Anyway, I’ve also been messing around with writing a new website from scratch. It’s more of a discussion site than a personal blog. It’s still in it’s infancy and I’m updating the code every night. Unfortunately, my web design skills suck.

Check it out if you want to be part of the experiment.

Here is the summary:

I. Strengths

• Voice and style. I love the variety to Darren’s (and the author’s) sense of humor—sometimes wry, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes slapstick. The voice is consistent and compelling. I think the voice and style lend themselves to cinema, and I like that. You’ve created a really good mix of humor and seriousness and a really good range and depth of emotions.
• Characterization. We really get to know the important characters (and several of the minor ones) and are able to envision them. In my opinion, your characters are the kinds of characters you want to meet in a movie—in a really good way. Darren sometimes seems apathetic and lazy and headed toward loserdom, but he really isn’t any of those things; as he eventually points out, he was trained/brainwashed to follow that path to a certain extent, and eventually he steps off the path. I like that he’s angry but not bitter. He grows throughout the book—a few steps forward, a couple steps back—and manages to become increasingly sympathetic. You also do a really good job of characterizing Shafto and all that he represents. The reader is certainly inspired to hate him.
• Dialogue. It’s hard to write dialogue well, and you do it really well. I pointed out one or two spots where the dialogue could be improved, but overall, the characters “sound” the way they should and the dialogue is a highlight of the book.
• Chapter titles. They’re pithy and sensitive, and they really enhance the text.
• Character names and nicknames. I especially love that you use the nickname Daryl and Daryl. It made me smile every time I read it.

II. Areas for Improvement

• Markers of time. This is an issue throughout the manuscript. It lacks markers/cues that help the reader understand and relate to the passage of time. I made specific comments at some points where time markers would be helpful, but this needs to be addressed globally. Readers often have questions like “How long has it been since . . .?” or “When does (s)he first . . .?” Too many of these questions currently go unanswered. For instance, at a few points it seems as if much less time should have passed between chapters. This flaw isn’t so major that it will stop someone from reading, but fixing it will make the narrative much stronger.
• The (almost) ending. I like the last few sentences a lot. Definitely keep them. But the ending, overall, is too abrupt. I’m not sure what to suggest here. I think we just need a bit more information about where Darren’s life heads and then a few more retrospective closing words from his current self—the one writing in the journal. Maybe something that more explicitly explains/justifies his decision to write. I’m not saying the ending needs to be much longer. A bit longer, yes, but more important, less abrupt.
• Disappearing mom. Darren’s mom is an important character, and I think she gets the shaft, meaning she’s a bit of a dropped thread. She needs to show up a few more times, more consistently, and be more fleshed out. I was left with several unanswered questions about her: How does she react to Darren’s heavy drug use, especially when he’s living with her? Or, if she doesn’t react much, why not? Is it because she’s too wrapped up in herself?
• Darren the writer. I recommend doing more to build Darren as a future writer. The quality and quantity of references to his writing are too weak.

III. Other Notes/Dropped Threads/Questions

• Where does the money from Darren’s drug sales go? During his time as a pot dealer, it seems as if he must be making a lot of cash. Does it all go toward Darren’s own drug habit?
• There is a minor case of disappearing Tracy. During the segment of the novel where Tracy has developed a drinking problem, she vanishes from interaction with Darren for a little while. She can’t vanish that much. She needs to show up a bit more, given how close they have become.
• I’m uncertain about the title. An experienced marketer would have better feedback than I, but I think White Dwarf is . . . impersonal, sci-fi-y, galactic.
• The point of view is strong and consistent. I pointed out a few spots where Darren couldn’t have known something because he wasn’t present. Just fix those spots.
• I think the length of the book is just right. The only exception is that the end should be a bit longer.
• Consider putting a bit more effort into making Kansas City a character in the book. A few more cultural nuggets would help ground your reader in the setting.

The drive out to Mimi’s was harrowing.  They are doing some sort of construction on 69 and so it has been reduced to two narrow lanes that wind unpredictably around man-made obstacles. The entire 12 miles, there were Kansas drivers either driving far too slow in front of me or far too fast, riding my ass. I was relieved to pull onto the exit ramp and see Mimi’s shortly ahead.

