The footprints on the sand

By the edge of the waves

Are saved once by luck

Before her greedy hand

Shifts the sands blank

Under the glaze of moon

The waters come alive

The Sea swallows up the lost pier

And recollects her treasures

Rolling them into a belly of deep

But still, she yearned for land

She longed for the world beyond

For something more than sand

So she stretched her body

To eat and eat just a little more

Season by season, year by year

Her ferocious appetite grew

She relished the acres of grass

The trees topped her meals

No walls could hold her back

She laughed as the people cried

Every decade was a royal feast

There were houses, near and far

Cars and boats and trains and bikes

She riled her currents up to all

But the young grew old and wise

Torrents of rain came in anger

She lifted her arms wide and open

Smashed her fists onto their towns

And ate them as they left

When the hurricanes took over

And the world fell quiet

When floods swept the plains

Finally, she caressed her dear Earth

Here and forever more

Under blood red of elder morning

The bank went up in flames. Scattered people running to and fro on the streets, panicked. There are mothers out there flailing their arms, children that are shaking. Men that can make no sense of the horror that has unfolded around them. No peace, no protest. This is an act of hatred, jealousy. I can almost throw up.

The three of them that went in come flying back toward the van as I lower my head and reach within an inch of shedding a tear. Bruta slides open the side door and they shove in bags of cash, storming inside the van and slamming the door behind them.

“Drive!” one of them yells. With their masks on, I cannot tell who is who, which voice is which. Wing up front heeds the call, puts the van in drive while we’re all still a jumbled mess in the van, and zooms off far away from the bank. Outside I can hear people screaming, but I know that I must look down. I cannot look.

A hand rests itself down on my shoulder. I look up in a roar at who it is and it’s John. It’s John, and the expression on his face matches mine.

“We have to get out of here,” he must be telling me through his head. In the back of mine, I tell him I agree, and I think he understands.

There’s police sirens in earshot now; one cop car passes us on the way back to the dojo, not stopping us as they head to the bank that they’ve blown up. The bank we’ve blown up. This is not what I did for my mom. I wanted to join a peaceful protest. John and I, we did. We must get out. Now. And John looks at me again as I think this, and I know he’s thinking the same thing.

Life doesn't fly by. It doesn't have wings. It doesn't have anything. It simply passes through us as time goes on.

As time goes on, you begin to realize that whatever passes through you becomes woven tightly into braids that stick out of your back like a tail you can never get rid of.

Some people, with experience and time, gradually gain the ability to see the strings in front of them. Only a few of them figure out how to reach out and grab it.

Now, once you take hold of them, there's no going back. Of course, it all still passes through you. The only difference is that you become responsible for weaving your own braids. As you make things happen rather than let things happen to you, the liberating freedom makes you feel a sort of carefree bliss. That is, until you realize how heavy the strings. Not to mention that if you fail to harness your strings, everything will go haywire and become a tangled mess. It happens when you decide to stop... or turn around. And that's when you have to decide whether you want to work your way out of the knots or just cut the string right then and there. Sometimes, I think the strings in my hands look an awful lot like chains.

Now, of course everybody gets stuck every once in a while. But at one point, the mess becomes so unbearable that it's nearly impossible to untangle.

In all my life, I have only witnessed a single person weave all the way to the end. As the last bit of string passed through them, their braids fluttered and lifted them up into the sky.

Life doesn't fly by. It flies away.

I’m rescued and I’m loved, I bloom so freely, I thrive.

I outgrow my home.

New home, I bloom, I thrive, I’m green, I’m happy.

I’m Green, and I’m brown.

I’m Brown?

I’m different not like my brothers, I’m green, but I’m brown.

I bloom, I’m green, but now again I’m brown.

I eat, I drink, I’m Bloom.

I produce new ME’s, I’m gifted beautifully, but I am not who I use to be, I’m brown.

Beautifully, big new home, I bloom so green, but then all over again I’m brown.

