dented, Kieran would offer up something, some gesture or word that would serve as balm for Malcolm's wounds, and anyone could see that Kieran loved his brother.

As for the girls in the group, including Lucy, Kieran clearly struck a balance between masculine and feminine in that he did not fear at all displaying a soft, sensitive, and intuitive part of who he was. Because this was a rarity in most of the boys Lucy and her friends were ever around, they all found Kieran very endearing, and irresistible. While Lucy maintained her loyalty to Will, all of her friends found themselves pining for Kieran.

Kieran would occasionally hook up with some girl or another outside of their circle, but should he ever attempt to bring the peripheral girl near their core group, she was shunned heavily. Lucy at least tried to be nice, but even though she was not willing to admit it, she was also jealous that Kieran's attention was drawn somewhere other than to her.

She did not believe she was trying to be vicious, but also did not recognize her feelings about him with any other girl as anything other than uncomfortable, and she was much happier when he was single.

One afternoon late in the summer, Lucy called Kieran and asked him to meet her at the pool hall, which was where they frequently hung out in the evenings. Lucy was upset and needed company, substantial company, and as Will was working, Kieran was her first choice among her friends to spend some time with. She felt he would be safe and soothing after her horrific experience from the night before.

Lucy got her driver's license about a month prior, and was driving the family car with her parents aboard. They were on their way into Atlanta for dinner at one of her father's favorite restaurants. Lucy and her mother picked him up from his office, which was on the way, and he insisted they take back roads into the city rather than get on the interstate.

He directed Lucy which way to go, and even though she was not familiar with the area, could see clearly that it was a much less prosperous neighborhood than her own in Arbortown. The houses were quite small, though many were very pretty and quaint. Lucy was not able to take in as much of her surroundings as she wished, because she needed to pay attention to where she was driving, and driving with her father in the car always made her terribly nervous.

It was also getting darker as they drove, and therefore more difficult for Lucy to see much more than the road before her.

As the family car approached the end of one of the small neighborhood roads, Lucy was startled to see a boy about ten years old jump in front of the car, waving wildly and yelling for them to stop. Lucy, acting instinctively, slammed on the brakes. The child just stood there waving his hands and shaking his head back and forth, "No! No! No!"

"Keep moving." It was a very clear and crisp order from her father. She turned to him incredulously.

"There is a kid in the middle of the road. I think something's wrong." Lucy spoke the obvious to her father, as he apparently was not aware of what was clearly happening.

"Keep moving." More sternly this time, but not louder, because he never yelled, only inflected more hate into his words as he escalated the severity of his statements.

"Dad, there's something wrong, it's just a little boy, I think…" Before she could finish, her father caught her with eyes of pure rage. She always believed he would like to kill her when he was looking at her like that, and she was frightened.

He told her to drive around the boy.

Under the fearful spell of her father, Lucy moved the car forward. As she advanced and the headlights took more of the scene in, Lucy was horrified to spot a medium sized dog lying in the middle of the road. She again slammed on the brakes, but her father persisted, demanding that she keep moving.

"There's a dog! There's a dog!" She was getting hysterical, and still her father locked his great white shark eyes on her, intimating what cold and calculated bodily harm would come to her if she did not keep going.

Her mother yelled his name, but as far as he was concerned, there was no one in that car except for him and Lucy, and there was a battle going on that he was going to win.

And win it he did.

The only thing Lucy remembered about what happened next was the sick, dull thud of the injured dog's body going under first the front driver's side tires, then the rear, and her father's satisfied smirk as he sat back in his seat like a throned imp being chauffeured through his allotment of hell.

Lucy made it a few more blocks before her foot slipped off the gas pedal, and her mother shook her from the back seat and screamed for her to stop the car.

Lucy got out of the car and into the back seat, and her mother continued the drive. Lucy sat in the back seat, feeling over and over again the weight of that dog under the tires, and seeing over and over again the face of that poor little boy, his pain and horror so vividly channeled from his heart to hers, and it was her fault.

It was all her fault. That little boy's dog was dead.

