Lemonade

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-22T20:13:00

2007-11-22T19:14:16Z

Chapter 12: June

There’s a point in everybody’s life that we feel like we don’t have anything else to do, that we’re like paralyzed, that our life doesn’t have sense anymore and maybe we don’t want to continue because we don’t have enough strength for it. Luke reached that point, ad this was killing him, softly, inside and outside.

One year ago he was full of life. He had a lot of projects he wanted to do, things he wanted to achieve before growing up, things that made him feel alive and made him want to live, but now he suddenly felt like he had done everything he had always wanted to do in his life. Yes, he had been in jail – even if only for a night -, had been in a road trip alone and met interesting people on it, he had taken part in illegal races with a car he had fixed hismelf, had had sex with several woman – some of them really experienced and hot-, had stolen wine and money –a nd even a licence plate -, had laughed, had been in a fight… and had been in love. All those things made him feel that there wasn’t much more reasons why he still wanted to be alive, not much to fight for. And this killed him, and made him fade away.

He decided that he needed a new list of things he wanted to do, and he also decided that the first thing that would go to that list – or the first person, for the same matter, would be Stacey. He needed to talk to her and find out what happened, ask her sorry for second time – maybe for third time – in his life, and at least not living the rast of his days with that weird feeling inside of him, that made him feel like he had ruined somebody’s life forever, even if it was pretty selfish and vain of him to think something like that. But being sincere to him, and listening to his heart, this was exactly the way he felt, and was was really hurting him right now.

During several days, he did everything that was in his hands - and even more - to get Stacey’s phone number. He talked with some of her friends that went to school, with people around town who should know her, with those that could know where she was. It was hard, and a task Luke was not used to, but gathering all the information he managed to get her adress in New York, and with the address finally on his hands, getting the girl’s phone number had been easy.

What wasn’t that easy was to find a good moment to call her. Ued to be the one calling women and making the first step – maybe not alwayts, but most of the times – now with Stacey he always seemed to find an excuse to procrastinate it, and excuse to don’t talk to her and delay the feared moment, only because he was too scared of her possible reaction when she heard his voice.

It tok him a lot of time, a lot of nights thinking about it and thinking about the words he’d use, but one evening of June – after sleeping too few hours and drinking too much vodka – he decided it was the good moment for it. He was alone at home and had enough alcohol in his system to feel brave, but not enough to say something silly, so he just got comfortable on the old flowered couch by the phone cabinet, and dialed her number.

It was Stacey’s mom who answered it, and Luke was not ready for that. How it was possible that every time he had thought about possible ways that things would go, it never happened to his mind that it couldbe Sarah who answered it, and not Stacey herlself? Probably because, once again, Luke’s mind worked in a simple way, and henever assumed that things would be complicated, like his sister Caroline used to do. He still remembered that time that Carol was in love with that guy who worked in the grocery sotre, and she built up such a weird story inher head that the poor guy ended up being guy on the Questal’s family head because Caroline was sure about it without ever having any evidence for it.

If talking with Stacey was a complicated mission, talking with her mom after everything that happened was almost impossible. So, like a coward would have done, he put the phone down, and decided he’d call her at any other moment. It was childish, yes, and something Luke was not proud about, but what else could he do, if he didn’t dare to talk to Sarah anymore? He still remembered the firlst time he had seen her, the way she looked at him, and then all the pleasure that emmanated from their bodies in their sexual encounters. It was hard to believe that a relationship could go from fire to ice in such a record time. Ironically, it was more or less the same situation that happened with Stacey- it was obvious that she had Sarah’s genes inside of her.

…

Days went by and Luke continued without having enough courage to call Stacey. Everytime he managed to orget about Stacey, something happened that reminded Luke of her, and he felt the need to call her again, to try in again. Gerard insisted on the fact that he should forget about her, that she was ruining his whole life from the distance even without living in Pleasant Port anymore, and that Luke wasn’t the sort of guy who used to care about girl’s feelings in a way that ended up affecting his whole life. The worse of it was that Gerard was – once again - right.

But Luke’s mind worked in a rational way, and this was what Luke thought, what was going on inside his head: if he wasn’t the sort of guy who’d care for something like that, the fact that he cared and worried about it really meant something, right? It should mean that he really cared about her, that she was more for him than what he’d have wanted to admit at any point before – even if deeply inside of her he already knew that he felt that way, and Luke assume that more than once she had taken advantage of that situation. This was another reason why Luke avoided love, because loving somebody placed you in the position of the weak ones, into the position of the ones that would always fail and end with their heart hurt.

…

The second week of June he attempted to call her again, and once again, Stacey’s mom was the one who answered the phone. Luke remained quiet, even if this time was more ready for it like he had been the first time. He knew he had to say something, because in case he put the phone down again he’d never dare to dial that phone umber again, and he’d probably end up regretting it during the rest of his life. Finally, and because he didn’t dare to say anything, it was the voice on the other side, Sarah, who talked.

“I know it’s you, Luke”, she said, making a guess but being almost 100 per 100 sure that she was right. Who else could be? Only a few people had called them since they moved to New York.

Luke swallowed. “I’m sorry, I… yes, it’s me”. He felt silly, stupid, retarded, pathetic. In some way, and for some reason he couldn’t explain and for any normal association of ideas, his father came to his mind.

“So you found out about it?”, she asked, her voice sounding sort of broken. It might be just the line, New York wasn’t exactly at the other side of the street.

“If I found out about what?”, Luke didn’t have any idea of what she was talking about, a feeling that she was already beginning to get used to. He really wanted to tell her that he didn’t have a fuckingclue of what she was talking about, and was thn when he decided that it was better to go straight to what was really important and to the only reason why he really called tot hat phone number. “Is Stacey at home”.

There was a deep sigh on the other side pof the line, or maybe it was a deep breathe, and then it sounded like if the other woman was crying, but Luke couldn’t be sure about that. Why would Sarah cry? Luke would have understood that she had yelled – that seemed to be her style anyway – and even if she was immature enough to cry for something like that, it seemed so out of place that it felt almost unreal.

“Sarah?”, he asked, hesitant. “Are you okay?”. He hated to ask her that question after everything that happened between them. Was him who should have been asked if he ws fine, the one that Staceyshould ask sorry to, even Sarah. But he didn’t want to argue again, he was so tired of that that he only wanted to be done with it.

“I’m sorry Luke, I thought you knew, but…”, she trailed off, and began to cry again, this time stronger. Between sobs, she managed to say “Stacey … Stacey died”.

Luke’s blood frozen inside his veins and the word seemed to go dow all of a sudden. If his heart had been weak, he’d have had a heart attack at that very same moment. He had to squeeze his arm to check that he was not dreaming, and then even the morbid thought that maybe she was making it up just to scared him crossed his mind. But no, she couldn’t be making it up, which kind of mother would lie about something like that? And judging by the way Sarah cried, it was not a lie at all, and he even felt guilty because he had considered that possibility.

“I’m sorry Sarah, I… I don’t know what to say”. He wished he could cry, or sound shocked bcause that was the way he felt inside. But his voice sounded neutral, like numb, even if both things he had told her were true. He didn’t know what to say because he was bad when it came to talk about his feelings or show them up, and he was sorry, too, more than sorry he was upset and terribly devastated. And shoked. He loved her, he really did. She had been the only way that made him feel that way, the only girl he’d only manage to love even if they were too different. What would happen now? She died without giving him the opportunity of telling her how sorry he was, without letting him express her his feelings and ask sorry to the only person in the workd that had make him feel – and would ever make him feel – that way. The only girl he had loved,

He cried. He wanted to stop it, but he couldn’t. He didn’t even mind the reason why she died, whatever it was she didn’t want to know it, she he didn’t even care why Stacey left this world, why she left him. If she was ill, Luke didn’t have any idea, but that was really besides the point at the moment. He had lost her, and with her he had lost a very important part of himself, and the highlight of the last year.

And now, more than ever, he felt that he didn’t have anything else to do in this world, that every single one of the reasons why he had to be alive had suddenly vanished in one single second. How had that happened? He didn’t have any idea, but he was scared… and lost.

When he put the phone down he headed towards his bedroom, watching without seeing anything, glad that he was alone because at least he didn’t have to reply to any question, neither pretend he was fine when he was really feeling like shit. Nothing in this would would hurt him the way Stacey’s death did, and nothing would. It was impossible to suffer more than that, to be more hurt than that.

Sarah told him that Stacey had killed herself taking a bunch of anti-depressive pills and mixed them with alcohol. Nobody knew the reason why she had commited suicide, she didn’t leave a note or anything, but Luke was afraid he might have something to do with that. What if he could have avoided it? What if Sarah was goig though a bad phase and then finding out that Luke had slept with his mom only made everything more complicated to her? What if…? He needed to stop making it more complicated, because that was only leading him to the self-destruction.

This was how Luke learnt a very important lesson in life: take the most of every minute, and do everything when you still can do it, because tomorrow might not come and it will catch you offguard. It really sounded gushy, yes, even cheesy and maybe too platonic and dreamy, but it was true and real, and one of the best lessons life could give you, even if it was, like Mr. Woodstoves said once, learnt in a harsh way. This was the only way to learn a lesson, anyway.

…

In the next days several things went though Luke’s mind. He wanted to take his life off, to die. He wanted to leave this world and stop being a problem, he wanted to don’t be a problem anymore and stop torturing himself with stupid thoughts about Stacey. But he couldn’t. Why? Because despite everything he loved life too much, even if he was not always aware of it. He couldn’t live this world, he didn’t have guts for it. He didn’t want to give more problems to his family, to make them wonder what they did wrong even if Luke could give them a long list that would reply to that question.

And there was his best friend. He still had tons of things to do with Gerard. Yes, they had done a lot of things together, but there were even more things the still had to do together. And he liked his job at the auto repair shop, and there were tons of girls with huge boobs he wanted to fuck. And road he wanted to discover, and cities he wanted to see.

He headed towards the pier and thought about the past months, about everything that happened that changed his life in a way he’d have never imagined. Only one year ago he was a kid that didn’t have any idea of how to smoke a cigarette, now he had one between his lips while he thought about that.

He decided he wanted a bike. Cars were cool, but motorcycles were better. He wanted to feel the wind against his face, feel that he was flying. And that gave him strength to live, something to fight for. He worked hard during the whole month, and finally, he was able to buy it with a little bit of help of his parents.

His parents were another of his pending subjects. He knew they’d ever get along because they didn’t see the word with the same eyes he did, but at the same time he understood that he didn’t want to argue with them during the rest of his life, because at the end it didn’t worth it. So now, the strategy he followed most of the time, was avoiding them or agreeing with what they said. Sometimes he went to church on Sundays to make his mom happy, and this seemed to be enough for her to realize that his little Luke was growing up, or maybe the most appropriate word to use was to say that Luke was becoming a mature guy.

He wasn’t proud of himself, but he wasn’t exactly disappointed, either. He was living the life most of the people would want to live, and he had people around who cared for him even if he always insisted on the fact that he didn’t need them. And he worked, and smoked, and got drunk, and drove way too fast, and sometimes he even cried. But he didn’t regret any single one of the moments he lived. Because at the end, and with the years, he’d learn that the most important things were the ones you owned inside your heart, not inside the garage.

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-22T20:08:00

2007-11-22T19:11:23Z

Chapter 11: May

Luke had been on a road trip in some occasions before – one of them when he was only three year old and his uncle decided to take him with the van during the whole summer -, but this felt like the first real one, because it involved more than just a road trip. He was driving alone, without any destination in mind, and feeling like the thief that just robbed a bank and had to escape with the booty. This feeling, weird and amazing at the same time, was what made felt him alive, and why he knew he would never regret everything that he was doing right now. Like he read once in some book – or maybe in some wall – the best trip was always the one that didn’t go anywhere.

He drove under the May sun, warm and shinny. The road was mostly frequented by motorbikes or old vans, but only a few trucks took it because it was a secondary road, not a principal one. If he was going to get lost, if he really wanted to know the country and be in a real road trip, he wouldn’t take the principal road, it wouldn’t have any sense. Principal roads where for business and family trips, not for escapes.

The sun was falling down when the silhouette of a town showed up further on the road, not far away from the moutains that didn’t have snow on them anymore. Was when he arrived at the town that Luke realized he was getting really hungry. He had taken most of the money he had saved working at the car shop, so at least he knew that he’d be able to survive if he did control his expenses. Diners were usually a good option, they used to be cheap and you didn’t need to get out of the road you were following. Also, there were cool interesting people in them, and nobody in there cared about what did you want or why you were there. Or maybe that was the wrong idea Luke got out of the movies where the characters stopped in a diner by the road while being in a road trip. Of course, his life was far away from being a movie, actually he was pretty sure that nobody would be interested in his life enough to make a movie neither a novel out of it. It would be too sad, pathetic and boring.

He parked the car under one of the few trees in the parking lot – at least that would protect it fom the direct light of the sun - and put on his aviator sunglasses. He imagined that he’d look way cooler wearing sunglasses, maybe even mysterious. When he got into the diner, though, nobody turned to look at him, so maybe the sunglasses didn’t have the effect he thought they’d have, which disappointed him slightly, but not enough to make him upsed or sad.

He took off the sunglasses, and looked around. There were few people, and all of them seemed to be part of a movie decorate, like if the palce wasn’t real and all those people they were only to make a roal.

A couple of man were sharing a table and having a burger. They were quiet and didn’t talk much to each other. Only when one of them – a blonde man – said something about the newspaper he was reading, the other also focused on the newspaper, nodded, and said something brief before focusing on his burger again. Then there was a pretty black woman with a kid that might have five or six years old, not more. She wore a very tight short dress and Luke thought that she might be a prostitute, or some kind of stipper that was forced to do that kind of job because it was the only way to raise her son – she looked like it would be divorced, too. At the table that was more close to the door there was a man who looked like a truck driver – cap and lots of earrings included. and Luke assumed it was the driver of the big truck parked outside, and that was blocing all the view thought the large windows.

Luke took a seat in one of the stools at the counter. The woman behind it – forty something, died red hair, white and red uniform – asked him what he wanted, he ordered, and then had lunch pretty fast – a cheese burger and a Pepsi -. It was pretty boring. For some reason Luke had always assumed that stopping in a diner when you were in a road trip meant that something amazing or interesting would happen, but it didn’t seem to be that way. Nobody cared about him and continued their lives like if he wasn’t there.

In part, it was sort of funny that Luke was disappointed because of that. He had decided to escape from Pleasant Port be cause he wanted that people didn’t pay attention at him, he wanted to be just an anonymous person and be ignored by the rest of the world. Now that he was ignored, though, he felt empty and disappointed. ‘Maybe I’m going crazy’, he thought by himself.

He left the dinner because he had already assumed that nothing interesting would happen there and nobody would want to approach him to talk to him. It was fine, he could deal with that. He got into the car, put on the cassette, and returned to the road to continue with trip to the west of nowhere.

…

It was the third day of his road trip, that he got into a pretty deserted road. He didn’t have any idea of where he was, and even considered stopping to buy a map at some point, at least it would help to decide in which direction he wanted to go – maybe he’d even be able to go to San Francisco, even if he was not sure that the fixed Dodge Dart would resist the trip.

He spotted somebody standing at the edge of the road. Approaching towards him, Luke realized that it was a hitchhiker, so as an attempt to make his trip a little more interesting – and have some kind of human interaction – he stopped so the guy could get into the car. It didn’t even happen to his mind that maybe it was some sort of criminal or serial killer, in fact Luke wouldn’t worry about that too much. What he needed right now was getting some emotion to his boring trip, so at least he’d have something to talk about to his friends when he was back to Pleasant Port.

Talking with the hitchhiker Luke found out that he was from Philadelphia, that he had thirty seven years old and that he was attempting to visit all the US states without using his car or the public transportation. Like thought that the idea was pretty cool, but sounded a little like he wanted to travel for free. But who cared anyway? Everybody was cheeky in some aspect or another.

When they found a gas station, Luke stopped the car to fill up the gas tank, and Johnny – the hitchhiker, went inside the store to buy something to drink. Luke liked the gas stations, he loved the weird atmosphere of all kind of people mixed in there, all going to different places and having a different purpose and goal at the end of the day. The smell was also amazing, and even under the warm sunny it felt good to be there.

“Get into the car!”, Johnny yelled at Luke, “Come on, get into the car!”.

Luke hadn’t done filling the gas tank, yet, but judging by the other man’s rush he assumed it wasn’t a good idea to finish the task. So he just got into the car, and started it, heading off towards the road as fast as he could, his right foot pissing the gas pedal to the end.

“What have you done?”, he asked, turning to the other man, averting his eyes from the road only for a second. For an ephemeral moment he had a flashback of the illegal race in town, when he and Gerard had the accident and he almost killed his best friend. Luke, though, tried to remove those thoughts away from his mind, and asked again, almost yelling, “What have you done???”

“I robbed the money in the register’s cash”, Johnny said, showing Luke a bunch of bills that he quickly stuffed into the pocket of his jacket.

“Are you crazy?”, Luke asked, wondering why he always got in these kind of messes. Didn’t he want some action? Oh, god, here he had it. No he wished that his life was a lot more calmed, that at least action didn’t meant being chased as criminals. He looked thought the rear view mirror, and saw another car that was obviously following them. Thinking that it was the only possible solution, he went off course just after the last gradient, so the other car didn’t realize they got off the main road, and they managed to dodge them,

“Wow”, Johnny said, looking impressed, “that was amazing, man”.

Luke didn’t reply. He was glad that both of them were fine, that they didn’t catch them and that the car was in perfect condition. The last thing he’d have needed right now having the car broken in the middle of the nowhere.

“Why have you done such a thing?” Luke asked, raising an eyebrow at the other man. Obviously he wasn’t the only crazy one in there. He tried to imagine what his parents would say if he had gotten arrested for that, probably his mom would disown him… that in case she hadn’t done that, yet.

“Because we can always use the money”, he replied, giving luke a grin while leaning casually on the back of the seat. “Come on, it’s just money, they’ve got tons of it anyway. Now we can stop in big town, have dinner in the best restaurant of the city, and we’ll still have enough money to go and gamble in some casione we find on the way, and maybe make even more money with it”.

Luke was pleasantly surprised that the man involved him in his plans, after all he had helped him escaping from the gast station and had dodged the cars that followed them, so at least he deserved that. Also, he had to admit that the plan sounded pretty good, he was beginning to miss his mom’s cooking skills, and he could use somehting else besides burgers and cheap sandwiches.

