The Pause Between Breaths

Savasana: Jesekah

Holding Your Breath: Lila

Tighten: Rex

The Long Inhale and the Short Crash – Barry

The Labor of Breathing – Cecily

Conclusion – Taking the First Breath Last

Savasana: Jesekah

Minute 4: Ardha Chandrasan

Jesekah pulled the air into her lungs and concentrated on the motion of pushing it back out instead of holding her breath. She closed her eyes and tried to visualize a light or a tunnel or a wide open sky or any of the soothing visual aids that had been suggested to her in order to slow her mind down, and she felt the one nanosecond moment when she could hold Ardha Chandrasan with absolute integrity. That’s what they called in in Bikram yoga when you found that isolated spot in the middle of a pose where you could really let go of all the other noise -- of the thinking about flexibility, of the morning argument with Matt over having run out of coffee filters, of the afternoon frustration at work when the rumor had started that she would not be given the advertising directorship (and though quickly dispelled, the rumor had caused a visible stress line to form between her brows), of the uneasy queasiness in her stomach that felt like it should be the warning that her period was about to start, of the nagging knowledge that her period was definitively late, of the sudden and unusual rain pelting the Dallas streets.

She rarely found those moments of integrity in her life, even in the strict ninety-minute Bikram routine that she performed with precise, scheduled regularity every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. This was how she managed her life, a series of lists and schedules and goals that could not be veered from without chaos ensuing across the board. Treadmill running and weight training was scheduled at 5:00am with her personal trainer on Monday and Wednesday, followed by a protein drink and a copy of Cosmo in the cab on the way to the office. Friday cocktails with the girls happened at 7pm after work, followed by Matt meeting her for a late dinner, an early fuck and a Netflix dvd as they fell asleep midway through some blockbuster hit with car crashes and a predictable love story. Wednesday nights were board meetings for a variety of charitable causes. Sunday was distance running followed by four or five hours of prep work for the upcoming work week, interspersed with phone calls to her friends from college, her mother and her favorite cousin. Monday nights were hers and Matt’s scheduled night for wedding planning activities, which she already felt hopelessly behind on even though the event was still ten months away. In between the regimen was work, and Jesekah worked like few other women worked. She obsessed over work the way some women obsessed over children. She defined herself by work. She arrived at the office at 7:30am and left at 7:00pm and took her lunch at her desk unless she was meeting with a client. She worked with dogged determination to ensure that none of the Abercrombie beautiful young men or single-and-therefore-able-to-play-the-game-in-ways-she-couldn’t women would be able to catch her promotion trajectory. She made mental notes of the advertising department employees who looked at her wrong or didn’t quite respond fast enough to her call so that when she took the department over from Allen she could speed up their exit from her domain. She was the first one there and the last one gone just so she could keep her edge.

But in between these set events, on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8:00pm and Saturday mornings at 9:00am, she took her Bikram class. And that was when she turned off and found the time to breath.

Minute 16: Dandayamana Janushirasana

The first time Jesekah was introduced to the theory of Bikram yoga, it was by her therapist, whom she saw every other week during her lunch hour on Thursday. The therapist, a soft, round man in his forties with perpetual hang nails and whom Jesekah could only assume had his own arsenal of emotional problems most likely stemming from the challenges that he faced in getting laid, had suggested that while Jesekah was not by nature the type of person who could “bring it down a notch to the type of peaceful living that would me more healthy for her,” the challenge element of Bikram might satisfy the competitive impulse in her while also forcing her to find quiet time in her life to “just be.”

Jesekah hated terms like “peaceful living” and “just be,” and really she had no interest at all in time spent listening to pan flute music and finding her “inner being,” but she could never leave a task undone. Homework was homework, and so that night while Matt was in the living room watching the NBA and drinking the last beer, which he no doubt would forget to replace, she crawled into the bed with her laptop and started to search out Bikram yoga.

The first thing she found was an interview with a Bikram master done on 60 Minutes. She loved 60 Minutes. That, at least, was something.

Bikram, she learned, was a ninety-minute yoga set of twenty-six repeating positions done in 105 degree heat. And it was hard. The interviewed Bikram master, a man named Bikram Choudhury, explained “You use the body as a medium to bring the mind back to the brain.”

And Jesekah had no idea what that meant or what type of hookah a person had to smoke to think that those words made sense, but then she read his next quote. “That’s the biggest problem in America. That’s the way yoga (was) introduced to America. Yoga (in America) means sit and close your eyes and you will look at the lamp and look at the crystal and meditate. Yoga isn’t supposed to be relaxing and meditative, it’s supposed to be torture.”

And suddenly, Jesekah was sold.

Minute 22: Dandayamana Dhanurasana

Allen had called her into his office almost six months ago. She had known something was wrong with him. His twelve-hour workdays had turned into sixteen-hour workdays. He had looked more haggard, and looking more haggard was hard to do if you were Allen. A man of fifty-five, maybe fifty-seven (she could never keep the difference between Allen and her father straight), he was always impeccably dressed, but his eyes were always encased in dark circles. His hair was always slightly in disarray. He always seemed worn down, as though the stress of running the advertising department for one of the largest financial institutions in the world had taken its toll early and he had given into it, accepted it as the way it would be. He had gotten the directorship early on, in his early forties. That, of course, was a feat Jesekah had set herself up to surpass. After Allen, she would be named director at the relatively young age of thirty-five. He’d bred her for it. Set her up for it. And when he called her into his office that day, she had known he was about to tell her that the time was coming. She had known he would tell her from the moment she had caught site of him in the break area a few days earlier, pouring himself a cup of coffee. She had watched the process from behind him. For what seemed like five minutes, he would pour a few inches of coffee into his cup, and then pause to collect himself. At one moment, he actually looked off into space, or at some imperceptible mark on the wall, and seemed lost in thought for endless moments. He had slowed it down.

And Jesekah felt three things. She felt sadness at seeing Allen slow it down when she knew it was against his will. In the early days, when he had just been named director and she had just been placed in charge of the high money accounts in the department, they had embarked on a cliché corporate affair. Renting luxury hotel suites for just hours each Friday to spend time together sweating, drinking hotel wine and forgetting the week. Finding each other naked and relaxed together on business trips. Once even fucking in his office late at night after everybody had left. It didn’t last long. Neither of them really wanted much from it other than an easy escape from the plan, the schedule, the day. She had never told Matt. In fact, she was quite sure that in the way of their generation, Matt had had his own corporate fuck buddy at some point. Probably one of the paralegals in his office. A nice safe affair since the paralegals almost always left the firm quickly to head into law school. But she had formed genuine, caring feelings for Allen along the way. She understood how his drive took him over. She had always had a part of her that wanted the best for him.

But when she saw him that day, knowing that something soon would cause him to have to put an end to letting the drive own him, she also felt excitement. Greed, maybe.

And she felt fear, but she wasn’t sure what the origin of the fear was. Fear that she wouldn’t get what she wanted? Fear that she would fail if she did get it? Fear that someday she, too, would be Allen?

In the office that day, Allen told her it was a tumor. It had started in his liver, but he had taken so long to have it looked at that by the time anybody caught it, it had spread. Six months maybe, but he was planning to work until he had to be put down. He didn’t have any illusions of ending it all on a mountain singing new age Kumbayas. She needed to be ready. They needed to start moving her slowly into the new role. He would have his secretary send Jesekah over all the files she would need to start getting acclimated.

It was Friday. Jesekah closed her office door and watched the sun begin to drop down over the Great State of Texas. Then she headed over to Deep Ellum and had gin and tonics with her girlfriends, got some sushi with Matt, had doggy style sex since they had done it missionary style the week before and fell asleep watching “8 Mile.”

Minute 36: Tulandandasana

Balancing stick pose was one of the hardest for Jesekah. She had a hard time staying still enough to make her body into a single line, extending from her fingertips to her toes, perpendicular to the one leg she was standing on. It required an exercise in rhythmic breathing and concentration beyond most of the other poses. She closed her eyes and counted the air in through her nose and out through her mouth. She tried very hard to be still in that moment.

Minute 48: Tadasana

She had met Matt in her last year of grad school. She was already out interviewing for jobs, and, at the time, he was working as legal counsel at a well-known consumer goods company. The day of her interview, she had a particularly foul morning. Her cab never showed up so she drove her car downtown, but it was the middle of the day and all of the parking garages were full, so she was already running late and had to park almost five big, Texas, city blocks away from the office building. On her way to the interview, she got caught up in a protest about animal fur or ethical standards or saving the planet or SOMETHING outside of a store that apparently did something that people with the kind of time to spend their days protesting cared about. So by the time she got into the interview, she was boiling with frustration and anger, and it seemed to have shown through in her demeanor because her interview was cut short and she only met with two of the three people she was scheduled to meet with. Before she left, the HR person sat her down and politely told her that while her credentials were fantastic, they just didn’t feel like she’d be a good fit with their organization. But best of luck!

And so, suddenly with time on her hands to kill after the shortened, failed interview, and in an even worse mood than before, Jesekah promptly went to the bar across the street for a Sapphire and tonic and a burger, which she ate at the bar. At least at the bar she would watch CNN on the bar tv instead of looking at an empty chair across from her at a table. She didn’t have the kind of patience to not be engaged with some kind of noise.

And there was Matt at the bar with his domestic beer and his club sandwich. Jesekah was from that generation of women who fancied the idea that they could be just as sexually aggressive as men, that generation called “Third Wave Feminists” but which Jesekah preferred to call “Just really screwed by the emphasis on sexual revolution. No pun intended.” But nonetheless, she’d been bred to pick men up as easily as men picked women up, and by nine o’clock that night she and Matt were at her place beginning the routine that would get them through the next decade. Talk about politics, the Business Times, how to decorate the living room. Eat out six out of seven days and eat leftovers out of cardboard boxes on the seventh. Learn about wine and retirement funds. Attend parties together. Take turns picking out the dvd rental. It was…fine. It didn’t interfere with any of their other ambitions while still giving them the security of exactly the type of relationship that all of their friends were in. It made sense in the plan.

That was almost ten years ago. They had moved in together in year three., spending months looking for the perfect downtown loft since they weren’t quite ready for the echoing noise that would result if they moved into a big house in a gated community in the suburbs. The bought each other cooking classes for Christmas one year, but the only time they ever cooked was in the class. He got a little thicker, but not in a bad way. She got a little thinner, but not in a bad way. They thought about buying a dog, but who would walk it in the middle of the day? They bought some high value artwork instead.

On her thirtieth birthday he had asked her if she wanted to get married No, he hadn’t actually proposed to her. Matt wasn’t a risk taker like that. He had asked her if she wanted him to eventually propose to her so that he could start making a plan to do that. She had said they needed to make sure they were on the same page with things first. Did they want children? Would she keep working? What expectations would they have of each other?

And so they talked it out. And decided that, yes, she did want him to propose to her. Yes, they did want to have children, but not until she was in her later thirties. Yes, eventually they would move into the bigger house, but not until there were children, and yes she would work, and yes they would get a nanny and yes that nanny would speak Spanish so the child would learn two languages and and yes there would be a pre-nup and yes it all made sense that this was the kind of life they wanted.