He tried so hard to protect his pet, his beloved companion, but the strangers in the large car seemed to come out of nowhere specifically to run over and kill what he was trying so hard to protect. Lucy imagined the blows that little boy felt to his heart and his head, and she felt the blows to her heart and her head, because she was the one who did it.

It was her fault, and she did not blame that poor, dusty, tear-streaked little boy for hating her and her father and his big car and his money one single bit, because it was what she hated, too.

At that moment, she could not hate anything more.

Lucy did not remember the dinner at the restaurant, did not even know if she ate. She did not remember the trip home. She did not remember going to bed, but only that she was there again, in her bed, staring and staring once more into the infinite darkness, and crying and crying and crying, and even though she was aware of what happened with the little boy and the dog, she could not quite connect it to why she was crying so.

Lucy was very alone and very frightened.

When she woke late the next morning, her mind went to Kieran, and the thought of him comforted her. She consciously made the assumption in her mind that she did not first think of Will because she knew he would be working.

She called Kieran and asked if he would meet her at the pool hall, and he said he would. Lucy dug a few dollars in quarters out of the jar beside her parents' bed (she was, at that moment, far beyond weighing the ethics of stealing their money), tried her best to fix her puffy face with her powder compact, got into her mother's car, and left.

Lucy arrived at the pool hall first, and as it was the middle of a weekday, was the only patron. She went to the counter to retrieve her pool cue, and then directly to a back corner of the empty hall and set up camp. Lucy got out her cigarettes and lit one, and placed it in one of the clear glass ashtrays situated along the shelf-type counter that ran along the entire wall of the room filled with quarter-slot pool tables.

She counted out four quarters from her change purse, arranged them in the slot, and applied the precise amount of pressure needed to push the quarters in and engage the release of the pool balls. Lucy continued to lean down by the slot, angling her head forward, and felt the rumbling and listened to the satisfying sound of an entire rack of pool balls dropping and rolling into the end of the table for her to grab.

She pulled the chipped and broken, yet still functional, plastic triangle out of its slot under the table, and loaded the balls with precise and consistent movements.

Following this set-up of the table, Lucy chalked the end of her cue using the same precise and consistent movements, then leaned it against the wall, and sat down with her cigarette.

She loved the pool hall in the middle of the day, especially in the summer when the air conditioning immediately stripped the damp lengths of heat off her body as she stepped through the door from outside. She loved that there was no competition to get a table, and no sleazy men her father's age ogling her as though she did not have eyes to see them staring.

Lucy dragged on her cigarette, held the smoke in her lungs for a moment before letting it out slowly, and caught Kieran out of the corner of her eye. He wore his beautiful smile on his beautiful face. It made her feel so good to know for sure it was just for her, as evidenced by the fact that no one else was around.

As he got closer to her, though, his smile faded, and he approached her with concern.

"Have you been crying?" His voice had a slight edge that did not typically accompany his calm tone.

She smiled at him, not only out of appreciation for his concern, but because he could tell she was upset, had been upset, until that moment.

"Yeah. My dad." It was all the explanation that was needed, as Kieran nodded in understanding and lit his own cigarette.

Lucy was hit again with how right it felt to reach out to him instead of any of her other friends. Of course they would come to be at her side in her time of need, as she would for them, but for some reason they were very intrigued by the tiny details of the events at her home.

Kieran just seemed to accept that it sucked, and that was enough for him. Lucy was grateful, and she looked at him again, and smiled.

"So, are you ready for me to kick your ass again?" Kieran threw out the challenge nonchalantly, yet happily, because he knew he was very good at eight ball, knew she knew he was very good at eight ball, and knew, too, that she would do her damnedest to beat him anyway.

He also knew he could make her laugh, and that her laughter would, if not erase, then at least ease, the pain behind her eyes. And it made him happy to do that for her.

***

Lucy first got drunk shortly before she started dating Will, but really started seeking out alcohol after they got together.

There were two reasons for this: one, she felt much more comfortable on the rare occasions they were with his friends when she was drinking, and two, sex was a lot more fun when she was drunk.

