Chapter 1

My Mom and Dad had been jokers. Always full of it and seeming to live only to make each other laugh. Bill Sprat had been born to a wealthy father and mother and apparently they were his model for getting along with women. He learned to make girls laugh and it always helped their panties slide off, sooner or later.

Sally Waterman's parents weren't po folks either. She and Bill dated off and on before Bill decided Sally could make him laugh too. After they graduated from University they purposely got Sally nocked up, for a laugh.

They had planned to marry all along, but they just thought it would be such a hoot to start the family first. Neither of their parents thought it was a damned bit funny, but the wedding went ahead rapidly and Sally was only about four weeks early with her delivery.

Of course it left me to be born with a broken arm, from trying to hold on as long as I could so we could try and make things look decent. Things rocked along almost normally until I was fourteen years old.

Of course Mom and Dad were always playing little jokes on me. Some were funny and some weren't, but I could tell they loved me better than teacakes and of course I loved them back, even with their, often weird, sense of humor.

Their last joke on me hadn't been a damned bit funny though, and I'm sure if they'd had the chance they would have apologized. They'd been off partying, leaving me home alone. What the hell, I was fourteen and old enough to look out for myself.

You guessed it. Dad was just a little drunk when he started home and Mom was even drunker. It wasn't the first time they'd come home under the influence. The trouble was they didn't make it home this time. All I can do is thank God they didn't hit anyone else and hurt them too.

After the singing and slow walking I moved in with my Dad's parents. We had all been fairly close, and the only reason Dad's parents took me in was because they were about ten years younger than Mom's. I still went over to see Mom's parents often and even spent nights with them lots of times.

Sometimes when bad luck gets its hooks in on you it just doesn't let up. In what I considered a payback by fate for something I didn't do, both sets of grandparents had been off on an outing together and were killed in a horrible crash, with a drunk driver for fuck sakes. Of course my grandparents weren't drunk, but the other guy had been and that was that.

I was eighteen by then, and old enough to see to myself, but it was a shitty deal all the same. Money wasn't a problem because they all had insurance and the drunk driver had been pretty wealthy. Our families' good lawyer made sure I got my share of the leavings of this drunks estate and I was well set up from my Grandparents estates anyway, since I was the only one listed on any will.

Still, it was a dirty trick for fate to pull on me, an all around shitty deal. I'd like to say I took it like a man, but I can't. I was devastated since I'd got started clinging to my Grandparents when my parents bit the dirt so early. I wasn't a titty baby or anything, but I did care for and depend on all of them, and it was just fucked up losing them all at once that way.

One of the worst things about it all was dealing with the school counselor. I know she was trying to help, but she'd call me in every day or two to ask me how I felt about things and other shit. I considered it a checking my pulse sort of thing. She finally told me she'd decided I needed to take a semester off to get my thoughts together, and I hit the ceiling.

The semester she wanted me to take off was my last one in high school, which meant I'd have to show up next August for another school year. I stormed out of her office, climbed into my pickup, and headed straight to my lawyer's office.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Going from a school counselor to a lawyer is exactly the wrong direction to jump. Maybe most of the time, but my lawyer had been my parent's and all my grandparent's lawyer too. He was a smart old bastard and already rich, so he didn't need any of my money.

I explained the problem to him and in two days he had a court order to make the counselor leave me alone and he was threatening the school district with a lawsuit.

Of course the school board didn't like being told what to do - small town politicians always think their shit don't stink, but he'd already burned their asses for a couple of hundred thousand over past misbehavior of a principal and they were loath to tangle with him in a lawsuit situation, especially since they didn't give a rat's ass whether I got counseling or not. The rest of my school year and my graduation went off without a hitch.