Scene: (the kitchen)

He wanted to hit her. They were both standing in the kitchen, Marilyn stood two feet back from him, her eyes growing wide as they looked just past his shoulder. John turned his head, following her line of sight to his own right fist, cocked back by his ear.

It had happened so fast. He had never thought he could bring himself to this moment. He had thought about hitting his stepmom, had wanted to, but when the moment actually came it had happened as if he were standing outside his body, and something else had automatically pulled the strings. In physics, there was potential energy, energy not yet released but pregnant with ability, and kinetic energy, energy in motion. He was more than these laws, more than a machine, and in this moment he had a choice: potential or actual energy?

Marilyn stepped back, then ran across the room, standing behind John’s father, and continued to glare at John with those large, saucer eyes. John lowered his fist; his breathing came rapidly.

“Do you have a problem?” John’s dad said.
“You ate Andrew’s hotdog!” Marilyn squeaked, from over Harold’s shoulder.“What? What are you talking about?” John said, shaking his head and taking a step forward.
Marilyn moved out from behind the wall of John’s dad. “You took Andrew’s hotdog,” she continued. “You knew we were saving it for him and you deliberately ate it.”
“I didn’t,” John said. “If I’d have known it was his I wouldn’t have eaten it. I was hungry. I didn’t know it belonged to anyone.”
“You did it out of spite,” his father said.
“This is ridiculous,” John said, walking away.
“Do you have a problem?” his dad said again.
John turned again to face them both. “No. No, I don’t.” He turned away, looking over his shoulder so Marilyn wouldn’t take a running leap again at the back of his legs, and left the house.



Before Andrew had been born, John and his parents had gotten in an argument over a trip they would be taking the next day. John had forgotten they were going on a trip and asked where they were heading. "You already know," his dad had said, but no, John told him he didn't.
"You're being smart," Marilyn said. "You do too know."
"I Do NOT," John said, exasperated that he should know something that he didn't.
"Don't get fresh," his dad joined in, and John was asked again where they were going. When he claimed he didn't have any idea, they told him to think, but nothing came to mind, so they marched him upstairs, lathered his tongue with soap, and forced him to swallow it. They next day they drove to Joplin, Missouri, and John promised he would know the answers to more questions.


John walked around to the back of the house, opened the door, fumbled for the light switch, and pulled the leash off the nail where it usually hung next to the door. Closing the door behind him, he walked across the yard, past the kitchen, out near the garden to a small kennel with four posts surrounded by chicken wire.

Pebbles began wagging her tail wildly before John had even reached the gate of her pen.
"What are you so happy about?" he mumbled, leaning down to lift the latch and catch Pebble's collar as she made a mad scramble for the opening. She licked his hand, and he couldn't help but smile softly. "You're a stupid dog," he said, rubbing her head behind the ears. He slipped the leash onto her collar and they were away, walking down the street to the end where it would meet the country road, and from there wherever it took them.

They were walking, Pebbles on a mission to sniff every hydrant and tree along the way, John settling into the swishing silence and warmth of walking. It always made him feel better, every step taking him farther from the house, the road opening up as they passed houses on the right and left, and then open fields. He imagined what it would be like to keep following the road, heading west, with fields of corn and soybeans on his left and his right, following where the sun led, and the clouds. He could go anywhere. He could leave this town and the life he knew, his family and the kids at school and start over. Someday, he promised, it would be different. He would find his mother, he would be somebody different.