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  “And a muse is a terrible thing to waste,” I reply quickly.

  “Bret, you’re so quick and clever, isn’t he, Kylee?” Mrs. Edmonds says.

  Kylee turns her back on her mother, then shows off a five-star eye roll, sticking out her tongue for the big finish. “Whatever you say, Mom, whatever you say.”

  I grab my coat and pull on my multicolored long stocking cap. Kylee frowns at me, since I’ve once again forgotten to help her on with her coat. These little details matter to her, but what she doesn’t get is that I don’t have any role models. She has these supercool, loving parents who adore her and each other, in this house filled with books, eating these great gourmet meals served with wine, and all of this culture. If my house was this huge cold front and hers the center of warmth, then it’s better our folks didn’t meet, because for sure there would be a storm. I liked spending time there, even if it bored Kylee. Here were people who weren’t “normal” by any stretch but were still living a nice life. Hope lived.

  “You wanna drive, cutie?” Kylee asks, flipping me the keys to the snotsmobile.

  “Okay, K,” I say, this time remembering to open the door for her.

  “You didn’t like the wine?” Kylee says, having noticed that I barely touched my glass.

  “No, I’m just not used to parents serving wine, that’s all,” I say as I start the car and head off to Sean’s house. “We don’t serve wine in my house, not since my dad started dancing the AA Twelve Step. He quit drinking the day I was born.”

  “That’s one way for him to never forget your birthday,” Kylee says, but with a dig, since I’d almost forgotten her birthday last month in the chaos of dealing with Morgan’s Gestapo tactics. I had to ask Sean to loan me fifty bucks so I could even come up with my offering of Godiva chocolates, clove cigarettes, and a poster from The Wizard of Oz, upon which I’d replaced Dorothy’s face with a picture I’d taken of Kylee with Sean’s digital camera. Even then, if it hadn’t been for my love (sans the word) letter, Kylee wouldn’t have been happy, which makes me sad. Sometimes it seems like she doesn’t realize that while I live her, I also have a life without her. There are times when I think Kylee wants more than I can possibly give.

  “Well, he made my sixteenth quite memorable,” I say, angry that Kylee’s parents trust me with the snotsmobile, while my unchanged oil-change stance keeps me stuck in the driveway at home.

  “Why don’t you just give in,” Kylee says, rolling down the window and lighting up one of her Christmas cloves. “We can’t keep taking my mom’s car everywhere. It ain’t no big thing.”

  “It is to me,” I say sharply, my shivering only partially because of the chill. “K, sorry, I’m not pissed at you.”

  “Well, I’m pissed at my father. He can be so embarrassing sometimes,” Kylee says as she snuggles against me. “Wasn’t his singing just awful?”

  “Well, it wasn’t, as he would say, ‘one hundred percent’ but I’ve heard worse,” I say. “Ever hear Sean sing? It’s like a form of capital punishment.”

  “No, I haven’t,” Kylee says, puffing away. “But I was just thinking something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I was thinking maybe I could sing a few songs at your next gig,” Kylee says, rubbing her hand along my leg.

  “That’s an idea,” I say, knowing full well my voice has just betrayed me. I’m seriously in love with Kylee, and we’re going through all the motions associated with those emotions. I’m head over heels, yet my head tells me this is a bad idea, and I feel like a real heel.

  “Well, think about it, cutie,” Kylee says, punctuating her remark by rubbing the back of her hand against my stubbly face. Sean’s dad gave him thousands of dollars in electronics for Christmas so he could explore and indulge his artistic side, whereas my dad gave me a fifty-dollar grooming kit, complete with razor, to keep my whiskers, if not my hair, short.

  “You tired?” I ask. Like me, Kylee is juggling a lot. She has a full load of classes, and dance lessons with occasional performances that somehow always conflict with what I’m doing. Plus her mom always wants her to help at the Food Bank.

  “Exhausted,” she says. “Maybe after rehearsal, we could just go back home and sleep. It’s winter break, so no school tomorrow. Why don’t you spend the night? I’m sure it would be okay with my folks. They’ll probably even turn down the covers.”

  “You mean on the couch, right?”