Mimi’s was an interesting-looking place. It was built to look like a large house. It was decorated with miscellaneous items taken—or made to look like they were taken—from New Orleans. The place was surrounded by trees and bushes.

I walked around to the front and before I could even reach the door, a scrawny girl in a black uniform popped out and beamed at me, “Bon Jour!”

Typical French.  Throw the doors wide open and send your women out to welcome the first German goose-stepping by.

I went in, awkwardly holding the next door open for the pseudo-French girl. She tripped over me and grabbed the door, urging me inside.

The interior of the place was comfortable.  More New Orleans décor hung from the walls along with various plants and menu items. I approached the greeter’s station.

“Bon Jour!” She smiled.

“Heh.  Hey.”

“How many tonight?”

“One.”

There was some discussion between her and the first girl as they cleared up some confusion about where to put me.  Finally, the first girl led me into an adjacent room and pointed to an empty booth.

“Is this okay?”

“Sure.”

I sat at the booth and ordered a Dr. Pepper while I checked the menu to make sure they actually had pot roast.

There was a table filled with silver-haired old ladies and a single old man off to my left and ahead.  Next to me, was a dumpy-looking couple arguing over the menu.  In the booth in front of me was a couple with two daughters.  One of the daughters kept opening the curtain that separated my booth from theirs and giggling at me.  I tried to frighten her with a terrifying grimace, but it only seemed to encourage her.

Finally, the waitress returned with my Dr. Pepper and took my order.

The pot roast was heavenly. It almost melted in my mouth. The mashed potatoes were from scratch and the vegetables had an incredible seasoning.

I listened to the conversation around me as I ate.  As best I could gather the dumpy-looking couple next to me were on a rare night out. They were bored and disillusioned with each other, but too old to have any other prospects in life. The single old man at the table with all of the silver-haired old ladies said nothing. The ladies were having a heated discussion about dehydration. The little girl in front of me continued to peek at me through the curtain. Her parents never did stop her.

I was finished with my meal within fifteen minutes and I left full, happy and humming Deutschland über alles.

The first round of editing will be a thorough, overall critique. She will begin work on January 30th and complete it by February 20th. After that, I’ll make decisions about large-scale changes based on her feedback.

Once that’s completed, I’ll send it to her for a thorough developmental/line edit which will take a few months.  Then, I’ll look at implementing those changes.

Finally, I’m looking at a couple of self-publishing places. I have a while to decide on which one to go with, so I’ll do more research in the interim.

“You remember an old kid’s show called Land of the Lost?” I asked.

She thought a moment, “Oh yeah!”

“Do you remember the episode where Holly gets in one of the pylons and it goes crazy and takes her to all these random places? She just stays in the pylon and the door opens and shows some different weird landscape…”

She thought again, “Yes!”

“I think of that every time these elevators do that…”

I work on the third of about twelve floors, all accessible from six different elevators. These elevators lead from the lobby to the office levels. You can walk north in the lobby and eventually hit another set of four elevators that go to the parking areas. I find this setup offensively inefficient, especially for chain-smoking. It took a while to sink into my thick skull, but there is a shortcut. I discovered that at certain times of the day my chances of getting the service elevator are pretty good and if I can’t get it on the third floor, I can always get it from the lobby. The service elevator goes down beneath the lobby to the B level parking garage. Don’t worry if you’re completely confused by my description of the property. I’ve worked there over two years and I still haven’t gotten my head around the layout. I think it extends into hyperspace.

So I can mainline my ass straight from the third floor to my car on B by using the service elevator, thus avoiding annoying physical exertion and abuse of precious time that could be used for smoking. This system usually works pretty well. Unfortunately, the elevators don’t. I’d even heard stories of coworkers getting trapped in the set of four elevators to the parking areas.

Today, I went out for a smoke and hit the down button. After a short wait, I heard the tone behind me… I didn’t get the service elevator. Oh well, I’d catch it on the first floor. I went on down and hit the down button in the lobby and the service elevator immediately opened. I got in, hit the down button and the door closed. That’s when all hell broke loose. The elevator went up.