Lucy did not spend too much time with Will's friends, but whenever anyone's parents were out of town, that is where they would all go. Will and his friends, and really, Lucy's friends as well, all smoked pot, but Lucy had not tried it before, and was not nearly as afraid to drink alcohol as she was to smoke pot, so that is usually what she did on these parentless occasions.

The only problem was that she and all of her friends were well below the legal age to buy alcohol, and there was not always an older brother or sister, or even the occasional mom, to get Lucy her booze. Marijuana, however, was readily available to anyone of any age who did not act too much like a narc and had the money to buy it.

So, one night when Lucy was unable to get her hands on any alcohol, and she and Will were at a party with a bunch of people Lucy did not know very well, she made the split second decision to hit a joint that was passed to her, instead of just passing it along as she always previously did.

Will was not in the circle of pot smokers at the time Lucy made this decision, and she was surprised that he was upset—even hurt—that she smoked for her first time without him. He really enjoyed smoking pot, to the point that he believed it had spiritual connotations, and apparently looked forward to sharing Lucy's first experience with her.

Lucy had no way of knowing this, but felt guilty all the same. She told Will she did not really feel anything anyway, and he told her that sometimes happened the first time one smoked pot, and this appeased him somewhat. He asked her to wait until he was with her until she smoked again.

And so he was. It was about two weeks after the first time she tried smoking pot, and Will went all out to plan a special time alone for them in which they could get high and just hang out. Lucy was happy to just hang out with Will on any occasion, so she went along with it.

She was a little nervous about what her physical and mental reaction would be to smoking, but she felt safe with Will, and knew the effects did not last any longer than a few hours, and they had at least five hours before Lucy needed to be home for the night.

They were at Will's house, and his parents were out for the evening. On the screened in back porch, Will packed a bowl for Lucy and showed her how to use it. They shared one bowl, and then Will packed another. After about five hits, Lucy began to feel way too woozy and thick, and a little nauseous, and so passed on the rest of the second bowl. Will finished it off, and then they sat back.

Will obviously was having a good time, but Lucy did not like the sensation at all. She felt as though she could hear her heart beating, and her mouth felt as if she was sucking on a dead animal, and she had to keep reminding herself that they were safe from any parents or police walking in. She told Will all of this and he got her some water. It was the most delicious water Lucy ever tasted. She and Will went into his room where he turned on some cartoons.

With the light-hearted and senseless distraction of the cartoons, Lucy began to relax. After about an hour she started to feel a little less like her brain was being absorbed by cotton balls, and a little more coherent. She and Will talked and talked and talked about absolutely nothing, and it was all very deep and special and hilarious.

As the effects of the marijuana began to fade, Will packed another bowl, and Lucy quickly declined. She just got to the point of feeling more comfortable, and she did not want to go through the whole fuzzy, paranoid thing again.

After that night, Lucy would smoke pot when it was available, although she still really enjoyed drinking alcohol more, and drank when she had the opportunity. Pot was simply more convenient, though. It was easier to come by, and she was able to go home at the end of the night relatively sober, and not reeking of alcohol really made it a lot easier for her to get away with. Also, Will really liked having that bond with her.

Will thought having sex while high was amazing, but there again, Lucy preferred alcohol. Where being drunk enabled her to relax and be freer with her physical intimacy, pot made her spaced out and anxious, and her mind would wander often to the point that she would forget she was supposed to be having sex. It just was not that great for her. But again, she mostly just liked being with Will, and he really liked being with her when he was high.

As Lucy neared the end of her junior year of high school, and Will got ready to graduate, things between them began to get less than good enough. Lucy did not like it when it seemed that all Will wanted to do when they were alone was have sex, and now it seemed to her that all Will wanted to do when they were alone was get high and have sex.

Since Lucy really did not like smoking pot, especially because of the paranoia, which was increasingly more intense, it was very difficult for her to even pretend she was enjoying herself. Lucy began to tire of her and Will's routine.

However, when she spoke to him about just spending time together without getting high or having sex, he was offended that she felt it was all he wanted from her. Lucy felt bad, but she really did feel that was all he wanted from her.

She knew that he cared for her, even loved her, but she overheard him speaking to his friends about college, and they all talked about how great it was going to be to have an entirely new pool of girls to hook up with, and how easy it was going to be to get laid without anyone's parents being around all the time.

