Dedication To Nora for faith from the beginning Contents Cover Title Page Dedication A Rail Trail Our House Is Sick Our Yard Has Junk Here Is a (Partial) List It’s Utter Dark Jimmy and Me Mostly Jimmy’s Sad My Mother Left Rusty Gold It Was the Fourth I Never Was Plus But I See The Teachers Stopped I Never Joined Father Percy Talked One Day When There Is I Went Up There Once He Preached Another Time Jimmy Listens At School You Learn Yeah Teachers Sure So After School A Thousand Million Every Day I Stop It Was Dinnertime On the Other Hand I Never Take The Art Room Door I Started Taping Art After a While That Peach I Hate to Talk There Was a Girl Once Which Is All Fine Except There’s Always One Hundred and Twelve Minutes Friday Came I Didn’t Want to Think Final Period Her Again That Thing So That Day The First Thing It Was Cold Among the Trees Church Bells What the Hell Are You Doing? He Was at the Table I Passed the Church Wednesday The School Assembly I Thought Okay Jimmy Didn’t Care Onboard She Told Me My Face Her Father Lunch Was Quiet It Was Five Blocks Out of the Tangle Friend Come with Me It All Exploded I Never Knew I Could Red Clouds I Don’t Know Why In My Mind Robert Lang? Bobby? His Little House I Know This Girl I Wired the Doors Shut The Picture from the Train I Was Too Tired to Run Your Mother I Unplugged Some Mornings Except It Wasn’t All Right Then Rachel Asked Me As If They Doubled She Stopped Dead on the Stairs I Had to Be Alone I Stripped the Picture How Long I Was There The Shriek I Don’t Know Why His Little House Then Not Just Him She Ran Away It’s Over Now She Fell I Trippedrolleddivedtoppleddown A Wail Then I Carried Her Mom’s Camper Banging Brought Me Out They Drove Us So I Said No Way The Art School Said It Stormed Jimmy Didn’t Speak It Hurt How Many I Thought I Thought I Was The First Thing I Saw That’s All He Said I Almost Cried Behind the Church Author’s Note About the Author Back Ad Books by Tony Abbott Copyright About the Publisher A Rail Trail winds far from any normal street into the woods it used to be a flat path for a train to run on now it’s for people to the green house there the dark green house down off the end three miles by foot from every human road is where I live Our House Is Sick all hours with mice their little bone claws scratching on the floor or in the ceiling and their furry up-your-nose smell when they die into thumb-sized little husks not just inside outside too our front steps are cracked so you have to take the top two two at once I jump them quick I always have our house has propane heat a big tank in the back but my dad Jimmy’s so cheap sometimes he won’t turn it up because of bills and since he gives me almost no money to buy food we don’t have tons around that plus the mice get to it first anyway and eat it in the ceiling and die and dry up when it runs out so good for them but being thin and cold and quick to move all make me hard to see so good for me Our Yard Has Junk moldering all over it (moldering’s from a song my father listens too much to) it is the junk of some life or bunch of lives (not mine) you honestly could live outside with all the trash dumped in the yard out here from who knows who or when which (living outside) because of everything going and not going on with me is something I think a lot about Here Is a (Partial) List stacks of half-chopped wood planks ripped from some home improvement that didn’t get improved five busted chairs, no, six one overturned washer two picnic umbrellas with broken spokes a kitchen table whose three remaining legs jerk up into the air like some dead cow’s after an accident with a truck a plastic baby pool cracked down the side and filled with muck and leaves a battlefield of empty gallon cans of paint I never saw on any wall three lawn mowers (one push) piles of sodden blankets critters and their families have made a bathroom of remains of what might have been coffee makers or radios or bomb-makings (just kidding) and clocks and busted farm tools but from what farm I sure don’t know a ton of broken blinds and shades an arsenal of curtain rods endless end-less extension cords the arm of a lounge chair (just the arm) a hundred shattered plates that maybe date from when my mother threw them at him (which might explain why we have only two plates left one for me and one for him) parts of three (or more) old cars a rusted pickup truck that mostly runs but is so rusted you could poke a hole just with your fingertip through its flaky skin and a camper from my mother an old round-ended hard-top flat-nose V-dub camper bus parked up on cinder blocks from nineteen sixty-seven two-tone cream and powder blue (that haven’t been cream or blue for years) that Jimmy says was hers that someday I swear I will make into my room to sleep in when it rains because along with every other reason to get out of here the ceiling in my real room leaks It’s Utter Dark at the end of the trail where the trees are thick and tall and close and the sun gets stuck in the branches and ripped apart and dies before it hits my roof utter is from a song Jimmy’s got to think is about his life because he plays it like a theme She cut my heart She stole my breath I knew she’d be The utter death Of me . . . my father is the only one who lives with me and he’s so funny Get your butt downstairs! and when I get there What are you staring at? plus he can yell as loud as anything at the end of the trail and no one hears Don’t stand there Like a slug, Slug! Open a freaking can of soup. Do that at least! that’s funny right? Jimmy and Me are like two sticks that came down in a storm you see them on the ground the morning after not touching just near each other I mean two things that happen to be in the same place at the same time this green house right now but in a year if I make it I might get out of here I’ll be sixteen I’ll be . . . I’ll be . . . I don’t know what Mostly Jimmy’s Sad and crying in his chest about stuff he maybe had once in the past also he hurts bad from his leg and spine which he busted up (he says) when I was small I think he mostly doesn’t see me living there with him like I’m some fly that buzzes in and buzzes out while he’s at home and who he knows will finally fly out and stay out like my mother did that’s not a joke she really did My Mother Left just after I was born a year and a month or two it’s like she said Nine months for this? No thanks. or maybe not take this morning in the schoolyard parking lot the mothers (and one grandfather) dropped their kids then chatted loud like a television scene of normal life but that’s not us Jimmy and me he says she died my mother died but he doesn’t tell me how and talks instead about Utah or Idaho or Colorado or one of those states out there he says she was from Jimmy never says the same state twice if he talks about her (which isn’t much) but I look up each place