“Great,” I thought. I’d seen it happen before. I’d get on the elevator after pressing the down button, but it would go up a floor or two to collect someone above me before going down. I guess it covers for the other five elevators when they’re slacking off smoking or something.

But it didn’t go up one floor… or two… or three. It went up to ten, then eleven. “What is this stupid thing doing?”

Twelve, thirteen… “thirteen? How many floors does this building have?”

fourteen, fifteen… there was shaking and noise.

It occurred to me that I was very high up now. I could rationalize the third floor—if the elevator cable suddenly broke, a miracle could intervene and save me from a third floor fall, but now… I was a goner. That thing would drop, faster and faster until I reached critical mass and the elements that composed my very self would vaporize in a mushroom cloud of bone and tissue on impact. I hit buttons on the control panel randomly in panic. My legs started feeling weak.

Sixteen.

The elevator stopped, leaving me standing there with nothing but my rapid pulse. I waited for the door to open, but I didn’t want to look. I didn’t even know that the building had a sixteenth floor. I expected the door to open and reveal something sinister. Maybe a secret lab filled with expressionless government scientists working on something I—as a mere mortal lacking the psychological profile of a lump of lead—didn’t want to see.

Whatever. At that point, all I wanted was to get off of that elevator. I pushed the open button… and the elevator lurched into motion… down.

I leaned against the wall. More shaking and sounds of scraping metal. I watched the numbers decrement slowly… nine, eight… Maybe the elevator would just dump me back on three. Nervous seconds drifted by and my life had just completed flashing before my eyes, “What the hell is the point of existence anyway?”

Four, three, two, one and, finally, B.

I pushed the open button repeatedly and, after a short pause, the doors slid open. Then jammed, six inches apart.

“For the love of God…”

I pushed close. The doors balked. Open… nothing.

Finally, I grabbed one door in each hand and pulled them apart with a sharp crack of metal.

I made my way to my car, shaking, and had a couple of cigarettes. I decided not to take the service elevator back upstairs. I walked toward the other end of the parking garage. Halfway there, a figure appeared—it was the brunette from upstairs. I waved at her and smiled.

“You don’t like going down there either?”

“What?” I had no idea what she was talking about. I was still contemplating the meaning of my existence.

“The smoking area on C… I hate going down there.”

“Oh yeah. It’s nasty. I think they do some sort of weird government research there.”

So the demise of Rudius left me on my own.  My OCD would have it no other way. This means White Dwarf will get published, with one caveat… I’ll have to do it myself.  I have some money saved up for just such a purpose.  I will be using an on-demand publishing service called Create Space.

I don’t really expect to recoup the money I sink into publishing it (probably about 4k) and the book will be priced cheap.  I don’t have the time or inclination to do any sort of marketing other than maybe buying ads on facebook (I tried just advertising this site on it for two days and was quite shocked by the amount of traffic I received… just for a stupid blog!).

Anyway.  I’m shooting for Spring 2010. If I just submitted what I have now, I could probably have it out by the end of the month, but I’m doing a significant cleanup.  If you divide the 42 chapters into 3 equal parts, nearly half the story is in part 1.  I’m going to significantly fill out the last two parts.  Right now, it’s about 83000 words.  I’m guessing it will end up being between 100000 and 120000.

I had already completed significant work on the first 14 chapters in the past month… all of which I lost a week ago due to a hard drive issue.  The only thing I managed to salvage was the rewritten first chapter which I’d emailed to someone.

I’ve re-completed that work (it was still fresh enough in my head) and will continue revising everything until I’m satisfied (or at least someone I trust tells me I should be satisfied)…

I’ll leave the original story as-is on the site and the new stuff will only be available in print.

Lilly and her friend, Cassandra, went to the dance with a couple of friends.  There was no way I was going to that—I never went to school when I was supposed to, I wasn’t about to start now.  So, I waited at the apartment smoking a joint with my 19-year-old pixie cousin.