Additionally, the drinking and smoking would be much easier to get away with, and therefore, become much more frequent.

While Lucy got to a point at which she could not imagine life without Will, she sensed he was envious of his single friends and the freedom they would have when it came to meeting all of these new girls in college. Will began to spend much more time with his friends, even standing Lucy up on his birthday.

She made him a cake, and got him presents, and was ready for him to arrive at the previously-agreed upon time of 5:00 p.m. She was excited about having the opportunity to lavish him with gifts and love and attention, and to celebrate that he was born.

She waited, patiently at first, but then as hours passed, with growing anger and fear. He did not come over to her house until midnight. He was out canoeing on the lake with his friends, and was indignant at Lucy's anger because it was his birthday, and if he wanted to hang out with his friends, she should not have any problem with that.

Shortly after that, Lucy told him she felt he did not want to continue their relationship when he started college, and that she thought he wanted to be free to see whomever he chose once he left her behind. It was very difficult for her to confront him about this, because she knew it was true. But she also was getting tired of being treated badly, and while she loved Will, she hated feeling jealous and afraid that he would want to be with other girls.

Will did admit he felt that way, and when Lucy suggested they break up so that he could go off to college and do what he wanted, he agreed. They cried, and had sex, and then cried some more. For the next couple of weeks, they would stay away from each other as much as possible, and then run desperately to each other to have sex one more time.

Finally, Lucy could not stand it any longer, and began taking advantage of other opportunities she had at parties to make out with other guys when she was drunk. It did not really matter who it was, just so long as it was not Will.

One of these parties was at Kieran and Malcolm's parents' house (their parents being out of town, of course), and after Lucy got nice and drunk, she set her friend Katie's hair on fire.

Lucy found it hysterically funny, but Katie just got hysterical. After the fire was out, Katie turned in outrage toward Lucy, but as they were both wasted, and both looking forward to staying out all night, they quickly recovered from their little tiff. Besides, only a little chunk of Katie's hair was singed, and after she trimmed off those bits, no one could tell any difference.

It was about this time, though, that Will showed up with his friends. Lucy was furious. She pulled him aside and demanded to know what he was doing there. He knew she would be there—it was one of her best friends' houses, for fuck's sake. What the hell was he trying to do? She broke up with him, just as he wanted. He was free to go be with whomever he chose at college. Why could he not just leave her alone?

Will left the party then, before his friends even noticed he was gone, and then they, too, left to go in search of him. Lucy remained, and found a random guy to make out with in the hot tub.

Kieran, who exited the house to have a cigarette, saw her. He jumped up on the deck along the hot tub, and yanked on her arm to separate her from the random guy. Lucy, again, was furious, and the random guy was not that happy, either. Kieran did not give a shit, and since he was the most sober of the three, and also furious, was able to pull Lucy from the hot tub, push the protesting random guy back in, and wrap a towel around Lucy and escort her upstairs.

Kieran gave her one of his T-shirts and a pair of boxer shorts, and she dried off and put them on, then got into Kieran's bed and cried and cried and cried. He stayed with Lucy until she was asleep, and then left her in his bed.

Upon leaving his room, he locked the door from the inside so that she could get out, but no other drunken assholes could get in, and he went on with his evening.

Lucy knew Kieran did not like Will, for he could see how Will treated her toward the end of their relationship. But Kieran was not there at the beginning, and while he may have been justified in his anger at Will, he had no idea that Will's heart was broken into as many thousands of pieces as Lucy's.

***

At one time in her life, Lucy created a set of standards for herself, and as she got older, lowered them. Actually, she took the standards her parents and their church set, and lowered those.

For example, Lucy knew she would never have sex until she was married; one standard shot to hell. Other examples were that she would never smoke cigarettes, she would never drink alcohol, and she would never do drugs; shot to hell, shot to hell, shot to hell. Or, more accurately, she reached a crossroads at which she said, "FUCK IT," when it came to each of these standards.

Not long after Lucy and Will broke up, the time came to move from pot onto bigger and better things. Lucy, who'd scoffed at the idea of marijuana as a "gateway" to other drugs, started to use other drugs.