  “No, silly, in my bed.” Kylee says, grabbing my hand, and running it along her black fishnets, which snag me hook, line, and sinker. “You’re kind of silly in my bed, anyway.”

  “And that’s a good thing,” I say, unsure exactly what she meant. I try to cover my inexperience by making lovemaking a laugh riot at times, although in the end, I did whatever she asked to make sure she always got the last laugh, so to speak. “I need some good things.”

  Kylee rubs my face. “What’s bothering you, cutie?”

  “I just want this dark cloud to pass over. This stuff with Morgan and my speech, the stuff with my dad, putting up with cement heads like Hitchings and Coach King. I just want it all to go away, and to not have these two stupid suspensions hanging over me. I want to go to sleep for about a year and a half, then wake up to get my diploma and put all of this behind me.”

  “Then don’t let my mom get involved,” Kylee says.

  “Why not?”

  “Did you see her? She’ll take right over,” she says. “Mom’s ready to take on the world. I think she cares more about its problems than she does mine.”

  “She loves you to death,” I say, always appealing to Kylee’s addiction to affirmation.

  “You don’t know how right you are,” Kylee says as she rolls down the window and flicks the half-smoked clove onto the highway.

  “But don’t you think …,” I start to say, trailing off as Kylee yawns, closing her eyes.

  “You don’t live with them, Bret. Trust me,” she whispers, yawns, then zones out.

  I gently rub one hand over Kylee’s hair, wishing that everything could feel this nice and be this easy. I would love it if we could just keep driving, smoking, listening to music, and touching each other. I’ve still yet to say that four letter word because it is both too frightening and too futile, but I’m happily in love with Kylee. I edge over to say “I love you” to her, even though I know Roget’s rips me off without enough euphemisms or synonyms for that eight-letter three-word statement of commitment, caring, and constant craving. It’s not an announcement heard much around the Hendricks household.

  My parents’ relationship is like what we learned in history class about trench warfare in World War I. They’re locked in a slow and agonizing battle with no clear winners or losers, just lots of suffering. It’s probably hard to fight with someone you barely talk to, but it could be worse. I’ve never seen Dad hit Mom, or even be mean to her. His sole weapon is silence and indifference; I know those soundless slings and arrows all too well.

  Their life is as follows: he comes home, performs the minimal requirements of cohabitation, and then retreats into his own private world of Camaros and home repair. He goes out with friends to play poker or watch car races. She mostly works. If there was a time when she went out with him, it must seem to both of them like a lifetime ago. And yet they stay together while lots of friends’ parents, like Sean’s, are coming apart.

  After Robin was born, everything changed for my mom. You can see it in her eyes that Robin has become her life, in the same way that my brother, Cam, is my dad’s pride and joy. I’d become an orphan in my own family. My dad had hope for me once, but he’s given up on all that. He’s told me he loves me and puts food on the table, but he lost interest somewhere between the time when he sat up with me when I was sick and now, when he just tells me I am sick. Although he and my mom remain married, his divorce from me seems final.

  I envied Sean when his parents broke up. Both of them vie for all of his attention. It’s like a bidding war, and Sean is no
thing if not shrewd, playing it for all it’s worth. He lives with his mom, who keeps the big house, and spends a lot of time with his dad, who keeps him happy with toys for teens. Sometimes I think hanging out with Alex and me (whom they don’t like), rather than Hitchings, Bison, or the rest of the water walkers, is his way of getting back at his parents for breaking up. But the past matters not, as we drive closer to Kylee’s final Christmas present.

  “K, time to wake up,” I say gently, stirring Kylee from her catnap.

  “Can’t I just sleep?” She huddles up against me. “I’m so tired.”

  “Let me ask you something.” I pull her closer, and she purrs like one of her family’s cats. I just hold her for a while. “What do you think it is to be normal?”

  “Why in the world would you want to be?” she says.

  “I don’t know. I guess that’s the problem.”

  “I don’t think normal is that great.”

  “But so many people choose it,” I reply.

  “I don’t think that’s it at all. I think most everyone is normal, and some of us, for whatever reason, choose to reject that and wear ruby red slippers or old black hats.”