My home, fresh new stakes, but I’m brown.

Ripped from new my home, and inside the walls uninvited guest.

Who allowed you into my new home?

My beautiful home?

Wait …. What’s in me?

Paint in my roots, my home is killing me!!

Paint in my roots and pest in my food, I’m brown.

Showered in loved, new food, new home, trimmed and divided.

I don’t want to be brown.

Please new home, don’t make me brown.

She pours the milk tea

In two olive colored porcelain cups;

I set the chairs

In the verandah of our little home

facing few distant windows

of a cemented white shed.

The orange of the dawn is

Melting into its wide plate of blue

Like the ripples of water

Spreading across the stillness of the sea.

"The tea's getting cold",

My eyes murmur into her ears

And she looks me through her leaned lids,

Smiling through the sound of the sip.

I take two spoonful of sugar,

She takes one

And drinks it hot the way it is.

I drink my tea half cold

So she could sit beside me a little longer

by the time I drink the last sip

My tea won't go as cold as

the stillness of the sea.

People shouldn't have to say "I'm a Christian" our words and actions should show it. Christians are flawed not perfect...with acceptance we are given the grace of salvation. No one knows a person's heart and their relationship with Christ but the good Lord and that person. It is a personal walk. There is only one seat of judgment and we don't occupy that seat.

Snow falls into the waves. By the thousands, flakes unify with the water while I sip coffee and watch, separated from the chill by my sweater, the fire I lit upon waking, the tall pane of glass that overlooks Keuka Lake.

I dream of winter because the lake is for summers. It’s not cheap at any time of year to rent a house on a shore: if you’re spending the money, you do it when you can kayak or swim or fish, or at least read a novel in the shade of a tree without the upstate January driving you indoors. My wife and I married within sight of our lake in July 2008; since then, her parents have rented a house on Keuka for a week every summer for us to gather. Those seven days are a highlight of the year because they exist outside of man-made time, without external demands or appointment calendars. There is food; there is love; there is the water. Two million years ago, glacial ice scraped out the valleys that would fill. Since then, the lake has been. Lakes invite being.

We have a couple kayaks and a canoe in our garage where we ought to park a car. Between May and October, I’ll hoist the boats atop our vehicles, lash them down and drive fifteen minutes to the public beach, solo or with the family. We admire the various lake houses as we paddle. Our favorites are not the new constructions, whose thousands of square feet dwarf the family cottages they replaced. We prefer the homes that have been here for at least the fifteen years we have, the old favorites.

“I wish we could live in that one,” my daughter said once as our canoe glided by.

“We could have owned a lake house,” I answered. “I started college as a business major on a finance track. Fund managers make a lot more money than teachers.”

“Why did you become a teacher?” she asked.

“People in finance told me to expect 80-hour work weeks, and I knew I wanted a family. A house on a lake is no good if you don’t have time to be with your family. And I wanted to teach,” I added. “I believe in it.”

My own father passed on lucrative promotions that would have uprooted us from our home and schools; he did, genuinely, attend every baseball game and concert. I understood then, as his son. I understand as a father now, and I hope my children will, too.

Regardless, I chose my path. As I told friends at the time I changed my major, I did not want to dedicate my life to earning more money for rich people—I wanted to teach; I wanted to have a family. These were the right choices. There are good days and bad days, but I do not pine for a road not taken. My hours are meaningful and good. The road ahead has unseen twists and turns, and there may be bridges out. Accidents. I feel optimistic, though, that I can continue to glance in the rearview mirror and see a life well-lived. Be a simple kind of man, Lynyrd Skynyrd sang. Be something you love and understand.

A teacher can live securely, not luxuriously. It is still possible my wife and I could someday retire to a lake house of our own through a combination of prudence and luck, but well-lived lives do not necessarily yield dollars. I am at peace with that truth. All the same, as my kayak cuts through Keuka’s waves, I dream sometimes of occupying one of those homes for decades rather than a rented week. I dream not just of summer but winter days, of that coffee and snow on the water. I dream of watching seasons pass over the water a morning at a time so I am part of the cycle of the lake. Of being there.