The first new drug she came across was acid, also known as LSD. She was "dating" this guy, and he loved to do acid, so she thought, "fuck it," and decided she would try it out. This, despite the fact that she did not really know this guy, let alone have any reason to trust him, and also did not really know if she even liked him.

He was just another guy she acquired after having sex. It was how she began to establish relationships. She would be at some party, and then hang out with some guy she found relatively attractive (relatively to whomever else was there), and then end up having sex with him.

Since she did not like to be sleeping with more than one guy over any period of time, she remained monogamous with whichever guy she was with until she was done with his bullshit (because they were ALL assholes), and then moved on.

She happened to meet the acid guy when they rode in the same car with a group of friends down to someone's apartment at some college (Lucy really did not remember exactly where it was, or even if it was in Georgia or not). In accordance with her modus operandi, Lucy got wasted, and while doing so, did the mating dance with this guy, and they had sex.

Then he stuck around, making them a "couple." A "couple" who did acid.

Lucy's first acid trip was not fun. All of her other acid trips were not fun, either, but the first was memorable because, well, it was the first one.

The "boyfriend" quelled her concerns about experiencing hallucinations and whatnot by assuring her that he would be with her the whole time, and that he would keep her safe. Lucy was not really sure what the hell that meant, but her safety was in the hands of lesser people before, so she went for it.

The boyfriend gave her a little piece of square, cardboard type paper, kind of like he ripped the corner off the top of a box of cereal. He told her to put it in her mouth and leave it in there, and that is what she did. This all happened at eight o'clock on a night Lucy needed to be home by midnight.

Having much previous experience with acid, the "boyfriend" could have considered that four hours after taking one's first hit of acid was not really a good time to go hang out with the folks, but he did not.

Lucy really did not like acid. She felt like she was in a very bad dream that she could not wake up from, and after this effect kicked in, the "boyfriend" told her it lasted about eight hours, a span of time Lucy was not able to comprehend at that moment.

She expected nice, happy, hippy, trippy hallucinations, like floating through a field of flowers, but the only visual hallucinations she experienced occurred when she stared at her hand for a long time, and her skin looked to be moving and breathing, which scared the shit out of her.

After a few hours of experiencing these not-so-pleasant sensations, Lucy realized she needed to be home soon. She reminded the "boyfriend" that he was going to have to get her home. He was very confident about driving her, even though he was tripping, too, and Lucy was too fucked up and too worried about being late to care. Once she arrived home, she went straight to her room, very grateful that her parents were already asleep.

She climbed into bed, laid down, and kept seeing things she knew were not really there flying around in the dark. She managed to keep herself calm by telling herself over and over that she was home, what was going on was not real, and that it would be over soon.

She also realized that having the light on, even the small bedside lamp, was much better than sitting in the dark. Lucy tried to read, but the letters and words kept moving around on the pages. She finally got a notepad and found she could write as long as she did not try to read what she wrote. Lucy began writing in very tiny lettering really mean things about the "boyfriend."

Lucy was pretty pissed at him for giving her the acid so late in the evening, knowing full well that she would still be tripping balls when she would have to go home. She filled up exactly one piece of notebook paper with little phrases expressing how much she hated him, and about an hour or two after the sun rose, she was finally able to sleep.

Of course, this incident did not keep Lucy from doing acid again, or from continuing to see the "boyfriend" until she could not stand to be around him any longer.

***

Lucy's senior year of high school was not stellar. While she certainly possessed the capacity to make very good grades, she had absolutely no motivation to make it happen. After Will, she closed her heart and opened her legs to pretty much any boy who came along, especially the ones who came along with alcohol. If she was drunk, she did not care about anything, and that was pretty much the theme of her senior career.

Her mother knew Lucy was not staying the weekends at her girlfriends' houses many of the times she said she was, but found it much easier to believe what Lucy told her than to confront her with the truth.

Lucy's father did not care what she did, and preferred her to be out of the house any time he was there. He found out about a year before that Lucy was sexually active—she wrote a letter to a friend on her father's computer in which she mentioned sex, and although she deleted it after printing it, she did not know her father routinely searched and retrieved and read the deleted files after she used his computer.

