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There was no real rhyme or reason to the visits - or so it seemed back then. Sometimes it was just for a few nights. Others, weeks. The present spell? Yeah, they were going on months. I didn't know how the kids - or their moms for that matter- were handling it.
See, that is where my story starts.
I didn't realize it at the time, of course. All I knew when I put my foot down was I was bored. And missing out on things that the other kids weren't. Because they were younger. Because they weren't in a pivotal point of their growing-up-hood.
If anything, they were happy to be put on home instruction, or, in a few cases, pulled out and put on homeschooling. They were glad not to sit in airless classrooms, going zombie-brained as the teachers hammered information into their little heads that they would remember only to spew out on test days, then Etch-a-sketch right out of their brains again to make room for the next lesson.
But that wasn't the case for me.
First, because I liked school. I know, I'm a freak. But I had always been a sponge for things that interested me, grilling the adults around me who might have had more information than even my textbooks could tell me. That meant for history, I could grill Uncle Renny who was a bottomless pit of facts. Or if I wanted to know more about literature, my Aunt Janie had an endless list of books that could help shape my life, the way my brain worked, that would make me see things differently. Aunt Lo was a big reader too, though her taste ran toward sweet - and dirty - stories. She'd started slipping them to me under my mom's nose a few months before when she sensed it was maybe something I was interested in - sex. She hadn't been wrong either. And the books had given me more information than any health class I had ever taken.
But it wasn't just the classes I missed. I could - and always had been able to - learn anywhere.
It was the experiences.
And, let's face it, time spent with some people my own age.
I liked the kids, I did.
But there was only so much I could take.
I mean, I could only listen to Katy Perry music so much before I was sure my brain was going to turn to mush.
I wanted to be around my friends from school. The ones I had been getting a record-store-education with for months before we were whisked away to Hailstorm at a moment's notice, falling deep into tracks by The Doors and Tom Petty and Zepplin and Hendrix and Joplin and Sabbath, back when music had something to say, not just records to sell and charts to climb.
I missed hanging out at She's Bean Around, drinking coffee Mom said I couldn't have yet, talking about politics we were still too young to weigh in on in an official capacity, but had strong opinions on.
I was losing out on Friday nights at the movies or football games. Saturdays doing sleepovers or hanging out at the beach.
I mean, for God's sake, I was missing just fresh air whenever I wanted it, seeing things other than the inside of shipping container rooms and the heavily guarded grounds that Aunt Lo loved so much.
So, I had done something I guess I had always been good at. I got stubborn. Unbending. Absolutely relentless in my pursuit for freedom.
Until, finally, Mom and Dad caved.
And let me go back to school.
There was some kind of meeting with my teachers and principals that I was not allowed to know about, and I was assigned two of Aunt Lo's men or women from Hailstorm to bring me to and from school, had very strict rules about when and where I would meet them. If I was so much as two minutes late because the contents of my locker attacked me or something, they would come charging down the halls. And while the guns weren't out, I knew there were just barely concealed and ready to use.
Weird, a bit embarrassing? Yeah.
But if that was all I needed to put up with to be able to be back at school with my friends, well, I was willing to deal with some sideways glances.
Those were nothing new anyway.
It seemed that everyone else knew what I had figured out about my family as well.
Which was both uncomfortable but also freeing. I was left alone. No one messed with me. Everyone seemed to be careful around me.
I mean, not that I needed my father's reputation to protect me, of course. I had been trained in martial arts since before I could even talk without a baby lisp.
I could handle myself against roving, unwelcome adolescent boy hands. I could shut down a bully with one hand behind my back and both feet in cement.