And this is exactly what they did. After driving during three hours they stopped in one of the restaurants, one that Mrs Questal would have liked to have dinner in, and they asked for a table. The man behind the desk gave him a serious judging look, and Luke quickly realized that the man didn’t trust them. “what?”, he asked, looking at that man in front of them, “We’re not good enough for your restaurant, maybe?”

“Don’t get me wrong, sir”, the man begind the desk raised an eyebrow, “But this is an expensive plase, we don’t allow truck drivers. If you want a sandwich you can go to the diner at the other side of the road, there’s even a strip tease show eveyr night”.

Johnny was about to make an scene, but Luke stopped him. Instead he grabbed the money from Johnny’s pocket and showed it to the man, “Maybe this money is not good enough?”

Seeing the money, the man changed his face. It happened to his mind that maybe it was stolen, but he didn’t care, it was money and they certainly could use more customers, the business had been slow lately and more during the week. “Of course it, excuse me, sir, I’ll lead you to one of our best tables, and I’m going to send the cheff to recommend you…”, he stopped because Luke interrupted him.

“You know what? I think the diner on the other side of the road sounds good enough, I think it’s the strip-tease show that persuaded me, I haven’t see a good one since a while ago”. He didn’t have 18, bt he looked older and he was sure that getting inside wouldn’t be a problem. The only important thing right now was to piss of that bastard who thought they were not good enough for his preppy restaurant.

“But…”, the man complined, “I’m really sorry sir, I promise you that this is not going to happen anymore”, he trying it so hard that it even turned out to be pitiful. But Luke did’t know about pity, and less when it came to hypocrital persons like that one.

They left the restaurant feeling proud of themselves. Even Johnny, whod didn’t seem found of the idea of leaving that place that smelled like Heaven, had a big smile plastered on his face. He was a cool man who dressed jeans and cowboy boots, and during the day he even wore a brown cowboy hat. Luke thought that this was the way he imagined himself in several years, but he didn’t share that idea with Johnny because it did sound cheesy, and weird.

It didn’t surprise Luke that they didn’t ask him the ID at the club, because that was not a diner like the man in the restaurant pointed out, that was a road club, one of those dark places that you could see in any movie, with fights taking place by the pool tables, and drunkards watching at the girls on the stage while leaning their elbows on the counter.

This wasn’t Luke’s first strip tease club, but it felt like the first real one for some reason. He was sure that Gerard would love to be there, and that made him wonder about his friend. Would he be mad at him? He didn’t have any reason for being, did he? It was Luke’s life, he didn’t have to give explanations to everybody every time he wanted to do something, even if that other person was his best friend. He spotted a phone cab into the club, by the man’s bathroom, and decided he’d give Gerard a call.

“Woodstoves”, the voice on the other side said. It wasn’t Gerard, neither his father. Luke assumed it was Mike.

“Hey, Mike, this is Luke. Is Gerard at home?”

“Hey, Luke, man, what’s up? Where are you? There’s all kind os stories going around town about you, there’s some people that even says tha…”, the voice trailed off, bcause Gerard snatched the ohone from his brother’s hands.

“Are you crazy?”, Gerard’s voice sounded happy and nervous all at the same time. “where the hell are you? I’ve been worried, your family is worried, people says you killed yourself, and… hell man, somebody found that bycicle in the river, do you rememer that accident at the Pumpkin Fest? Anywya, don’t worry, they don’t know who did it or anything, I just wanted to let you know about the bycicle. Where have you been? Are you okay? And what the hell is this music?”

Luke tried to process all that information, but it was pretty hard to do mainly because his mind was simple and he couldn’t think that many things at the time. He attempted a brief yet clear reply, “I’ve gone to a road trip, I’m safe, I’m in a strip club at the moment and I’m planning on boinb back in a few weeks”.

There was a silence at the other side of the phone line, the sort of silences that used to happen between them and that some people would define as uncomfortable, but for them it was mostly a genuice moment that only two persons like them could share.

“So, you’re in a strip club, uh?”, Gerard laughed, that seemed to be the only thing he caught of the whole conversation, “And you really needed to escaper from Pleasant Port to see boobs?”. He was mostly joking. Gerard admired Luke’s guts, the way his friend was turning into a rebel, into the guy that dared to do anything that went though his mind no matter what the others would think about it. Only last year, Luke would have done anything that Gerard asked him to do, now… now Gerard wouldn’t be able to follow his pace at all.

When Luke put the phone down, he felt accomplished and sort of relieved that his friend didn’t seem to be mad at him. For a while he had been scared that maybe Gerard would hate him for going out like that, but now he realized that he was really his friend, no matter what happened Gerard would always understand his point of view – even after almost killing him in a car crash.

…

After a couple of weeks of traveling together, Luke and Johnny had became good friends. They had spend spent a couple of nights hid in a hotel because the police was looking for them after the gas station reported them and gave them the Dodge Dart licence number. But they had stolen another car’s licence, but if they were lucky that would give them some time, and maybe get rid of the police. Luke was pretty sure that at some point everything he had done and tried to hide (like the accident with the bycicle in Pleasant Port, or now this) would chase him for the rest of his life, but there wasn’t much he could do to change that. Some people were born to lead, other to hunt, he was the chased one, and fugitive, the one that would always have to run from somebody or something.

The day came when Johnny decided he had to continue his trip alone. It wasn’t because of Luke, he enjoyed his companyt, but like Luke he was scared of making friends and he didn’t want to get too attached to somebody. Luke stopped the car in a small town, where Johnny decided he wanted to spend several days alone, thinking. He even mentioned the possibility of getting a job and ry to start again.

Luke gave him a soft friendhu hug and a pat on his shoulder. He wasn’t going to cry because it was well known that he wasn’t the sort of person to show up his feelings, but inside he felt sad, upset, and like if he was losing a very important part of him. He didn’t take any address, and didn’t give Johnny hos address neither his phone number, they simply decided that it case life wanted to make them meet again at some point, it woul dhappen.

Luke wasn’t very found of fate. He didn’t believe that things happened for a reason, he simply believed that people made their own luck and what happened to you was what you deserved to happen. This was why he never complained when he ended up in complicated situations – like the time he ended up spending the night in jail for stealing the wine -, because that’s the fate he had built himself. It was a harsh way to live, maybe, but it was realistic and it had sense in Luke’s ration way of understanding the world that surrounded him.

He was getting old, and for a second, he was aware of it. He was able to survive in a word that wasn’t made for weak people, able to make their own decisions and to assume the consecuences of every single one of his acts. Still, his family didn’t seem to be proud of him.

But something happened in those three weeks that changed his whole life. He had found himself. He didn’t really know how to explain that, but deep inside of him he knew that everything that happened during that trip made him stronger. And he made an important decision, he didn’t want to come back home in his car. Yes, that car had a lot of memories attached to it, but some of them were painful and he didn’t want to deal with that during the rest of his life, and less when the police might find him at some point and get him directly into jail for robbing a gas station.

So he burnt the car. In the same way several months ago Gerard and him had burnt Mike’s motorbike, now he decided to burn his loved car. While the flames covered and destructed the metal, a tear went down Luke’s check, and he cleaned it with his right hand. Crying had never been that easy.

…

The day he came back home, his mom hugged him tightly and cried. She was mad, but she was more happy at the moment than mad, so she decided to forget about the bad words, and just hug her son – she’d have time to lecture him later, to tell him that he couldn’t do whatever he felt like doing all the time.

Caroline was also crying. She assumed that people was right, that Luke had killed himself and that some day the police would call them saying that they found the body. But now Luke was standing in front of her, with his usual nonchalant look in his face and smelling really, really bad. She loved him, even if she didn’t understand him at all.

He didn’t want to tell them what happened to his car, he only explained that he came back with the train and that the car was so broken right now that it would be impossible to use anymore, so he just got rid of it. His dad wasn’t at home, so at least he still had some time before going though more of those questions that he was so used to deal with.

His mom explained him that he was out of the school for this year, but that next year they’d accept him again, which meant that he’d have to take the same subjects and tests for second time. Also, Mrs. Questal assumed that her son needed theraphy, so evey week Luke would have an appointment with the a phsychologist to ‘try to find the real problem’ – quoting Mrs Questal.

The phsycologist turned to be a nice forty year old woman. She looked and talked like the aunt every kid would want to have, the one that always brought you sweats, and who always got you the best Christmas presents. Her voice was warm yet confident, and let Luke express himself using words like ‘shit’ or ‘crap’ or ‘bastard’, or ‘asshole’, which made her even cooler.

Luke told her about the problems with his family. She asked all kind of questions, but never put pressure on him to reply them. If he felt ready for it, he replied, if he didn’t know the answer, or just didn’t think it was her business, he shrugged. He also told her that he didn’t think he had any problem, even if he understood that her attitude could be a problem for those around him.

She – The doctor Martin – determined that Luke was a very maure guy who didn’t really have any problem, he was just somebody with a strong personality who wanted to have control over his life and didn’t want to be told what to do or how to act. He even gave a name to that, but Luke didn’t recall it, he wasn’t really interested in the scientific part of his story. He didn’t want to find any explanation about why he was the way he was, in the same way he didn’t want to be treated like some kindof crazy person who needed a shrink to don’t ruin the life of those around him.

And, like everything in Luke’s life, the sessions with the shrink didn’t last more than a couple of weeks. Dr. Martin quickly determined that they wouldn’t get anythng out of that, and Luke agreed because it was a waste of time to go there three times per week, only to talk to that woman about something that Luke didn’t even understood himself.

Only because he was different than the rest of the members of his family, didn’t mean that he was worse than them.

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-22T14:51:00

2007-11-22T13:55:01Z

(...)

Luke used to go to the hospital every day, after school and before work, or something he slipped in there when he was done at work, even if Mr. Woodstoves had told Luke that he didn’t have to go to work if he didn’t want to, in case he preferred to visit Gerard. But Luke wouldn’t do something like that, of course, Gerard was his friend, but he was Mr. Woodstoves son, and the man needed help at the repair shop if he wanted to spend some time at the hospital.

Luke felt terribly guilty about the accident. Yes, Gerard got into the car because of his own will and Luke never forced him to go with him, but still Luke was the one driving and couldn’t help but feeling like a terrible pilot and a worse friend. He was not sure where he had made the mistake, bit if he could go back and change that, he certainly would. Like other mistakes he had made in his whole life. This time, though, it felt worse. What if Gerard had died? What if he were stuck in a wheelchair during the rest of his life? Luke would never forgive that to himself.

He also appreciated the fact that neither Gerard nor his family hated him for that. Mr. Woodstoves lectured both guys about the illegal races, but that was all. In her own words ‘they had learnt the lesson in the harsh way possible’, something that Luke agreed with. On the other side, the Questals hadn’t been so understanding. Mr. Questal barely talked to him, and Helen decided that she’d send him to a boarding school for boys in Boston, but fortunately for Luke they didn’t allow ‘guys like him’ in there.

It was Gerard’s birthday, and Luke decided that he’d go at the hospital late in the evening, after work and dinner, to bring him a cake and something to drink that didn’t involve just water. The visits time had finished a lot of hours ago, but Luke would figure out a way to get inside.

He found one of the back doors open, and without hesitating he got into the building. Everything was quiet and had that weird smell that only hospitals had, like a mix of medicines and death, it was hard to describe. He walked several steps, when one of the doors opened, and before Luke could hide, a nurse – young, blonde and pretty – got outside and spotted him.

“Where do you think you’re going?”, she asked, raising a questioning brow at Luke.

The guy tried to find a convincing excuse, but he had the cake on his right hand, and a bottle of vodka on his left hand, which meant that he was way too busy trying to keep the balance to think about a convincing excuse that would allow him inside. So, instead, he decided to tell her the truth.

I’m here to visit a friend”, he said, his eyes running up and down her body. God, uniforms really turned him on.

“Visits time is over”, she said, noticing that he was checking him out, which made her feel a little uncomfortable. She was not used to men looking at her like that, mostly because she worked a lot, almost always during the evening/night shifts, and she didn’t hang out very often to places that would allow her to have any kind of contact with the male nature.

Luke noticed the blush on her face, and wanted to chuckle. Instead, though, he focused on replying to her question. “I Know, but I’ve been working hard after school, we don’t have money at home so…”, he trailed off, 2I’m helping in what I can”. He lied. Okay, not really, he just disguised the reality a little so she’d feel pitiful for him. And judging by the pout on her lips and mouth, it worked pretty well.

“What about the cake and the alcohol?”, she asked, pointing curious towards Luke’s hands.

“It’s his birthday, this is why I should visit him today. You wouldn’t want to skip your best friend’s birthday, would you?”, he smiled genuinely at her, once again his eyes longing up and down that amazing body of hers.

“Well…”, she trailed off, “You’re such a sweetie, aren’t you?”

Sweetie. Luke wanted to laugh. This was probably the funniest thing somebody called him since a lot of time ago, but of course he didn’t say that to her and he didn’t laugh, either. For some reason he liked to give her that impression, after all he wouldn’t have to see her anymore so it wasn’t that it would hurt his reputation or anything. Not that he had a reputation to care about, but if he didn’t want to build one up that was the sweet guy reputation, he’d hate that more than he’d hate eating vegetables every day for dinner during a whole month.

“I do what I can”. It sounded fake and he was aware of it, but she didn’t seem to mind it.

“Okay, you can go and visit your friend”, she said, now was her who looked him up and down. For sure, what was going on inside her mind was pretty similar to what was going on inside Luke’s mind, but neither of them did the first step. She was way too shy of why for that – or maybe not shy, but she wasn’t used to it -, and he knew he didn’t want to complicate his life. If it had been only one day that he had had to visit Gerard it would have been different, but he’d go to the hospital maybe for another two weeks, every day, and he didn’t want to get into that vicious circle again.

He smiled at her and gave her a last look, before heading towards the elevator. He pushed the button of the sixth floor, and leaned on the wall, still trying to keep the balance. God, both of his arms felt pretty tired after the conversation with the nurse than lasted almost five minutes, but soon he’d get rid of the cake and the bottle so it was just a few more seconds.

Once he reached the sixth floor, he made his way towards the bedroom, glad that he didn’t meet face to face with any nurse. It was a good thing that Gerard didn’t share the bedroom with anybody else, because at least they’d be able to have their own party, without bothering anybody else.

He got into the bedroom without knocking the door. Every time he did so, he imagined he’d find Gerard with some hot girl on the bed, having sex despite the situation. But he never did. Only sometimes they were some girls from school visiting him, but they were *around* the bed, and not *in* the bed with him, which was pretty different.

“Hey!”, Luke chuckled, “Happy birthday man!”. He was alone. During the first days Gerard’s family used to spend the nights there, but now that he was already feeling better there was no need for that, and somehow Gerard preferred to be alone because he said he slept better – the truth, though, was that in was the only way to get a smoke from time to time -.

“Hey”, Luke chuckled back at Luke, and grinned when spotted the cake, a grin that turned even wider when spotting the vodka. “I thought you forgot about it?”

“Forget about my best friend’s birthday? I’m an asshole, but I’m not *that* asshole.

Luke cut off a piece of the cake and gave it to Gerard. He forgot about the candles, but who cared anyway? They both knew that his friend would be 17 now, and this was all that cared. Who wanted to make a wish while putting out the candles, anyway? Everybody knew that those wishes did never came true.

“There’s something I should tell you”, Gerard said, after taking the first bit of the chocolate cake.

“You love me?”, Luke laughed, “I’m sorry man, but I’m not into guys”

Gerard laughed and shook his head, “No, it’s not this”, he laughed again, but his face quickly turned serious, giving Luke a hint that what Gerard would share with him wouldn’t be exactly pleasant.

“Are you okay?”, Luke asked. The first thing that went though his mind – optimistic as he was – was that maybe the doctors found him something serious, that maybe he would have to stay in the hospital for longer than what they expected, or maybe there was something really wrong in his body and he’d… No, he didn’t want to think about that.

“Yes, yes, I’m okay, it’s not about me”, Gerard said, noticing the worried look on his friend’s face. It was nice to have somebody who cared that much for him, somebody he’d be able to call a friend no matter what happened.

“It’s not about you?”, Luke asked, arching a brow at Gerard. “It’s about me, then?

Gerard nodded, and Luke wondered what it could be. Something that Gerard knew about but he didn’t have any idea? Luke was totally lost in the conversation, and curious he turned to look at his friend, hoping that he’d clear this up for him. “I’m going to need the vodka?”, he asked, half serious, half jokingly.

Gerard smiled, “Maybe you should grab the bottle, just in case”.

Luke took a long sip straight from the bottle, and then turned to look at Gerard, waiting for him to say something. There was a long weird silence, the kind of silence that rarely happened between them, but that showed that what was coming now wouldn’t be pleasant. Gerard was not the kind of guy to delay something he needed to say, so Luke really wondered what was about what he wanted to tell him.

“Stacey visited me this afternoon”, Gerard said, averting his eyes from Luke and turning the TV. It was turned on, but none of them were watching it.

“Yes, I know, she told me she’d come”, Luke asked, and then paused, wondering if what Gerard wanted to tell him had to do with the fact that maybe something happened between Stacey and him. Still, he didn’t say anything, he didn’t want to interrupt Gerard.

“She came to say goodbye”

“Goodbye?”, Luke frowned, “Why she’d say goodbye? Is she going somewhere?”

“She’s going to New York”, Gerard say, wishing he could find the comforting words Luke would want to hear, but he wasn’t good at that, so he just said it the way that the words themselves popped into their mouth and get out of his mouth.

“For how long?”, Luke asked, “I mean, now? In the middle of the school year? She’s taking a break? Some family of her died?”

Gerard shock his head in negative. “No… no, it’s not that. She’s moving Luke”, he swallowed, and then averted his eyes from the wall and his eyes met Luke’s. “Her grandparents are living there, and some uncles, so she and her mom decided to move there, they said something within the lines of forgetting Pleasant Port and it’s people”.

Luke didn’t know what to say. It felt like a knife digging right into his heart, hurting every single one of his senses, overwhelming his feelings. Why she never told him about it? Why now?. “When is she going?”, he asked, when he was finally able to say something.

“She already moved Luke”, Gerard breathed deeply while Luke took another gulp of vodka, “They stopped here just before heading towards the train station, the tain left at seven”.

“Why she didn’t tell me?”, Luke asked, his voice sounding confused. Usually it was hard for him to show his feelings, people never knew when he was sad or upset, but not the feeling was impossible to hide. They got along, they were friends, things were fine – or more than fine - between them, why she told Gerard, but not him?

