Chapter 7

Around 10:00 that night, Julie Sweener splashed through the rain towards her home.

She'd lied to the others at the hospital that her parents were picking her up, and after three bus transfers was finally nearing her destination. She actually lived fairly close to Bobby and Sammy, in a small trailer park that had somehow survived the neighborhood's transitions over the years. She felt like a drowned rat, hungry enough to start chewing on shoe leather, but at the same time she also felt as happy as she'd ever been at this time of day, in a long time.

That Patty girl, the one that Van had been after, had put on a pretty good ice princess act towards her. But everyone else had been very nice. It was obvious that Patty didn't want to talk about their shared knowledge of Van in front of Barbara any more than Julie did, so there had been no open warfare. The others had done their best to ignore the tension between the two girls, as they celebrated Bobby's return, albeit brief, to consciousness. Just being around the happy, supportive people had lifted her spirits. It was so different from what she was headed home to.

As she turned the last corner and the double wide mobile home finally came into view, she pulled up short. Her father's rusty old Camaro was sitting in front of it, and she let loose a few curses. He hadn't been there in months, and she'd begun to hope that maybe this time his absence would be permanent.

Julie's mom was an alcoholic that somehow managed to scam enough disability and welfare programs out of monthly checks to keep the metal roof over their heads. Julie took care of shopping and preparing food for herself and her mom as best she could.

Her mom nevertheless blamed Julie for all the problems in her life, continually fantasizing aloud to Julie about how perfect her life would have been if only she hadn't been born. She would also gleefully describe the horrors of rape and beatings that would no doubt result if the state's child protective services were to get hold of her.

The combination was so depressing that the young girl was increasingly using pot and cocaine to mentally escape her reality, usually in the evenings after her mom had passed out for the night.

Whenever her dad showed up, he would squeeze whatever money for drugs he could out of them, before dropping out of sight again. Julie would then be scrambling to make ends meet for months afterwards.

With a sigh of resignation she approached the door to the trailer to see what dysfunctional situation she had to deal with this time. One good thing, she thought as she pulled the door open: she didn't have much money on her for him to take.

It turned out that this time, that was not a good thing.