It was still early in the evening—still light—when they knocked on the door.  Lilly came in and I hugged her happily and greeted Cassandra with her long, thick, curly hair.  They had another friend, Raene, she was younger—sixteen—and had moved to St. Joe.  I’d heard a lot about her, but wasn’t prepared for the full package:  thin, long brown hair all braided up and gorgeous green eyes; even her teeth were pretty.  I had to look away.  I was crazy about Lilly and didn’t want to admit—even to myself—that Raene had floored me.  She’d brought an even younger friend of hers with her and we all sat in the living room while Justin rolled another joint.

We were both in heaven, getting high with four pretty teenagers in that dimly-lit living room.  We talked and laughed and watched a crazy, psychedelic computer-animation video.  I’d been trying to get Justin to hook up with Cassandra.  I’d decided he needed a chick to get him off the meth.  He dug her, but wouldn’t make a move, no matter how hard I pushed.  He didn’t make a move on Raene or her friend either.  Damn pixie.

We all hung around a while planning a night of glorious debauchery.  The pot would just be the start.  I would buy gallons of alcohol and we’d drive to St. Joseph, where Raene and her friend would deliver us into a world of decadent anarchy.  Justin left us, having to do his pixie thing.  I piled in the Mazda with Lilly driving and the other three sitting in the back.  I could smell spring in the air; it added to my excitement.  We sped north on 29.  I have no idea how fast we were driving and didn’t care.  The roadside went by in a blur, like the past 25 years of my life.  It had gotten dark and I liked it.  When it was dark, you could fill the world ahead with whatever you wanted.  I smoked and talked—to Lilly and Cassandra and Raene and the other girl.  Raene didn’t say much.  She didn’t have to.  She was in my head.

Eventually, the conversation turned to high school.

“It’s really sad.  We’ve spent all these years with these people and now it’s over,” Lilly was clearly melancholy about the situation.

I couldn’t fathom it.  If her appearance hadn’t been so melancholy, I would have thought she was joking.  Even if I had followed the normal route through high school, I’m sure that seven years later, I would be embarrassed to have the conversation I’d found myself in.

“Well, you know nothing really ever ends,” I said, taking a drag off my cigarette, “things just change.”

“Still, it’s sad.”

A fog had settled in as we reached further north.  We cut through it, no big deal—until a deer jumped onto the highway.  There was a thud, screams, swerving off the road.  It happened that fast.  We all got out, shaking.  I held Lilly.  The girls held each other.  The front of the Mazda was mangled.  I lit up another in an endless chain of cigarettes—I had learned to inhale them long ago.

Raene looked at me, shivering, “Can I have one of those?”

I handed her a cigarette and lit it.  The flame lit up her face in the darkness there on the side of the highway and glinted from her green eyes.  Shades of that cemetary a decade ago fell over the night.

We all smoked a cigarette and calmed down before getting back in the car.  All momentum for the evening had been lost.  I decided to go home and the girls decided to go to Cassandra’s house.

I was still up at 3am when Justin buzzed in.  He came in the living room and we watched some shitty late-night television.

“So why don’t you ask Cassandra out, man?”

“Ahh.  She doesn’t want to hang out with a pixie.”

“Cassandra’s like one of the coolest chicks I know.  She doesn’t judge people.”

“Man, that other chick was hot too!  What is it with Lilly and her friends?”

I knew immediately which other chick he was talking about, “I don’t know.  Those young ones…”

Justin nodded enthusiastically, “I think it’s because we never got laid in high school.”

“I don’t know.  There’s probably more to it.  I mean it’s not just you and me.  On the one hand society says it’s a no-no.  But on the other, those same people send their teenage daughters out in bikinis to wash cars for the cheerleader team.  What the fuck is that?”

Justin packed a bowl, took a hit and passed it to me.  Criticizing society always seemed to go better with the help of pot.

“Our culture is all about putting us at odds with our own biology,” I let go my breath, everything suddenly clarifying out of the ghostly exhalant, “it’s kind of sick.  Actually, it’s like the very definition of insanity.  You keep trying to fight your nature over and over, generation after generation and expect some sort of utopia and instead everyone just comes out of it all neurotic and fucked-up.”

