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chewed it.
    “I think I’m full,” she said.
    “Oh, Karen, you haven’t—”  Her mother looked at her plate.  “Oh, I guess you have eaten enough after all.  Okay, dear.”
    Karen took her dishes to the sink and headed to her room.  Tina was gone, thank God, off to give Jimmy a blow job or a fuck or whatever the hell she gave him.
    She lay down on her bed and closed her eyes, wanting to think of the kiss she’d given Jeff.  Instead, her mind insisted on conjuring up Bobby Jersey, full-blown, pulling her to him and squeezing her breast.  He’d scared her, but it’d happened so unexpectedly, she hadn’t had time to really think about it.  Now, though, she imagined his brown eyes staring at hers, his arms holding her too tightly for her to imagine escaping, and his mouth forming a thin line.  It looked like anger or hate, but that didn’t make sense.
    Did it?
    She never wanted to see him again, and she vowed to never go to the beach.
    But one more thought rattled around her head, grabbing her attention.
    Next time I see you, I’ll teach you to fly.
     
     

 
     
     
     
Chapter 2
     
     
    Karen Marie Richardson was a straight-A student.  She had to be or she’d have the wrath of her father to deal with.  Although he wasn’t a big man, he seemed to grow six inches taller when he was mad, and the one time she’d come home with a midterm C in her math class, he just about blew a gasket.
    Getting a C in subjects that were useless, like art, was bad enough, but in science or math …that was like stabbing him in the heart with an icicle at Christmas time.  He was a geologist who worked at the university.  Every year he published one or two papers researching stuff Karen didn’t understand and would never care about.  She vaguely understood that her getting bad grades in science was somehow a slight to him, but she never really grasped why.
    That all changed once, when time stopped and she snuck into her parents’ bedroom and went to the walk-in closet.  On the top shelf, she found the box he’d referred to once upon a time after he’d downed a few beers: the old shoe box that held his ancient report cards.  The first one she grabbed was grade ten and she almost laughed when she saw the grades.
     
    *   *   *
     
    Math: D
    English: D
    Science: F
    Music: C
    Social Studies: D
     
    *   *   *
     
    “Oh, man, Dad, have I got you now.”
    She skimmed through a bunch of other reports, and, although his grades improved through high school, she never found a single A to mark his progress.
    Hypocrite .
    She had been sixteen when she snooped through her father’s belongings, and after she amused herself with the report cards, she found herself wondering what was in the other boxes nearby.  They were hidden behind the one she was already snooping in, and she grabbed them.  There were three others.
    The first box held a gun.  She’d never seen a gun before, never held one, but she grasped this one solidly and held it out.
    “Do you have any bullets?” She had no clue how to check.  It wasn’t a revolver, where she might be able to see the point of the bullets hiding in their chambers.  Rather, it was a shiny, sleek gun with a clip that would have been smacked into the bottom.  She’d seen that done on countless TV shows.
    The gun was heavy, and she walked back to the kitchen and pointed it at her mother.
    “Oh my God, what am I doing?”
    She aimed the gun at the floor and then walked back to the secret box and restored it.  A year later she’d realize she couldn’t actually fire a gun when time was stopped, but that day she hadn’t clued into that yet.
    The next box was heavier than the one with the gun, and she hesitated before opening it.  A wave of guilt rushed through her as she imagined her father’s reaction if he caught her snooping through his stuff.
    Fuck it .  I bet he snoops through my stuff.
    The box lid lifted off easily, and inside was a stack of magazines.  She took