He said it so casually, 3 AM, no plan.

"Let's take a walk through an ocean town."

We were weekend warriors

Always on the run

In a permanent state of getaway

What's wrong with where we are?

What's so tragic about home?

He says, "I feel myself getting older.

The clock in the kitchen

Ticks too loudly

Like a bomb in my head

And I'd rather be anywhere else."

I wonder how soon anywhere

Could turn into with anyone

How soon until the ticking in me

Is a bomb inside him that explodes?

So I say "Let's take a walk through an ocean town."

I hate the beach

The ticky tacky cheapness

Of the would-be ocean trinkets

In rundown shops

It's January

Who goes to a beach town in January

Except a man terrified of time

And the woman who loved him too fondly?

The cold air whips

My fraying curls about

But his arm's in my arm

And I'm warm.

I make the plans and I fold the maps

His delicate artist hands

Could never be held in the cages

Of schedules or plans

"That's why I have you." he says

And I smile, because he has me

Which means I still have him

But for how long?

Until the lines on my face

Echo my age?

I won't be young forever.

Will you still want to be seen

On a boardwalk hand in hand

With me once my hair starts to gray?

I find myself wondering

In the future you see

The one where you never grow old

Is it still me, ten years away

To which you say

"Let's take a walk through an ocean town?"

Part One

Chapter One

Paige doesn’t have to see in the dimly lit truck to know the purple vein in Big Daddy’s forehead is pulsing, that his hands clench the steering wheel and his lips twitch as he prepares to unleash a barrage of shaming words. The speedometer glows white, faintly illuminating Big Daddy in his stiff new overalls. Fifty, sixty, seventy miles per hour, too fast for the clunky red pickup that whines to keep up with Big Daddy’s rage. Paige crouches against the passenger door.

They are headed to the bus station. Big Daddy had shoved Paige in the truck and said he was putting her on the next Greyhound leaving town. Said he wanted her gone for good. Said this is tough love, which makes his chest heavy, but there is no other way.

Big Daddy drives in fuming silence at first. Then the yelling starts, builds to high speed like the truck, madder and faster as Big Daddy fumes. Paige only hears some of the words. She learned long ago to put an invisible helmet over her ears, and to pretend she is invisible too.

Paige has heard most of these words before. Addict. Weren’t raised this way. Piece of shit boyfriend. Trash. Hurting Abby. Stealing, from me! Me! He bangs his fists on the steering wheel. Ought to call the cops. But no! You’d be back like a damn feral cat. Getting you the hell away from Abby.

Paige winces at the mention of Abby. She hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to her little girl. But surely Big Daddy won’t really make her leave. Back like a damn feral cat made her cringe too. She is his daughter, not some stray animal.

Surely, Paige thinks, this will end like when she was a teenager and Big Daddy caught her skipping school with Danny. Big Daddy drove around yelling until his throat hurt, then ground her and refused to speak to her for days. Mother had treated her like a sick, wounded creature, bringing soup and crackers on a tray to her room for dinners, until Big Daddy got worn out being mad and let life settle to normal.

The mean words continue now though, like a stream of consciousness. She hates Big Daddy because he doesn’t understand her. His words make her want to go away, to find a place with Danny again. Danny will get her from the bus stop if Big Daddy follows through. Big Daddy’s eyes are on the road. She plucks a strand of long brown hair from her head and presses the tip to her lips.

“Stop it Paige!” Big Daddy yells and snatches the thin strand. How did he see that? Paige wonders. The butterflies wake up and flap, flap, flap in Paige’s stomach. She’d always called worries and nerves the butterflies. Mother calls them that too. Paige smiles remembering how Abby thought they were real butterflies, black monarchs and orange and yellow painted ladies flying around in your stomach like on a bloody summer day in a garden.

