Chapter 2

I went back to Sterling High on January 8'th, a week after the accident. The kids were very sympathetic, that helped a lot. It's a modest sized school, just over a thousand students. The class ahead of me, the graduating seniors number about two hundred. I have some mixed feelings about the school. I like my teachers, but the drug dealing has gotten so out of hand I sometimes worry about my safety... And Melanie's...

Melanie is my girlfriend. She gave me a really great hug after school that day, long and affectionate, holding me in her arms as if she never wanted to let me go. We had seen each other briefly over the past week, but there was so much family coming in from both my mom's and dad's side that we never really had much of a chance to talk. We both decided to skip the bus and walk home...

I should tell you about Melanie. We're in the same AP science and math classes and have been friends since we were toddlers. She's bright, considerate, very courageous, athletic, ambitious... She is determined to become one of the world's greatest doctors... Melanie is also absolutely, positively, the most beautiful creature who ever walked the Earth. She also has one of the wackiest, most dysfunctional families I've ever heard of, let alone met. Seriously, they're one for the record books.

We held hands as we walked home, not doing much talking at all. Somehow, we didn't need to. Melanie could sense how I was feeling and she thought having me talk about it would only make it worse, at least for now. She gave me a quick kiss and a warm smile as she dropped me off at my house. Her home is only three blocks away. I felt a lot better heading up to my room to study. Melanie was right. She's so perceptive. Just being with her and not having to try to verbalize all the chaos within me... It was exactly what I needed.

That's where we were in our relationship, at the holding-hands stage. Well, over the last few months we've started to kiss each other goodbye too. But Melanie is genuinely shy about getting more physical, and to tell the truth so am I. We'll be going to the junior prom of course, and we both have our dreams about the future. But for now, we're still exploring how to be emotionally intimate with each other. We're holding off on the physical stuff till later.

And the months passed. At the end of February, (or the first of March, take your pick when it's not a leap-year), I turned seventeen, a month ahead of Melanie. More time passed and somehow I came to terms with never seeing mom again. But for dad it was a different story. The United Steel Workers were a family to him, but somehow even the USW couldn't replace the hole mom had left in his heart. Winter turned into spring and I hadn't seen dad smile or even relax in months. And the fact that Northwestern would be shutting down the plant in May certainly wasn't helping any. I worried a lot and tried to be around for dad to talk with. There didn't seem to be much else I could do.

Then on the last day in May I came home from school and found dad grinning like a Jack O' Lantern. He had been traveling over the past week, ever since the plant closed, and had just gotten back from a trip to Reading, Pennsylvania. One look at his face and I knew he had struck pay-dirt.

"Carpenter Technology?" I asked grinning.

He nodded happily. "I was unbelievably lucky. They have an opening that fits me perfectly! It'll actually be an increase in base pay, much better than I was hoping for. I'll be going back into operations again, specialty steels, and branching out into titanium."

I gave him a beaming smile. "So when do you start?"

For the first time, dad looked a bit worried. "They're anxious for me to start right now. They're offering me a nice bonus if I start this coming Monday. Eric, we have some talking to do."

Chapter 3 »