It took him three years to actually propose to her. Promotions for both of them at work and Jesekah’s mother’s passing away, which took her away from Dallas for every weekend for almost eight months and a critically stressful time when they thought Matt was going to get an offer to run for judge (he didn’t, but it was still only a matter of time), had pushed the idea of a wedding back further and further. But one day, on a Sunday, Jesekah was sitting cross-legged in bed reviewing ad reports on her laptop and Matt was in the living room watching football and reviewing law briefs, or so she thought. But suddenly he appeared in the doorway with a bottle of champagne, a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts and a tiny ring box. And she said yes. And her girlfriends thought that it was funny that on the day she was proposed to, Jesekah was wearing her glasses, no makeup and a pair of sweatpants she’d had since college. And Jesekah returned the ring that Matt had picked out and selected one that she liked better. And the two of them agreed to split the cost of the wedding down the middle.

They set a wedding date for two years later. After all, these events take planning, and they both had very busy lives. They made a list of things they would need to do to pull the wedding off, set Monday night as their “wedding task” night, and got to work. And that was a year and a half ago.

Minute 51: Bhujangasana

Cobra pose was Jesekah’s favorite because it was how she lived her life. Poised and anxious and ready. Anybody who told you that cobra pose was a centered moment, a moment in which you could find integrity, was wrong. It was an anxious moment. It was a moment in which you didn’t even try to slow your breaths down.

Minute 64: Poorna Salabhasana

She had really known it the moment her period was late. Her period was like her, always punctual. She had actually woken up that day and put a tampon in even though there was no sign of the thick flow of her insides coming out yet. After all, it would happen sometime that day. Jesekah took her shot every three months to ensure that. In to the doctor, get your shot, fill out insurance forms, return to the office. And when she took the tampon out that night and it was still as white as that morning, she had known. But she had run her mind through the other possibilities. Stress? The strange weather they’d been having with rain in the middle of August? So odd. A change in her body as she hit her mid-thirties? Any of this could explain it.

But she had known. But there is a difference between knowing and knowing.

And knowing came here, in the peak of the locust pose. Laying on her stomach, creating a curve with her body by raising her head and her feet. Pushing the arch of her back to its limit. Counting as she breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth. Integrity came. And in the integrity she knew she was no longer alone in her body. That deep within her, there was another rhythm of oxygen going in and out. And that rhythm was in conflict with hers. It was faster. It was driven by some force different than the one that drove her. But just like her, it would not give up it’s pattern of in and out and heartbeat and the path towards an ultimate goal. Just like her, it would not slow down of its own will.

He would not slow down of his own will?

She would not slow down of her own will?

Jesekah released her locust pose and returned to a flat laying position on her mat. She took in bigger breaths to fill herself back up in the moments before they returned to the pose again. She wondered what she was supposed to feel like at this moment. Next to her, a woman who always came to the same Bikram classes as Jesekah opened her eyes and looked across at Jesekah. And Jesekah wondered if her eyes ever looked as clear as that woman’s.

Minute 71: Ustrasana

Allen had been admitted to the hospital two days ago. Jesekah had not been to visit him yet, but that was because she was suddenly overwhelmed at work. She didn’t officially have Allen’s title yet, but in his absence and with the unlikelihood of his return, she had assumed almost all of his duties on top of her own. There had been this ugly rumor circulating that the executive team had begun to wonder if she really had the experience necessary to manage the entire department. Jesekah had shut that down, quickly scheduling a meeting between herself and some key members of the upper management to show them that not only was she ready, she was prepared to make significant improvements over the way Allen had handled the department.

Matt had been excellently supportive, not once complaining when she needed to stay extra late at the office. Leaving tiny white cardboard containers of food in the refrigerator for her. Changing his daily afternoon check-in phone call to just a text message so that he wouldn’t interrupt her. After all, he understood. His job demanded the same thing sometimes.

This morning, she had received the official offer. Hygienically sealed in an envelope delivered by some administrative assistant from the human resources department. Jesekah had closed her office door, opened the interoffice envelope and read the contents. A pay increase to put her on the level of any male executive in her position. Complete control of the department. Extra stock options. Extra bonus incentives. A director’s title and the hope that should would grow into even bigger roles within the company.

VP? Could she be a VP? Maybe even a partner?

Out of her office window, she saw that big Texas sky, and she felt a pang for Allen. He had put his life into this, and now she would probably surpass him and he would fade away in a hospital bed, looked over by a wife who meant only as much to him as any other building block in his perfect tower of a life, children who probably didn’t even really know him, and the real thing that had driven his life, his work, already passed into the hands of another as though he’d never even been there.

She really should go see him in the hospital.

She took the forms from the envelope, signed her name in the appropriate places, and buzzed her secretary to take them back to the HR department. She’d probably need a second assistant now, what with all the things she would need to manager. Allen had had two assistants, maybe she could retain one of them.

Minute 84: Ardha Matsyendrasana

Spine twisting pose. Life twisting problem. The forms were signed, but if she didn’t prove herself as director, she knew they would let her go. And how could she do that with her belly growing big? With a need to take not weeks but months off? With overwhelming nausea and a problem concentrating? With every male executive looking at her with that “That’s what happens when you trust your company to a woman?” look.

Would they cancel the wedding? Would she walk down the aisle with a big, fat belly and a big fat face and gas and hormones and a ring that wouldn’t fit on her swollen finger? They had planned for this wedding for over a year. Three hundred people were coming. There were going to be four kinds of cake and six bridesmaids.

If she couldn’t prove herself as a director now, would she ever get a second shot? It was different for her, for a woman. You were supposed to want to raise children, but if you took the time to have one, it would count against you forever. It would…change how they all looked at you.

They hadn’t even started looking for a house yet. Would they be able to find one in time? What about finding a nanny? They hadn’t even gotten a puppy because neither of them had time for taking care of it. How could they get ready for this while she was getting promoted and Matt was trying to get a judgeship and they were still planning a wedding?

It wasn’t what she wanted right now.

But as Jesekah twisted her body around and focused on slowing herself down, she felt the other person inside her trying to fit its breaths with hers. His breaths with hers? Her breaths with hers? Not really breaths, Jesekah knew, but the same thing. A taking in and a letting out in a pattern that continued at all times. What would it be like to have something so close to her that they breathed together?

She could barely imagine.

Would that be enough to drive her? Could that be enough to drive her?

Tomorrow, when the strange rain had stopped, she would go to the hospital and see Allen.

Minute 88: Kapalbhati in Vajrasana

The pose is called blowing in firm pose. It is simply about trying to capture the peace of breathing and feeling solid so that you can take it into the outside world with you. For Jesekah, the challenge was much more simple, just find that moment where you feel solid. Where you feel like you’re not a thousand pine needles swept into a dustpan after you’ve dried and fallen off of a Christmas tree. To feel, instead, like you are the trunk of that tree, firm and heavy and lasting long after the decorations have been taken off you and the tinsel has blown away in the wind and you have been discarded into a dumpster or a city corner or a compost pile. To be powerful and heavy even when you have been stripped down and tossed away into aloneness. To have that, even for a moment, was seemingly beyond her.

It was raining in Dallas. She had fought with Matt about the coffee filters. She had panicked about the rumor that she would be passed over for the promotion. Tomorrow she needed to see Allen. There was a nucleus forming deep in her belly. It was unbearably hot in the Bikram studio suddenly. She had a plan. She had a wedding. She had decisions. She had dried up and turned brown and was being swept into a dustpan and she couldn’t slow her breath down enough of her own will.

Namaste.

Holding Your Breath: Lila

Underneath the surface of the pool, Lila opened her eyes and felt the sting of chlorine rushing up against them. She tilted her head up. Above her, the water was coated with fuzzy yellow patches where the sun’s rays hit it, making it seem like a piece of painted glass from her summer camp art class with light blue and yellow tempra paint blotched all over it. Her long brown hair floated in the water around her head, and Lila wondered if maybe she looked like a mermaid from the top half up. She moved her skinny arms and legs in circles to keep her body planted under the water, even though her breath was running out and she could feel herself starting to float up to the top. She turned her head and looked to her right side where Jenni was doing the same thing, a mass of Texas cheerleader blond hair making her look like a weird alien octopus. Lila knew she could outlast Jenni. All Jenni did all summer was cheerleading camp, but Lila did gymnastics camp, soccer camp, dance camp AND twirling camp. She for sure was in better shape than Jenni, even if she didn’t have Jenni’s perfect blond hair and blue eyes. Lila could for sure always win when they played to see who could hold her breath longer underwater.

There she went! Yeah! Lila saw Jenni tilt her tiny little nose up towards the water’s surface and head up as quickly as she could. Lila lasted just a few seconds longer. Just long enough that there wouldn’t be any question about who had come up from under first. She closed her eyes and all she could hear was the sound of the pool water sloshing up against the sides of the pool. She could feel some warm spots on her skin where the sunlight had fought far enough through the water to actually warm her. She loved the moment, when your head got all spinny from almost losing all the air in your system. It was like you were in one of those virtual reality games in the mall where things felt real and not real all at the same time.

Lila couldn’t hold the air in any more. She blew bubbles out of her mouth while she pushed herself up towards the top of the water with her arms. She came out gasping and sucking the air into her lungs. Hot, sticky humid air like you find around a pool. It felt like she was inflating herself back up. Making herself into some puff-n-stuff kind of thing. Not like the lean mermaid she’d been underwater. She turned herself around in the water, floating and using her arms to push the water. Jenni had already taken the best pink floaty raft and was twisting her hair into a million little braids.

“Okay fish girl. You win. We’ll go again though. But who’s got the best raft now? If you’d given up and come up from under, you’d be on the cool pink raft instead of that old woman silver raft. So there!”

Lila smiled and started swimming to the side of the pool where the silver raft her mom used was floating, spitting water out of her mouth the whole way there. Jenni was her best friend. They’d been best friends since they were babies and Jenni’s family moved in down the street from Lila’s. Their mom’s were both stay-at-home moms then, and they’d march up and down the street to each other’s houses every day to gossip and eat lunch and have coffee and, Lila guessed, whatever adult women did. That was years ago, though. Or at least it felt like years ago. When the girls had started school, both of their moms had gone back to work. Lila’s mom liked to say, “I’m not sure how you think we’ll pay for all your prom gowns and a sweet sixteen party and all the other things you need to have if both of us aren’t working!” Lila figured though that her mom had just gotten bored staying at home all day. Lila got bored at home all day, too. Summer seemed to stretch on forever. Some days she had one of her endless camps to keep her busy, but most days it was just her and Jenni floating around in the pool or watching dvds or playing The Sims to see who could build the better family. Lila couldn’t wait to start school again in the fall. The two of them would be in the fourth grade this year. It was their last year in the elementary school before they moved up to the middle school. Next year, in the fifth grade, there would be dances and a cheerleading team and they’d change rooms and teachers for some of their classes. And they’d be best friends just like always. They always went shopping together right before school started so that they could pick out lots of matching clothes. Some days, if their moms didn’t have to go to their jobs until the afternoon, they’d convince each mom to French braid their hair exactly the same way – Jenni with her perfect, shiny blond hair and Lila with her thick, dark Mexicana hair. Best friends forever. That’s what their favorite matching pink hoody sweatshirts said.

Lila climbed onto the side of the pool and launched herself onto the silver raft, spraying splash water all over Jenni on the way.