Big Daddy couldn’t make her leave Abby. A wave of nausea washes through Paige and tears well. She doesn’t know what to do with Abby. Her sister, Melissa the perfect, thinks Paige is a terrible mother, but Paige loves her daughter. That’s all you need, right? But she can’t have Danny and the drugs, and be a mother, responsible and all. Danny and the drugs always call her back. The heroin, the meth had chosen her, but no one understands.

Paige rolls down the passenger window for air to tamp the nausea and to let Big Daddy’s words dissipate into the night rather than hover around her all hot and moist in the cab. She looks out into the Knoxville sky, lit with billboards, and beyond that a faint sprinkling of stars. The rain-scented mountain air helps her breathe, refreshes her face, and whips her hair.

Big Daddy pulls off I-40 at North Central and eases down Magnolia to the Greyhound station. He parks the truck, which ticks to cool down as they sit in silence.

“Next bus leaving,” he says. Big Daddy looks straight out the windshield into the night. “Don’t care where it’s going.”

Paige wipes her runny nose with the back of her hand, opens the passenger door, picks up her backpack and sling purse from the floor, and steps outside. She stares at her father, who sits in the harsh glare of the overhead cab light. His eyes look sad, but unrelenting. His lips press together in a firmness that says Paige can’t come home.

“It’s cruel to kick out your own flesh and blood,” Paige says, spitting the words. ’What kind of father does that?” She waits for Big Daddy to say “I know. I can’t do it,” and order her back inside the truck. Instead, Big Daddy sighs and gets out of the vehicle, slams the door hard.

“This is your own doing, Paige,” he says. “You’re 25 and still acting 15. You’re killing me, taking years off my life.”

Goosebumps pop on Paige’s skinny arms and legs. The June night suddenly feels too cold for blue-jean shorts and a tank top.

“Daddy,” she says. Her voice cracks. “Please don’t. I can’t leave Abby. And where will I go?” Paige shivers as she talks. He’s really doing this, she thinks.

“You’ve already left Abby,” Big Daddy says. “You aren’t there for her at all. It’s the rest of us -- me, your mother, and Melissa who tend to Abby.” His voice is soft but firm. A thick moment of silence passes as they glare at each other across the expanse of the truck bed, the parking lot light drawing gnats toward their faces.

“You can’t force me to go!” Paige stomps her foot. “That’s child abuse. You could be arrested.”

“Twenty-five is not a child, Paige. Don’t threaten me,” Big Daddy says, his voice strangely calm now.

“I hate you,” Paige hisses at him. “I hate you for this.”

“Well, I don’t hate you. But I don’t know what to do with you,” Big Daddy says. “A man shouldn’t have to put a private lock on his bedroom door to keep his child from stealing cash from his wallet, or rummaging through the closet for the guns.”

His lips twitch as though he might cry. He waves away a swarm of gnats. “I can’t have you stealing from me, coming home high, and then disappearing for weeks without a thought for Abby. And as for your mother, you’ve caused her to age way beyond her years.

“Mama’s not my fault,” Paige yells.

“I’m sorry, honey, but we are done. I hope you learn something from this, grow up and get your life together. Until that happens, you’re on your own.”

Paige squares her jaw, tightens her lips, and slams shut the passenger door, trembling mad inside. Well screw him, she thinks. He never loved her. No decent father would throw his daughter on the streets. He loves Melissa, the smart one. Sorry she can’t be Melissa.

Paige walks fast into the station, hating Big Daddy for crossing this line, hating Melissa. She keeps her head down. Her heart pounds. Big Daddy follows her, purchases a one-way ticket on the next Greyhound headed to Denver, Colorado. Paige has never been there, but she knows it is far away. Too far to easily get back home.

Paige snatches the ticket and walks to the far end of the station, takes a seat in a blue plastic chair attached to a row of blue plastic chairs. She doesn’t look back, determined not to give Big Daddy the satisfaction. Big Daddy clunks coins in a vending machine for a Coke and sits a distance away, sipping the drink.