Luke only found one possible explanation for that. Maybe, somehow, Stacey had found out about what happened between her mom and Luke. He couldn’t see any reason why Sarah would have told that to her daughter, but judging by how pissed off and upset she was the day Luke told her that it was over, it wouldn’t surprise him that she had told some weird version to Stacey, maybe even making up some of the parts only to make Luke seem like the evil one of the story.

“She seemed upset”, Gerard say, “ore than upset, she looked really mad at you. Her mom didn’t even want to get into the room, she said she didn’t want to have anything to do with any of Luke’s friends”.

Luke swallowed. Sarah had always showed up as younger than she really was, but the way she was behaving right now was way too immature and childish, and so was Stacey. Whatever it was that happened, whatever was going on inside her mind, Luke considered they were friends and he deserved an explanation. An explanation that now was sure he wouldn’t have anymore.

“And she didn’t say anything else?”, Luke asked, sitting on the armchair by the bed while taking another sip straight out from the vodka bottle.

“No. I asked her if she wanted me to tell you something, but she said no. Then said she didn’t have anything against me, but that she preferred that we didn’t stay in touch anymore”, Gerard shrugged, feeling some pain in both of his shoulder – mainly the right one – when he did so, and then added, “Do you have any idea of what happened? I mean, you have to know what this is about, you said you talked to her today at school, did she look normal? She behaved like always?”

Luke was bad catching reactions on other people’s voice and face, but she hadn’t noticed anything weird on Stacey. “Maybe she was being a little more distant lately, but I assumed it was because of all the exams and stress that go with the Spring break. You know, she’s in charge of the dance, and she always said that this was killing her”.

Gerard nodded. He knew that it didn’t have anything to do with the school, because that wouldn’t be enough to leave the town and disappear without even wanting to say goodbye. Still, he didn’t put pressure on his friend, if Luke wanted to talk about it, he’d talk – that if there was something to talk about.

…

The day came when Gerard got out of the hospital. He was wearing a plaster on his right arm, but that was all. He had gone thought a couple of operations after the first one the day he was taken to ER by the ambulances, but now he felt pretty well despite everything. Gerard was a strong guy.

There was a party at the Woodstoves, and a lot of people were invited, mainly customers of the repair shop, neighbours and friends of the family. Even Mr and Mrs Questal decided to go, mostly because they felt bad that Gerard ended up at the hospital because of his son’s fault.

On the other side, though, Mrs Questal kept repeating that Luke acted the way he acted because Gerard was a bad influence for him. She didn’t seem to realize that Gerard was not as ‘wild’ as her son was, Gerard was also a rebel, but a different kind of rebel. Gerard did what was supposed to be cool, but he never got himself in trouble, or at least he didn’t get as much as trouble as Luke did. Gerard would have never slept with his cousin, neither with his best friend’s mom.

Some people at the party looked weird at Luke. He noticed that, but he didn’t really care. What else could he do? He wasn’t going to return them the bad looks, that would be like admitting that they were right. He had learnt that ignoring somebody was the best way to make them feel like shit, and this is what he went for. That was until Mrs. Sanders, the owner of the Ocean View Bar, approached him. She was one of those women who always poked her nose into other people’s business, one of those women who had made of gossiping her full-time activity. This is why she enjoyed so much to work at the bar, because it let her the possibility of getting into other people’s lives and control everything that happened in Pleasant Port.

“It’s pretty sad that you couldn’t have the daughter and you had to do the mom”. This is exactly what she said, without changing a single word.

Luke looked puzzled at her. “Excuse me?”, he asked, because fortunately he swallowed the first cussing words he had at the edge of his mouth, waiting to get out at any point soon if the woman didn’t shut up or vanish.

“The whole town knows about it, so don’t pretend you don’t have any idea of what I’m talking about”.

No, Luke didn’t have any idea of what she was talking about, but he assumed it, or had the impression that he knew what was that about. It was pretty said if he came to think about it, he had decided to end up with that story with Sarah only because he didn’t consider it was the correct thing to do, and then, at that point, things began to go wrong, and the only reason he could come up with was that Sarah told people about it, if not he didn’t know how it was possible that the town had found out.

Whatever it was that happened, though, it was pretty weird and something that get out of the limits of Luke’s rational mind. Why doing the correct things to don’t hurt others always ended up having bad consequences? And what was worse, why when you didn’t want to hurt somebody’s feelings, you always ended up hurting them in the process, no matter how hand you tried to avoid it? Maybe this was exactly the reason why doing always the correct thing didn’t worth it, because you’d be hated no matter if you acted in the correct way or not, and if you had to end up hurt, it was better than you did what you felt like doing without caring about anything.

This only confirmed his theory that not giving a shit was the best philosophy when it came to life. Like somebody said once, don’t take life too seriously, you won’t get out of it alive, anyway.

He gave the woman a killed look and headed off towards the other direction, only to find out that more people looked weird at him. He didn’t know what to do or how to act, at that moment he’d love to take his car and disappear, but he couldn’t, he had school, and…

Wait, since when he cared about school? He should just disappear, go somewhere were people wouldn’t judge him only because he couldn’t change the sort of person he was. Escape, not telling anybody where he was going, and just enjoy live for once, forgetting about anything else. Still, he knew that in case he disappeared without telling anybody, his family would report to the police that he was missing, and they’d find him at some point. This is why it sucked not being 18, and why he couldn’t disappear because then the return would be even worse than the Hell it was already being right now.

So he left the party, headed towards his place and left a note, hanging on the fridge with a magnet Caroline brought from New York when she was there last year. How ironic. In he note, it said:

“I’m tired of everything. I’m taking a break. I’ll be back in a month”

Nothing more, nothing less. He knew that this wouldn’t be enough for his mom, but he also knew that his father would persuade her to don’t go after him. The guy was already a free bird, and he had been like that since the very first moment he was born. Sometimes the best way to find yourself, was getting lost.

Chapter 11: May

Luke had been in a road trip in some occasions before, but this felt like the first real one. He was driving alone, without any destination in mind, and feeling like the thief that just robbed a bank and had to escape with the booty. This feeling, weird and amazing at the same time, was what made felt him alive, and why he knew he would never regret everything that he was doing right now.

He drove under the May sun, warm and shinny. The road was mostly frequented by motorbikes or vans, but only a few trucks took it because it was a secondary road, not a principal one. If he was going to get lost, if he really wanted to know the country and be in a real road trip, he wouldn’t take the principal road, it wouldn’t have any sense.

He was arriving to a small town and realized he was getting hungry. He had taken most of the money he had saved working at the car shop, so at least he knew that he’d be able to survive if he did control his expenses. Diners were usually a good option, they used to be cheap and you didn’t need to get out of the road you were following. Also, there were cool interesting people, and nobody in there cared about what did you want or why you were there. Or maybe that’s he idea Luke got out of the movies where the characters stopped in one while being in a road trip. Of course, his life was far away from being a movie, actually he was pretty sure that nobody would be interested in his life enough to make a movie neither a novel out of it. It would be too sad, pathetic and boring.

He parked the car under one of the few trees in the parking lot, and put on his sunglasses. He imagined that he’d look way cooler wearing sunglasses, maybe even more mysterious. When he got into the diner, though, nobody turned to look at him, so maybe the sunglasses didn’t have the effect he thought they’d have.

He take them off, and looked around. There were few people. A couple of man were sharing a table and having a burger, then there was a pretty black woman with a kid that might have five or six years old, not more. At the table that was more close to the door there was a man who looked like a truck driver, and Luke assumed it was the driver of the big truck parked outside.

He took a seat in one of the stools at the counter. The woman behind it – forty something, died red hair, white and red uniform – asked him what he wanted, he ordered, and then had lunch pretty fast – a cheese burger and a Pepsi -. It was pretty boring. For some reason Luke had always assumed that stopping in a diner when you were in a road trip meant that something amazing or interesting would happen, but it didn’t seem to be that way. Nobody cared about him and continued their lives like if he wasn’t there.

…

“Get into the car!”, Johnny yelled at Luke, “Come on, get into the car!”.

“I robbed the money in the register’s cash”, Johnny said, showing Luke a bunch of bills that he quickly stuffed into the pocket of his jacket.

“Wow”, Johnny said, looking impressed, “that was amazing, man”.

(...)

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-22T10:41:00

2007-11-22T09:44:43Z

(...)

Sarah disappeared into the kitchen, and few seconds later she showed up again carrying two bottles of beer. She offered one to Luke, and then sat on the couch, motioning at Luke with her head to do the same.

He sat down, noticing the towel going up while she crossed her legs. She had a way to do it that drove Luke crazy, and he was pretty sure that she already knew that. She seemed to be one of those women who knew perfectly how to treat a man, and it was obvious that she had a lot more experience than Luke, not only for the age, also for how comfortable she seemed to feel in that situation.

“I’m going to be sincere”, she said, after taking the first sip of her beer, “The car is already fixed”.

Luke raised an eyebrow, “So you didn’t trust my mechanic skills?”, he asked, his voice neutral.

Stacey smiled and shook his head. “It’s not that Luke. The car was never broken”

“So… the weird noise you said…” Luke trailed off.

Sarah shock her head in negative. “No, it never made a weird noise”.

Luke’s mind worked now at full speed. In part, he wondered if the only reason why she had lied to him about that was because she wanted to be alone with him. On the other side, though, it seemed weird that a woman like her would be interested in spending time with him, and more when he was her daughter’s ex boyfriend and friend. He remained quiet, waiting expectant about what she’d say or do.

“You still don’t have any idea of what I want, Luke?”, she leaned her hand on his leg, just above his knee, and rubbed it softly.

Now Luke was sure about what did Sarah want, what he was not sure about was what he’d do. In part, he wanted to do her in there, on that couch, not caring about who they were or what might happen. After all, his friendship with Stacey didn’t have anything to do with the relationship he might have with her mom,… or it did? It was just a little weird, and he was pretty sure that Stacey would be mad about that, but on the other side he also knew that Stacey didn’t have to know about it. That wouldn’t be lying, it would be only top hide the truth only because he didn’t want to hurt her… neither disappointing her again. He couldn’t stop acting like that, having sex with people that would be considered ‘banned’, only because those were the kind of situations he felt attracted for. A lot of people would define him as an evil person, but he didn’t consider himself evil, he just did what a lot of people wanted to do but didn’t dare to. At least he wasn’t hypocrite to himself.

She leaned forward towards him and kissed his lips deeply. Luke closed his eyes and kissed her back, his hands making it’s way underneath the towel and towards the most hidden part of her. She moaned, which Luke interpreted as a sign that he could go further and leaded his index finger inside of her. She moaned again, louder, and kissed his lips deeply while she got her body over him on the couch in a way that she was on top. During the next minutes they didn’t care about anything else besides giving pleasure to each other’s body. Luke had needed that more than what he had been aware of , and it was now, having sex with a ‘real woman’, that he realized about everything he had been missing.

When they were done, he got dressed quickly, maybe afraid that Stacey would show up. He had a feeling that he’d regret this during the rest of his life, but he prThe eferred not to think about the future right now. He had had fun, and this was all he cared about.

…

The town celebrated the beginning of the Spring, with the annual Spring Festivities. Every street was decorated with flower garlands, and the air had a special perfumed fragrance that it reminded of the flowered fields you found by the hill. Even the ocean seemed to wake up from the winter’s sleep, and it showed up on it’s splendour with an amazing and deep shade of blue.

The last Friday of March it was always the first day of the Spring Festivities, that always lasted during the whole weekend. They had off school and people didn’t have to go to work because most of the stores were closed.

Lume met at the park with Gerard and Stacey. The three of them had become close friends, and now most of the time they used to hang out as a crew. Even Gerard, who used to dislike Stacey, got along pretty well with her, in part because he had a crush on one of Stacey’s friends, Samantha.

It was weird the waythings could change in a few months. Luke would have never imagined himself being friends with a girl, neither hanging out with somebody else besides Gerard. He was enjoying every single minute he spent with them – event he minutes when Gerard flirted wih Stacey, after all she wasn’t his girlfriend and he was not a jealous guy – but somewhat he had the feeling that this wouldn’t last longer. It was something he didn’t know how to explain but he didn’t seem himself like the sort of guy to have a crew of friends to hang out with. Because, for Luke, three was already a crowd.

“I think my mom is seeing soembody”, Stacey mentioned, out of the blue.

Luke stopped walking and turned to watch at her. He had been seeing Sarah in several occasions during the past days, always being extremely careful and only the first time it had been at her place. Sometimes oth of them drove in separate cars towards the nearest town, and they met in a hotel in there, where nobody would see him. They even got into the hotel in different hours, in case somebody from Pleasant Port happened to be around.

“How do you know it?”, he asked, trying to sound neural even if inside he only wanted to disappear.

“Because she’s acting weird, she’s out of home at hours that she used to be there, and the other day somebody saw her into a hotel”. She paused, before adding, “Not here, not in Pleasant Port, but what would hse do in a hotel, if she’s not there to meet with somebody”.

Both Luke and Gerard nodded. In these years Luke had learnt that Stacey’s parents got divorced, and her dad was now living in Boston with a woman who worked as a dentist. He also knew that they got divorced because both of them liked to sleep with other people, and because she was, in Stacey’s words, ‘a complicated woman’.

Luke had never told anybody about him and Stacey’s mom. Neither to Gerard. He wasn’t stupid, and mostly he knew that the best way to keep a secret was not telling it to anybody, after all if you wanted somebody else too keep your privacy and not tell anybody, the first thing you had to do was follow your own example and not telling anybody about it. And now, he was glad that he had never shared, because he’d have felt a little uncomfortable in that situation, with Stacey’s mentioning that her mom might have an affair, if Gerard had known about it.

Both guys listened at Stacey when she talked about her mom’s supposed affair, but since she didn’t seem to be too worried about the idea, they didn’t try to get it out of her mind, they just listened.

Still, Luke felt guilty, and decided he’d stop that. He didn’t mind of how fun he was having, or how much he was enjoying it, his friendship with Stace was way more important right now. This was the first time he thought about it that way, the first time he put the third person in front of himself and decided o take a mature decision, even if that meant to end up with his fun.

The next day, when he knew for sure that Stacey wasn’t at home because he was in the Spring football game with the other cheerleaders, he called Sarah and told her that he wanted to meet her, but this time out of the hotel. They met in a café in another town –not even in the same time they always used to go – and he told her about his intentions, that he didn’t want to continue with that, that Stacey was too important.

She didn’t seem to take that too well. Looking upset, she rose from the chair and left him in the café, alone, wondering about ow was he supposed to deal with that, and which sort of mom wouldn’t understand that somebody cared for their daughter. On the other side, though, he felt accomplished and proud of himself. This would be hard and he’s miss her a lot, but at least he wouldn’t hurt Stacey in the process.

Chapter 10: April

The highlight of that April was not Easter, but the illegal car races that took place at the old road by the hill, the one that nobody used anymore, because they closed it due to how dangerous it turned to be, not only because of the ice in winter, also because of the cliffs at each side of the road.

Somehow, somebody spread the voice about some car race taking place in there. Nothing official, of course, and nothing that the authorities should know. Luke and Gerard, of course, were there, with Luke’s car, ready to take part on it. They didn’t mind if it was dangerous or not, they both wanted to live life at it’s fullest, and this was the only way to do it. Being scared would make your life safer, of course, but not better.

There were a lot of people who were there to watch, but only a few seemed to be ready to take part on the race, which most of the people had already called as ‘Race against Death”. This was the deal: Two cars competed, and won the first that reached the finish line. Some of the people watching they were making bets, but Luke was not interested in the money, he was only interested in proving that he was the best pilot in the whole city. It wasn’t about how fast your car were, but about having guts to actually drive by the edge of the cliff.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”, Gerard asked, when the car that had to compite with them approached. It was a fancy Chevrolet, bright red. It might be faster than Luke’s Dodge Dart, even if Luke wasn’t 100 per cent sure about that because he had worked hard on the possibilities of his car’s engine.

Luke nodded, “Of course I’m sure”

“What if your car ends up bumped against a tree?”

Luke shrugged, “And what if we win?”

Gerard nodded. Knowing that Luke was ready. It was a nice spring day, so at least the weather didn’t go against them – it would have been a lot worse to be on the race if it had been raining, then the road would be even more dangerous than what it already was right now.

Most of the people watching at the edges of the road made laugh at them wondering about how did they dare to compete with that car. Neither Luke nor Gerard listened at them, what people said never affected any of the decisions they made. Instead, Luke turned on the cassette player, and with his favourite music sounding aloud inside the car, he didn’t hear what they said anymore, and what was more important – he got into the mood.

A tall guy with huge shoulders gave them the start sign. Luke started the car, the tyres made a loud chilly noise while they rubbed against the road. The Chevrolet was going first, not far away from them, but wining more and more seconds at the time. Luke frowned. He knew that he had to wait for the right moment, at some point their adversaries would make a mistake and it would be their chance to steal them the first position.

And the moment arrived. The Chevrolet in front of them get out of the road in a place that fortunately didn’t have a cliff on the edge. Was then when Luke pushed the gas pedal hard and over passed their rivals, making both guys giggle. They were so focused on the fact that they were going in the first position, that didn’t realize they bumped the car into a tree at the edge of the road.

This was the last thing that Luke remembered, because then everything happened fast. He did remember people talking around them, but their voices were blurred. He also did remember the siren of an ambulance, but he was not sure if that was real, or if he had dreamt it. And then, everything turned black.

…

It had been in a week since Luke got out of the hospital. He only stayed there for a couple of days, he had his left arm broken and a fracture on his left arm, but nothing too serious. Gerard, though, hadn’t been as lucky as him, he got some kind of fracture in his spine and needed a surgery. Fortunately everything went all right, but during the first days the doctors doubted that he’d walk again.

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-21T00:48:00

2007-11-20T23:50:09Z

(...)

“Sure, of course, thanks Mrs…”, he trailed off, remembering that she asked him to not call her like that “… thanks Sarah”.

The woman was about to say something, when Stacey joined them. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and Luke thought that she looked way more prettier like that, than when she used to wear all those fancy clothes at school. But girls were complicated, it was really hard to make them understand that make up and clothes could be wrong when they were used in excess. Or maybe that was only Luke, who liked the fresh natural look. The fact that her hair was wet after the shower only made the whole look better.

“What is he doing here?”, she asked, casting a glance at her mom, but quickly averted her eyes from Sarah and turned to look at Luke, “What are you doing here?”. Her voice didn’t sound pissed off, just a little surprised which was normal considering that they were not best friends – neither friends for the same matter –, he had never gone to her place before, and the situation was awkward between them.

“I wanted to talk to you”, he said. He had already decided that depending on her reply, he’d quit without having breakfast.