“Liiiiila! It’s cold! I’m gonna get you for that.”

Lila’s dad had said earlier that he had seen that the rainstorms from the day before might happen again, but right now the sun was burning down on them, turning Jenni’s skin a perfect tan and making Lila even darker. It looked like a perfect afternoon.

***

The first thing you need to know about best friends is that they will do anything to make sure they stay best friends. There may be fights (especially fights over cute boys who play football and wear adorable red ball caps and always make the honor roll), but best friends always make up in the end. Boys can’t really break up best friends. There will be competition about who has the better hair or who gets her period first or who has the better dress for the Christmas dance or who can hold her breath underwater longer, but in the end, each girl will help the other one pick out her prom dress and will insist that their dates take them to prom in the same limo. They will take a picture hugging each other on graduation day, and they will send each other cute little ‘I miss you cards” from college. Years later, they will take a trip together once a year to a spa or a beach to catch up and have “girl time’.

There will probably even be weeks, sometimes months, where best friends don’t speak because they’re so angry at each other for making plans to go to the movies without asking the other one to go or for telling some other friend the secret that they SWORE they’d never tell, never ever ever ever. Those will always end though after they run into each other in the mall, accidentally about to buy the same pair of shoes.

Yes, the thing you need to know about best friends is that they will do anything to stay best friends. And really, there’s no boy, no competition, no silly little piece of gossip that can threaten best friends. There’s really only one thing that can threaten best friends. Another girl who wants one of the dynamic duo for her best friend. Especially if that girl is the prettiest, wealthiest, smartest, most popular girl in the about-to-be-fourth-grade class.

***

“My dad is such a dork. He totally said it was going to rain today.”

The girls had been floating in the warm sun for 15 minutes. Kind of starting to get drowsy and close their eyes now and again. Kind of half talking.

“I think your dad is a sweetheart. Where is he? Is he at work? Your dad is always at work. My dad, too. I hope we never marry guys like that.” Jenni had been best buds with Lila’s dad for as long as either could remember. Both girls were like second daughters to each other’s families, but Jenni and Lila’s dad had a special bond. Jenni was so spunky, and the two of them would shoot baskets or throw footballs in the back yard. Lila’s dad always told Jenni she was way too girly and somebody had to teach her a little bit about the inner tomboy in her.

“Yeah, he’s at work. But my mom is here. They’re freaked out about Shanna missing. They said no little girls were being left alone during the day for creepy men to come and snatch away.”

“Is that what people think happened to Shanna? Some man snatched her away?” Suddenly, Jenni’s voice had dropped to a whisper and she didn’t look anything like an almost-fourth-grade girl anymore. She looked like someone much older.

“Jenni, shhhhh. We can’t talk about it here. If you need to talk about it, we should go up into my room. You need to be careful what you say.”

“No,” said Jenni, “Let’s float around a little more. What if your dad was right and it’s going to rain? I have to do a solo routine at cheer camp tomorrow. I want to be tan for that. Let’s flip over. We can make up stories while I get my stomach even with my back. Yeah?”

“Cool!”

“Here, give me your hand. We can hold hands while we float and that way we won’t get too far apart from each other.”

***
The other thing you need to know about best friends is that they can keep secrets. In fact, nobody is better at keeping secrets than two best friends are. Secrets are one of the key foundations to being best friends. To really be a best friend, you have to be willing to tell your best friend EVERYTHING. If it would go in your diary, not the online version you show the world, but your real diary, then you need to be willing to tell it to your best friend. Otherwise, what’s the point of being best friends? What kind of best friend are you if you wouldn’t put the power of destroying you in your best friend’s hands? If you wouldn’t do that, do you really trust your best friend? Do you really love her?

Keeping secrets is how best friends prove that they are best friends. One best friend may know that the other one really did lose her virginity to Brent Stanley in his older brother’s car after the basketball game, but when the rumor starts floating around school, the best friend will say, “That’s total bullshit. She’s my best friend. I’d KNOW if that had happened, and I’m telling you it’s just Brent making stuff up to seem like he’s a stud or something. She’s totally holding out for somebody better than Brent Stanley. I mean, seriously. If that kind of thing were true, I wouldn’t even want to be her best friend anymore.” But later that night, in the secret club room of one of the girls’ bedrooms, the girls will talk about how Brent Stanley was just practice so that she’d know what she was doing later.

Best friends keep secrets. It’s what they do. You can never believe anything one best friend says about another because they always have an agenda to protect each other. They’re best friends forever. They have matching ankle bracelets to prove it.

***

Shanna’s family moved from Houston to Dallas at the beginning of the summer and right into a house in the same community as Lila and Jenni’s. Shanna looked just like Jenni. Same long blond hair. Same blue eyes. She was taller, but Jenni’s mom kept telling her she hadn’t gone through her growth spurt yet. Shanna was a cheerleader too, but she’d moved to town too late to sign up for summer cheerleading camp at the community center. Shanna wasn’t a shy kid. It didn’t take her long to make friends with all the kids up and down the streets. She had TONS of questions. What were the teachers like? Who were the cutest boys? What did kids here think was cool? Wow, kids in Houston weren’t like them at all! What shoes should she buy for back to school? Should she ride the bus or maker her mom drive her to work? Which was cooler?

It was really clear that Shanna’s favorite target for “cool questions” was Jenni, and that made sense. Every kid on the street could see Jenni and Shanna being perfect twin Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders in ten years. Their hair pulled into identical blond ponytails. Wearing matching cheerleading uniforms. Probably even with the same earrings on. Shanna started showing up at Lila’s house in the middle of the day to ask the girls if she could come swim with them. Lila’s parents were never, ever rude, so they’d invite the new little girl in. But as soon as Shanna came out to the pool, Lila became the girl who got left out of the conversation. Shanna would ask Jenni questions about the girls in cheerleading camp and boys and all the things that Lila and Jenni usually talked about. But she’d ignore Lila unless Lila’s parents were around. As soon as Lila’s mom or dad came out by the pool to check in on the girls or give them lunch, Shanna would start talking to Lila like Lila was her new best friend.

Jenni didn’t even seem to notice it at first. “Lila! You’re crazy. Shanna really likes you. Think how awesome we’d be as a threesome! We’d rule the school. You, me and Shanna! Nobody could stop us. Just give her a chance. I don’t understand why you don’t like her. She’s so much fun.”

Just hearing Jenni defend Shanna made Lila’s stomach tighten up in knots. Was Jenni blind? Didn’t she see how this girl was coming in here and trying to steal Jenni away from Lila? Jenni had been Lila’s best friend FOREVER. There wasn’t some third girl in that equation. They were best friends. Best friends forever. Shanna was just looking for a time and a place and a way to convince Jenni that she didn’t want to be Lila’s best friend anymore.

Of course Shanna started inviting Jenni to do things without Lila around, and whenever Lila would ask there was always an excuse for why. “Lila, we totally called you to see if you wanted to go to the fun park with us, but you were at soccer camp,” or “But you don’t even like horror movies. We just thought you’d rather not come to see a movie that you don’t even like!”

It got worse and worse over the first part of the summer. Before long, Shanna and Jenni had matching yellow t-shirts with pictures of little ducks on them. When Lila asked Jenni why they hadn’t bought one for her, Jenni just quoted Shanna. “Jenni, Shanna said that yellow doesn’t look good on people with brown skin. It’ll make you look like you’re sick or something. We just didn’t get you one because we didn’t want to make you feel like you should have to wear something that was going to look gross on you.”

Lila couldn’t understand why it was that Jenni didn’t see how Shanna was trying to break them up as best friends. She cried and cried at night when the two of them went to the mall or the community center without calling her. When the two of them chatted away floating on the two rafts in the pool, Lila floated down to the deep end and practiced holding her breath underwater for as long as she could. At least underwater, she couldn’t hear them talking about their plans for when school started. She got really good at holding her breath underwater.

It was a Thursday. Shanna and Jenni had gone to watch the boys play baseball at the community center. Lila had moped around her room and played on her computer. It was around ten o’clock when she got an IM from Jenni.

JenniCheer99: I need 2 talk 2 U.
LBug: I’m home. Call me.
JenniCheer99: Can’t call. Can I come over?
LBug: Is Shanna with U?
JenniCheer99: No. Need 2 talk 2 U about her.
JenniCheer99: R your parents home?
LBug: No. Next door at neighbors playing cards.
JenniCheer99: Meet me at the front door in 10.
LBug: It’s too late. Your parents won’t let U come.
JenniCheer99: Sneaking out. C U in 10.

Whatever had upset Jenni, Lila couldn’t wait to hear. She checked her hair once in the mirror and headed down to the door to let Jenni in. Ten minutes later, Jenni showed up in the door in her pajamas. And she’d been crying. Lila grabbed her by her hand and pulled her up the stairs, “Hurry up. If my parents come home and see you, they’ll call your parents and bust you.”

In Lila’s purple bedroom with a real sky with clouds painted on the ceiling, the two girls sat cross-legged on the bed. Jenni reached out and took both of Lila’s hands, “You were totally right about Shanna. Lila, you wouldn’t even believe the terrible things she said to me tonight. I don’t even want to tell you because you’ll get so pissed, and you’ll totally think I’m so stupid for falling for her. I can’t believe her! She’s so terrible.”

“Just tell me what she said, Jenni.” Lila felt her heart warming up. Her best friend had come back to her, and together they were going to remove the thing that had tried to break them up.

“She said that when school started, she and I couldn’t be friends with you anymore because nobody would think we were cool if we were friends with…with…”

“What, Jenni? What’d she say?”

“She said that nobody would want to be friends with us if we were friends with a greasy, low-class Mexican whose mom should be cleaning our kitchens instead of living in the same type of house as us. She said we needed to start a rumor that you’d done something horrible and embarrassing so that nobody would like you and we’d be able to stop being your friend. She asked me to tell her something that we could tell everybody about you that they’d believe so that we’d be able to stop being your friend. Lila! I didn’t even know what to do.”

Lila felt like she’d just been hit, hard. Her parents had only hit her once, about a year ago, when she’d used the F-word in front of them, and even that hadn’t felt as shocking as this feeling right now. Did kids think of her as a low-class Mexican? She had lots of friends. It was Texas, there were lots of Mexican kids in her school. She’d never even thought that somebody could hate her for that. And Jenni. Had Jenni betrayed her? Was Lila going to go from being one of the most popular girls in the school to the kind of girl nobody would sit with during lunch. Jenni knew all of Lila’s secrets. What had she told Shanna?

“Jenni, what did you tell Shanna? Is everybody going to be hating me when school starts?”

“NO! I didn’t tell her anything, Lila! We’re best friends, you and me. I always thought Shanna would be like our third. I guess you’re just smarter than me. But listen, so I told her that you were my best friend and I wasn’t going to do that. And she told me that I’d better think about again. She told me that no matter what, everybody was going to want to be her friend when school started, and that if I didn’t help her get rid of you, she’d make everybody hate me too. She said she’d make both you and me the most unliked girls ever for the rest of school. She said she was always the most popular girl, and she always decided who the most popular girls would be, and I could join her team, or I could be on the losing team. That’s what she said! Oh, Lila, what are we going to do?”