Paige decides that when he leaves, she’ll cash in the ticket and take a cab to Danny’s house, or find a motel for the night. But Big Daddy doesn’t go anywhere. Paige has no choice but to board the bus and leave everything she knows behind.

Chapter Two

Banging and yelling upstairs wakes Abby from a fitful sleep. Abby’s grandfather, Big Daddy, thunders across the ceiling. Abby pats the bed, but no one is there. Overhead, Big Daddy shouts words with “God” in them, words you aren’t supposed to say. Brave Abby wants to barge her eight-year-old-self upstairs and scream “stop!” Scared Abby jams her head under the pillow, a soft shield that does little to mute the noise.

A pale glow spills over the stairs that line the far wall and lead to the main level of the house. Aunt Melissa, who Abby calls Meme, climbs down slowly with a flashlight, one hand spread across her pregnant belly. She unlocks the desk drawer, counts out dollars, and stuffs them in her short’s pockets.

“Why’s Big Daddy mad?” Abby whispers.

“Can’t talk, Abby. Go to sleep. He’s not mad at you.” Meme takes the steps back up two at a time.

More angry stomps. A cabinet door slams. Abby sniffles against her pillow. She knows this has something to do with Mama. She pulls her fists under her chin and curls in a ball. Jinx sits on the bed and pats Abby’s back. Aunt Meme says Jinx is imaginary, but she seems real to Abby with her short orange-red hair and green eyes, always saying things that make Abby feel better.

“It’s probably nothing,” Jinx says. “He gets mad over nothing.”

Big Daddy’s old truck revs, squeals in the gravel driveway. Then, silence. Damp, dark basement air stirs like a spooky presence. The house sounds extra quiet after the commotion.

Meme walks back down the steps and Jinx disappears. Jinx doesn’t like Meme. The bed squeaks with Meme’s weight even though she’s skinny as a stick everywhere except her pregnant belly. Meme pulls Abby close and strokes her hair. Meme is so sweet -- sometimes.

“What’s going on?” Abby whispers.

Meme lights a cigarette. The match flares, sizzles. The tip of her Salem flits like a firefly around her tight-set mouth.

“I’m going to tell you the truth Abby, like I always do.” She pulls the chain on the driftwood lamp Big Daddy made. Abby takes a deep breath and waits. Meme doesn’t always tell the truth.

“You know how your mama sometimes makes bad decisions?”

“Because of the Polar Bear?”

“Well yes. The bi-polar. That’s part of the problem.”

Abby sits up and moves closer. Meme puts her arm around Abby’s shoulders. This is what Abby calls the “time before the knowing,” the few seconds when she is aware there is bad news, usually about Mama, but the words haven’t yet spilled into the air to become real.

I want to slow down time, Abby thinks. Stay here, where Meme loves me and I don’t know about the bad thing, whatever Mama did this time. She thinks of the merry-go-round at school, where you can dig in your heels, pull with your arms and slow down, go almost still.

Meme sighs and shakes the foot of her crossed leg, dangling a flip-flop. Abby knows she is hesitating because she’s thinking how to phrase things, how to make whatever happened hit Abby’s heart like a soap bubble instead of a brick.

“Your mama made another bad decision.” Meme takes a deep inhale on her cigarette and turns her head to the side, exhaling a stream of smoke. “I don’t how she got so over her head, if she quit taking her meds, or is on something else, or what. You can never tell with Paige.”

Smoke ghosts elongate like spooky eaves-droppers waiting to hear what Meme says before floating up and out the crack in the window. “You know how mad Big Daddy gets sometimes, right?”

“Go on and tell. What did she do?” Abby hears the dread in her voice, the dragging of vowels that Meme hates.

“It doesn’t matter what she did, and you don’t need to worry over it. Big Daddy kicked her out for good. He’s driving her to the bus station and putting her on the next Greyhound, no matter where it’s headed. He wants her out of our lives. Those were his exact words.”