After acquiring knowledge of his daughter's sexual activity, he dismissed his only child with a look of disgust and one word thrown into her face:

"Whore."

Lucy did not know how he found out about her sexual activity, and was terribly frightened at what he would do to her as punishment. She did not expect, though, to be dismissed from his mind and his heart (assuming he actually had a heart beating in his chest), with such curt and final disdain. The pain she felt from this would not be evident to her for years to come, and so at the time, she felt more relief than anything that he was no longer attempting to keep tabs on her.

Lucy's mother also had very certain standards, though, that she would not tolerate being broken. For example, Lucy was required to be home by ten each school night, and if she was not staying over at one of her friend's (or at least saying she was staying at one of her friend's), her curfew on Fridays and Saturdays was midnight.

Additionally, Lucy's mother expected her to attend school every day, and at least make some sort of pretense at completing homework, papers, and projects. Studying for exams was also a plus.

Lucy did not find her mother's standards so difficult by which to abide, and additionally found that when she did so, her life was much easier. Lucy reserved her weekend time for drinking, although she was not opposed to an afternoon joint at one of the more secluded parks in Arbortown when she knew she had at least two hours before she needed to get home.

The two hour rule started after Lucy got home only an hour after smoking, and being pretty stoned, went straight upstairs and got into bed. Her mother came into her room about ten minutes later to see if she was okay, and after Lucy assured her there was no problem, her mother tilted her head to the side and quizzically asked,

"Have you been smoking?"

Lucy's heart raced, and she felt a cold spike of panic. Her brain was moving much too slowly, and she absent-mindedly grabbed a strand of her hair to twist around her finger, and as she pulled it across her face, just under her nose, she realized how strongly she smelled of cigarettes. She breathed a huge sigh of relief, and said, "OH! You mean cigarettes?"

Her confused mother nodded yes, and Lucy happily confessed to her cigarette habit, pulled her covers up to her neck, told her mother good night, and went straight to sleep.

She did not hear from her mother about the incident, except for when there was an article about the dangers of smoking printed in any type of periodical, which Lucy's mother would clip out and leave on Lucy's bed. Whenever Lucy saw one of those clippings, her first reaction was irritation, but then the slow sinking of pure sadness at how much she knew her mother loved her, and how hurt her mother would be if she only knew how very insignificant cigarettes were compared to the other activities in which Lucy participated.

But then Lucy would allow the irritation to build up again, a little burp from the molten river running through her blood, and she would crumple the article and toss it into her trashcan. But then envisioning her mother taking the care to cut it out and place it on her bed, Lucy would retrieve the article and put it in the same desk drawer that held all of the other articles, and consider what a vast collection of anti-smoking propaganda she was collecting.

This ritual was usually followed by a very strong desire to smoke—a cigarette—and Lucy would go out onto her roof and do so.

Lucy called on the rage within her frequently, because it was what got her out of bed, through each horrifically boring day of school, through awkward social situations, through breaking off each of her very shallow relationships with various boys, and basically, through her life. She was not aware, though, how others could see this in her, and that people who knew and loved her became afraid of her.

Although Lucy managed to maintain friendships with Katie, Brittany, Malcolm and Kieran, she unwittingly came to alienate herself from pretty much the rest of the school population. Familiar people would nod or wave in the hallways, but rarely did anyone go out of their way to interact with Lucy, and she just added this onto her pile of proof that she was a freak.

Her rage was a salve over the raw spots of loneliness on her soul, and it became increasingly easier to cut herself off more and more from those around her.

She saw no light in herself that might draw others in, and no one else saw any light they might be drawn to, because in Lucy, what little light was left was painted over black with hate. What others did see, aside from darkness, was a very pale, very thin, painfully beautiful girl who could rip their hearts out and do with them whatever she pleased.

On one of the ridiculously useless days of that year, Lucy opened her locker to find her lunch was stolen. She was very pissed off, not only because someone stole from her, but because she was starving, and made a very enjoyable lunch for herself the night before, which was rare, and she even purchased a bottle of dark cherry sparkling water to enjoy with her meal. She ended up having to scrounge up change from her classmates to purchase yet another of the disgusting school lunches.