Jenni started crying again, but Lila was suddenly very happy. Her best friend had come back to her. Jenni had seen the light. She’d seen that they needed to stick together, and in the moment when it counted Jenni hadn’t betrayed Lila.

Lila said, “Jenni, if she comes to school in the fall, she’ll ruin it for both of us. She almost stole you. Think about what she can do once school starts. And she knows all about you now. She can make everybody hate you.”

“I know,” cried Jenni, “We have to to something. What are we going to do? What if everybody ends up hating us? What are we going to do?”

***

You also have to know something about ten-year-old girls. They are not such little girls. We treat them like little girls because as a society, we have decided that children should be innocent and protected and sheltered and not have to fight for survival.

But what we forget is that if it were only up to nature, a ten-year-old girl would be almost a full adult, and it would only be a year or two before she would need to ensure herself of the best mate, the best hearth and the best position to get the best meat and treasures from her tribe. So while we can create rules that say that we should treat ten-year-old girls like dolls and puppies, what nature determines is that ten-year-old girls are almost women. And as almost-women, they are old enough to understand their survival instinct. There is a tribe, no matter how big or how socialized, and they need to protect their place in that tribe.

We spend a lot of time trying to figure out what makes little girls be mean to each other. We blame it on the media, on society, on consumerism, but there is a more simple truth. Little girls are actually almost-women, realizing they need to fight to survive. And no matter how much society we put around things, at some point they need to play out their natural instinct to assert superiority and secure their spot in the tribe.

***

“Hey, Shanna, it’s Jenni. I know what you can say about Lila. I have a copy of her diary right here. I stole it when I was over there. I don’t want to say anything over the phone though. You know, cause what if somebody hears? Let’s totally meet someplace private. Can you come over to my house? We have that storage shed in the back yard where my mom keeps all the holiday decorations. Nobody’ll hear or find us in there.”

Jenni hung up the phone and looked at Lila. “Oh my God. I can’t believe we’re going to do this.”

“We have to, Jenni. Don’t chicken out on me now. You can do your part right?” Lila was full of determination and her eyes had a scary glow to them.

“You’re right,” Jenni said. “I know we have to. I can do my part. Just don’t be late.”

Shanna showed up about an hour later. She and Jenni held hands as they snuck out to the storage shed, going quietly like spies to make sure Jenni’s parents didn’t see where they were going. Jenni’s parents never actually locked the storage shed, and Jenni and Lila had hidden in there in the cool a lot of times to share secrets. Jenni led Shanna into the shed and climbed up onto a box once they were in there to pull the chain and turn on the simple maintenance light that was hanging in the middle. The two of them sat down cross-legged in the middle of the shed. Behind Shanna, boxes labeled “Christmas lights” and the big, plastic tree Jenni’s parents never took all the way apart after the holiday made Jenni think about last Christmas when she and Lila had been given computers for Christmas. Behind Jenni, the giant inflatable Easter Bunny that her mom put out in the yard every spring filled up most of the space.

Jenni handed Shanna Lila’s purple diary with silver stars on it. “Here’ just start reading. There’s a lot in there to pick from.”

Shanna grabbed the diary out of the Jenni’s hands and started anxiously reading page-by-page. “I’m glad you realized what you needed to do, Jenni,” she said. “I’m telling you, you and me. They’ll all want to be our friends. But we can’t carry dead weight like Lila around. She was only popular because she was friends with you.”

Behind the giant inflatable Easter Bunny, Lila felt her chest burn again. So this is what anger felt like maybe? Whatever it was, it was the thing that made sure she was able to do what she did next.

As Shanna kept thumbing through the diary, Lila snuck out from behind the Easter Bunny with the piece of electrical tape they’d cut from the roll they’d stolen from Lila’s dad’s tool shelf earlier. Before Shanna ever sense that Lila was there, Lila put the electrical tape over Shanna’s mouth so that she wouldn’t be able to scream. As soon as she did it, though, Shanna started to scream and hit at Lila, and the noises were louder than Lila thought they’d be. Jenni moved her and pushed Shanna down and sat on her, but the girl kept kicking and screaming. “Quick, we have to move quick!” hissed Lila. She handed Jenni another roll of electrical tape and she took her roll off of her arm. Shanna was kicking and screaming, but with both Jenni and Lila sitting on top of her, she wasn’t able to get up. Lila took her roll of electrical tape and started rolling it around and around Shanna’s head until it covered up her nose and eyes and mouth completely, and Jenni rolled her tape around Shanna’s ankles and wrists so that she couldn’t move. Shanna stopped screaming.

“Is she dead?” Asked Jenni, when the noise stopped.

“She may just be faking so that we’ll undo her and she can run out of here,” Lila said. We may not have enough tape on her to actually suffocate her. What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” said Jenni, “What do you think we should do with her next?’

Lila got up and started yanking at the tape around Shanna’s ankles and wrists. “I don’t know. Do you think if she were still alive and we left her here, she’d be able to get the tape off of her?”

“No way. There’s a whole role of tape on there. How’s she gonna get it off?”

“We should leave her here for a few weeks,” said Lila with finality. “We can’t do anything with her until we’re sure she’s really dead. So, if we haven’t killed her yet, we need to make sure she starves to death. I don’t know how long that would take, but I bet we can find it on the internet.”

“You think?” asked Jenni, “What if she really is dead? What if she starts to smell and my parents notice it? What if somebody comes into the shed for some reason?”

“We don’t have any choice,” said Lila. “Here, help me drag her behind the Christmas boxes or something.”

And so the girls moved Shanna behind the box with the big plastic “Noel” candles that Jenni’s mom put that the entrance to the sidewalk every Christmas and left her there. Every day, they came in and poked at her body, but she still felt warm and made little whimpering sounds. On the tenth day the sounds stopped, but she still felt warm to the touch. On the twentieth day, when Jenni snuck in to check on her in the morning, she was cold and felt like Jenni’s grandmother had felt in her coffin.

“Lila, I think we need to move her now,” Jenni had said one day at the pool. Lila had just nodded and said, “We just need to know the next night your parents aren’t going to be home.”

That night was four nights later when Jenni’s parents went down the street to a neighbor’s house to watch the televised debate between the two candidates for mayor of Dallas. They’d almost decided to invite all the neighbors over to their house to watch the debates, but at the last minute they’d decided to have a cookout a few days later. After all, since the new little girl in town had gone missing, there had been more parties to keep everybody’s spirits up. It had been almost four weeks now. Every day it looked less and less like that little girl would be found. Jenni’s parents told Jenni she would have to either come down the street with them or go and spend the night at Lila’s. With that other little girl missing, they weren’t leaving their daughter alone in the house.

Jenni happily headed towards Lila’s, and an hour later the two of them snuck out of the house and down the street on their bikes. If anybody asked, they’d just say that Jenni had forgotten something at her house and they’d run to get it. If their parents got upset about their being out and unsupervised, they’d just play dumb and promise never to do it again.

At Jenni’s, the task was quick and simple. Shanna’s taped-up body was heavy, but they didn’t need to drag it too far. There was a well in Jenni’s backyard for water storage. It was like a cistern. The water when through a filter and eventually got used in Jenni’s house. The girls had looked the filter stuff up on the internet, and if flat out said that animals could get into your well and die and it wouldn’t be in your water at all. The girls parked their bikes in the back yard and went over to open the grate on the well at the back corner of the yard. They had always gotten yelled at as little kids not to play near it. What if they fell in? So Jenni’s mom had planted rose bushes with thorns all around it to keep the girls away when they were running wild.

The grate was heavy, but between the two of them they were able to undo the safety bolt and slide the grate over. Shanna’s body was heavy, too, but the two of them were able to drag it across the back yard and drop it into the well. By the time they got back to Lila’s house, they were sweaty and gross, but they were also lucky. Lila’s parents had been watching the same debates on tv and hadn’t even noticed that the girls were gone. “Mom, we’re going to take showers now,” Lila yelled.

“Okay, honey. There are clean towels in the basket in the hallway.”

A day later, the strange summer rains started and the well filled three quarters full. The girls looked down to see if they could see Shanna floating on the top, but it was too dark to see anything and all they could smell were roses.

***
After Shanna went missing, the town went into lockdown mode. Everybody felt the most sorry for Lila and Jenni because they had both been friends with the missing little girl whose parents kept appearing on the local news begging for any information about their daughter. Everybody invited them over to play and commented on what strong little girls they were being, still going to cheer camp and gym camp and soccer camp and putting on brave faces for the world.

But Jenni hadn’t been the same since that night, and everybody noticed it. She slept a lot and had to be dragged out of bed by her mother and forced into the shower every morning. Unless it was Lila’s pool, she didn’t want to be anywhere near water, and she started insisting on drinking nothing but bottled water because there might be germs in normal water, even if it had been filtered through her mother’s special drinking water pitcher. She got stomach pains for no reason and kept breaking out in unidentifiable rashes. Her parents took her to a therapist who said that this kind of depression and anxiety was normal for a child who had just lost a best friend to some kind of tragedy. They just needed to keep and eye on her and make sure they talked openly with her about what she was feeling.

To her parents, she put on the best face possible. And though they were worried about her, they were also patient with her.

To Lila, the full effect pulled out. “Lila, we did that to that girl. Are we evil? Are we evil, evil people? Do you feel like this every day? I feel crazy? Am I crazy? I wake up and I swear she’s right there in my room. It’s like she keeps following me around. I keep waking up in panic that she wasn’t really dead and she’s somehow come back. Or whati f my parents look into the well? Or what if part of her finger comes out in the garden hose?”

And then Jenni would start panic breathing and crying and Lila would crawl behind her and hug her and say, “We did what we had to, Jenni. Nobody’s going to find her. You need to just forget it ever happened. That’s what you need to do. Just forget that it ever happened. It’ll be easier when school starts and we’re not bored all day. You’ll have so much to do you’ll forget about all of this. And she won’t be able to hurt us at all. She can’t even hurt us now.”

***

That was a month ago. By the end of the summer, Jenni seemed like she was back to normal to everybody. Worrying about her tan. Going out to movies and the last summer baseball games. Going shopping for back-to-school stuff, since school started in just a week. To Lila, something still seemed off with her, but Lila was just happy to have her friend back.

“Hey, let’s see who can hold their breath longer again,” said Lila. They’d been floating on the rafts for so long it had gotten hot, and the idea of being underwater sounded great to Lila. She’d even let Jenni win this time. Any little thing she could do to get her best friend’s spirits back up.

“Okay!,” said Jenni and slid off the raft. The two girls swam down to the deep end where they could push themselves down deep under the water instead of maybe losing because they accidentally popped out in the shallow end. “On three we both go under,” Jenni said, “One, two, three…”

Both girls pushed themselves underwater. Lila opened her eyes to look up at the yellow patterns on the surface again. Sometimes, when she was alone in the pool, she played this game by herself just because it was so relaxing. She looked over at Jenni. She couldn’t come up too early or Jenni would know that Lila let her win. She needed to wait until Jenni started to the surface and then just shoot up right ahead of her like she’d lost all of her breath.

Lila blew a few bubbles out of her mouth. They’d been down for a long time. Why wasn’t Jenni coming up? She never held her breath this long. Lila really was running out of breath. Jenni really was going to beat her this time!

