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Learning to Fall: A goal.
Jillian came into the kitchen just as momma was about to flip Alex onto the griddle and frie him crisp like a catfish. Zit Head pulled him aside and whispered into his ear and steered him towards the door just as momma started to ask her something. Jillian covered for her boyfriend 'cause she had to in order to hide the work she did on his tongue with her metal mouth.
"Momma, Alex has to go to band practice at the school." Jillian yelled behind her, shooing Alex out the door. She wasn't even lying; Alex played the drums and was in a band, and not just a marching band, a real band with guitars and lights and everything, and he really did have a practice to run to.
Momma tried to get them to talk, to slow them down, and she looked like she wanted to really grill Alex, but she just sighed and let them walk away without a fight, rummaging through the drawer under the toaster oven for matches to light her cigarette on the way out of the kitchen to sit in the sunroom where she spends sunny days and cloudy days.
Terry jerked my arm hard and spun me around. He dragged on me, practically making me fall and bust my head on the corner of the kitchen counter like Zit Head did when she was eight. I 'clomp, clomp, clomped' my way down the hall, my feet barely able to get back up under me falling forward like that, and Terry pulled me into the laundry room and said to me,
"We gotta do something about that guy..." He meant Gill.
"We gotta get him back for what he did to me." Terry's face was older and meaner than it was an hour ago. Up close with him talking like that he coulda' been a hundred ten.
I knew we'd have to do something just like he said 'cause he said it real serious like he was trading for a new player to fill a slot in his baseball card collection, or he was defending his private time in the bathroom when his mom and four sisters were pounding on the door just because he was spending extra time alone with the Sears Christmas catalog and the door locked.
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