  “Well, why do we choose the hard road?” I continue, hoping that Kylee won’t notice we’re taking a different road over to Sean’s. I have a last gift for her to unwrap.

  “Now, that I can’t answer,” Kylee says. “Maybe when I get to college next year.”

  “Promise me you’ll do something for me after college,” I say.

  “Just about anything,” replies Kylee, with a kiss acting as her exclamation point.

  “If you run into me in ten years, and my hair is one color and cut short, and I’m jammed into a minivan with a bunch of screaming kids in the backseat, promise me something, okay?”

  “Anything, cutie,” she says softly.

  “That you will kill me,” I say sans emotion.

  “Kill you?” Kylee asks, snapping fully out of her slumber.

  “I’d rather be dead than live that life,” I say. “I’d rather be dead than be like my father.”

  “Deal!” Kylee says, and kisses me again. “And being dead is okay with you?”

  “I don’t want to get out of the world,” I whisper.

  “Then what?”

  “I want to get the world out of me.”

  “Maybe later you can put a little of your world into me,” Kylee says, tugging my ponytail.

  I hug her but keep my eyes on the road as we turn down a dead-end street off Fenton Road. I spot the large concrete embankment that once said “Grand Trunk Railroad.” Kylee notices we’re slowing down, and my heart is beating faster as we approach my revelation celebration. “Close your eyes for a second, okay, K?”

  I need her to shut her eyes before I can open my heart, even if my mouth still can’t say the words. On Christmas Eve, while the whole family but me was safe at church at Midnight Mass, I enlisted Alex’s helping hand, and with the leftover black paint from the Rock created a Christmas present for Kylee, sans colorful paint but loaded with colossal passion.

  “Bret, what’s going on?” she asks, unsure of my intentions.

  I flash a bright smile, then the car’s bright lights onto the concrete. The Rock is fine for temporary tattoos, but not for something lasting and deep. We may be off the beaten path, but for me, it’s a sign that for the first time ever, I have pulled directly onto the human highway. I may be different, but the love I feel for Kylee is normal and enormous. “Look,” I tell her.

  Tears fall down from her brown rounds when she reads my words painted black, boldly, and bravely and as tall as she, on cold white concrete:

  BRET LIVES KYLEE

  Fifteen

  December 26, Evening, Junior Year

  “Sean, that’s not it!”

  Alex isn’t happy with Sean’s drumming, and he’s not the only one. It’s been a frustrating couple of hours, as we try to record some old songs and work on Alex’s newest, “Sweetheart of the Graveyard Shift.” It’s a great song about his new squeeze, Elizabeth, the eighteen-year-old waitress at Venus that he finally talked into going out with him. I don’t think we’ll make it to see Elizabeth tonight at this rate. Maybe it’s because I’m exhausted from Kylee and keeping up with school, but Sean’s pissing me off, and not just tonight. The last couple of weeks, his tone at school is all sharp, but tonight he’s dulled his senses with a few glasses of Jack Daniels.

  “Do you want me to show you again?” Alex asks Sean, his voice saturated in sarcasm.

  “I got it. Sorry, guys,” Sean mumbles, an unlit clove cigarette dangling from his lips.

  “You’re coming in too soon,” Alex says, unmoved by Sean’s apology.

  “Just like sex between you and Elizabeth!” Sean says, hitting the cymbal for a rim-shot effect, although he’s the only one laughing. The three of us are always busting each other, but our girlfriends are usually off-limit topics. For Sean that’s true, for Mr. Jack Daniels, not.

  “Sean, why don’t—” Alex starts.

  “Guys, this isn’t getting us anyplace,” I say, trying to be the perfect peacemaker. “Why don’t we stop trying to record new material. Let’s just play an old song, to get in the groove.”

  “How about ‘Matter of Fact’?” Alex says, tuning his guitar.

  “Are you sure you trust me with your precious originals?” Sean asks, egging Alex on.

  “Sean, maybe you better check where you’re sitting, because I think you got a drumstick stuck up your ass!” Alex replies to Sean’s whiskey-inspired insult in a voice louder and sharper than the chords he’s playing. “What exactly is your major malfunction?”