“I asked him to come in”, Sarah said, giving Luke a comforting smile.

Sarah’s nodded. “Okay, I… I’m just surprised, that’s all. I didn’t expect a visit of you on a Saturday morning”.

Luke chuckled, “I didn’t expect to be awake so early on a Saturday morning, either”. So early for him was at 11:30am, but of course he was only joking, which he showed with a soft laughter. “I was working but they let me finish earlier today, it was being a slow day anyway”.

“You’re working?”, Stacey sounded surprised again. Was in moments like those that it was obvious that they didn’t know anything about each other, which wasn’t anything new anyway.

Luke nodded, “Yeah, at Woodstoves autorepair”

“You’re a mechanic?”, Stacey’s mom asked, sounding interested. Luke didn’t have any idea if she was being polite or if she was really interested, it was hard to say. But judging by the few minutes he had talked to her she didn’t seem like the sort of woman who’d pretend to be interested only because it was the polite thing to do – still, you never knew.

“I wouldn’t say I’m a mechanic”, Luke said with a chuckle, “I only work there for now”.

“Well, maybe you could check out my car later, it’s making a weird noise”.

“Sure, of course”, Luke nodded at the woman, while thinking that he’d check more than only her car, which made wonder a lot of things about that woman, things like if she was still married or divorced – he hadn’t seen any man yet at the house -, if she was into sex with younger men, and what was she like it bed. She couldn’t help it, he felt attracted to woman and no matter if they were the mom of his ex girlfriend, or who they were, he felt terrible attracted to them. He blamed it on the hormones, this was what happened when you were young and your body was waking up, right? He wanted to chuckle at the thought, his body had already woken up a lot of time ago.

Sarah smiled at Luke. Luke smiled back at Sarah and then turned to look at Stacey, who was shooting her mom a weird look. There was a strange exchange of looks, Sarah turned to look at her daughter, and then Stacey turned to look at Luke, who was not sure of what to do so he just lowered his eyes down at the cup of tea in front of him on the table.

Breakfast was mostly awkward. He realized that there was some kind of tension going on between Stacey and her mom, but he didn’t know about it so he didn’t have any idea of what it was. Both girls were kind with him, even Stacey, who seemed to be ready to kill somebody every time her mom opened her mouth to say something. Maybe she also had issues with her family, but in any case those issues wouldn’t have anything to do with the ones Luke had with his parents, he was pretty sure of that even without knowing anything about Stacey’s family.

After breakfast Stacey and him went for a walk. It was a pretty sunny day, and despite being only the first week of March it was pretty nice to be outside. Children played on the street, and people walked up and down getting some grocery shopping done.

“I didn’t expect to see you this morning”, she started, deciding to break the silence between them.

Luke shrugged. That was a motion that he used to do a lot, and it didn’t’ exactly mean anything special. “I know. After the everything that happened between us, I decided it was stupid to continue like that”, He turned to look at her for a while, but quickly averted his eyes towards the ground again, talking while walking. “Look at us, we know each other since several months ago, and we keep behaving like perfect strangers”. He stopped and considered what he just said, “This is not normal at all”.

Stacey nodded, “I know what you mean, and really, I’d love to fix that, it’s just that I don’t have any idea of what you’re looking for”.

What was he looking for? That was a hard thing to reply to, mainly because Luke himself didn’t have any idea about what did he want. When he was younger he assumed he knew himself very well, but the more he grew up, the more he realized that he was a complete stranger even for himself. That made him feel weird, uncomfortable, out of control of his own life… and scared.

“And you?”, he replied back, “What are you looking for?”

She wondered if he was starting a discussion again, if he was trying to tell her that she was guilty of everything that happened between them. But she was tired of that, almost as tired as he was, and she didn’t want to continue with that, not anymore.

“I haven’t forgotten you”, she said, and before he could say something, she added, “But I also understand your point of view. You don’t want to complicate your life, that’s fine, I don’t think I’m ready to complicate mine, either. At least you’ve got your friends”.

“Friends?”, Luke laughed, “Which friends Stacey? I only have Gerard, this is the only friend I’ve got”.

“I don’t even have one”, she said, lowering her glance to the ground like him. “I know, I’m always surrounded by people, but those… those are not my friends. They’re just people who want to spend time with me, to be with me only because they believe I’m rich and popular”.

“And you are?”

“If I’m what?”

“Popular”.

She breathed deeply, thinking about his question. “All depends on what you consider popular, I guess. A couple of years ago, I wanted to be popular because I thought I’d be happier. Then is when everything began, I worked hard to get along with the coolest people in school, spent a lot of money in clothes and I hosted the best parties. Now…”, she shrugged, “I’m not happy anymore. It made me happy for a while, yes, but it reaches a point that you realize that being popular doesn’t make you happy if you don’t have a true friend to share this happiness with”.

Luke had the feeling that she was being sincere. More than having this feeling, he was almost 100 per cent sure that she was. This was the reason why he had never been popular or cared about those who were, he liked people or disliked them, but that never had anything to do with their popularity rate.

“Why are you so quiet?”, she asked, averting her eyes from the ground to look at him, “You’re surprised that I don’t enjoy being popular?”

Luke shook his head, “It’s not that I’m surprised that you don’t enjoy being popular, it’s more the fact that I’m surprised that you opened to me like that”.

She stopped walking and smiled at him. “You’re a great person Luke, you’re sincere, and this is something I really appreciate. After years of being surrounded of hypocrital people, you don’t have any idea of how refreshing it is to have somebody around who calls things by their name”.

They walked for a couple of hours, talking, getting to know each other. They headed towards the park, the boardwalk, the main street, and they shared all the information they hadn’t shared in the months they had spent together. Luke then understood that it wasn’t all about sex, that sometimes you could get something out of another person that could fulfill you as much as sex, even if that person was a hot girl. And that made him feel smile in a way he hadn’t smiled since a lot of time ago.

…

Luke and Stacey became close friends in few days. He didn’t spend as much time with her as he spent with Gerard, but they walked half of the way home together most of the days, and even if they didn’t share the same table for lunch they exchanged a few words during the lunch break every day. It was hard to say if she lost popularity because of it, or if he won some popularity in the school, but since neither of them seemed to matter about it, this didn’t really care.

On a Sunday morning, after going church with his family – yes, Mrs. Questal still insisted that Luke had to go church every Sunday, and because it was easier to go than having a one hour fight with them he sued to go – Luke headed towards Stacey’s place to fix Sarah’s car, like he had promised her a few days ago, He rang the bell, and hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans he waited for somebody to open it.

“Luke”, Sarah opened the door, wearing only a towel curled up around her naked body. Her hair was wet, making it obvious that she just had a shower. “It’s nice to see you again, come in, please”.

Luke swallowed and couldn’t help but let his eyes run up and down her body. She was hot, not only for her age, also comparing her with any other woman. Her body seemed to be in perfect shape, and her greats were still firm despite how huge they were.

He got inside, wondering if they were alone in the house. He also wondered about Sarah’s husband, because Stacey never talked about him, and Luke had never seen him around. It didn’t make him uncomfortable to be around an older attractive woman wearing only a towel, but his body was reacting to it in a way he couldn’t really control, even if he was pretty conscious that this was not the way he was supposed to fantasize when it came to Stacey’s mom. But he really couldn’t help it, the woman was there, in front of him, and he had a couple of eyes in his face that they were put in there to watch.

“You want to drink something? A beer?”, she asked.

He nodded, positively surprised Sarah didn’t seem to be like his mom – Helen would have never offered a beer to any of Luke’s friends -.

(TBC)

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-19T20:12:00

2007-11-19T19:16:44Z

Day: #19
Words so far: 35079 (titles included)
% of NaNo done: 70,15%
Chapters completed: 6/12

Words in chapter 1 (July): 4175 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 2 (August): 4172 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 3 (September): 4184 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 4 (October): 4191 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 5 (November): 4171 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 6 (December): 5020 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 7 (January): 4156 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 8 (February): 4178 - FINISHED
Words so far in chapter 9 (March): 805/4167

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-19T19:54:00

2007-11-19T18:56:49Z

(...)

A knock on the door woke up Luke and Gerard, who were both sleeping peacefully while the snow was falling outside. Travis O’Donell, wearing a weird green pajamas with severan turtles on the pants and the shirt, informed them that a group of people gathered in one of the halls of the second floor to talk to the spirits of the hotel. In other words, they were invited, at 4am, to a real teen session of spiritualism. What was funny about Travis, the red curly haired words that was also the captain of the math club, was that his glasses always matched his outfit, and even now, with the green turtle pajama, the glasses were green. Luke wanted to laugh, but he was way to asleep for laughing.

He wanted to yell at Travis for waking them up, and go back to bed, when Gerard convinced him that it might be funny to laugh at the school dorks playing with the spirits and being completely convinced that they talked to a ghost.

Luke didn’t really believe in that stuff. Ghosts were just another excuse to make movies or create stories, or when people couldn’t explain something, they then blamed it on the supernatural stuff because it was way easier than blame it on themselves or admitting that they didn’t have any idea how it was possible that something like that happened. It was weird, but Luke was about the only person in his family, that didn’t believe in ghosts at all. His mom used to say that her mom’s spirit was wandering around the house, sometimes she said that she even heard her talking to her, or crying. Luke didn’t believe anything of that. When people heard voices, or saw things, it’s because their mind was playing with them in some way, probably because they were too tired.

So, almost dragged by Gerard, they headed towards the hall, quiet in that time of the night. A small crowd was gathered in the centre, on the big flowered carpet not far away from the elevator, and they had several candles around them. This was another curious thing about supernatural, why you couldn’t just do that kind of stuff with the lights turned on? Who said that spirits and ghosts and all that weird creatures were scared of light? Sure, vampires did, but judging by the Ouija board in there vampires weren’t exactly the kind of creatures they were trying to attract.

A few people turned to look at them, but quickly averted his eyes from the two guys and focused on the board again. There was one of the guys who apparently was leading the whole stuff, a guy that Luke didn’t know probably because he was from the boarding school that also spent some days in the hotel. Luke sighed, and while Gerard seemed interested in the whole performance and approached towards the crowd, Luke leaned on the wall next to the stair, wondering what would come out of there. Of course going back to bed was still a possibility, but why going to sleep when it seemed that the nerd kids would give him some funny time?

Suddenly, there was a big silence. Everybody focused their eyes on the guy in front of the board – that apparently was called Michael – and Luke assumed that something ‘important’ would happen.

“Is there any spirit in the room?”, Michael said aloud, his eyes closed. “If there’s any spirit among us, please, show up”.

Luke wanted to laugh. The whole situation it was to die for, and he didn’t have any idea that people could be so retarded at sixteen year old. What they did expect? Some spirit showing up and saying hi to all of them? Because thinking about it, if the improbable situation of a ghost saying hi to them really happened, what would they do? Say hi back at him? No, of course not, they’d probably run away. So this was the only reason why people kept doing stuff like that, because they knew that ghosts were not real and that none ghosts would show up.

“I’m going to repeat the question”, Michael said louder, “If there’s any spirit in here, please, show yourself to us”.

There was a long silence, people looked around, like if the ghost had to show up all of a sudden from the most unexpected corner of the room. Suddenly, somebody broke the silence.

“That painting on the wall moved!!! Really, I’ve seen it moving!”

There were all kind of gasps, and “ooooooh”, and “ahhhhh”, and people talking to each other only because somebody said that the painting moved. It was hard to believe, not that the painting moved – which was impossible – but that people believed that the guy really told the truth. Well, maybe the guy did tell the truth, but what happened was that he was way too drunk or to high, this would have been a very plausible explanation.

Was then when Luke decided it was time to go to bed, even if Gerard decided to stay in there. It didn’t have any sense to stay up when the only reason was watching at a bunch of kids playing silly games.

…

The rest of the week went by pretty fast. They had more skiing classes, and mostly they spent the week doing what the teachers called ‘getting to know each other’. Knowing his class mates was what Luke wasn’t really interested in, even less than the skiing classes on itself. Which sense it had to talk with people you never talked with when you were in the town, only because now you were at the top of a mountain lost in the middle of nowhere? It was stupid. Teachers said that this would develop stronger bounds between them, but Luke didn’t want those bounds to exist, he just wanted to be himself, and have the few friends he felt comfortable with.

When the bus arrived in town, Luke felt pleasantly surprised to find out that he had missed that little corner of Connecticut more than what he’d have expected. Sadly, he couldn’t say the same abaout his family, which most of the time made him feel like some kind of evil person for not really missing them or caring for them the way he was supposed to do. Still, he loved his parents, it was just that they happened to don’t be able to live in the same building or stay close to each other for more than five minutes.

The first thing to do when he arrived at home, wsa leave the bags in his bedroom, and head to the garage to go for a drive with his loved car. It was sad, yes, he had missed the car more than what he had missed his family, but at least the car didn’t complain or asked him about his personal life, or about things he didn’t want to talk about.

He headed towards the top of the mountain, glad that it hadn’t snowed in town during these days because with the snow or the ice it turned out to be impossible to drive to the top, and once there he stopped the car at the edge of the cliff, turned on his favorite music, and watched at the tinny lights of the small town shinning all together not far away from the ocean, with the white big moon reflected on it. Was at that very moment, that he felt happy of being a Pleasant Port resident. Was at that moment that he knew that he’d never be able to leave that small corner of the world, even if his dreams had always involved moving to New York and finding a job there. But deep inside he knew he’d never be able to survive in a big city, and minus considering that crowds owerwhelmed him so much. He tried to imagine himself in several year, but he couldn’t. He only wished that no matter what happened or what he was going by then, he’d never lose the teen spirit that he had now inside of him. Because he’d be able to live surrounded by people away from his loved town, but he’d never be able to live being an adult in heart. Because that, in his opinion, was not living.

Chapter 9: March

March meant two things: the end of the winter, and the beginning of the spring. It also meant that it had been two months since the last time Luke had sex, and this began to hurt deep inside his body,… and his pants.

He didn’t have any idea of how things with Stacey were at this point. They kept that civil conversation at the hotel, outside the porch, while everybody else danced inside, but even if it was going well it ended up being kind of awkward and weird. They didn’t argue, but they didn’t exactly have what he’d call a nice conversation, and the proof of it was that this happened at the first night of being at the hotel, and they hadn’t talked any other day since then.

Now, Luke decided it was time to go and find Stacey again. In theory she wouldn’t have that STD again, and he had also done with his whole month of abstinence so it was a golden opportunity to have some sex. It was either that, or using his hand again, and the truth was that his arm was beginning to hurt badly after all the times he had used it during the past days. It was bad that he only wanted to see her now that he needed sex? Yes, it was terrible and he knew it, but what else could he do? He was sure that she was in his same situation, she didn’t exacly catch the STD in first instance for being a virgin, did she?

He headed towards her place. This would be the first time he’d go to Stacey’s place – or to any girl’s place in a time that he knew her family would be there – but he didn’t feel nervous at all – just a little bit scared, but that was besides the point. He adjusted his jacked, put the cigarette down, and then rang the bell.

Stacey lived in the best street of the town, in a street with a lot of trees and big houses, and all the families had expensive cars and amazing gardens – some of them they even had a pool or more than one televesion, which wasn’t very normal at the seventies.

“Can I help you?” a woman on her fourties opened the door. She had a died blonde hair, and wore a lot of multi colored jewelry and make up. Luke assumed she was Stacey’s mom, because they looked pretty alike – that woman’s body was amazing, too, and her boobs really big, which made it harder for Luke to look up at her eyes instead of keeping his eyes focused on that amazing body standing in front of him.

“Is Stacey at home?”, he asked, casually.

“Yes”, she looked at him up and down, but mor than looking him it was pretty obvious that the woman was checking him put. He was young, and those jeans, buttoned up shirt and leather jacket looked awesome on him. She thought he had a James Dean thing going on, but it wasn’t that what really attracted her, but the way he also seemed to check her out. “Come in”.

The place was as wonderful and big inside like it looked on the outside. It was so big, that Luke suddenly felt small and non existant, like an ant in the middle of the beach. It looked so different from his place… but he wouldn’t like to live there, he was not born to live in a place like that, and he was pretty sure that he wouldn’t enjoy it, either. The only advantage was that if he still lived with his family like now, the house was so big that it would be hard to coincide with his mom.

The thought made him chuckle, and was only returned back to the real life when Mrs. … - he realized now that he didn’t know Stacey’s second name – offered him a cup of tea.

“No thanks Mrs…”, he trailed off

“Call me Sarah”, she smiled, “I’m not that old”

“Of course not, Sarah”, Luke returned her the smile and looked around, at all the paintings and photos hanging everywhere around the couch and the fireplace. In most of them there was Stacey with another children – maybe siblings, or cousings – and on the others there were people that might be old members of the family, maybe aunts, or grandparents. Luke thought that if he told his mom that he had been in a house like that, she’d never believe him.

“She’ll come down in few minutes, she was having a shower and we have to have breakfast now, so you won’t have to wait for a long time, I hope”, she crossed her legs, the short skirt went up considerably and Luke swallowed, “You’ll have breakfast with us, I hope”.

(TBC)

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-18T22:55:00

2007-11-18T21:57:40Z

(...)

“I’m glad you see me like some kind of hermit, or a sociopath”, he laughed to show her that he was only kidding.

Seeing him smiling, Stacey smiled back. It felt good to be like that, without being mad at each other, although she was still really mad at him and she was sure that she’d end up exploding at some point. But in here everything was different, maybe it was because of the magic of the snow, or because the place was magic and special, but in here all the problems seemed to be solved all of a sudden.

“You’re not a hermit, hermits are not hot”, she said, her face looking serious while she stared at him.

Luke laughed, “How many hermits have you known in your life to be so sure about it?”, he shook his head and laughed again, “Or maybe you’ve even done them?”

Stacey raised an eyebrow. First, she wondered if she meant that she was a slut or some kind of sex addict, but then she realized that he was joking, so she assumed he was only kidding her. There were tons of things that Stacey could say to shot him back, to tell him that she wasn’t the only one that she thought about sex the whole time, but she didn’t, and she didn’t only for the simple and plain reason that she knew he was right. Maybe they were too alike in some aspects, even if they had different interests and looked for different kinds of approval.

While Luke didn’t need to approbation of those around him to live his life, Stacey needed to feel that others realized of how special she was. When it came to sex, though, they both looked for the same thing – forgetting about the real world, believe – even if it was only for a while – that nothing cared besides themselves. They didn’t have sex to show the others how much they loved them, only because they only wanted to fulfil their respective physical needs.