“Out of our lives?” Abby asks. “No! You can’t kick people out of a family! She’s Mama!” Abby’s throat feels suddenly sore and her eyes swell with tears. The panic butterflies pummel her chest, beating their little wings as hard as they can.

“He sure can and he is.” Meme sits her Salem Light on the table and pulls her brown hair into a ponytail with a rubber band, then picks the cigarette back up.

“I gave her a little money, enough for a place to stay until she gets on her feet. She’s got her meds, and I told her I’d forward next month’s pills when she lands somewhere. She’ll be okay. Thank God she’s gone though. We are all going to be better off. ”

Abby jumps off the bed, furious at Meme and Big Daddy for wanting Mama gone. How can anyone’s mama be out of a girl’s life? She digs in her clothes pile for something besides the Hello Kitty pajamas she’s wearing.

Grandma Lovey will understand and take Abby to the bus station; maybe she can go away with her mother or at least say “goodbye.” She doesn’t want to live in Big Daddy and Lovey’s house with Meme and not Mama.

“I’m going too!” Abby tells Meme. “She’s my mama! I don’t want her out of my life. I’m not glad she’s gone. Hey Jinx,” Abby yells, “help me pack. Lovey will take us to the bus.”

Meme rolls her eyes and taps cigarette ash in the base of the driftwood lamp.

“For the last time Abby, grow up. Jinx is not real.”

“I’m eight!” Abby shouts but isn’t sure if she means she is grown up, or that she is just eight and has a right to believe in magical things and to have her mama with her. Somehow, she thinks, she means both things.

“She’s a made-up friend. And besides, you aren’t going anywhere,” Meme sighs. Her voice turns softer.

“I know you don’t understand and want Paige to stay, but she’s already on a bus by now. I know you love your mama, but you’ll understand someday why she’s not good for you. Besides you’re safer here and starting third grade soon!”

Abby turns her face from Meme’s eager smile about school. The other kids have moms who bring cupcakes on their birthdays and drive on field trips. School is where Abby learned that all moms and daughters don’t live in their grandparents’ homes, sleep in their mother’s childhood bedroom, or in the basement with an aunt. Most live with their moms and dads in their own house or apartment, and visit their grandparents on Christmas. Warm tears hit Abby’s cheeks, her nose runs, and her heart throbs like in the fast-moving dreams, even though she’s standing still in an ankle-deep heap of unfolded clothes.

Abby imagines her mama riding to the bus station, arms crossed, glaring out the window, mad at Big Daddy for throwing her out. Where will she go? Abby wonders. Her home is here, in the canopy room she shares with Abby, in Big Daddy and Lovey’s house, 537 Juno Drive in Knoxville, Tennessee, the address she had to memorize in first grade. Nowhere else can be home! She must have panic butterflies real bad, Abby thinks, and bursts into a fresh round of tears.

She wonders what Mama said to Big Daddy on the way to the bus station. Did she say “Tell Abby I love her? I’ll be back for her?” She might not be the kind of mama everyone else has, but she’s Abby’s mama, and cupcakes or not, Abby needs her to be the one person in the world who loves her most.

With Mama gone, who will sleep with Abby in the canopy bed upstairs? Who will flip through Glamour magazines with her and Jinx and tell them who the stars are? Because Mama understands about Jinx and doesn’t tell Abby to grow up. Who will wake Abby in the middle of the night to raid the freezer, giggling and shushing each other as they eat chocolate ice cream by the blue light of the open door? Who will love Abby most of all?

And what about Dell the Giant? With Mama gone, will he leave too? A few days ago he brought Abby star-shaped sunglasses and a coloring book from Goodwill, where he works. He’s Mama’s friend, but he’s so sweet and nice to Abby. She doesn’t want to lose Dell, too! She’s known him all her life. She once asked her mother if Dell was her father. Paige had made a snorting laugh and said “don’t be ridiculous.”