A few days after this incident, Brittany was telling her about a girl she knew, and how she always stole lunches from people who did not have locks on their lockers, because if they were not going to take the time to lock up their valuables, they did not deserve to have them.

Lucy thought this was stupid, because even for all of her illegal activity and disdain for society at large, pretty much all of her destructive behaviors were aimed at herself, and she did not believe in stealing from anyone other than her parents. Lucy was considering this when Brittany mentioned that the girl was very happy to have gotten her hands on a lunch with a bottle of black cherry sparkling water.

"What did you just say?" Lucy's voice was taut with surprise and outrage, and Brittany froze, because she did not know about Lucy's lunch being stolen, and had no idea what she said that made Lucy mad, so she simply repeated the last thing she said, which was the statement regarding the black cherry sparkling water.

Lucy told Brittany the lunch with the black cherry sparkling water was hers, and was very adamant about Brittany telling her who stole it, as she felt due some sort of restitution. Brittany assured Lucy she would speak to the girl about it the next day, and Lucy was quite shocked—and even offended—when Brittany came back with the news that the girl began to cry when she found out it was Lucy's lunch she stole, and that Lucy knew who she was.

"Why?" Lucy could think of no other response to this news.

"Because she's scared you're going to kick her ass." Brittany stated this matter-of-factly, as if it was an accepted bit of knowledge at their school that Lucy went around kicking people's asses. She found the whole thing ludicrous.

"Just tell her to pay me for the lunch. For fuck's sake." Lucy left the conversation at that, because she was not comfortable at all with the idea of people having an expectation of physical violence associated with her.

She was surprised to find, though, that she had no desire to dispel this notion, and in fact was somewhat comforted by the idea that people were afraid of her, even if she did not really believe they were. She assumed it was obvious to everyone that she was more frightened than any of them.

***

Two weeks before Lucy was to graduate, the guidance counselor summoned her to the office. It appeared as though Lucy would not pass gym class, and that she would have to go to summer school.

Upon hearing this information, Lucy felt like she was punched in the stomach. She hated school, violently so, for many years, and the only reason she even applied herself was so that she could get out. And now someone was telling her it was not going to happen because of a gym class.

Lucy walked out of the counselor's office, straight to the gym, where she confronted her gym teacher. He was an older man whose own children long ago graduated from high school, and who also happened to hate being forced to teach girls to do things only boys should be doing. Especially girls like the one before him, who reeked of cigarette smoke and complained every other week that she had menstrual cramps, and therefore could not participate in class.

Needless to say, he was not sympathetic to Lucy's plight, and even made it clear that if she was in his summer school class, she would be working harder than anyone else if she wanted to graduate before the next year started.

Lucy was surprised by her response to this man. She felt the bubble of her righteous indignation hiss and deflate, and her shoulders dropped about four inches, and she just felt very, very heavy. She looked at her gym teacher and told him in a tone lacking any life at all, "Go fuck yourself."

She turned and walked back to her class, gathered her personal items, left her books, and went home.

***

Lucy's mother was on the phone attempting to straighten out something or another with their health insurance provider when she saw her daughter pull in the driveway three hours before she was supposed to be home from school. She hung up the phone and went to meet Lucy.

Lucy told her mother what happened, omitting only the part about telling the gym teacher to go fuck himself. Her mother responded exactly how Lucy anticipated, which was to state in no uncertain terms that Lucy was to finish out the school year, and then complete summer school, and then graduate.

Lucy responded in a way her mother did not expect at all, which was to simply state that she was not going to summer school, and was in fact not ever going to any school ever again.

Her mother took one look at Lucy's face, saw the dark there, the dark that began seeping into her daughter's eyes … when? She could not remember exactly, only that she was so, so happy when Lucy was born, and delighted with her beautiful, happy, bubbly baby girl, and then how she tried so hard not to see as that darkness entered her from such an early age.

And now here it was all but consuming her child and she knew it was too late to do anything at all.

And so Lucy's mother did nothing at all.