Justin’s eyes lit up, “Man, I need some pixie.”  He scurried off to the bedroom to do another in an endless stream of lines.  He had deeper issues to nurse:  an obsession with a local weather man and his pet dog.

I fell silent, sitting there trying to figure it all out.

All of the other kids were completely silent. Of course, the artist was either me or Billy, but nobody would rat us out—whether it was because of their loathing of Mongoloid or fear of our swift and terrible retribution, I couldn’t be certain.

“Who. Is. The. Artist?” Mongoloid quivered. His moustache twitched. He threw off his sunglasses, revealing wild, cloudy blue eyes. He wadded the paper and threw it on the floor. “I just want you all to know, this ain’t true. I will find out who the responsible parties are,” Mongoloid cast a piercing gaze toward Billy and me, “and they will be dealt with!”

Mongoloid returned to his seat and, still shaking, resumed the route.

The drawing was as completely tasteless as two out-of-control 15-year-old delinquents could imagine. And after spending every weekend for the past two years analyzing Billy’s dad’s endless porn collection, our imaginations had warped exponentially to unexplored levels of depravity. It depicted Mongoloid’s son and daughter in the midst of some sex act while Mongoloid hovered over instructing them with a whip. Billy had worked on it during science class the day before and intentionally left it on the bus where Mongoloid would find it during his nightly cleaning.

It was toward the end of the school year and these random stops along the side of the road to and from school were a daily occurence—at least on the days either Billy or I decided to show up, which were few.

“Warren, we’re going to be ‘dealt with’!” Billy said gleefully, breaking the silence.

There were some quiet giggles from the young girls who sat near us—they seemed to enjoy the field of chaos that we naturally generated, but not enough to sit too close. We always offered them candy to sit with us, but they would vehemently refuse, then blush and giggle. I found the dichotomy between their rational minds and basic nature to be fascinating.

I took Billy’s cue and, fueled by the giggling, I shook up a plastic Coke bottle and opened it, causing it to spew all over the girls. They laughed and screamed uncontrollably, I yelled out maniacally, “YEAHHH!! WHOOO!”

The bus jerked to a stop, sending everyone lurching forward. Mongoloid walked briskly toward the back. As he neared us, I could see the tears in his eyes. His pale face had become deep red. His voice quivered along with every muscle in his body as he tried to maintain control, “Warren, I’m sick of your shit. I’m going to recommend to my superiors that you never ride this bus again.”

Billy and I looked at one another and lost all composure. That sentence said it all, we knew. “Superiors”—Mongoloid allowed himself to be an eternal slave… and he was our slave too. We laughed without control. The girls laughed. The chaos had boiled over and taken on a life of its own. All civility on the bus had rushed out the windows and everyone regressed into raving apes. All Mongoloid could do was hope for a decisive response from his Superiors. He returned to his seat, defeated and once again started the bus and drove us all to our destinations. Tomorrow morning, in the off-chance that Billy or I woke up and dragged ourselves to school, the morning announcements over the intercom system would end with their usual, “Would Warren Mann and Billy Lester please come to the office.” The teacher would roll his eyes, shake his head and motion at the door and Billy and I would smile proudly and have another chat with the principle.

But as it turned out, Mongoloid needn’t have worried. It was the last time Billy or I ever rode that bus… and the last time we ever bothered to show up for high school. After two years of complete academic neglect, skipping more than we attended and generally living as though we were in an anarchic society, we simply didn’t show up for the remainder of the school year and didn’t bother returning for the next two years. It was like breaking out of prison—how could we possibly be expected to want to go back to that lame asylum?

That episode on the bus was to be our swan song. Had we known, we probably would have planned something far more epic for our old nemesis, Mongoloid. In the end, he was spared by an unforseen indiscretion at a cemetery.

Five of us had made plans to go out and get roaring drunk that night. One of our friends, Stu, had a car and already had his license. Another had a brother old enough to buy alcohol. Billy and I had enough money to buy a case of beer for everyone and the fifth of our party, Barny, came along as spiritual guidance. The plan was to get the beer and drive to a spot in the hills off of a bluff road. I knew we’d be safe there: my great-grandmother owned the hill and nobody would bother us.