Finally, Lila couldn’t stay under even a minute longer. She made her body into a straight line and pushed towards the sunlight on the top of the pool as fast as she could, sucking in as much air as she could as soon as she broke through the surface. As soon as she had her breath back, she swam over to where Jenni was underwater to go back under and get her attention to tell her she could come up now. Jenni must have been practicing! This had to be a record breath holding.

Lila dove back under the water and opened her eyes, but as soon as she was under, something happened to Jenni. Jenni rolled her body over so that her face was towards the bottom of the pool and her back was towards the sunlight and started floating limply up to the top of the pool

Her eyes were open, but she didn’t look at Lila.

Her mouth was open, but she wasn’t blowing air out of it.

Before she could even notice the top of the water or the sunlight or the quiet, Lila was out of the water and running into the house.

“Daaaaaad. Something’s wrong with Jenni! You have to come help Jenni! Jenni’s not breathing. Daaaaad!”

Tighten: Rex

Rex pulled the covers over his head. Underneath his Dallas Cowboys comforter, the world was his own little cave, like the one Golem lived in in the movie Lord of the Rings. Rex closed his eyes and imagined he was Aragorn, defeating enemies with his fairy sword and saving all of the weaker little hobbits and elves from the scary dark invaders on the road at night. His mom had promised him that as soon as she was settled in, he could come to her new house and watch the Lord of the Rings movies again. She’d even make his favorite tiny, square toasted ham and cheese sandwiches to eat while he was watching it. Rex had promised her that her new family would love the Lord of the Rings movies if they just watched them, and she had said that even if they didn’t love the movies, she would sit on the couch and watch them with him. She would pretend to be a fairy and he could pretend to be Aragorn.

The door to Rex’s bedroom swung open. “Up and at’’em, Rex,” his father boomed. “We need to be at the field in two hours. Time for breakfast. You got all of your equipment packed up and ready to go?”

Rex reluctantly burrowed out from under the comforter. “Yes, sir. It’s all in the bag.”

“Well, get going then, son. Hit the showers. I’ll get your breakfast started. Can’t stay under the covers all day, ‘specially if you’re gonna be Texas’ next Troy Aikmen.”

Rex climbed out of his bed and sleepily trudged passed the hulking figure of his father. “Dad, I don’t even like Troy Aikmen. I wanna be like Tom Brady.”

“Son! What have I done told you about that? We don’t wanna be like no pansy boy California boy who done ended up playing for some Yankee team full of other pretty boys. Someday you’ll understand.”

“They’ve won three Super Bowls, dad.”

“Cause of that hard ass coach of theirs. Now get your butt down there to that shower. You want bacon or sausage this morning?”

“Bacon, sir.”

Rex’s dad watched his seven-year-old trudge down the hallway like he was a little old man getting ready to head off to the office. He thought about going down to stand in the doorway and watch Rex climb up on his little stool to brush his teeth. Watching his son do that, for some reason, just warmed his heart. This little thing up on a stool brushing his teeth with so much seriousness that you had to imagine he’d never have a cavity in his life. Brushing his teeth with a kind of focus that his dad had never had. That kid, that kid was going to take life like it was a climb up a mountain. But Rex’s dad knew if he opened that door to watch Rex brush his teeth Rex would just pout and get embarrassed and shut the door while giving his dad the look Rex’s dad referred to as the ‘Daaaaad, plleeeeease,” look. So Rex Sr. pulled the Cowboys comforter up over Rex Jr.’s pillow so that the bed was half-made and went downstairs to start breakfast.

Making bacon wasn’t something Rex Sr. had ever known how to do before his wife had left him. Left both of them, really, because she had made it clear that there would not be room for Rex Jr. in her new life with the CFO from the company where she had been temping while Rex. Sr. recovered from his accident. He hadn’t wanted her to have to go to work, but after he fell on the construction site and hurt his leg, his disability check wasn’t enough to keep her and him and Rex Jr. in frozen pizzas and pee wee league fees. So Lynda had gotten a job temping as a receptionist, and the rest was history.

Rex Sr. hated her, but he also really didn’t blame her. He knew he was a tough man to deal with even in the best of circumstances. He had a temper and a heavy fist, and that was putting it politely. He and she had thought really different things about the best way to raise Rex Jr. He felt like you needed to push little boys. It was rough to be a little boy. If you ended up at the bottom of the pile as a little boy, that’s where you’d stay for the rest of your life. But if you learned to be the bully instead of the bullied, you could end up a powerful man, just like the man Lynda had ended up leaving Rex Sr. for. He knew she’d wanted to take Rex Jr. with her, but there were already three teenage kids in that house, even though the house was big enough to hold twice that many, and her new boyfriend didn’t want to raise another little kid. For the better, Rex Sr. thought. Lynda always treated Rex Jr. like he was a little wimp. She was probably scared that if she didn’t, he’d turn out rough on the edges like his dad, but Rex Sr. would rather have that than some kid who grew up to take it in the ass from everybody.

It had been bad before she left. He couldn’t stand sitting around the house all day while she was gone at work. There were only so many days a man could watch ESPN and sit on the back patio listening to the radio before he started to get itchy. And Rex Sr. didn’t like the changes he was seeing in Lynda when she would come home from work every day. New clothes in bags with paper handles. The kind of bags Rex Sr. knew came from expensive stores. Not the plastic bags from Wal-Mart or K-Mart or any of the places he usually sent her to shop. More makeup. She got her hair colored to get rid of the blond highlights and make it all one shade of brown. When he asked her why, she told him that nobody in the big office buildings downtown dyed their hair blond like that. He told her she didn’t need to worry about the people in those office buildings. Those weren’t their kind of people anyway, and as soon as his leg was better, she could stop working. She just smiled and said she might want to keep working anyway when he was better. She liked getting out of the house and feeling like she had a purpose. Then she’d turn around and head into the kitchen to make dinner before he could start yelling at her.

The night played out the same after that. He’d already had a couple of beers before she got home, and her new ways and new look infuriated him. Why should she be out having all the fun while he was stuck here watching TV and listening to Rex Jr. run around the house with his fake, plastic sword and one of his mom’s skirts on. What was wrong with that kid? Rex Sr. would get up and hobble into the kitchen. The yelling would go on for an hour or more. Things would get thrown. Both of them would hit each other. It was fair game in the kitchen. By the time they called Rex Jr. down from his room for family dinner, Lynda would be crying and Rex Sr. would be too exhausted to eat. He would pass out on the couch and Lynda would put Rex Jr. to bed. He never knew what she told junior on those nights to make him stop crying and go to sleep.

***

Rex Jr. loved his parents. He loved his mom, and even though his dad was mean, he loved him too. Rex’s dad hadn’t been as mean, in some ways, since his mom moved in with Mr. Nellis and Mr. Nellis’ kids, who were all older than Rex Jr. His dad didn’t yell as much anymore, and he spent more time with Rex Jr. He made him breakfast and took him to Blockbuster to rent movies and video games. One day he had even let Rex Jr. sit on his lap and steer the truck when nobody else was on the road.

But when it came to football, his dad was still mean. On days when there weren’t games, Rex Jr. had to get out of bed at nine in the morning (in the summer!) and go out into the back yard to do football drills while his dad sat on the green and white striped lounge chair on the patio. Rex’s dad claimed that his leg was still too weak and he was still in too much pain to go back to work, but Rex Jr. thought it seemed like it had been a really, really long time since his dad had worked. Rex Jr. had broken his leg once when he was five and his cousin Matty had taken him out on his moped during a Fourth of July picnic. It had only taken the same time as from when school started until Thanksgiving for Rex Jr.’s leg to be okay, and it seemed to Rex Jr. that it had been a lot longer than that since his dad hurt his leg. But when Rex Jr. asked his dad about it, his dad just said that it was easier for little boys to get better than old men.

Rex Jr.’s cousin had taken a serious beating from Rex Sr. after junior’s leg got broken. Because it was at the start of school, Rex Jr. couldn’t play football with his pee wee team that fall, and in Rex Sr.’s mind there wasn’t much that was worse for his boy than being sidelined and picked on by the other boys while they all won the pee wee division. Since then, Rex Sr. had made his son work twice as hard to make up for the lost season, and Rex’s cousin, the one with the moped, didn’t come to family picnics anymore.

Rex Jr. could understand why his mom wanted to go to live with Mr. Nellis. Mr. Nellis never yelled and he let his kids do whatever they wanted. His house had a big swimming pool, and his mom had her own bathroom with a hot tub right in it. Rex Jr. loved visiting her there. He never asked why she didn’t want him there with her, even though he wanted to live there with her. Just every time he tried to ask her, it was like she knew what he was going to ask and offered him a cookie from the good bakery or a chance to go swimming or an hour to play video games on Mr. Nellis’ huge TV in the den. And then he didn’t remember to ask again.

Rex Jr. wasn’t sure where he belonged. It really was that simple. He must not belong with his mom at Mr. Nellis’ house. If he did belong there, she would have taken him with her. But he must not belong at this house with his dad, either. If he did belong there, his dad wouldn’t make him work so hard, like it was punishment for being there. Rex Jr. didn’t mind football. But it was just punishment to have to get up at nine in the morning to do football drills while his dad yelled at him. And then they’d practice again in the afternoon. And then there was summer pee week practice in the evenings. And on some days, like today, there was a summer pee wee game. Those were the worst days because his mom and dad were both always at the games. And no matter what, they always fought.

Rex Jr. didn’t really want to be like Tom Brady or like Troy Aikman. He wanted to be like Aragorn. He wanted to be able to take care of people like Aragorn did. Everybody knew they could count on Aragorn. Rex Jr. knew if he worked hard he could be like Aragorn. Maybe not in some magical kingdom, but he’d seen his friends’ parents, and they weren’t anything like his parents. His friends parents never forgot to pick their kids up from school, and when he ate dinner at their houses hands were checked to make sure they were washed and food was served at a table instead of out of pots on the stove. Even before his mom moved in with her new family, his family had never been like that. Someday, he figured, when he was older, he might understand why that was. For now, what he knew was that he was going to be more like his friends’ families than his family. But he loved his parents.

Rex Jr. grabbed his mesh bag of football gear and dragged it down the stairs behind him. The bag full of shoulder pads and knee pads and helmets and towels was almost as tall as he was, but he pulled it behind him stair-by-stair like he was used to it. In the kitchen, his dad handed him a paper plate with a frozen egg sandwich and some microwaved bacon on it. They had started using paper plates after his mom left. His dad said it hurt his leg too much to have to stand and wash dishes, and Rex Jr. wasn’t tall enough to reach the sink.

“Is you inhaler in that bag?” his dad asked, cocking his head toward the big bag of gear by the door.

“Dad, I haven’t had an asthma attack since I was five years old,” Rex Jr. said as he ate his food, including the five vitamins his dad has handed him in a paper cup.

“Better to be safe than sorry,” said his dad. “If I’d had that attitude, I’d be at work right now instead of sitting home like a girl all day. You hear me son?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Rex, “My inhaler’s in the bag, dad.”

