1. The State of a Sixteen-year-old

Snow.

That’s what the new day brings.

A white, cold cover-up.

Complete and total isolation.

Icy fingertips on the window.

And hot, raging anger.

The second day of the new year, and I’m ready to wake up from this nightmare and find myself back in Illinois. Where’s my buddy Brady’s game room with all the latest games and the ability to connect with twenty other players online? I can only connect with a dog that looks like a cotton ball dropped in chocolate. Everything else is impossible. Starting with Mom.

She looks like a survivor of a car crash. I didn’t want to talk with her yesterday, but when morning came and she eventually woke up and I made an effort to communicate, I knew that something was wrong with her, too. Maybe she watched her own personal New Year’s Eve bonfire and sacrifice. Maybe she got a call from Dad saying he wanted her back. Maybe she realized the mess the two of us are in and then proceeded to drink herself to oblivion.

I was going to tell her, but not in her condition of walking unconsciousness. Instead I made her coffee and waited until she could listen without dozing off into Slumberland.

Our phones don’t work. Of course. Mom says they’ve been out ever since the ice falling last night turned to snow. If she’s so groggy now, how can she remember what it was like in the middle of the night? All I can remember is the tapping on the window and Midnight snuggling next to me. I can’t imagine the dog enduring a storm like this in the deserted barn where Jocelyn was keeping her.

Sure you can, buddy. You can imagine anything now. Anything.

The Internet doesn’t work either. Yet our cable does.

I’d try a cell, but we haven’t made it that far. Baby steps. Like my license. Like my sanity. Like my soul.

Midday, and the weather reports are wrong. This ice-turning-into-snow storm has tripled expectations, at least in the wonderful little vacation getaway of Solitary. Come for the weekend, and you’ll leave scarred and changed for life! Come for life, and you’ll discover that life’s not exactly worth living.

I stepped out on the deck and saw a good seven or eight inches.

That was hours ago.

That means any thought of driving is no good.

No phone, no Internet, no car.

And no Mom.

I’m imprisoned with this rage inside me.

Still in shock, still out of my mind in awesome terror, still in this little cabin that once belonged to Uncle Robert before he disappeared.

A voice reminds me that oh, yeah, I’m still sixteen.

But I don’t believe that voice anymore.