“You keep trying to give that tough image of yourself”, she said, her eyes searching his. “but you know as much as I do that your heart is soft on the inside. You don’t hate people, you’re just scared of them, of opening to them”.

He didn’t reply, because he knew that she wasn’t wrong. She hated to admit that other people knew as much about him as himself – or almost she knew him enough to make this conclusion about him -, but sometimes this was exactly what he needed to open his eyes, somebody who called things by their name so he wouldn’t have to lie to himself anymore.

“We all have faults, I guess”. He only tried to avoid the subject.

“I guess”, she reassured him. “I didn’t go to the hospital to get the tests done”, she said, lowering her glance towards the wooden floor.

Luke averted his eyes from the floor and turned to looked at her, frowning. He’d have assumed that she’d be smarter, that at least she’d have cared for her health. She wasn’t like him, he was the stupid one, the one that didn’t give a shit, but Stacey… heck, Stacey had one hundred and one reasons to live, maybe even more.

“But…”, he started, not sure of how to ask that without sounding like his mom. He cared for her, but he didn’t want to sound like he was judging her or trying to give cheap advice. “Why not?”

She stayed quiet for a while. She knew what would happen, what she had to tell him would hurt his feelings and maybe ruin the whole situation and all the improvements they had done during the past minutes in their relationship – to call it in some way, even if it was weird it was still a relationship -. “Because…”, she started hesitant, “… because I already knew that I’ve got some kind of STD disease before you even told me”.

There was a silence. A weird, long and uncomfortable silence. Luke averted his eyes from her and lingered them from the snow towards the wooden ground. He didn’t know what to do or what to say, because he knew that once he opened his mouth, he’d probably say something he’d regret, and he didn’t want that, not again. How would he ever trust her, if every time they spend some time together she ended up disappointing her? Yes, she had slept with other women while being in a relationship with her, but at least he had been sincere from the beginning, he had never hid anything to her. But Stacey, on the other way, didn’t seem to care about that, she kept hiding information and pulling it out of the sleeve at the most unexpected moment.

“Why you never told me?”, he asked, trying to sound calmed. He took a drag from the cigarette and waited for a convincing reply-

She shrugged. “I don’t know, I guess I was scared you’d never sleep with me if I had told you”.

Luke let out a sarcastic laughter, “Well, I don’t know if I should feel crappy, or happy”. The comment was as sarcastic as the laughter. “I mean, I’m supposed to be happy that you wanted to so desperately to fuck with me, or I should feel pissed off because you didn’t give a shit about me getting the shit you had? Was that some kind of revenge? You hated me so much that you wanted to see me ill?” He didn’t expect an answer, he didn’t think that any of the things she could tell him would help him understand the way she had acted.

“I’m sorry”, she said, almost in a whisper, being perfectly aware that she had behaved like the kind of bitch everybody said she was. “I guess I wasn’t thinking”. She looked at him right in the eye, “The other day, at Gerard’s cousin party, when you disappeared with that girl… you had sex with her?”

“Is this important now?”

Stacey shrugged, “I guess you should warn her, too”.

Luke knew that she wasn’t worried for Monika, she only wanted to know if he had sex with her so the guilt would suddenly go to him, and they wouldn’t be talking about her mistake anymore. But Luke didn’t want to continue with that story.

“Look, I told you about it when I didn’t know what you told me today, so what makes you think I didn’t do the same with her?”

Once again, Stacey shrugged. Luke rose and threw the butt of the cigarette in one of the trash cans by the porch, and then adjusted the neck of his jacket, “We’ll talk tomorrow Stacey, have a good night”.

She nodded at Luke, and watched him disappear into the hotel. Meanwhile, outside, it began to snow again.

…

Staying in the mountains for a week involved to take some skiing classes. Luke hated skiing, not because he had never skied in his whole life and was afraid of making a fool of himself, but because he didn’t get the point of it. Why waiting for a long time in a long like to go to the top of the mountain, only for going down again and returning to the same point you started? Besides, the outfit made him feel too dressed up. It was some green gaudy thing, with yellow and black, and the texture was weird.

He listened at the instructions the instructor gave them, while was more focused on wondering why on earth he had forgot the cigarettes at the hotel room. He was sure that it wouldn’t have been hard to skip the class and hid himself somewhere in the shelter, instead of being there doing that silly stuff, wasting his time doing something he wouldn’t do again in his whole life.

He spent some time in the learners lane, hoping that the instructor would leave them alone and he’d be able to sit down and relax. He hated all that activity, and people around him being so excited about it made him nervous. When the instructor decided that he was ready to go to the top of the mountain, Luke let out a lazy sigh. Ready? He might be ready, but he was too lazy for that, and too tired. But he did as he was told, following other mates that were also sent to the top.

When it was time to go down, the descent was fast and amazing. Way cooler than what he had thought it would be. It was so surprising for him that he had enjoyed it, that he even wondered if he was drunk – but no, he hadn’t drank anything in the past 48 hours or more, so this possibility was just non existent. And yes, it had been cool, but not as cool with a fast drive with his Dodge Dart in the high way, or as cool as he imagined it would be to go for a ride with a fast cool bike.

At the end of the day, he found himself in a situation he had never experienced before – he was tired after having fun in the way preppy kids had fun. It had been cool, and a new experience, but he couldn’t see himself doing that kind of sport. The only bad thing about it was that in case now he wanted to have sex during the night, his legs would be so sore that he was sure he wouldn’t be able to make a single movement.

During dinner, he sat with Gerard and for a while, having a conversation with him and a few other guys, he had the weird sensation that he was happy. It was something he hadn’t experienced in a lot of time, but maybe this exactly what he needed – to go away from town to realize that life wasn’t as bad as he had assumed it was. Sure, he didn’t like the relationship with his parents, but it was only a matter of time that he’d be able to go away from home and get his own place to live. And when that happened, they wouldn’t have any reason to poke their nose into his business, because by then, he’d be old, and free.

(...)

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-17T23:09:00

2007-11-17T22:12:03Z

Day: #17
Words so far: 31160 (titles included)
% of NaNo done: 62,32%
Chapters completed: 6/12

Words in chapter 1 (July): 4175 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 2 (August): 4172 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 3 (September): 4184 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 4 (October): 4191 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 5 (November): 4171 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 6 (December): 5020 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 7 (January): FINISHED
Words so far in chapter 8 (February): 1067/4167

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-17T23:06:00

2007-11-17T22:08:58Z

(...)

“What are you going to do now?”, Gerard asked, pulling out the pack of cigarettes and offering one to Luke. Both guys were leaned against the wall outside the high school, watching at the other students getting inside before the first class in the morning.

Luke grabbed one of the cigarettes and shrugged, then placed it between his lips and lit it. “Nothing, I guess”.

Gerard turned to look at his friend, shot him a look and then raised a questioning eyebrow, “You’re going to regret this”.

Regret? Luke didn’t really believe in that word. Regret was the name people gave to their mistakes, so they could deal better with the fact that at some point they did something or said something that then caused some kind of trouble or hard time in their lives. “I already regret it”.

“You should call her”, Gerard pointed out, while the smoke be blew out his mouth mixed with the morning fog.

Luke laughed. “I’m not going to call her, she’s going to think it’s only an excuse to talk to her. Or even worse, she’s going to think that I’m making it up just to fuck her life”.

“Luke”, Gerard’s voice sounded harsh and serious now, “She’s got some kind of STD that needs antibiotics, it’s not a matter of how much you hate each other, it’s a matter of being fair and telling her about it”.

Luke sighed. He did remember the day when he read the results of the tests and sighed relieved seeing that the result was negative. Still, during the test, they found him some kind of sexual disease that was not important, but needed a treatment with antibiotics. Luke was not sure if it were Stacey who transmitted it to him, or Lily, or maybe the girls in the party, but whoever it had been Luke needed to tell to those he had had sex with to have the tests done. In fact, he was pretty sure that was Stacey who transmitted it to him, because the itchy feeling started after having sex with her a few days before the party. He didn’t consider the possibility of informing the girls of the party about it, he was too pissed for the fact that he almost caught AIDS because of them, and that was a lot more serious that some random and not dangerous STD caused by a bacteria.

He ended up talking with Stacey during the lunch break. At the beginning she didn’t want to talk to him, she just kept babbling about how much she hated him, what a prick he was, and how much she did regret every single minute they spent together.

“Call me prick if you want, but at least listen to me!”, Luke yelled, something that was not using on him. He grabbed her arm to prevent that she could go away, and then looked at her in the eye, “It’s possible that you have some kind of sexual transmission disease, it’s nothing serious, but needs antibiotics or it could turn into something worse”. He realized that she was about to say something, so before she could he talked first. “I got some blood tests done at the hospital, I’m not 100% sure that you were the one who passed it to me, maybe not, but to make sure you have to go there and get the tests done”.

Stacey began to cry, and once again began to insult him and call him a prick and a bastard. In part, Luke did understand her reaction, he had been her he’d also have had the feeling that it was him who passed it to her, or that he only wanted to make her feel bad for some reason. Luke tried to comfort her, but he was not sure of what to say or do. So he just hugged her tightly, until he pushed him away and ran away from him, crying.

Was at that moment that Luke really felt bad for her. It hadn’t happened before, usually he didn’t give a shit about the other’s feelings – he had enough dealing with his own to care about the others – but now it felt different. He felt guilty, even if he was not sure why he was guilty, and was pretty sure that it had been Stacey who transmitted it to him, and now him to her.

But there wasn’t much he could do about it, and he knew that. He had already talked to her about it, told her that she should go to the hospital, and had given her a comforting hug. If there was something else he could do, something else to help her, it wasn’t on his hands anymore. Now, it was her who had to realize that he didn’t want to hurt her, that he acted that way only because that’s the way he was.

Chapter 8: February

February was the month the Junior and Senior classes went to Massachusetts to spend a week on the snow. Luke hated it, he didn’t have any idea why they had to do the whole travelling thing when they had enough snow in town during several days every winter. It was for skiing, it seems that it was a sport that a lot of people liked to practice, and teachers thought it was a way for the students to interact with each other outside the classroom walls. That was pretty much stupid, it was just another excuse to do a preppy activity and take pics, so then everybody would be able to see that we went skiing.

But he had to go, his mom freaked if he didn’t want to take part in those kinds of things, and staying at home sounded as terrible as going there. A week in the mountains, or a week with his parents… no matter what he chose, both would be long and boring.

That was how he ended up stuffing his bag inside the trunk of the bus, and getting inside with a bunch of people who looked like children going to a trip to the zoo. He hated that. He knew that eventually they’d start to sing all kind of repetitive songs, with lyrics that didn’t have any sense and were only good to drill his mind. He was not sure that he’d survive to that, and minus without cigarettes. It was a good thing that Gerard was sitting with him and at least he’d have somebody to share some kind of normal conversation. Otherwise falling asleep would have been the best option.

…

The hotel looked big, and cosy, with lots of lights that created a magical effect, like a mountain of jewels right in the middle of the snow. It appeared all of sudden, immense, looking self confident and powerful after the last bend on the road. It was one of those places you’d never imagine it was there, until your eyes were able to see it.

The rooms were double, and unfortunately mixing boys and girls wasn’t a possibility, the same way the teachers made sure that the guys got the second floor the girls the thing one. It was like a prison, with teachers immersed in their guardians role, making sure that the hormones would explode and the guys got out of control in the middle of the night. No matter which rules the teachers out, or how much they tried to control, Luke would find the way to skip all the rules.

Also, he wanted to talk to Stacey. She was there, too, and it would be stupid that they avoided each other the whole time. He wanted to know if she had decided to get the tests done, if she was fine. He had been a bastard with her and he admitted it, but on her side she hadn’t been better than him. Maybe they both needed to start over, to get things talked and try to be friends. Even if she seemed to have another people who liked to be surrounded with, after all she seemed to be back with his preppy crew, which didn’t really bother Luke because they were able to be friend even if they didn’t have the same friends in common.

Thinking about it, Luke only had one friend, which was at the same time his best friend. He had never needed more, and he was not sure why people wanted to have tons of friends, if having tons of friends meant that you ended up having tons of problems. It was hard to find somebody you could trust, somebody who understood you and didn’t think you were crazy every time you made a fool of yourself. Despite their differences, and their initial problems, Gerard had been that friend for Luke.

…

The first day, after dinner, there was a ‘Welcome dance’. It was some kind of social event where the school mixed with other people in the hotel, which were all old people, or preppy guys from a private school in New York. The music couldn’t be worse, and there were no alcoholic drinks. If the situation wasn’t already pathetic enough, they began to play silly games with the music, something that was more appropriate of a ten year old birthday party, than a high school winter holiday dance.

Luke decided it was time to take a break. Gerard was dancing with a blonde girl from the other school, so he headed towards the bedroom, grabbed the pack of Marlboro cigarettes hid under the blankets in the closet, and hid it in the inside pocket of his anorak while he headed outside the building.

At the front there was a big wooden porch, well, lightened and with several benches. In a sunny afternoon a lot of people might gather in there to talk while enjoying the weather and the landscape, but in a cold night of February there wasn’t much to do outside. Still, Luke lit up a cigarette and blew out the smoke slowly. It felt good to be there.

“I see I wasn’t the only one getting bored inside”

Luke turned to the voice and spotted Stacey standing right in front of him.

“Hey”, he said, happier than he’d have liked to admit to see her in there. So maybe she wasn’t mad, after all. Maybe she had thought over and realized that it was stupid to keep a fight that wouldn’t lead them to anything good. Getting along with somebody was fine, not getting along with them was also something that happened, but a middle term was never a good option. Luke needed things simple, he needed to know if they were fine or not, but ‘today yes, and tomorrow not’ didn’t work for him.

“I assumed you’d be here”, she said, wrapping the scarf around her neck.

Luke offered her the pack of cigarette. “You assumed I’d be here?”, he couldn’t help but laugh. Not a sarcastic laugh this time, just a spontaneous one. “I’m such an open book?”

Stacey took one of the cigarettes and shrugged. “I guess it’s because you tend to avoid the crowds”.

Luke’s face showed surprise. He had the feeling that they didn’t know anything from each other, but apparently she knew more about him than what he had expected.

(TBC)

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-16T23:16:00

2007-11-16T22:18:59Z

Day: #16
Words so far: 29275 (titles included)
% of NaNo done: 58,55%
Chapters completed: 6/12

Words in chapter 1 (July): 4175 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 2 (August): 4172 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 3 (September): 4184 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 4 (October): 4191 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 5 (November): 4171 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 6 (December): 5020 - FINISHED
Words so far in chapter 7 (January): 3341/4167

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-16T23:13:00

2007-11-16T22:16:05Z

(...)

His mom wanted to know where he had been. He had disappeared on December 31th at 4pm, and didn’t got back home until January 1^stat 8pm, which meant that he wasn’t home since last year. That was a funny thought that Luke formed inside his mind, and wanted to smile, but the situation wasn’t really something that made him happy. He couldn’t tell his mom about the whole AIDS thing, hell, she didn’t even handle well the fact that he had gone to a party, even when she assumed it was one of those ‘normal’ teen parties. And for ‘normal’ teen party Luke meant the kind of event that only involved alcohol, drugs and music, no sex or additional sexual transmission diseases as a souvenir of the great night.

He headed towards the bathroom trying to dodge his dad’s questions, took off his clothes – which smelled terribly bad due to the smoke and everything else -, and popped into the shower, the warm water relieving him only in a partial way. He was scared, and once again wanted to cry, but it was impossible, he didn’t try it hard anymore because he knew his body would resist the urge to let the tears out.

He didn’t know what he’d do in case he had AIDS. He didn’t have any idea of what would happen to him, either. He knew that people with AIDS died, but he was not sure if it was a fast death, or if they were able to live with the disease for a relatively long amount of time. Dying didn’t really scare him, what scared him was dying with the feeling that he hadn’t lived enough, that he still had things to do and he’d never be able to do them again. He didn’t believe in Heaven, but he was not 100% sure that when you died it was the end of everything. Maybe there was some powerful thing up there, be cause somebody had to create the universe at the beginning. Yes, he had heard that the universe as only matter, but what about the matter? Somebody created it, right?

He got out of the shower and curled a towel around his waist. Then, lazily, he headed towards his bedroom, with some drops falling from his hair towards his shoulders – he barely noticed them. Once there, he put on a pair of comfortable sweat pants and a tee, and headed downstairs for dinner. Like always, his parents were already having it.

“How was the party?”, dad asked, without averting his eyes from the newspaper.

“Cool”, Luke replied with a shrug of his shoulders, “Not much to tell about it”

“Did you drink?”, Mrs. Questal asked, shooting a questioning look at her son. And here they were again, performing the third grade on him. He hated those moments, the fact that they only cared when it came to know what he had been doing so they would be able to complain and say how much he was out of control. They never asked about the sort of music he listened, or if he was enjoying his driver’s licence, neither about his friends. So Luke was not sure why he had to reply to all those questions, either.

“A girl called this morning”, mom said, before taking a sip of her water. “Stacey”.

Luke raised an eyebrow at his mom. He had completely forgot about her. Did she know that he had disappeared with Monika at the party? Did she knew anything that happened in that bedroom? Did Luke care if she knew, or what she might think about it or about him? No, he didn’t really care at all.

“I’ll call her later”, he said, nodding to his mom like a way to tell her that he appreciated that she let him know.

“I think you shouldn’t”, Mrs. Questal said, her voice sounding harsh.

“What? Now you also have to tell me who I can talk with and who I can’t talk to?”

Mrs. Questal shook his head. “No, Luke, it’s not that”

“Then?”, Luke asked, feeling pissed off at the whole weird and stupid conversation he always shared with his parents at dinner. He wished that at least they could have some normal family dinner, talking about daily random things. But no, they always argued, and most of the time it was for his fault. Okay, he was a complicated guy and he realized about it. He was aware of the fact that it was not easy to live with him and understand him, but he also was sure that the only thing he waned was other people not poking their nose into his business. He didn’t think it was asking that much, after all.

“She didn’t she didn’t want to know anything else about you”, Mrs. Questal added, noticing that his son didn’t really understand what was going on, she he decided to make it clear for him. “she seemed upset, or disappointed, it’s hard to say”.

“And she had to tell you?”, Luke let out a sarcastic laughter. “How coward of her”.

“What did you do to her Luke?”, Mr. Questal added, “I bet you hurt her feelings”.