Rex Jr. had only had about a dozen asthma attacks in his life, and almost all of them had happened when he was five years old. After he’d gotten the inhaler and they’d gotten rid of the dog his mom used to have, he hadn’t had an attack except for once. Once, about a year ago maybe, it was in the summer too, his dad was had just stopped working and his mom hadn’t started her job yet. They were spending all all day in the house together every day and they were yelling all the time, about everything. Rex Jr. didn’t even understand what they were yelling about most of the time. He would just go upstairs into his room when the yelling started and climb into his Golem cave and stay there until somebody came and told him that dinner was ready or that it was time for football drills. One day, though, the yelling had gone on and on and on. It had gotten dark outside, and still nobody had come and told him it was time for dinner, and Rex Jr. was hungry. He knew that in the cabinet underneath the microwave there was a bag of crispy potato chips, and it was all he could think about. So he opened the door to his room and crawled to the top of the stairs. When he peeked down, he could see his parents arguing in front of the television. His mom was saying something about too much beer and too little working, but that was all he could understand. They were using a lot of big adult words that he didn’t know yet. It looked like if he just crawled down the steps and behind the couch into the kitchen, they’d never notice him and he could just get the chips and sit underneath the kitchen table eating them.

He was about halfway down the stairs when it happened. His dad picked his mom up by the shoulders and slammed her against the wall so hard that it looked like her eyes were going to bulge out of her head. As soon as he did it, Rex Jr.’s mom screamed just like women do in movies. Rex had seen his parents fight before, but this terrified him, and before he knew what was happening his chest started to tighten up and he felt like he couldn’t breath. He tried to call out for his parents, but all he could make come out what a wheezing sound, and his mom and dad couldn’t hear them over the sound of their own screaming.

That was all he remembered. The next time he woke up, he was in a hospital room. But he could still hear his parents. They were standing outside of the door to his room. And they were arguing about how to pay for the trip to the hospital.

His mom went to work about a month after that. She moved in with Mr. Nellis about six months after that. Rex knew time because when he left the hospital that time, one of the nurses had given him a calendar with pictures of dogs on it since he had told the nurse that he was sad that he couldn’t have a puppy because of his asthma. Rex Jr. had started marking days and months off on that calendar after that. He liked doing that. The idea that time was moving forward in days and weeks and months felt good to him.

***

Rex Sr. was one of those good men who didn’t really know who to be good. Sociologists would be able to point to his being bullied as a little kid until he became a bully himself. Psychiatrists would be able to point to his dad being a hard ass and his mom being over-involved. Liberal leftists would point to lack of funding for early education and conservatives would point to a lack of religiously imposed structure on kids. Everybody would be able to point to something, but sources were less important than outcomes. Rex Sr. wanted what was best for everybody. He loved his wife and his son. But he was only able to think in very small boxes. There was a right way and a wrong way. A safe way where the outcome was known, and a risky way where you couldn’t guarantee what was next. And when anything got outside of those little pockets of how life was, Rex Sr. didn’t have much of a capacity to deal with it. He got scared easily of situations or paths or ideas that he didn’t understand. Some people hide when they are scared. Some people ignore what they are scared of. Some people try to understand what they are scared of, and some people react in anger and lash out when they are scared. Rex Sr. was the last kind of person.

And in the end, it didn’t matter what made Rex Sr. into a difficult man. It was what it was. He was what he was. And it was fine. And in some ways it was hard on people, but it was the life they were all leading. Except for Lynda. She had chosen a new life. And years from now when sociologists and psychiatrists and leftists and conservatives would all be debating what it was that had made Rex Jr. into whatever it was that Rex Jr. would eventually turn into, the fact that Rex Jr.’s dad was a hardass and his mother had abandoned him would surely be pointed to. But so would the lack of funding for early childhood education and the lack of religious structure imposed on him. And in the end, would any of those things really matter? He was going to be whomever he was going to be, and that was the life he would lead.

***

It was too hot out to be geared up in football gear. Rex Jr. was uncomfortable and fidgety and bored. His team was ahead by two touchdowns in the last quarter and the defense was on the field. Rex turned around from the sideline and waved at his dad. His dad had been cheering him on all game, and when Rex Jr. caught the ball for the big fifteen yard gain, his dad when crazy. Then Rex Jr. turned in the other direction and waved at his mom who was sitting at the other end of the bleachers with one of her friends from her new neighborhood. His mom had lots of new friends now. He hadn’t been able to hear his mom cheering for him, but he knew she had been.

Rex Jr. looked back out on the field. It was so hot, and the air felt so heavy. When he’d said that to his dad in the truck on the way over here, his dad had said it just felt heavy because of those rain storms that had happened the other day. He said Rex Jr. just wasn’t used to humidity and that maybe next summer they should go visit his grandparents in Houston so Rex could learn to be strong in heavy, humid air, too.

Rex Jr. fidgeted and looked behind him again. His mom and her friend were still sitting in the same spot drinking bottled water and talking while the defense was on the field (Rex was sure when he was on the field his mom was only watching him), but his dad must have gotten up to go to the bathroom or something because he wasn’t in his seat any more. Rex Jr. looked up into the sky. The sun was super, super bright. Rex Jr. wondered if somewhere in another parallel universe goblins and dwarfs and fighters and fairies were looking at a big yellow sun too. He wondered what games, like football, people might play in places like that. Right after the game, he was going to ask him mom when he could come over to Mr. Nellis’ house and watch the Lord of the Rings movies with her. She’d been promising for a long time, now. And pretty soon school would start and then it would be hard for him to go and visit her. He’d have school all day and then football practice and then homework and bed, and on the weekends he had to go to football practice with his dad, so that meant no sleeping over at Mr. Nellis’ house.

He wondered if Mr. Nellis even liked football. He never came to Rex Jr.’s games. But Mr. Nellis seemed to like Rex Jr. enough. He had even bought Rex Jr. a Lord of the Rings backpack once. Even Rex’s dad didn’t think to do that. Mr. Nellis wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t like Rex Jr. Right?

Rex Jr. heard the sound before anybody else on the sideline heard the sound. Maybe it was because he’d never really gotten the sound of his mother screaming out of his head since the day he saw his father push her up against the wall. Maybe it was just because he hadn’t been paying that much attention to the football game in front of him. But as soon as he heard the noise, he knew it was his mother screaming. He knew she was afraid. Somehow though, he never thought that it was his dad she might be afraid of. After all, his dad was supposed to be sitting in the bleachers on the other side waiting for Rex Jr. to go back on the field. But when Rex Jr. turned around to see his mom, his dad was right there. He was hitting her. Rex Jr. could see his arms and fists and hands flying at her. And men in the bleachers were trying to pull him off of her. And his mom just kept screaming and screaming and screaming. His mom’s friend had pulled out her cell phone and was dialing numbers while she yelled at everybody to get a police officer.

For a moment, Rex Jr. just stood there. He wondered if this is actually what happened every night when his mom lived with them and he would spend all evening in his Golem cave. He wished he had been big like Aragorn so that he could have rushed at his father with his sword right at that moment, but he was just a little kid who wished he were home underneath his comforter.

Rex wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. The game had stopped, and all of the adults were rushing towards his parents. He could see a policeman running in from the parking lot, too. And the noise, the sound, it wouldn’t stop.

Maybe if he were older, it would have made sense to do something. But he wasn’t older. He was seven. And he had no idea why he did what he did next, but he picked up a football from the sideline and started running as fast as his legs would carry him towards the end zone. At first nobody noticed him. They were dealing with the blood coming out of his mother’s mouth and the handcuffs the police officer was putting on his dad. But after about fifteen yards, one of the coaches noticed and yelled and started running after him.

Years and years later, Rex Jr. wouldn’t remember what in his brain had told him to pick up the football and run with it. He wouldn’t even remember whether he felt scared or not at that moment.

Sociologists would say it was a contextual reaction of fight or flight.

Psychiatrists would say he was desperately trying to give a touchdown to his parents in hopes that if he were good at something they would stop fighting and be a family.

Leftists would say it was a horrible example of how conservative values teach children to prioritize winning over anything else that may be going on.

Conservatives would say the whole thing was an example of the breakdown of the American family because of the lack of morals preached by the liberals.

And in the end, whether any of them were right or wrong didn’t matter. Rex Jr. crossed into the end zone at full speed with the football. He turned around to see one of the coaches running at him. Behind the coach, his mother was running down the field, blood still dripping from her lip. He couldn’t quite make out what she was saying to him. He could only feel his chest tightening up and his breath getting shorter and shorter. He’d always gotten scared when he had an asthma attack before. But something about this one, in the hot sun, with the heavy air, it felt like maybe he was traveling through a warp between universes. Like maybe he was going somewhere where he wouldn’t need to breathe at all because the whole land would be magical. He felt heavy and blurry. And then he felt the cool fresh feel of the grass on the football field beneath his head.

The Long Inhale and the Short Crash – Barry

"It was hard being a precocious child. Okay, that was a lie. When you were, in fact, a precocious child, it was easy. Adults thought you were adorable with your tiny little man ways. Teachers lived just to have you in their class, and, while the other kids may hate you, you always knew you were better than they were anyway, so you didn’t really care. What was hard was when you were no longer a precocious child but instead just a very smart young adult who’d been put on a pedestal his whole life. That part, that part was hard. Before, no matter what you had done, people thought it was outstanding. You won every high school award whether you tried for it or not. You weren’t expected to focus in class or care about grades or prove how smart you were because everybody already knew, and they wouldn’t want to hamper the creative development of your super smart brain by forcing you to behave like average kids had to. Your mind should be free to expand on its own.

"That? That was easy. But now, now was hard. It wasn’t like that anymore. Now that you were twenty-four, people were waiting for you to prove just how smart you were. Sure, you’d gone away to Austin and graduated Sume Cum Laude with your degree in in business and finished up your MBA at the McCombs School all in just five short years. But what were you going to do now? What was the great thing you were going to do to show everybody how smart you really were? You’d been running your mouth about how insignificant they were and how, obviously, significant you were since you were young enough to wear Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pajamas. Now they were all looking at you to prove it. And you didn’t kid yourself. They were hoping that you failed. They wanted nothing more than to find out that all this time you were nothing more than some big talk. They wanted to see you brought down a peg or two.

"You weren’t sure you didn’t want the same thing. It was hard work, proving you were better than everybody else. And you didn’t like hard work.

"And here you were, a solid year after your picture was in the local paper congratulating you on getting your MBA – a picture of you in your new suit with a fresh haircut in grainy black and white right next to it. You had picked up that paper from the kitchen table and taken it upstairs to your bedroom, the same bedroom you’d slept in when you still had those Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pajamas, and you’d put it down on your desk. And it was still sitting there, getting brittle like newspaper does. And you were still living in that room, with your parents’ room down the hall. Getting up late every day. Doing some light day trading even though the markets had been dead for a couple of years now. Going downstairs, still not showered, at noon to sit at the kitchen counter and drink coffee while your mother, who still thought you were going to be the next President, made you whatever you wanted for lunch. Going back upstairs to you room to trade, masturbate to online porn, read some books designed for smart people and, finally, at around six in the evening, drag your ass to the shower.

"I mean, it had only been a year. You just needed some time to unwind from the pressure of doing all those big things. It was hard, all these expectations. You just needed some rest. People don’t understand the pressure. They just don’t.”