  “Whatever, Wordboy,” Sean shoots back.

  “Guys, come on,” I shout. “Let’s do ‘Burton Calling’ then. Everybody okay with that?”

  “Okay, but I have a suggestion,” Sean says, as he taps away on the snare.

  I shoot Alex a look. I know he wants to say something but instead he just frowns and starts tuning his guitar.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “Why don’t we let Kylee sing background, or maybe even lead vocal?” Sean says, pointing his drumsticks at Kylee. She is blowing white clove smoke, scratching down thoughts in black ink in her purple journal, acting like the angry scene spilling in front of her isn’t real.

  “We don’t do duets,” Alex says contemptuously. “Bret, what do you think?”

  I pause for a second, then ten, and then almost a minute. My mouth’s closed, but it can’t stay that way. I know Alex wants only me to do vocals, but I also know Kylee really wants to do this. I don’t know why Sean even cares.

  “Don’t you wanna share the stage with us Kylee?” Sean asks in a strange tone.

  “It’s not that. It’s just, you know, it might be kind of weird to have the two of us singing together,” I say, trying to signal Kylee with my nonverbal shoulder shrug apology.

  “You guys must do all your singing between the sheets,” Sean says, hitting the cymbal again, then adding a drum roll. “Singing in the sheets, singing in the sheets!”

  Sean laughs and so does Kylee, who puts down her journal. “What do you think?” Kylee whispers in my ear as she walks by toward the microphone.

  Alex lets out a huge sigh that suggests he regrets not just getting Sean in the band, but even knowing him. I look at Alex, then smile sadly at Kylee, and finally glare at Sean.

  “Forget it, wannabe,” Sean says. “You don’t have to sing it with her. I will.”

  “Now Sean, you’re the funny man,” I say with a sarcastic smile, winking at Alex.

  “I’m serious,” Sean says with an evil grin. “Kylee, you’ll sing with me, won’t you?”

  I turn on my heel and face Sean. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but just because you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth doesn’t mean you have a golden throat.”

  “What the hell do you mean by that?” Sean says. “Can’t you just say something without busting your ass to
sound so damn clever?”

  “Well, I’ll keep it simple then. When it comes to singing, two words best describe you,” I snap back. “You suck.”

  “And I got two words for you, wannabe: fuck you!” Sean says, flicking his cigarette my way as Kylee returns to her seat, out of harm’s way.

  “What is your problem!” I shout back.

  “Here’s two more words for you: get out!” Sean shouts, hurling both of his drumsticks my way. One misses me, while the other catches me in the gut, just above the belt. It doesn’t hurt, but the pain of this is killing me. The band, our music, these guys: this is supposed to be a release from the other crap in my life, but suddenly it stinks just as bad as everything else does.

  “Sean, what is your problem?” I ask, wondering where all this anger came from.

  “What are you going to do, Bret, fight me or run away like you do with Hitchings?” Sean says. He laughs like it’s all a joke. Guess when life is so easy, nothing ever comes down hard.

  “Damn it, Sean, cool it!” Alex finally interjects.

  “Big surprise, you’re taking his side,” Sean yells at Alex.

  “What does that mean?” Alex replies, at equal volume.

  “You’re the musical genius, figure it out,” Sean says. “Look at the two of you: Wordboy and Wannabe.”

  Sean stands up, or tries to anyway. He slips for a second and then rights himself, putting his fists out in front of him. “Right now, Bret, let’s you and me settle this.”

  “I’m not going to fight you,” I say, the exhaustion obvious in my face.

  “Why not?” Sean shouts.

  I pause, take a deep breath, and then look quickly at Alex. Before I can answer, I hear a noise. It’s Kylee. I hear the smack of her journal falling on the floor, then the heel of her shoes clicking as she runs out of the room. She’s fleeing the scene of my lack-of-spine crime.

  “Hey, it’s not like with Hitchings. I’m no jock so this will be a fair fight,” Sean shouts.

  Sean’s shorter than me, but thicker and way tougher. “I won’t fight you just because.”

  “Because why?” Sean challenges, unwilling to let it go or drop his fists or tough guy act.