Luke didn’t reply. He rose from his chair and headed off outside, where his car was parked. Once there, he got inside, put the music aloud and pulled the car off towards the dark street. He only wanted to be away from there, to be able to live his own life without people judging him all the time. Was that really a difficult thing to ask? Was asking too much? Why it was always him who hurt other people’s feelings? His parents didn’t have any idea about his relationship with Stacey, and yes, maybe it was not nice to sleep with other girls while being in a relationship, but Luke had told Stacey from the beginning that he wasn’t a monogamous guy, and she had understood. Now, who was worse? The one who cheated, or the one who lied? Luke didn’t considered that he cheated, because cheat involved to hide it – or try to hide it -, and he had always been sincere about his feelings and about what he was able to do, and what he wasn’t able to do. People who cheated were the ones who promised to be loyal, and then they didn’t.

Listening to a sad rock ballad, and thinking about the whole situation he was going though, a tear went down his check. He didn’t even realize about it, but this was the first tear he was able to get out of him since a lot of time ago. People assumed he was a cold person, that he didn’t care and he didn’t worry about anything, but that was not true. What happened was that it was harder for him than for any other person to show up his feelings, which didn’t mean that he didn’t have feelings at all.

…

The went by really slowly. Luke thought about the AIDS tests during the whole time. They said they’d call him, but he didn’t want his parents to answer the phone, so early in the morning he headed towards the hospital, hoping that they’d already have the results. He was scared – very scared -, but he decided to go alone because having somebody else in there wouldn’t make him feel better. Even if it had been Gerard. He had to deal with that alone, because that’s what he was used to do and how he wanted to face the whole situation.

“I’m coming for some results”, he said, leaning his left arm at the receptionist’s desk.

“Name?” It was a woman on her fifties, blonde dyed hair, a lot of make up and big fake gold earrings. She was eating chewing gum, and wore a gaudy flowered shirt.

“Questal, Luke Questal”.

“Wait a second, please”. The woman disappeared into a small room next to the receptionist’s desk, and Luke wondered if there was money or something that could be stolen in that desk. Not that he’d steal anything – not right now at least – but he couldn’t help to ask himself these sort of questions in situations like that.

When the woman came back with an envelope, Luke sighed deeply. In there there what could change his whole life – or shorten it considerable”. He thanked the woman – briefly, he was a guy of few words – and then headed off towards the parking lot. Once inside the car, he sighed deeply and closed his eyes for a while, wondering if he was ready to know the result, whatever that was.

He took a deep breath and turned on the radio. Soon, though, the music overwhelmed him, so he turned it off again. Then, it was the silence that overwhelmed him. He turned it on again, but lowered the volume and changed the station, until he found one that played a song he didn’t know, but it didn’t sound too bad.

He opened the envelope, wanting to check the result, but wanting to delay the moment at the same time. Maybe he should look, the sooner he looked, the better, rigth? Or maybe not. What if it was a wrong result? At least now he had hope, but if the result was positive… then there wouldn’t be anything left to him.

He had the paper on his hands, but it was folded so he couldn’t see the result. He promised himself one time and another that no matter which the result was he’d try to deal with it. This was what happened for doing sex around while being drunk, you ended up doing things you might regret your whole life. He bit his lowere lip and unfolded the ppaper, hiw eyes lingering though the whole information and information he didn’t know what was about, until he reached the small box at the end.

He read it, and then breathed deeply, leaning his head against the back of the seat.

…

(...)

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-16T00:00:00

2007-11-15T23:02:04Z

Chapter 7: January

The year started with a terrible hangover, which was fine, because that was Luke’s mental state during most of the year. Most of the time he walked around like immersed in some kind of weird dream, hands stuffed inside the pockets of his jeans and head lowered dawn on the ground. When he was a child, teachers – and adults in general – used to ask him what was on the ground that was so interesting, and always replied with a shrug, not even realizing that the question was meant to be rhetorical and not something he had to answer.

It was January first, and Luke was walking up the boardwalk towards the carrousel that was at the edge of it, not far away from the harbour. Once again, it was a holiday, a family day, one of those days people liked to gather and Luke disliked so much. Also, the boardwalk was lonely, almost deserted, which wasn’t weird because it was so terrible cold outside that the last thing you wanted was to have a walk at the open air. At least it didn’t smoke in the past hours, and that was a plus.

He saw on one of the benches and lip up a cigarette, when Gerard joined him.

“How it comes that I knew I’d find you here?”, he asked, casting a glance at Luke and then pulling his pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of his black coat, and placed one between his fingers to light it.

“Because you know me better than I know myself?”, Luke asked, blowing out the smoke and averting his eyes from whatever he had been looking at to watch at his friend.

“What happened yesterday at Gabriel’s party? You disappeared”.

When people asked him those sort of questions, he always had the weird feeling that they wanted to control him. Of course with Gerard was different, he was his friend and most of the time he worried for him – or so Luke hoped – but those were the sort of questions Luke didn’t like to reply. Once again, he was not a big fan of talking about himself.

“I was invited to another party”, he said with a chuckle.

“You left the party and you didn’t tell me?”

“I didn’t live the party”, Luke said

“But you said that…” he stopped because Luke interrupted him.

“I didn’t say I left Gabriel’s party, I only said I joined another party”. He did a pause to take a puff of the cigarette, and after blowing out the smoke on the frozen air he added, “I was invited to another party within Gabriel’s party”.

Gerard’s eyes widened. “Wait, you mean that you were in one of the bedrooms?”

“I guess it was a bedroom, yes, or at least it had a bed”.

“Shit man! And when did you wanted to tell me?”

Luke couldn’t help but laugh. “It happened last night man, I’m still in that phase where I wonder if it was a dream or not, and my heart and body hurt so much that I can’t even think about what I’ve done only five minutes ago”.

“You lit up a cigarette”, Gerard replied with a chuckle, and then added, “Seriously man, this is great. How many girls did you do?”

Luke didn’t reply, not because he didn’t want to share that with Gerard, but because he didn’t remember. There were more than two, but from there he didn’t really remember if there were three, four or five girls. “I don’t know, three or so”

“Three? You got three girls only for yourself?”, Gerard shook his head and laughed, “Meanwhile I was there, talking with that nerdy girl, the one with the glasses, hell man, she has a great body, but I swear her conversation is boring as hell”. He took a drag of the cigarette and turned to Luke again, “So, you convinced Stacey to get into an orgy? Hell, man, you’re a god”.

Stacey? Luke didn’t remember the girls in the bed, but was pretty sure that Stacey was not there. He did remember the point where she asked him if he wanted to dance, Luke said no because he had never liked dancing, and then some girl dragged him upstairs. There was that girls… Monike, or Monique, I can’t really remember, she had red hair and…”

“Wait”. Gerard’s face turned serious in a matter of seconds, “You didn’t do Monika, did you?”

Luke nodded, “Yeah, I did. I can’t really remember what I did to her or what she did to me, but she was also in the bed with the other girls, so yeah. Why? You wanted to do her?”

At this point, Gerard was not sure of what to reply. There was something he had to tell his friend, but at the same time he was afraid of which would be Luke’s reaction. Still, he knew that Luke was a pretty calmed guy, and because the subject was important enough, Gerard breathed deeply, and turned to look at Luke. “She’s ill. Monika, I mean. She has… AIDS”.

There was a long silence. Like lingered his eyes from Gerard’s face towards the floor, and it was really hard to guess what was going on inside his mind, because when it came to feelings Luke was a closed book. No matter the situation, no matter how upset, or happy, or surprised he was, nobody around would know about it. Maybe that was the reason why he always lowered his head down to the ground, so people wouldn’t be able to read anything in his eyes – his grandma always said that the eyes reflected the soul of the person.

“Say something”, Gerard said, a little worried.

“And what do you want me to say?”, Luke asked, maybe a little harshly, while took the last drag of the cigarette and threw the butt right in front of him on the ground.

“I just told you that you slept with a girl who has a sexual transmission disease, a very important one, I’d have expected some kind of reaction Luke. I know you’re not comfortable with feelings, Hell, I don’t think I’ve seen you crying in my whole life, but at least complain, or curse, or say something, because you’re really worrying me right now”.

Luke sighed deeply. “Of course I could do that, of course I could say that she’s a bitch and that she’s going to regret this, but what would this change Gerard? I have to go to the hospital, I need to have an AIDS test done and check if I got it. It’s the only thing I can do about it, because every moment of complaining, is another moment I’ll sit here wondering if I got this shit”.

It was in moments like those that Gerard realized of how much he admired Luke. It was amazing the way something terrible would happen, but his friend would keep his calmed self, thinking in a really rational way that was hard to understand even for his best friend, the man that knew him since they both were in kindergarten.

“You want to go now?”, Gerard asked, also throwing the butt of his cigarette on the ground.

“You don’t have to come”, Luke said, raising from the bench and adjusting his leather jacked. All of a sudden it felt even colder.

“You’re kidding, aren’t you?”, Gerard shock his head, “Of course I’m coming”.

The next couple of hours were kind of hectic. They headed towards the hospital, which was in a town ten minutes away from there, and once there they explained the situation. They got all kind of looks, something that wasn’t new because in those kind of situations it was easy to judge the other person. Some of the doctors looked at Luke with pity, the others it was obvious that were already judging Luke without knowing anything about him – or basing their theories in what his appearance told them. His mom would freak, this was one of the things that happened to Luke’s mind while the needle got deep inside his skin. It didn’t hurt, and he barely noticed the shot, he was way too immersed in his thoughts to notice anything physical.

He couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if he really had AIDS. Would he die? He didn’t know much about it, because every time they talked about that in high school he had skipped the class to go smoking in the bathrooms. This hadn’t been very smart of him. The funny thing about Luke, was that despite everything, his grades were good. He didn’t dislike studying, if he liked the subject – like Geography – he was able to get a good grade like an A, and sometimes with not much effort. The problem was that he had to want, and some things like boring speeches about all the diseases you could get had never interested him. This is probably why he knew for sure that he’d never be a doctor. He cared for his life, of course he did… but he didn’t do anything to keep himself healthy – smoking and drinking were good examples of it -.

“Okay”, the nurse said, giving Luke a soft smile. “You’re done”. She was pretty, but not pretty in the way Luke would have liked to do her. It was more an angelical beauty, like the ones you got in the Renaissance paintings. She might have thirty years old, no more, and Luke assumed she really needed to money if she had to work on January first. Or maybe they couldn’t choice their shifts. “We’ll have the results in one week, we’ll call you when we’ve got them”.

Luke nodded, without saying a word. He had done it, and right now he knew there wasn’t much he could do. That would be a long week, no matter how calmed he seemed to be. He needed to make sure that he had enough alcohol and cigarettes to deal with the next seven days.

(TBC)

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-14T23:04:00

2007-11-14T22:06:38Z

Day: #14
Words so far: 25931 (titles included)
% of NaNo done: 51,86%
Chapters completed: 6/12

Words in chapter 1 (July): 4175 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 2 (August): 4172 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 3 (September): 4184 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 4 (October): 4191 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 5 (November): 4171 - FINISHED
Words so far in chapter 6 (December): 5020 - FINISHED

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-14T23:02:00

2007-11-14T22:04:12Z

(...)

“You didn’t dislike him, Luke”, she stated with a chuckle, “You were jealous of him”

“Me, jealous of that prick? Come Stacey, haven’t you seen him? He’s everything I’d never want to be, can you imagine me wearing those pretty Oxford sweaters, and those horrid preppy shoes?”

Which was true. Luke was not sure that he knew the meaning of the word jealousy, the same way he’d never want to have brand clothes or an expensive car to be happy. Okay, the expensive car he wouldn’t mind, but only if he was able to fix it himself, or if it was special for some reason, not only because it was expensive. He preferred things with personality, things that talked about him or defined him in some way, not just expensive impersonal things, those he didn’t like at all.

“You still have to give me a reply”, she said, like expecting the other would know what she was talking about or what she was referring too.

“A reply about what?”, he asked, a curious eyebrow raising while he turned to look at her.

“About you and me”, she said, wishing that he wasn’t that retarded when it came to understand these kind of things.

But Luke wasn’t retarded, only scared. He knew perfectly was he was talking about, but he didn’t want to give her a reply, because he knew he wouldn’t like what he had to say. “Stacey, we already talked about it, I can give you as much sex as you want, I can be your friend or try to be your friend, we can hang out, spend time together, but don’t ask me to be your boyfriend because I’m not that kind of guy”.

Still, he felt something for her. It might be the fact that she seemed to like him the way he was – or at least she pretended to like him when her friends were not around -, or maybe it was because she gave her the sort of thing that his parents would never give him – she listened, she cared. There was a part of him who wanted to stay away from her because he knew she’d break his heart. He had promised himself that he’ wouldn’t trust her neither any other woman again, but then she looked at him in the eye and he wanted more than just sex. And this was something he couldn’t explain, and only because he couldn’t explain it, it was wonderful.

He kissed her in the lips, his hand wanted to slip underneath her jacket and shirt while he did so, but he didn’t, not this time. It was wonderful, almost magic, with the snow falling down over them, the whole beach painted in that peaceful white colour, and the ocean looking almost frozen in he middle of the winter landscape.

And was there, and then, that he asked her if he wanted to go out with him. And she said yes, and suddenly, he felt more happier than scared.

…

This would be the first New Year eve that Luke would spend away from his family, something that made him happier than what it would have been nice to admit openly. His mom was weird when it came to several subjects like holiday and family. In her opinion, an special event was something that should have spent with people you cared about, and in her opinion those people were your family.

Luke didn’t seem to think that way. He cared about his family, but he didn’t feel comfortable around them. In fact, he had a weird way to care about them that it was hard to explain even for him.

He was invited to one of those parties that only took place every now and then, and if you were lucky enough, you’d be invited. The reason why Luke was invited was because it was Gerard’s cousin, Gabriel, who hosted it, and because he and Luke always had had a good relationship, Luke was quickly added to the list. And he invited Stacey.

Gabriel’s place was one of those mansions in one of the best streets of the town. It had a lot of rooms, a living room and dinner are that was as big as a restaurant, and even a gym. His parents were on a one week vacation, skiing somewhere in Canada, which made the whole party even more perfect. The best of the event, though, was not the house or the fact that Gabriel’s parents were out, but that the only requisite to attend the party was going in red underwear. Nothing else, just your underwear.

It worked in the following way: guest arrived dress, and once they crossed the main door they were sent to a room where they had to took their clothes off. Once that was done, the fun began.

For Luke, that was the most similar place to paradise. If his mom was right, if Heaven did exist, it might look a lot like that, and this was the place Luke would like to spend the whole eternity. Young, pretty girls were everywhere, dancing almost naked. And because the house was so crowded they walked really close to you, even rubbing you in the process.

“Hell Stacey”, he looked at her up and down, and then grinned “Can I rape you?”.

She was wearing a blonde bra and a matching thong. Yes, a thong. That killed Luke. He thought there couldn’t be anything better than a short mini skirt, but he was wrong. Thongs beat it all. He still couldn’t believe he had been invited to a party like that, hell, he didn’t even know that those kind of parties really existed. He wondered if things would go wild, because in case he would, he was definitely up for all kinds of action – yes, even with Stacey being around. She always said she was wild and liked to try new things, maybe it was time for her to prove that trying something new didn’t mean to change the lipstick color.

After the first initial hours of dancing, drinking and chatting, the party began to get wilder. Some people began to share drugs and joints at the living room, the music got lounder, and the environment got hot. The good about it was that people were already naked, so they didn’t have more clothes to take off.

Stacey tried to persuade Luke to dance with her, but Luke wasn’t the type. Instead he chose to stay in one of the corners, smoking a join and watching at the girls passing by him. Her bodies were just wonderful, and it was hard for Luke to hide the erections underneath his boxers.

Suddenly, somebody dragged his arms. He turned, and spotted a red haired girl, smiling at him. Luke looked her up and down, noticing every single one of the curves of her body.

“I think nobody introduced us”, she said, looking at his crotch instead of his eyes. “Because I’d certainly remember”.

Phil took a drag of the join, and then smirked, following her to wherever she was leading him.

They got inside one of the bedrooms. It was dark, and it was hard to see anything. It was also pretty hot, and some indirect light came from a nearby room. Once Luke’s eyes got used to the darkness, he could see three human silhouettes on the bed, femenine silhuettes with a lot of curves on their boddies. He smirked in the darkness, took the last drag of the join, and got imself ready for the best.

The red haired girl – Monika – walked him towards the bedroom, and was then where he was able to see the three girls on bed more clearly. They were hot, saked in sweat, and kissed each other. One of them, the girl who had the shortest hair, grabbed his arms until he was also laying on the bed, and then Monika took off is boxers, and began to do him a blow job.

A deep predatory moan escaped Luke’s mouth while he felt her lips against his skin. Meanwhile, the other two girls kissed his whole body, while they also touched each other.

He was not sure of which of them fucked first, he only knew that he entered all of them, without caring about which of the girls it was, or which were their names. The only thing he cared about at the moment was having fun. He even forgot about Stacey, who must be downstairs dancing – or maybe having fun in one of the bedrooms with somebody else. During an ephemeral second he felt terrible bad for her – she was his boyfriend, what was doing know was what other people would call cheating on her. But he didn’t see it that way, he was just having fun. One thing was the sex, and the other different thing were the feelings.

He fell asleep on the bed, with them. He was so tired by the sex, the drugs and the alcohol that everything mixed inside his body and mind, causing him to have weird confusing dreams.

He woke up with the first rays of the morning stroking his skin. He had a terrible headache, but he didn’t even care about that, he was used to hangovers and he had seen worse than those – okay, maybe not worse, but this wasn’t certainly his first hangover -. He rose from the bed, and slowly began to get dressed, the girls didn’t even woke up – not that he did much noise anyway.

When he headed downstairs there was all the trash scattered around the floor. Some people were sleeping here and there, but Stacey didn’t seem to be anywhere. Luke shrugged, lit up a cigarette and headed outside, towards his car.

It was a brand new year, and Luke had started it in the best possible way: doing three hot girls at the same time, on the same bed. There could be anything better than this?

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-13T20:14:00

2007-11-13T19:16:15Z

(...)

After dinner, it was time for the gifts. That was probably what Luke hated the most about the whole Christmas tradition. When he was a child, he did found out pretty fast that Santa Claus wasn’t real, and this was because he found the presents hid at the bottom of a closet, in his parent’s bedroom. This might be the reson why the guy stopped believing in the magic of Christmas too early, and never recovered that magic again.

…

He was five years old, not more, and tried to find sheets and big cloths to make a tent. He liked to play Indians and Cowboys with his friends, or with his cousins – back then he was an open child and he had a lot of people to interact with, probably because he was closer with his family than he was right now. Anyway, he didn’t find enough sheets in his bedroom and his mom always complained when he used the ones on the bed, so he decided to go and look at his parent’s bedroom and see if he could find some in there he could use for the tent, maybe the ones that his mom never used and she kept at the bottom of the closet would work.