Stu flashed the high-beams, “This road is a dead end, man. Where are you taking us?”

“Don’t worry,” I assured him, “I knows these bluffs like the back of my hand. There’s a path that leads through a tobacco field and to a rock quarry. It’s perfect.”

Everyone in the car was nervous. All that beer, Stu had just gotten his license, a world of shit awaited us if we got busted.

“I don’t like this,” Barny’s nervousness had gotten the better of him. “This is Pat George country!”

Pat George was a local psychotic. He’d escaped from jail and was living in the woods somewhere. He wrote insane letters to the local paper threatening to burn down such-and-such barn if some bizarre political action—the significance of which only Pat himself could comprehend—weren’t taken. Sure enough, the designated barn would be reported burned to a crisp a week or so later.

“Pat George doesn’t give a shit about us getting drunk,” Billy pointed out.

“He’s crazy,” Barny became animated, terrified, “he’ll kill us all! He loves these woods!”

“Man, my great-grandmother owns these woods! Fuck him.”

“You guys don’t understand. Pat George is fucked up!”

We listened to Barny rattle on about Pat George. My mental image of the eccentric woodsman, fueled by Barny’s paranoia, was taking on absurd proportions. I imagined this 8-foot tall, hairy, bearded freak with yellow glowing eyes and strings of bloodied white flesh snagged in the gaps of his rotting teeth, bursting from the woods with a torch and exterminating us all in an orgasm of cleansing flame.

Stu eased off the gas, though in that enormous lump of olive-green metal it was difficult to discern, “Yeah, I don’t like this. Maybe we should go someplace else.”

I opened another beer, resigned to the fact that our well-laid plans were crumbling into a chaos over which I had no control—I’d seen it happen a million times on the bus and in the acne-filled hallways of the high school. “Yeah, well, you guys figure it out,” I slurred, “we’ll just sit back here and get drunk. Stop by the Workingman’s Friend, I need some smokes.”

We drove to the gas station off of highway 92. I could see Fort Leavenworth lit up on the other side of the river. When I was much younger, I used to stand in the sliding glass door at my grandparent’s house and imagine that Santa Clause lived in that bubble of light across the river. It was a source of wonder and magic that sort of gets pushed further and further away as you get older. Until you’re left looking for it in yourself… with the help of something like beer.

It was an easier time to be delinquent back in those days. They’d sell a pack of cigarettes to a 15 year-old for 90 cents, no questions asked. I stumbled around the side of the building to use the bathroom and, much to the delight of my drunken teenage mind, there was a condom machine on the wall. I bought one, much for the same reason I bought cigarettes I didn’t inhale at the time.

When I finally managed to wobble back to the car, it had been decided we’d go to the cemetery to party. Everyone concluded there was no chance we’d be bothered there—it was well outside Pat George territory—and rumors had been circulating that a gathering was to take place that night.

I was getting a bit dizzy and spasmodic in the stomach. That cemetery had only one meaning for me, “Man, my grandmother’s buried there.”

There was a short silence, then Stu replied, “We’ll be up by the caretaker’s shack. Nobody will bother us.”

I tried to make sense of the non-sequiter as we headed for the cemetery. In the end, I could only shrug and open another can.

When we arrived at the cemetery, there was already a large bonfire burning with a cluster of kids standing around it. Billy and I were in a state of delirium at that point. All of the beer had gotten mixed together in the trunk and none of us had any clue how many we’d each drank. I have no doubt Billy and I had consumed the most. The others were at least able to stand up straight.

As we approached the fire, I began to vaguely recognize some of the faces. I didn’t know any of the people very well—I remembered maybe passing some of them in the hall at school. Except for one on the opposite side of the fire. Her name was Jackie. She had moved into town about two years ago. The first time I had ever seen her, I was waiting in the car while my mother and grandmother went into the local grocery store. A car pulled up next to us and the adults got out while someone remained in the back seat. I glanced at her through the window and gasped. She looked almost exactly like Brooke Shields, but with braces. She turned and glanced back at me and I looked away.