For some reason, whenever Barry took his first hit for the night, that monologue about himself, all in the third person, ran through his head. He couldn’t stop it. In fact, he thought it was very relaxing. It made him feel better to know that somebody out there, some higher consciousness or whatever was talking to him in his head, must understand how hard it was to be him, why he needed to rest. Why he needed the space and time he found when he rolled out into the sandy fields outside of the city with his old friends from high school and pulled out the crack pipe.

Barry chuckled in the middle of his fix. He knew what everybody would say if he told them he was doing crack. “That drug is SO nineteen ninety. We’ve all moved on to meth by now. Get with the program.” But Barry knew that wasn’t true. Anybody who liked a real fix, a real rush, a real sensation, still used crack. Meth just made you jittery. Crack took you on a ride. Barry needed a ride. The rest of the time he felt like he was chained down.

It hadn’t been the plan at all. At all. After he finished up at UT, Barry had planned to come back to the Dallas suburbs where he was raised just long enough to go on enough high powered interviews to land a coveted position with one of the big five consulting firms. Something glamorous with travel involved. Then he and Jennifer, the same girl he’d dated since he was a junior in high school, would move wherever his home base would be for his new job. Sure, Jennifer thought small, acted small, didn’t know a white wine from a rose, but Barry could turn her around. There were night classes she could take. And she was pretty. Texas pretty. She’d look good at all the company events. Maybe he’d even get lucky and get a job right there in Dallas. Then his and Jennifer’s moms would be able to help out and babysit when the “Little Barry” babies started coming. There was no way he’d be back at his parents, stuck in his room, running to the grocery store in his old Jeep that looked worse for the wear from all the trips between Austin and Dallas, for more than three or four months.

That, of course, was not how it worked out. At all.

The interviews? The jobs? Well, the interviews came, and they came in abundance. How could they not, given his pedigree? He flew all over the country – Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Miami. He bought new two hundred dollar ties for each interview. After all, soon he would get hired at a nice, fat, six digit salary and a grand here on designer neckties wouldn’t mean anything. He bough an online subscription to Zagat and ate at the most highly recommended restaurants everywhere he went. After all, he would need to learn all the food and wine lingo. His choices of gourmet venues in Austin had been limited. He shook hands powerfully, answered questions with confidence and always appeared with a fresh copy of his resume in an expensive cloth-bound folder for any interview. In Miami, he stayed for a few extra days to sit on the beach and watch the girls in their thongs. He even took one of them back to his hotel later that night. Jennifer was beautiful, but she was a sweet suburban girl. Those Miami girls had other ideas altogether. And he was a man. He was out to explore the world … and then to conquer the world.

The interviews were fantastic and exciting and promising. The response to the interviews was nonexistent.

Actually, the response wasn’t nonexistent. The response was very existent in the form of letters thanking him for his interest in company such-and-such. Company such-and-such unfortunately didn’t think that he was quite the right fit for their corporate culture, but they wished him the best of luck and were sure he was going to go on to do great things. Each time he received one of these letters, Barry snatched it from the mail before his mother and father could see his failure and buried it in the kitchen trash, well below the left over chicken bones and wilted salad. Down far enough where nobody would dig for it.

He called people he knew at the companies where he had interviewed to ask them to scout around and find out why he hadn’t been hired. His friends, acquaintances, whatever, wouldn’t return his calls. After days of calling them and leaving friendly messages in a tone that clearly conveyed that their lack of response was creating an increased agitation on his end, they would finally call back. Usually in the middle of the afternoon when they could use “the afternoon staff meeting” or “my lunch hour is just about to end” as an excuse to rush off the phone. The calls would start off with the typical jockeying, good humored ball busting about whose baseball team was ahead in the standings or the latest rumor about that girl they’d all slept with sophomore year. Before long, the friend, acquaintance, whatever, would shift into a different tone. A tone that kept the frat boy good humor tone while adding in a layer of formality over it, as if to say, “You know this isn’t me, I don’t think this about you, It’s just goddamn business speak I’m about to give you.” The reports back from the field were all the same. Barry was obviously super smart. Yes, he had all the pedigree and paperwork. But he just came across as so full of himself in the interviews. Some people even called it arrogant. The managers and partners and HR people all thought he just wouldn’t be able to take direction or listen to management or respect his bosses. They’d dealt with his kind before and it had always ended badly. With the way the world was going, globalization and cheaper workforces overseas, nobody wanted to spend all that money to bring on an employee who probably wasn’t going to cause the company anything but grief.

The calls always ended the same way, a shift back into the more fraternal tone of the early part of the call and this: “Barry, seriously man, they’re so short sighted. They’re just a bunch of corporate lackeys. You’re the MAN. You should just go off and do it on your own. Show them, man. You don’t need them.”

“Yeah,” thought Barry, “I don’t need to be held down by a bunch of people who aren’t as smart as I am and have no real creative vision…just a bunch of rules they follow from the company handbook. I can be twice as successful doing it on my own. Ten times as successful. I’m just going to take a little downtime to get focused, and then I’ll start getting some funding together to do something. A financial firm, maybe. Or my own consulting firm. I’ve never let that kind of bullshit hold me down before, why would I start now? I don’t know why I ever thought I’d want to go out and work for somebody else. That’s just naïve. I just need a little downtime to recharge. Then it’ll be all me. Just a month or so to recharge.”

And that’s when Barry started day trading. And even though the markets had been dead for months, he was ahead. Maybe he didn’t need to go find funding. Maybe he could just day trade for a year or so and by then he’d have made enough to fund the expenses to start up his own consulting firm right here in Dallas. He could just live at home for that year, save up some money. That was a good idea. He liked it here. It was nice to have his mom and her adoring eyes around, and her home cooked food. And it was nice to spend Sunday on the couch watching football with his dad. And it was nice to be able to get out of the house when he started to feel cooped in and go spend time with Jennifer and her two roommates in her apartment downtown. This actually, Barry thought, might end up being one of the most laid back years of his life. He should enjoy it.

As he looked back on it now, Barry was surprised that he hadn’t figured out that Jennifer was looking to break up long before she hammered him over the head with it. It had been a long time since they’d lived in the same city. She’d stayed in Dallas to get her nursing degree while he was in Austin. They’d seen each other over holidays and part of the summer most of the time, but it had always felt like a visit, like how they were sneaking in time to stay connected until Barry was done with school and they could start a life. But Barry must have been the only one to keep that vision, he figured, because one thing that became clear almost as soon as he moved back to town was that Jennifer wasn’t exactly the sweet and adoring girlfriend he remembered her to be. She’d gone out and gotten herself some ambition. At the hospital where she worked, it had been suggested that she’d make a great physician’s assistant, and she was actually planning to go back to school the fall after he moved back. Barry tried to tell her what an incredibly stupid decision it would be to commit to a school program. She was going to end up moving soon anyway – as soon as he knew where it was that he’d be working, and he was sure to know that soon.

And Jennifer looked right across the dinner table at him (He HATED her dinner table. He was pretty sure she’d bought it from Wal-Mart.) and said that maybe they would just have to spend a few more years apart. It hadn’t been a big deal with they needed to spend time apart while he went to school. Was it really such a big deal that she’d found something she was good at?

When Barry told his mom about the conversation, his mom just smiled and told him that Jennifer would come to her senses. There wasn’t a girl out there who wouldn’t see that Barry was an unbelievable catch and change whatever she needed to change so that she could be with him. And Barry had taken such good care of Jennifer for years and years, buying her things that she and her family thought were so opulent and staying faithful to her even though he was away at college where the girls were, his mom was sure, clamoring for a chance to be the future Mrs. Barry.

Well, okay, thought Barry, maybe he hadn’t exactly been one hundred percent faithful, but he was a man. And Jennifer was always so self-conscious in bed anyway. Plus, there was no way Jennifer could understand the stress he was under every single day. Sometimes a man just needed to find a way to release the stress.

His mom was wrong though. He’d only been back for about three months when Jennifer called him to ask him if he could stop by the coffee shop across from her school before her night class started -- to talk for a little while. Barry was glad to see her making the effort. He didn't like her time being tied up with this night class at all. On the three nights a week that she was in class, he was left to kick around his parents’ house or spend hours at the local driving range just killing time. And when she was done with her night class, she usually was too tired to do anything except curl up with a blanket on the couch and watch television. It was not in any way what he had expected from her, and he had told her that. He was glad when she called to meet up for coffee. That showed she was listening to what he was saying. Maybe soon she’d see the silliness of this whole going back to school and taking some space thing. He stopped on his way to the coffee shop and bought her a gift card to Neiman Marcus. Just a little something to show her that he cared…and hopefully inspire her to get some clothes other than the jeans and button down shirts she was always wearing.

He came up behind her and kissed her on the cheek while he slid the envelope with the gift card into her hand. She fiddled with the card for a moment before sliding the envelope back across the table at him. She didn’t think this was going to work. She wasn’t the same person he remembered from when she was a kid in high school. She had goals too now, and she thought he needed somebody who could devote all of their attention to him. He infuriated her, the way he thought that everything was about him, but she could understand why he was like that. She’d grown up with him. She knew everybody had always treated him like he was the Maharaja. But she wasn’t that girl any more. She didn’t really want to move to some super huge city with him. He was going to get some kind of job and work a million hours and she was going to be stuck in a city with a bunch of stuck up people who probably would make fun of her southern accent. She liked it right here in Dallas where her friends and her family were. She wanted to be good at something too, and, no, being good at being a girlfriend didn’t count. He didn’t really love her anyway, and he knew it. Their relationship was all about looking good together and his having somebody to take care of him. And she understood that, too. His mom had waited on him, hand and foot. But Jennifer wasn’t going to be like that. There weren’t that many women out there who were going to be like that, she warned him. This was really the best thing, their breaking up, she said. He could find somebody who was more like the kind of girl he imagined himself being with, and she spend some time just doing things for herself. She looked and her watch. It was almost time for her class. She got up, kissed him on the cheek and walked out. It was the last time they were ever together as a couple.

Barry sat there for ten minutes taking it all in. He knew she’d regret it. He’d hit the bars in Deep Ellum that night and have a new, prettier, more appreciative girlfriend before sunup. And when Jennifer was done acting out, she’d come back to him and they’d have an even better relationship, because by that time she would have realized how much better of she was with him as compared to without him, and she’d be more appreciative. Maybe he’d make her wait. Act like he didn’t really want her back. Make her do something dramatic to win him back.

The truth, of course, was that the breakup rattled Barry. Barry wasn’t good at the idea of being alone. Jennifer had always been a secure net beneath him. It was hard, when everybody expected something big from you, not to feel alone out there proving to them that you were as good as they thought you were. Jennifer had been something, no – someone – he could always come back to for safety. He wasn’t out on a ledge alone when he was with her. And no matter how many confident things he put in his head, he couldn’t kill the little voice that wouldn’t go away that said that without her there he was suddenly very, very alone. Sure, she was right, they probably didn’t love each other, but they had supported each other. That, to Barry, was more important. But how could she understand that.

He hit the clubs in Deep Ellum that night. Went home with a dark-haired law student who turned on CNN after they had sex and poured them both glasses of amaretto to put them to sleep. He forgot to get her phone number when he headed back to his parents’ house in the morning. In the car on the way home, he realized he’d never picked the Neiman Marcus gift card up off the table in the coffee shop. Some crazy hippie girl with dreadlocks was making out with that card right now, he was sure. Oh well. Soon the $100 he’d spent on that card wouldn’t mean all that much to him.