He did remember something about his mom saying that he shouldn’t take the ones in the bottom, because it was something called Egiptian cotton and it seems it was very expensive, and ‘not playng material’. But they had those nice textures on them and looked so colorful and were so soft, that Luke couldn’t help but grab one of them, the one more at the bottom of the closet, causing the whole pile of sheets and towels falling down on his head and feet, just at the same time that some boxes fell on the ground, causing a loud nose. He looked down, and realized those were not current boxes, but present, wrapped in red Christmas paper.

Luke’s eyes widened. At the moment it didn’t happen to his mind that those were Christmas presents that his fmaily tried to hid from the children. The only think that happened to his mind was that those were presents and that he wanted to see what was inside – he was a child, any child would have done the same, don’t you think?

He sat on the floor and wrapped one of the presents – the biggest one, of course, that was the one which attracted his whole attention. He giggled, and with his clumsy childish arms he quickly unwrapped it, tearing up the gaudy paper and scattering it all around him.

What was inside the box it was so amazing and wonderful that Luke couldn’t help but scream – a happy scream, of course. There was the garage with the cars, that toy he had wanted during the whole year and he always sae when his grandma walked him to the school. And now it was there, it magically appeared in the closet only for him. This was the most wonderful thing ever.

The happiness reflected in his face quickly vanished when Mrs. Questal got in the bedroom and noticed Luke on the gound, with the Christmas presents all around him and one of them even unwrapped. He began to yell all kind of things Luke couldn’t even understand, and then grabbed Luke by his arm and leaded him towards the bedroom, where he sat the kid on the bed, and ordered him to stay there, that he wouldn’t have dinner that night and he wouldn’t play with his sister neither talk to anybody until hi parents decided he could.

Luke was not sure what he had done wrong, but judging by his mom’s reaction it was something terrible what he did. He layed on the bed and put his arms under his head, looking up at the ceiling of the bedroom and thinking about what happened. Slowly, he tried to put everything together. First, he had gone to his parents bedroom to find some sheets for his tents. Then he opened the closet and the sheets fell on the ground. Then, within the sheets, he found some presents, and then his mom showed up and leaded him to his bedroom.

Of course! Suddenly he understood everything! The reason why she was mad at him was because all the clean clothes fell on the ground, and because she might have realized that he wanted to play with the Egiptian Cotton sheets, the one she didn’t want him to touch because she said they were too expensive.

Luke decided he’d go and ask sorry. He wasn’t allowed to get out of his bedroom, but father Smith always said that asking sorry was a good action, and this was what Luke would do right now. He rose from the bed and slowly walked downstairs, hesitant, like if he were afraid that one of his parents would suddenly show up and kill him. Okay, not that this was possible because his parents would never hurt him, but that was pretty much the feeling he had.

Slowly, he haded towards the kitchen where Mrs. Questal was cooking. She didn’t realize her son was there and contunued focused on her task, until Luke approached her, she heard the footsteps and turned to look at him.

“What are you doing here? I told you to stay in your bedroom and don’t move until I told you so!”.

Luke swallowed. She seemed pretty angry, but that wouldn’t hold him back on his purpose. “I’m sorry”, he said, almost in a whisper, “I’m sorry mom, I didn’t want to…”

“I’m sorry you found the presents”, his mom said, sounding a little harsh even if she didn’t want to. She was pretty sure that Luke talked about the presents, she didn’t have any idea that he only wanted to ask sorry because of the sheets. “I thought we’d be able to keep the secret for another three years or so, but…”

Luke suddenly put two and two together. The presents, of course! Whose parents were the ones buying the presents ever Christmas, the ones that made him believe that Santa Claus was real, the ones that always used as an excuse that he had to be a good boy or he wouldn’t get any present. Because Santa was real, and magic, and he could see him all the time, 24 hours per day, seven days per week.

He was so shocked, upset and disappointed at the same time that his first reaction was to run off towards his bedroom again. He didn’t understand why adults had to lie like that to children, why they had to build up their hopes id none of that was true. He laied on his bed, his face against the pillow. And wanted to cry, he really wanted to… but he couldn’t, it was like if the tears didn’t know their way down his eyes. And that made him feel even more upset and helpless.

…

Luke came back to reality when his father gave him his Christmas present. He was 11 years older that the Christmas he had found out about Santa Claus not being real, and he still felt like things barely changed around him.

He unwrapped it, and noticed the cowboy boots. Those were amazing, so amazing that it surrpised Luke that his father bought him something cool like that.

For most part, he’d say that he was a happy guy. Okay, maybe happy was not the word, but he’d say that he had everything he wanted, minus a faily who really understood him. This sounded very cliché, but in his case it began to hurt… and it began to hurt badly. He didn’t complain when it came to money, they bought him everything he needed, but when it came to love… he really felt that they didn’t show too much comfort to him. They never tried to understand his point of view, and if sometimes they tried to they always ended up mad and upset for some stupid reason. Like decided he wouldn’t care anymore, that’s the Christmas gift he decided to give himself.

…

She was sitting at the edge of the pier, looking towards the ocean. The first snow of the year was falling quietly on the beach sand, and quickly the whiteness covered the beach, the snow softly caressed by the light ocean waves.

Luke approached and sat down next to Stacey.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?”, he asked, lingering his eyes from the beach to theocean.

“What?”, she asked, turning to look at him.

“The snow falling on the beach”, he replied, pulling out the pack of cigarettes and placing one between his lips, right before lighting it.

“I thought you were not a romantic”, she teased, pretending to don’t look as happy as she was in reality.

“The fact that I don’t want a serious relationship and I hate cheesy gushy couples doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy moments like this”. Which was true, he enjoyed a lot of moments the nature had to offer him. He had drove his car towards the top of the hills in several occasions, late in the afternoon, just to see the sunset. He sat there, on the driver’s seat, his favorite music playing though the cassette while the warm colors of the sunset caressed the town. Where in those moments that he felt alive.

“Have you missed me?”, she asked, curiously.

“Would that change anything?”, he asked, blowing out the smoke of the cigarette.

“Of course”, she replied, surprised that he said that. “I want to know if I should kiss you right now or not”.

“Is your boyfriend going to show up while I’m kissing you?”, he asked. He couldn’t help being sarcastic about the situation.

“I don’t have a boyfriend anymore”

“You don’t? Well, this is nice to know, because I really disliked Nick”. He didn’t dislik the fact that he did her before him, he disliked the fact that he was a prick who only cared about his money and his appearance.

(TBC)

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-12T22:41:00

2007-11-12T21:43:38Z

Day: #12
Words so far: 22584 (titles included)
% of NaNo done: 45,16%
Chapters completed: 5/12

Words in chapter 1 (July): 4175 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 2 (August): 4172 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 3 (September): 4184 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 4 (October): 4191 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 5 (November): 4171 - FINISHED
Words so far in chapter 6 (December): 1673/4167

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-12T22:39:00

2007-11-12T21:40:40Z

Chapter 6: December

December first. This was the day that Luke stopped being a kid. And began to be a man. To him, not being able to drive a car meant not being a man, yet, but today was his 16^th birthday, a day he had been waiting for since the very same day he was born.

His father barely talked to him since what happened in Boston on Thanksgiving, and his mom reminded Luke about it the whole time, something that made Luke wonder if the woman was really pissed off about it, or if she was enjoying the fact that at least she had en excuse to tell Luke he was stupid.

Helen bought a big party – the most expensive she found – because she liked to go to the stores and pretend they were rich and a close family. This was stupid, the whole town knew about their problems and about Helen’s ways, so it was a really stupid things to do. Then, she talked everybody about her little Luke growing up, and how proud she was of him, and Luke only wanted to throw up at his mom’s hypocrisy. That was definitely not normal, and at some point it would turn against her. For now, though, it only turned against Luke.

So the whole family was sitting around the table, after dinner, with the cake in the middle and 16 candles on it. While Luke blew the put down the candles, the other three – mom, dad and his younger sister Caroline, who was 14 at the moment – watched at him, wondering which sort of wish would run though the guy’s mind. None of them trusted him enough to think that maybe he asked something nice, like peace for the whole world, or happiness in the family. Only Caroline didn’t judge Luke, she liked his brother.

Luke and Caroline had been pretty close – something that with the years would change, but for now they were close. He was pretty protective with her, but not in an overwhelming way. When she needed something, or there was somebody who made her life difficult, Luke tried to help her in the best way possible, but never solving 100% of her problems because he was aware that she needed to take care of her. She didn’t want Carol to turn into one of those persons who always needed somebody else to protect them and never dared to face life by themselves. Carol was the last hope he had to get alone with somebody who belonged to his same family.

About the kiss with Lily, nobody in the family mentioned it again. Ever. His mom kept pretending that it never happened, while Mr. Questal was so upset about it that barely talked to Luke. Once Caroline told Luke that he was sorry the way everything happened, that she’d talk to their mom if Luke wanted, but he said no. He didn’t need anybody helping him, he didn’t need anybody talking to his mom, who apparently couldn’t understand that a kiss was just a kiss and you didn’t need to make a big deal out of it. It wasn’t like he’d marry Lily, he only kissed her and that was it.

The Dodge Dart was fixed and ready to get in the road. Luke couldn’t feel more proud of himself for fixing it, and really helpful with Mr. Woodstoves who had helped him and gave him several of the pieces he had needed without making Luke pay for them. In exchange, though, Luke began to work at the auto repair shop, something that he began to do to pay for the pieces – he didn’t like the idea of people giving him something because they felt bad for him – but then he liked it so much and got so involved, that Mr. Woodstoves asked him if he’d like to work in there despite what his mom thought about it. This time, Luke wasn’t stupid enough to let his mom know about it, it was his life and it was not that he was doing anything bad for working as a mechanic, so he accepted. It was official – he had a job, and he was now a mechanic.

The first days working there were pretty harsh. Luke felt bad because there were only a few things he was able to do, but with Mr. Woodstoves patience and with his willpower to learn the job, he quickly began to understand more and more, and without realizing he was able to fix a car only by himself. He felt happy, and he earned money that allowed him to buy a record or a pair of jeans without needing his parents money. At some point, he’d like to start saving money to live with own life, but that would take more than a few hours working at the auto repair shop after class.

The first time Luke went for a drive with the fixed Dodge Dart, he went alone. His initial intention was to pick up Gerard, but then he decided that this was a moment to be alone with the car. Nobody else in between, just him and his lover, with nobody else getting in the middle and telling him where to go or how to drive. Speed made him selfish, and it was the most pleasant of the feelings.

He put his favorite cassette in the stereo, aloud, and started the engine, which also sounded like music in his ears. Suddenly, he felt powerful, capable of doing anything. It was a weird feeling and pretty hard to explain, but he felt that he had the control of everything right now, like if the whole world was under his feet and he could do whatever he wanted with it. This what the only thing he had wanted to have since he was a child, a car, his own car. He had never wanted to be rich or famous, those things had never interested thing. The only thing he needed was to have a car and get on the road.

He drove off the town towards the highway. From behind the wheel everything looked different, like looking at the world though a different point of view, like wearing a special pair of col glasses. He liked it. He left the town and quickly the landscape changed, the winter fields and the grey sky making everything seem magical, like some kind of dream he liked to live. He knew that from now on, everything would be different, and no matter what happened or how bad life treated him, he’d always have the car to escape. This was all he needed to be happy, the only freedom he wanted was the one the road would give him.

…

The lights sparkled everywhere and the leaves danced lonely on the dirty corners. There was a magical air covering the town, and everybody walked around looking happy, with a big wide smile plastered on their faces. It was Christmas eve.

Luke was sitting in church, surrounded by people who wore their best clothes and expensive perfumes only to show off how rich they were and how powerful their family was. He didn’t believe in God, he didn’t believe in religion, he didn’t believe in Christmas either, and being there made him feel sick. Still, he didn’t want to argue with his family, not in Chrismas. Today he’d try to get along with them, being as hypocrital as the rest of people in town, only because he knew that the less pissed off his parents were, the sooner he’d be able to disappear and get up from the Christmas table.

There was a girl sitting in the row in front of the wearing a really short skirt. It wasn’t short enough to give Luke the opportunity to see her panties, but he imagined what sort of underwear she was wearing. She was hot, with blonde curly hair, and next to her there was a woman that should be her mom, or maybe her aunt. Looking up and down at her body, Luke imagined what he’d do with her.

In his fantasies, he and that curly haired girl they were together into the church, but there was nobody else in there, just them. He fucked her right there, in one of the benches, with all the figures of the saints surrounding them, their moans breaking the sepulchral silence of the big place. At some point, the priest – that old man that annoyed Luke so much - got into the church and caught them in fraganti, but they continued fucking, they were way too immersed in what they were doing to realize that somebody else was there. The priest was about to yell at them, but because it was a fantasy and fantasies weren’t supposed to end up like real life, Luke returned back to the reality, with a big grin on his face, and an huge erection underneath his pants. He stuffed both hands inside his brown leather jacket and covered the croth of his pants with it. At least today he wasn’t wearing jeans, tight jeans made these kind of situations even more uncomfortable.

Later, when the Christmas mass ended, Luke found out that the girl had a boyfriend. Not that he cared anyway, he had done girls who had a boyfriend in other occasions and that didn’t scare him. What was more, he was sure that this turned him on.

Apparently, curly haired girl’s parents knew Luke’s parents, so both families talked for a while in front of the church, wishing each other a happy Christmas, and smiling like if there was no pain in the world. Meanwhile, Luke kept fantasizing on making out with that girl. This was what people did in Christmas anyway, right?

Once at home it was time to have The Dinner. Mrs. Questal had cooked during two days only for that night, and everything looked so delicious and smelled so well, that Luke always forgot all the problems he had with his family. Almost.

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-11T20:23:00

2007-11-11T19:25:45Z

Day: #11
Words so far: 20908 (titles included)
% of NaNo done: 41,81%
Chapters completed: 5/12

Words in chapter 1 (July): 4175 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 2 (August): 4172 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 3 (September): 4184 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 4 (October): 4191 - FINISHED
Words so far in chapter 5 (November) - 4171 - FINISHED

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-11T20:21:00

2007-11-11T19:23:37Z

(...)

It was an understatement to say that the voice broke their passionate kiss in a matter of seconds. Luke didn’t even dare to open his eyes and turn towards the other direction, because he knew what was coming from. He had recognized aunt Rose’s voice, a voice that was quickly followed by the noise of the steps of the rest of the family members that headed towards the back porch to check was going on.

But at some point they’d have to face the reality, and Luke was the first one doing so. Trying to seem confident about it, he casually turned his head towards the voice, spotting the whole family standing by the kitchen’s door, looking at them like if they were some weird animal that suddenly showed up in the back garden and they were wondering what to do with it.

“Luke!!!”, Helen Questal was all red in anger, “Oh my God, Luke!”. She couldn’t say anything else, because right after yelling her son’s name, he fainted, causing confusion among the family, and giving Luke a little break.

Several of the family members – mainly the women – gathered around Helen, laying on the ground. The patted her cheeks and put her legs up, trying to wake her up again. Meanwhile, Alexander – Lily’s father and Luke’s aunt – walked towards the young people.

“Lily, Luke! Get inside the house now. I want to talk to you both”, he paused, and quickly yelled, “NOW!”.

Luke breathed deeply, stuffed the hands inside the pockets of his jeans, and casually began to walk inside, almost dragging his feet. He was tired. Tired of always being yelled at, of always being the one who did something wrong, of being accused of breaking some stupid rule only because it wasn’t the correct thing to do.

Luke knew what would come know. The Speech. Uncle Alexander would tell him that he was being a bad influence for Lily, that she was a nice girl, that she’d never so something as horrible as kissing a guy – okay, kissing her cousin – that Luke was the black sheep of the family and that he shouldn’t be allowed to spend the Thanksgiving them with them. Of course, then she’d try to keep Lily away from him, and they’d never visit them again in the town, and his mom would be terribly mad at Luke because he was the one ruining the reputation of the whole family. That, if the family had any reputation at all. This was the same exact reason why nobody wanted to talk about aunt Margaret’s death, because rumour had it that she was into drugs when the accident happened. It was a pity that she was dead, because Luke would have got along with her – not because of the drugs, but because none of both seemed to be good enough for the Questals.

“Luke” uncle Alexander shot the guy a killer look. “why were you kissing my daughter?”

Luke had a flashback of that day in Stacey’s party, when her boyfriend came in and everything seemed to be his fault. He wondered if his uncle would also try to punch him, and Lily would admit it had been her fault too.

He shrugged. The question couldn’t be more stupid. Why he had kissed Lily? Hell, because she was hot, because she wanted to kiss him too, because she had missed him, because it was the best thing to do in a family meeting where everybody else was talking about money and trying to be better than the rest of the family. None of these seemed to be good options at the moment – Luke usually didn’t give a shit, but that didn’t mean he was stupid.

“I’m sorry”, he said, thinking that at least this would calm his down a little. But instead of calming him down, uncle Alexander had a fit.

“You’re sorry? What the heck are you talking about Luke? You don’t have any idea about what being sorry means. You can’t be sorry if you’re not intelligent enough to realize that what you were doing in the back garden it’s called incest”.

Luke couldn’t help but laugh – sarcastically, of course. “Really?”, he asked, raising a brow, “And what is called to accuse me of something you don’t have any idea about?”

“I know what kissing is about. First you kissed her, then you wanted to drag her to bed”.

Luke shook his head. That man was retarded. He’d have been proud to tell him that he had already done his daughter, but he didn’t want to give Alexander another reason to yell. His head was already hurting because of all the yelling and lectures he had dealt with during the past months.

He wondered when did his life turn so complicated, when he began to behave like that. At the beginning, he blamed Gerard, he assumed that it was his fault that he always ended up in some kind of mess because the other guy seemed to enjoy breaking the rules more than himself. Luke, though, wouldn’t say that he did it for breaking the rules, when he wanted to do something he never stopped to think if that was allowed or not, he simply did it. Which was the problem in kissing somebody who also wanted to kiss you? If Lily hadn’t wanted to kiss him, but Luke had done it against her will, then his uncle would have had reasons to yell at him. But yelling somebody who only wanted to make you daughter happy? That was stupid.

He turned towards Lily, hoping that at least she’d say something. But she didn’t. He couldn’t help he was living the same situation again, he couldn’t believe that a girl was behaving like a bitch to him in second time in only a couple of months. If that was life, if that was what women had to offer to him, then he wouldn’t fall in love ever. He’d be a rock, he wouldn’t show his feelings anymore, and no matter what happened or how hard a woman tried, he’d never let them get him further than his body.