I’d seen her a few times since then at school. She was a grade above me, probably sixteen now. In any event, I had no doubt she was completely unaware of my existence and I swayed quietly in front of the fire. Everyone chatted and laughed and I tried to stay conscious with an unlit cigarette in my mouth.

I was roused from stupor when I felt a presence next to me. Jackie brushed my arm with her hand, “Are you going to light that thing?”

I remembered the cigarette and tried to muster a response. All that would come out was a goofy giggle. I was petrified into a state of shock.

“Can I have one?”

“Oh, sure.”

I gave her a cigarette and reached into my pocket for my Bic lighter. I was far too numb to make any sort of precise, coordinated movement and ended up scooping out everything in my pocket, including the unopened condom.

I picked through all of the crap in my hand, knowing I was looking for something but not being able to associate the intent in my head with the confusing shapes I was seeing. Coins fell to the ground along with wads of paper, some lint blew away in the night breeze. Jackie shook her head, smiling, and took the lighter from my hand. She lit my cigarette then her own and returned the lighter.

“What’s that?” She pointed at the condom package with her cigarette.

“Uh…”

I opened the small square package and unrolled the green contents. My fingers became slippery with lubricant. I held the condom up—I had managed to turn it inside-out—and looked at it with some degree of skepticism. I probably would have been embarrassed if my emotional machinery hadn’t been in such a degraded state at the time.

Dear God. The girl is probably wondering what manner of deranged personality she’s stumbled across.

“Jesus,” I laughed awkwardly, and threw it at the fire. Except it didn’t burn. The fire was dying and the condom had splatted against some unburned wood at the outer perimeter.

With the fire dying and the night air chilling, Jackie stood quietly next to me, huddled into herself. Neither of us spoke, because I had no idea what to say to her. I knew I couldn’t converse with her on the same level as I could with Billy. He and I were both completely anarchic. We understood one another. Our social interactions with the girls at school were limited to lewd suggestions, groping and leering. I had no doubt if I said anything to this tall, gorgeous, skinny girl she’d kick me between the legs and push my greasy ass into that sputtering bonfire where it belonged: The Bride of Pat George.

She shivered and I gave her my jacket and sat down. She smiled and thanked me and sat next to me. I blacked out immediately. It was the best response I could muster.

I have no idea how I got back home, but when I awoke, I was in my bedroom. It was Friday morning and I had missed the school bus hours ago. Mongoloid had gotten a free pass. The phone rang and I knew immediately Billy had stayed home too.

“Hey.”

“Warren, we’re in trouble!”

“What do you mean?”

“Rosie found your damn glow-in-the-dark condom at the cemetery. And your report card, you damned fool! What were you thinking!”

Rosie was a friend of Billy’s family. He worked at the cemetery, along with several other odd-jobs around town. He was sort of an outcast, as only a man with a girl’s name could be.

My head was filled with a toxic sludge of confusion, “What’s the big deal, it was all F’s anyway.”

“Your name was on it, you dumb-ass!”

“Fuck. That thing glowed in the dark?”

“Goddamn. We’d better lay low for a while. I’m not going to school.”

I hung up the phone and my mind explored every disastrous consequence. We’d left beer cans, cigarette butts, condoms… the fire… was that legal in a cemetary? Jesus, the FBI would probably be called in. It was over. Had I done something to Jackie? I was finished in this town.

Billy and I psyched ourselves out good. We had entered uncharted territory. Up until then, our debauchery had been limited to the bus or high school. It was Mongoloid’s problem, the school faculty’s problem. This latest escapade could involve the unsavory likes of the local police department. I imagined getting banished into the woods, to live a life on the edge of civilized society with nobody for company except a dangerous, meta-human pyromaniac.

We stayed holed-up for days. Both of us had it easy: when everybody in the house works while you’re supposed to be at school… well… you tend to develop a somewhat independent attitude.

Eventually, the Fear evaporated, but it was almost a case of momentum. One week turned into two and that turned into three months and…

Billy moved to Indiana that summer and I couldn’t bear the thought of returning alone to face the scorched battlefield of my academic world. I never signed any official forms or sent any letters or anything of the sort. I simply never went back to school. A stunt I would pull again later halfway through my second semester of college.