And so time passed like that. The job offers didn’t come. Day trading made him a profit, but he had such a hard time getting motivated to roll out of bed and work that the profits were slower than he had hoped for. He still talked to Jennifer on the phone once a week or so. She was doing fine. Getting good grades and had already gotten more responsibility at work. He hit the clubs at night. His mom kept him in clean sheets and casseroles. Any day now, he’d be ready to hit the streets full force and start his consulting business. He just needed a tiny bit more capital to cover some of the start-up expenses. That was all he was waiting on. His mom reminded him that he didn’t need to feel like he needed to rush just because people were starting to whisper the word “slacker” and “burn out” behind his back. Do things at his own pace. In ten years when he was living in a mansion, they wouldn’t be whispering those words anymore.

Barry hooked up with some of his old buddies from high school who had all stayed in the area. Dan was working as a security guard at an office building, Butchie was driving a delivery truck and Jacob was in charge of shipping and purchasing for some big design firm downtown. The three guys had gotten a “dude condo” together just a couple of miles away from where they had all grown up, and Barry started spending evenings there. They’d crack some beers, order some pizzas and watch whatever game was on. Some nights after they got good and drunk, they’d get the basketball out of the closet and go play two-on-two down the street at the local high school. Some nights they’d invite some girls over and get a keg and some Christmas lights and have a party.

It was one of those party nights that introduced them to crack. And it was one of those girls who did it.

It was one of the young girls. They always had young girls there. And the young girls were always appreciative of the free beer. And the young girls were always ready to party. Sometimes, the girls brought their own treats. Some weed here and there. Some meth. Some Oxycontin. Barry tried it all. He liked the rush of drugs. He liked feeling invincible with the drugs. Like he was able to get away with using them when everybody warned him that they could destroy him. He would get high and just think about how he was proving everybody wrong. All you had to be was a strong person and you could do drugs without there being any kind of life-threatening situation. Look at him, after all. He was using drugs three or four times a week. He wasn’t sitting in a gutter. In fact, he was still in the process of putting his plan into action. And when he did, he’d have one final blow out party with his boys and some hot girls and all the drugs they wanted. Then he’d probably never talk to them again.

It was a December night (He had no idea how it had gotten to be December. It felt like the summer had just started, like he’d just moved back into his old room, like he’d just started interviewing for jobs, like Jennifer had just broken up with him), when they boys had a party to celebrate the Cowboys making the playoffs. It was a Saturday night, and the boys were planning to party straight through until the game the next day. Jacob had invited some girls he’d met out at a club a few nights earlier, and Barry couldn’t stop staring at the one. She looked just like Drew Barrymore, but skinnier. He picked up a beer and headed over to introduce himself. He already had a nice buzz from a joint he’d smoked earlier and the beers and shots he’d done at the party, but as he was talking to the girl, he offered to get her some Oxy or some angel dust from somebody else at the party if she wanted to have a really good time. The girl laughed and said she’d brought her own stash, and it was something better than dust or Oxy for sure. Then she took him by the hand and they went up to Dan’s room and he’d smoked crack for the first time. It wasn’t like anything else he’d ever had. The girl showed him how to suck the smoke in with force. It wasn’t like pot, she said, you didn’t want to take your time and savor it. You wanted to breath as much of the potent smoke in as fast as possible to jumpstart your rush. Barry took the pipe from her. He took a few short breaths to fill up his lungs with oxygen, and then he put the pipe to his lips, lit it, and sucked in as much of the narcotic smoke, as deep into his lungs and heart and muscles and brain, as he could.

It was the greatest feeling of power he’d ever experienced. Would ever experience. He felt like his arms were ten feet long and ripped with steroid-big muscles and able to pummel the world or anybody who came close. He felt the exact same way about his dick. He was on fire. Better than any orgasm. Better than any drug. Like he was a god or a warrior king or the most powerful man on earth. He looked out of the bedroom window and saw the streetlights burning and knew that ordinary people lived under streetlights, and that he was more powerful than that. He would someday live in a private mansion with no lights so that when you arrived at night you would be intimidated by the darkness around you. You would be intimidated by him. Hell, you should be intimidated by him right now.

There had been, would never be, any feeling like this. He woke up hours later with the girl laying half-dressed next to him and half-drunk beer bottles spilled on Dan’s dirty laundry pile and he remembered the King Kong feeling of owning the world. And he wanted it again.

The girl proved to be a reliable source for the drug. She’d sell it or trade it or smoke it with them if she thought she was about to get laid afterwards. And as soon as the rest of the guys found out what crack felt like, it became a nightly pursuit. They weren’t addicted, but it was just simple math. Of all of the things that they could do on any given evening, smoking crack felt the best. They were chasing the high, but nobody had warned them that it never feels as good as the first time. But it didn’t matter. It still felt better than anything else in their lives.

The crack kept Barry up until early morning every night. He’d wait for the rush to start to wear off, down a beer and drive back to his parents’ house. On the way there, he’d stop at Seven Eleven to get a tamale or a breakfast sandwich or, if it had been a super rough night, a hot dog. Then he’d crawl into bed, sleep until noon and get up to trade. About once a week or so he’d call Jennifer and hang up when he got her voicemail. She’d stopped answering her phone when she saw it was him calling. About once a week he’d pull out the incorporation paperwork for his consulting firm and look for office space to rent. At least ten times a day he thought about how good it felt when he sucked the powerful smoke into his body. It was like he wanted to hold the drug inside him and never exhale, but life demanded that he not hold his breath.

He would have if he could have -- held his breath with the super secret power formula of the smoke inside him. In the moments when he was alone in his room in the middle of the day with the blinds pulled down and the scent of lemon Pledge around him, he would stare at the truth standing in the corner. And the truth was that he may not be fearless enough to do all the things that people expected of him. The truth was that he had always been very scared of failure, of being alone, of missing out on something, of life being too much, of life being not enough, of finding out that maybe he wasn’t all that he thought he was. But when he smoked the drug, it was like he became a different person. If he could walk around with that power inside of him all day long, he could do anything. They would all fear him, and with good reason. Without the crack, he was just Barry – living in his high school bedroom with his mom still cooking for him, no job, no girlfriend, no motivation to put plans in action. And now, almost no money. The money he’d saved up day trading had been whittled away at to pay for a case of beer here, an order of fried chicken there, gas for the car, and, mostly, nightly drugs. Maybe if he just stayed high all day it would be easier to turn this around. Yes, he could use the drug instead of the drug using him like it did most people. He could use the drug to mask over the fear and become the brave, confident, imposing person he needed to be to get out there and prove them all wrong about his being a failure and a spoilt burn out. He would just hold his breath and never exhale the smoke once it was in his system. That was all he needed to do.

But life demanded that he breath.

It was four in the morning and time for Barry to head back to his parents’ house. He could feel himself coming down from the rush. He always knew when he was starting to come down because the third-person monologue about himself would start in his head. And then the questions would come: What was he going to do? Would he be forty and still hanging out in the “dude condo” with some young chick bringing him drugs? Did his mom really know what she was talking about? It went on and on, the questions. Like a car he was trying to pass on the freeway, he’d try to get past them, but they’d just speed up to stay neck and neck with him.

He should try it. He should take another hit right now and then go home and trade and fill out the rest of the paperwork and call Jennifer while he was still in his power mode. He should do it. The girl, the one who always brought their drugs, was asleep on the living room floor, and Barry knew from experience that she wasn’t going to wake up any time soon. He found her jacket in the kitchen and, just like he thought there would be, there was extra stash left in her pocket. He went back to the living room and dug a pipe out from in between two sofa pillows. There was a downstairs powder room that was near the door. Barry went in to take his hit. He didn’t want anybody to smell the smoke and get woken up to find him stealing from the girl’s stash.

This would be his biggest inhale ever. He needed enough in his system to power him through the day. It was going to be a big day. He was going to make all the changes he needed today. And then, once he’d put his plan into action and started proving everybody wrong about what a loser he’d turned out to be, he wouldn’t need the crack anymore because the questions would go away. He took five or six huge breaths and held them to expand his lungs so that he could pull in as much smoke as possible from the pipe. Then he lit it and covered the end with his mouth as fast as he could and inhaled as deeply and as powerfully as he ever had in his life. He couldn’t imagine that his first breath in the world had been as desperate and as needy as this one was. And as the smoke filled up his system, he felt himself start to expand into a bigger, stronger, scarier version of himself. Like the smoke was filling him up like a balloon, but like a Teflon balloon. He never wanted to exhale.

But life demanded that he breath.

He snuck into the living room and put the pipe back between the pillows so that nobody would suspect that he had stolen from the stash. Then he made his way out to the Jeep. It was August. Hot. Burning hot so he had left the top off of the Jeep. The sky was still dark, but within the next hour the streetlights would automatically turn off and the sun would start to rise. Daytime was long in the summer in Texas. His seat was wet. One of those freak rainstorms must have passed through while he was inside. But it was refreshing.

He turned the ignition and started cutting through the uninhabited residential streets that led back to his parents’ house. People were still asleep at four thirty in the morning. Even the early risers were still tucked away in bed. The only people out on the roads were the ones who had been out all night and were just coming home now, and there weren’t too many of those in the Dallas suburbs. Was he driving too fast? He couldn’t tell. The world always felt fast after he’d had a hit. He was just trying to keep up with it. The wind rushed through the Jeep and over his face. Too fast? No such thing. And this speed was nothing compared with how quickly he was going to get back on track to accomplishing his goals. He just needed this little boost to do it.

And he needed breakfast. A tamale sounded good right about now. Some fortification so that he could work straight through without having to take the time to go down to the kitchen and sit while his mother made him food and blabbered about the neighbors and the landscaper and the latest rumor that Jennifer had started dating a chiropractor. Three or four tamales, actually, was what he needed. Was he driving too fast? Everything felt so fast. Did it feel like the Jeep was almost tipping over when he turned into the Seven Eleven? Didn’t matter. Life was fast, and he was going to keep up with it. There was a parking spot right in front of the door. That’s what happens when you go to Seven Eleven at four thirty in the morning. You get the prime parking spots. Who ever said nine to five were the most efficient hours to work? He’d never known a genius who worked a nine to five schedule, that was for sure.

Barry slammed down on the gas to accelerate into the parking spot.

And Barry and his Jeep went through the spot, and over the sidewalk, and straight through the glass doors of the Seven Eleven. Life had been going fast, but when Barry flew out of the front seat of his Jeep, through the windshield and across the store to land up against the doors to the wall of refrigerators that housed the beer, soda, milk and juice, life had never moved more slowly. Barry felt every nanosecond as he flew through the air. He saw the cashier ducking underneath the counter to avoid the flying glass. He saw the refrigerator doors getting closer and closer and closer until he flew into them and they, too, shattered around him. And as he crashed into the doors he realized with complete clarity that he had held his breath the entire time he was flying through the air. And maybe he should just keep holding his breath and that would protect him. Holding the air in so that he would stay inflated even with all of the glass punctures in his body making holes for the air to rush out and Barry to deflate. Yes. He just needed to hold his breath in.

But life demanded that he breath.