“Hey,” Meme lifts Abby’s chin with her pointing finger. “You want your mama to be safe, don’t you? She’s safer away. You’re safer here. You don’t want to travel away on a bus, do you?”

“No.” Abby lets the pair of shorts she dug from the clothes pile drop from her fingertips, then falls back on the bed. “But I already miss her,” Abby says. “I miss her so bad.”

“Don’t pout,” Meme says. “You’re loved plenty.” She pauses, then in a rush grabs Abby’s hand.

“Feel this,” she says. Meme places Abby’s palm on the skin of her big belly. It’s a private place, underneath the waistband of her elastic stretch shorts. Meme’s belly is hard as rock. Two faint kicks press into Abby’s palm. Boom, Boom. They feel like heartbeats. Abby’s lips curl into a smile and her hand trembles against Meme’s warm skin.

She can’t be angry with Meme, now that her aunt has let her touch the thin-stretched skin of her stomach, let her feel the kicks. Abby has never touched another person’s belly like this. It feels private, a personal thing she wasn’t part of before but now is.

Her heart beats quicken. She leaves her hand there, hoping for more kicks, hoping Meme will embrace her again, will stroke her hair and tell her not to worry about Mama, that she’ll talk Big Daddy into letting Mama come back and everything will be okay. Another kick tickles Abby’s palm.

“That’s your cousin,” Meme says. “You will be sort of like a big sister.”

“Yea,” Abby smiles. “Sort of like you and Mama.

“Well,” Meme says. “Hopefully not.”

Chapter Three

Paige drags her backpack up the steep steps of the bus, clutching her sling purse close to her chest. About a fourth of the seats are filled with hunched over men and women. The smell of sweat and mold fills the air. No one says anything to her and she is glad. A withered-looking woman nods and smiles but Paige ignores her.

Where did these sad people come from, Paige wonders? Where are they going? A lyric to an oldie’s song Big Daddy plays sticks in her head. “All the lonely people, where do they all belong….” She finds an empty row of seats near the front and plops down, curls into a fetal position, and pulls her iPhone from her purse.

She calls Danny’s number for the tenth time, then texts Melissa, who doesn’t respond either. The soft hug Melissa gave her when she handed Paige the $400 must have meant nothing. And Danny, saying he loved her all those nights. That was bullshit too. If any of them loved her they wouldn’t have let this happen. She’s truly on her own with nothing but Melissa’s money, a baggie of heroine she took from Danny’s stash last time she was at the trailer and a handful of Adderall.

Alone. No place to sleep, no Abby to snuggle with when she needs a hug. She could get murdered out here. How would Big Daddy like that? How would he feel about tough love then?

She pictures in her mind police officers knocking on the door at home, bringing the news that the dead body of Paige Anne Marsh was discovered in Denver, Colorado. Lovey and Abby would cry hysterically and blame Big Daddy. They would never speak to him again and he would die alone and sad. The panic butterflies kick in.

“I’m in trouble,” Paige says to herself. “I’m in serious trouble.”

Her lips twitch as she thinks of the white powder in her purse. So glad she lifted it off Danny when she did. Paige digs in her purse for her straw, draws the purse close to her face, and snorts just enough heroin to help her cope, calm her down, and make her feel better. God, she needs it more than ever. It’s the only thing she can count on.

The bus pulls out of the terminal just as the sun begins to rise and Paige’s high kicks in. She’s on an adventure now, awake and alert, watching the pink dawn, a new day opening, through the wide bus window. It feels a little like she’s at a theater.

Under the bridge, homeless men and women mill about, which makes Paige uneasy so she looks away. This part of town feels grey and lonely, deserted except for a couple entering a coffee house and a lone homeless man curled under an awning.

The Sun Sphere stands tall above the town, its big golden ball like another world in the sky, an unreachable world. A World’s Fair World that dinky Knoxville hosted before Paige was born. The university, just a few blocks over, Melissa’s old territory, would be quiet this time of morning.