“I don’t want you to get close to my daughter again, I am clear?”, The man’s voice sounded menacing, “And this includes not talking to her, not watching at her… and not being in the same room that she is unless somebody else is there to make sure that you keep your male hormones under control”.

“Maybe you should ask your daughter what did she think about the kiss”, Luke said, thinking that she was on his right to complain about the situation and try to defend himself.

“Excuse me?”, Alexander asked menacingly, at the same time that Lily rose from the couch and turned to look at Luke.

“What are you talking about Luke?”, she looked confused, definitely that girl would be a great actress, “You kissed me, I tried to stop you, but you kissed me anyway”.

Luke didn’t reply. He was tired of arguing and complaining and always being the evil one. He was tired of people looking down at him, of others thinking that the only thing he was able to do was to mess things up. He rose from the chair, and instead of saying anything, he walked out of the room.

Outside, he caught the rest of the family members listening behind the door. He wanted to laugh, but the situation was too pathetic to do something like that. In any other circumstances he’d have lowered his head and walked past them as fast as he could, but he didn’t. Instead he looked at every single one of them straight in the eye, not feeling ashamed at all about what happened – if there was somebody there who should feel ashamed was his cousin Lily, not him, even if nobody else knew about what really happened.

He didn’t wait for anybody or anything. He left the house, and headed towards the train station. He almost could hear his mom yelling that somebody should go and follow him… but nobody did. Everybody seemed to have better things to do than going after the loser, which didn’t bother Luke at all.

Once into the train, he leaned her back on the seat and closed his eyes. He didn’t know what he was going to do once he arrived in town again, but at least now he got to have some time alone with himself. To think, to be alone, to don’t listen to anybody telling him what to do or how to act. He wondered for how long he’d be able to resist that, for how long he’d be able to live under the same roof than his family. But he didn’t have money to do anything else or go anywhere else. He needed to find a job, no matter what his mom said. Find a job, get the old Dodge Dart finally fixed, and at least have some freedom, because now he was so overwhelmed, that he was sure that he wouldn’t resist that for too long.

Once Luke arrived in town, the streets were desert and nobody seemed to be around… it had sense, it was Thanksgiving and people gathered together, staying all day inside homes, and forgetting about anything else happened in the world. It was one of those days everybody smiled, everybody was happy for some reason… everybody had somebody to share that with, minus Luke.

He headed towards the beach and sat on the sand. He didn’t mind the cold breeze hitting his face, neither the sand stucking everywhere in his clothes. He lingered her eyes towards the ocean and let it’s wonderful blue colour enrapture his senses. There was something about the ocean, something that helped him forget about everything. No matter what happened and how wrong everything went, he’d always have the ocean. It was when he was alone with himself, that he felt alive.

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-10T22:23:00

2007-11-10T21:25:21Z

Day: #10
Words so far: 19250 (titles included)
% of NaNo done: 38,5%
Chapters completed: 4/12

Words in chapter 1 (July): 4175 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 2 (August): 4172 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 3 (September): 4184 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 4 (October): 4191 - FINISHED
Words so far in chapter 5 (November) - 2513/4167

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-10T22:20:00

2007-11-10T21:23:44Z

Stacey looked up at him in the eye. The next thing Luke knew, she was pressing her lips against his, both of them melting into a sweet, brief kiss.

When they broke the kiss Luke was about to kick himself. What the heck was he doing? He had promised himself he’d avoid these kind of situations in the future, that no matter how pretty or sweet Stacey seemed to be he’d never trust her again. He promised himself that he’d keep his heart safe and his feelings under control… but apparently none of those promises seemed to work when she was around. Was that love? Luke didn’t think it was love, but it was something pretty similar to that. Maybe he’d fall for her soon, because no matter how much he tried to delay it, or hide the evidences, it was obvious that he felt something for her. Something strong, something that made him feel insecure and fragile… and yet it was an amazing feeling.

“I like you Luke”, she said, almost in a whisper while she kept her lips still close to his.

Luke smiled. He wanted to say that he liked her, too, but he wasn’t strong enough for that. If he did tell her that, maybe she’d associate ‘like’ with ‘love’, and then it would be even harder to deal with the whole situation. That was typical Luke, try to dodge feelings to don’t hurt himself and the others he cared about in the process, and for this same reason, people judged him as cold, only because they didn’t know anything about what was going on inside his mind.

“You don’t like me?”, she asked, noticing that he stayed quiet instead of giving her any kind of feedback.

“It’s not that I don’t like you Stacey”, he said, trying to be sincere about it but not hurt her in the process. “but I don’t know you enough to say something that would take me a little bit of time to find out. You’re a great girl, b…”

“but what?”, Stacey interrupted him, “Not good enough for your cool self?”, she asked, sounding a little annoyed and upset at the same time.

“Stacey”, he tried to calm her down, but he was not good at these sort of situations, and less when it came to share feelings. “When I tell you that I like you, I want to have reasons to say so. I don’t want to tell you something that I don’t feel, not because you’re not a great person and a somebody I wouldn’t like, but because I want to actually feel it when I say it”, he raised his hand, in a motion that asked her to stay quiet because he wanted to add something else. “And before you say anything else, let me tell you that I want to know you better, because I’m sure you’re the sort of person I’ll end up liking”.

“Is this your way to ask me out?”, she asked, raising an eyebrow.

Luke sighed. Him in a relationship? This is not what he was looking for or what he wanted to get. He had never seen the point in serious relationships, you could love somebody, or like them, and not to be attached with them in some kind of weird deal that didn’t allow you to feel anything for anybody else. Maybe he had been like that forever, or maybe it was a consequence of seeing his parents, who seemed to be together only because it was ‘the correct thing to do’. Her mom used to tell her husband what to do and how to behave, and Luke’s dad only allowed because it was easier to deal with her, that dealing with all the paperwork and mess that a divorce would mean. Not that they ever talked about getting divorced – maybe they would never do something like that – but it was sad to see that, at the end, the only reason why people got together was because it was what the society expected from you. Not that Stacey was pointing out marriage – that would have been scary considering their age – but to get going out together was establishing some sort of pre-marital relationship that would only deal to a bad, boring situation.

Yes, routine scared him, and routine in relationships – or with girls he could hook up for the same matter – was one kind of routine he’d like to avoid during his whole life.

“I’m not asking you out”, he finally said, coming back to reality, his mind working faster than his words – something that he had always considered a positive part of his behaviour. “What I’m trying to say is that I’d like to get to know you better, you know, hanging out from time to time, going to drive-ins, bowling, to the beach in summer, whatever”, he stared at her in the eye, “And this involves not to feel ashamed of me in front of your friends”.

“You’re hot, how I’d feel ashamed of you?”, she asked, knowing that at the end he was right, but not daring to admit it openly just because she wasn’t the sort of girl who’d admit something like that. She was Stacey, the perfect Stacey, and being a bitch was only another of the things involved in the whole package of her perfect self. “I mean, my friends like you. Mary said that you’ve got the best arms in the whole school, and Camille always said that your hair is gorgeous”.

“They do?”, Luke asked, trying to recall who those girls were, in case he could make out with them at some point. “You’ll have to introduce them to me”,

“Don’t build up your hopes, Luke”, Stacey said, a hint of jealousy hitting her mind even if she quickly moved it away. “You’re not their type”.

…

Thanksgiving wasn’t only an special occasion to eat turkey and be happy for the harvest, it was also a great opportunity to remember why you hated family meetings so much.

This time, the whole family would meet again for Thanksgiving. During the past years they never did it because, since aunt Margaret died, it didn’t seem the correct thing to do – yes, in the Questal’s family when somebody died the others weren’t allowed to eat turkey, or at least it seemed that way -, but this year, and because their meeting it October had been so great, the family decided they’d meet in Boston – where the other half of the Questal’s family lived – to celebrate the holiday all together. So Luke and his parents got into the car, and drive during several hours only to see some persons none of them felt like visiting.

Seeing Lily again was refreshing and weird at the same time. They had had fun in the beach when she had been in the town last month, and she was as hot as she always – maybe she had even improved during that month, and Luke quickly felt like doing his cousin again. Even knowing that this was not correct. But which was the difference in her being part of his same family? What did that change? He liked her body, and he’d do her no matter if she was her cousin or not. Hell, he was pretty sure that he’d even do her if she was his sister. Maybe he thought that because he didn’t have any sister, though, it was impossible for him to imagine how gross that would be.

Aunt Margaret had been Lily’s mom. Luke was not sure about how Lily felt about her death, because they never talked about it. During the day she had visited him they had only fucked, and they didn’t talk at all. Yes, it was kind of sad, but which was the point in talking, if none of them felt like it?

Aunt Margaret had died in weird circumstances. She was driving, and all of a sudden her car went down a cliff on the road she was driving. Some people said it had been a heart attack, others said that she fell asleep on the wheel, and there was some people that dared to say that she did that on purpose because she was bored of the kind of life she was having. Whatever it was that happened, Luke didn’t really care. He didn’t know her, and even if he felt bad that he died, he couldn’t say that he’d miss her because they had never been close and she never recalled his birthday. Lily had her eyes. Or so said Luke’s mom. She also said she had her hair, and her pale skin.

“Hey”, Lily approached Luke when the rest of the family were gathered in the hallway, and leaded him towards the back porch. “I’ve been thinking a lot about… well, you know, about what happened”.

“And what happened?”, Luke asked, knowing that she was referring to the day they had sex, but not wanting to make a big deal out of it. This was one of the few reasons why she disliked having sex with a girl, they used to make a big deal out of anything.

“You forgot?”, Lily asked, in a tone of voice that suggested that slapping him right in his cheek was the first thing that crossed her mind.

Luke laughed at her reaction while shaking his head. “How I would forget?”, he smiled and looked her up and down, “I would never forget this body, no matter how many girls I slept with”.

And apparently, this was the reply she wanted to hear, because she kissed him right there, deeply on his lips, while all the family were in the hallway, unable to imagine what was going out between the two cousins.

While kissing her, Luke slid his right hand underneath her shirt and stoker her breasts, a moan escaping her lips while he did so. Slowly, he lowered his hand to undo his jeans, and was so lost and immersed in the situation that he barely saw the screams happening around them.

“Oh my God! Lily! Luke! What are you doing?”

(TBC)

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-09T23:21:00

2007-11-09T22:27:45Z

Day: #9
Words so far: 17560 (titles included)
% of NaNo done: 35,52%
Chapters complited: 4/12

Words in chapter 1 (July): 4175 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 2 (August): 4172 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 3 (September): 4184 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 4 (October): 4191 - FINISHED
Words so far in chapter 5 (November) - 823/4167

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-09T23:10:00

2007-11-09T22:12:40Z

“We’re not going to say anything”, Luke said, after blowing out the smoke. “Nothing at all”.

Gerard raised an eyebrow at Luke. This was pretty new. Usually Luke was the quiet one, the ones who didn’t care doing one way or the other, but today it seemed that he had made a decision – and a harsh one. “We’re not going to say anything? What if they find out? What if we killed that person? What if…? Hell Luke, we could go to jail!”

“And in case we tell we were the ones doing it, we could go to jail, too”, Luke stated, “Or you forgot they opened us an expedient at the Police Station?”

Long silence. Both guys took a deep breath. Around them nothing could be heard but the soft murmur of the river, and the braches of the trees moving with the cold October breeze.

“I’m pretty sure that nobody saw us, it’s impossible. I somebody had noticed us, or knew that we were the ones doing it, somebody would have followed us, or stopped us to avoid that we could go away”. It didn’t seem a very convincing explanation mostly because maybe somebody saw them but didn’t have time to follow them, but right now was the only thing they had, and their only hope to get away from this without being sent in some weird boarding school like his mom had been wanted to do every time Luke did something she called ‘stupid’. Now, this time, she’d have enough reasons for it.

What bothered Luke the most, though, was that Gerard would be the one whose family would protect him, while Luke’s family… Hell, they’d freak. Of course this time there was Mike’s bike involved.

“What are we going to do with the bike?”, Luke asked Gerard, trying to hide his concern.

“What do you mean?”

“Your brother is going to be mad if we tell him that we broke his bike. Not to mention that when people know that there was a bike involved in the accident, they quickly put two and two together”.

“Shit!”, Gerard stroked his chin, “We need to think about something, we need to…”

“We’ll get rid of the bike”.

“What?”, Gerard frowned, “Are you crazy?”

“I’m not the one who wants to go to jail”, Luke replied, half sarcastically. “They’ll think that somebody stole the bike, they won’t suspect we were the ones doing it”.

Gerard thought about it for a while. He knew as much as Luke that the risk was high, but he didn’t want to be caught. “What if they investigate? They’ll find our footprints in the garage”.

“Of course they’re going to find them, it’s your house”. Sometimes, Luke wondered if Gerard used his brain at all, but that was something he’d never say aloud to his friend.

Because the bike still worked, they considered the possibility of ridding it somewhere else and burn it where nobody would caught them. But the sound of the engine might attract the police, so instead they decided they’d burn it in there, and throw it in the river. It seemed like the best option. And then, even if the police found it, all the evidences would be gone because of the fire and the water, and they’d never catch them. Yeah, that seemed like the best of the plans.

In moments like those, it come in as handy to be a smoker and always carry a lighter. They cleaned the ground, moving aside the leaves and surrounding the bike with stones, trying to avoid that the fire would spread – the last thing they needed know was causing some sort of wildfire in the forest and be arrested for it. When everything seemed to be ready, Luke handed the lighter to Gerard, and let him the ‘privilege’ to him. After all, it was his brother’s bike.

It took several seconds to Gerard to gather the courage for doing it. When he finally did, his hands were shaking and he had to close his eyes for a while, like trying to avoid seeing a reality that would probably go with him during the rest of his life – for good and for bad. They both knew that this was wrong, that it wasn’t the correct thing to do. But being young, wild and coward – yeah, coward – wasn’t always the best of the mixtures.

The fire caused a lot of smoke, but fortunately there was a dense fog that surrounded the forest and the river area. It had been a summer night, the smoke would have attracted the police, but this time the cold season played in their favour.

They waited by the fire until it was out. It was early in the morning – 6am – when the fire was finally out, and what remained of the bike was black and burnt, making it impossible to recognize it was the same bike. Despite how tired they were, they both grabbed the bike and threw into the river, causing a weird noise that broke the silence into the forest. The fog was still there, covering everything, also his soul.

Chapter 5: November

November brought the cold weather in town. Streets were usually lonely, it began to get dark earlier, and residents tried to seek warmness and comfort inside their homes, away from the cold breeze that hit their skins as soon as they reached the street.

The cold days always made Luke nostalgic. He didn’t know why, but the coldest it was outside, the more he wanted to get out on the street and spend some time alone with himself, watching at the ocean from the top of the hills, or walking along the boardwalk until this finished and his feet met directly with the beach – the part of the beach that was never crowded in Summer because it was too far away and you couldn’t go there with your car.

He was sitting by the lighthouse, his back leaned against the hall, when he heard some steps approaching him. He didn’t turn, probably it was somebody walking a dog, or jogging, it happened the whole time. Hearing a young girly voice surprised him, though.

“Hey”

Luke turned, frowning slightly when she saw Stacey standing there. He didn’t have any idea of what she was doing there, but he knew that he wouldn’t allow her to break his heart again.

“Hey”, he replied, trying to sound neutral. Depending on what she said, he’d ask her to go away.

“Do you mind if I sit with you?”, she asked, a little hesitant.

Luke shrugged, “If you want...”.

So it seems that all of a sudden, the girl didn’t mind if he got her clothes dirty. Luke was pretty sure that she was there for some reason, she wanted to get something out of him, otherwise she wouldn’t want to spend time with Luke Questal, the pathetic loner who always tried to avoid every single one of the social events happening at school.

“I’m sorry”, she said softly, averting her eyes from him to look at the ocean. “I know I behaved like a bitch, and it wasn’t my intention. Sometimes….”, she paused to breath deeply, “Sometimes I do things that I don’t want to do, but I can’t do anything to avoid doing them either, you know what I mean? It’s like if it were somebody else who said all those horrible things or acted in that terrible way, not me”,

A sarcastic laughter escaped Luke’s lips. “I can’t believe you’re using this pathetic and sad excuse to justify why you ignored me”.

“I wasn’t ignoring you Luke, and it’s not an excuse”

“You were ignoring me. Not when I was the star of the basketball game, of course, but when you realized I’d never be the guy you wanted me to be, then you stopped talking to me”. Luke didn’t sound mad, but upset, sad, even disappointed. “I understand if none of your friends thinks I’m the good guy for you, I understand if I don’t have a fancy car like those guys on the party have, but what I’ll never understand is that you dragged me to your bedroom, and when your boyfriend showed up you pretended it was me, that you didn’t want to be there, that I was the evil one in that whole story”. Hell, this sounded like a cheap soap opera you’d see on TV every morning.

“Luke please”, Stacey stared at him in the eye, “I already told you I’m sorry, what else do you want me to do?”

Luke sighed. “I don’t want you to do anything, just… Hell Stacey, just get out of my life”. He didn’t want to say so, and he didn’t want it to sound so harsh, but he wasn’t the sort of guy who’d keep his mouth shut when he wanted to say something, either.

“Is that what you want?” she asked, a tear falling down her cheek, “I thought you were different, that you wouldn’t be like them, but you are. I’m sorry, but it’s your fault. You only cared about how hot I am on the outside, but you never card to know the person inside of me, so now if you’re disappointed is all your fault, not mine”.

Luke shook his head at her. “You can’t blame me for judging you, because you’ve done the same to me”.

Now Stacey was crying harder. “I love you Luke, I really love you, I…”, he trailed off, and began to cry more and more.

Luke didn’t know what to do. Confused and upset at the same time, he wrapped an arm around her shoulder while he hold the cigarette with the other, and let her lean his head over his shoulder. “It’s okay Stacey, it’s okay…”, he whispered. But he didn’t reply to her three words. He couldn’t reply to those, because no matter what he said, it was either lying, or telling her the truth. And the truth was too harsh to be told to her just when she was crying.

(TBC)

lemonade_nano @ 2007-11-09T00:39:00

2007-11-08T23:43:59Z

Day: # 8
Words so far: 15880 (titles included)
% of NaNo done: 31,76%

Words in chapter 1 (July): 4175 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 2 (August): 4172 - FINISHED
Words in chapter 3 (September): 4184 - FINISHED
Words so far in chapter 4 (October): 3337/4167