“Glad I’m leaving this stupid town,” Paige mumbles.

The bus hisses and sighs like a live beast, then pulls onto the downtown streets. They hit I-40 West toward Nashville and pick up speed, then pass the exit for Pellissippi State, where Paige had once considered enrolling for a business degree. That imagined life wouldn’t happen.

But something new will happen, something exciting, she thinks. Big Daddy isn’t yelling at her. Danny’s brother can’t track her down for the money she owes. Abby will be okay with Melissa and Lovey. She’s free now, free of her old life and off to a new one where she doesn’t owe money and can become anyone she wants. She feels light, dandelion fluff in the wind. Off to wherever the breeze takes her.

Paige would love a cigarette, but a sign up front says “no smoking,” and she doesn’t want to call attention to herself. So she adjusts her backpack against the window, rests her head on it, and falls asleep thinking of dandelions, but her dreams take a darker turn.

A tabby mama cat in an alley scavenges trash cans for food. It’s a pretty cat, orange and black and white. But it turns rabid with a rat in its teeth and chunks of hair missing. She knows it’s a dream but she desperately wants the pretty cat back, the smooth-haired tabby with the gentle purr. She can’t steer her dream that way. The rabid cat slinks closer, drops the rat on her lap.

Paige wakes nervous and fretful, her neck sore from sleeping against the bus frame, her mouth cotton dry. A sour odor wafts from her armpits. She watches the boring landscape -- fields planted with corn or wheat, dotted with cows, barns and ponds. Her stomach growls.

“Where are we?” she asks the withered lady.

“Past Nashville, headed to St. Louis,” the lady says. “You slept right through that stop.”

I must have slept four or five hours, Paige thinks. Now she longs for St. Louis so she can get something to eat and drink and use a proper restroom.

In St. Louis, the bus screeches to a halt and swings open its doors. A big, lumbering man in overalls boards. He reminds Paige of Big Daddy because of the overalls, but this man is taller and his overalls are threadbare and washed to a faint blue, not starched and stiff like Big Daddy’s.

His beard and hair are bushy and mostly gray, but strands of reddish-orange show through. The man catches Paige’s eye, but she quickly looks down and calls Danny again. Her shoulders shake as she chokes back sobs because Danny still isn’t answering and she is a long way from home.

“You all right, darling?” The big man touches her shoulder.

“Leave me alone.” She flinches at the touch, stays hidden behind the waterfall of hair.

“Headed clear to Denver?”

“I said leave me alone.”

“My name’s Jonah. Long trip to Denver. Travelers can use friends.”

Paige shakes her head, still looking down, hair swinging back and forth and hiding her face. She doesn’t want to look at anyone right now. She wants this old, smelly man to leave her alone. Who knows, he could be a rapist. He claims the seats across the aisle and a couple rows back.

“Creep,” Paige mutters as she stands and steps outside. The air is thick and toxic with bus fumes. Inside she purchases two bottled waters from a vending machine and gulps one down, then plunks in quarters for cheese and crackers, a tube of Pringles and a pack of Salem Lights.

She could stay in St. Louis, she thinks. Not return to the bus and the chatty old man. But her backpack is there, and Colorado is supposed to be pretty with all the mountains. Maybe she could get approved for medical marijuana. She smokes a cigarette and reminds herself it’s an adventure.

TITLE: Fast Moving Dreams

GENRE: Adult Literary Novel

WORD COUNT: 56,000 for full novel. This is the first three chapters.

SYNOPSIS: Paige is kicked out of her family home, where she had been living with her little girl. She goes to Denver and meets a homeless preacher and a Jamacian woman who help her set up life in a camper at Camp Timberlake, an old state park that is now a homeless shelter. Three years pass. Abby, now 11, gets clues to her mother's whereabouts and sets out on a trip cross country with an old friend and her grandmother to find Paige and bring her home.