Free 7 Days at the Hot Corner by Terry Trueman

gas station parking lot, leaping up, and clawing its way over a wooden fence into the backyard of a small house.
    The car behind me honks—not just a little beep-beep , either, but a long blast. I look up and see that my light has turned green, so I ease forward.
    I drive on thinking about the cat, about Travis, about my inability to make things okay. Before I realize what’s happening, my whole feeling of happiness from the girls at the Safeway has completely collapsed. Famous? A pro? A millionaire jock? Come on! I can’t even handle my own life: My parents got divorced; I don’t know what to say to Travis; I can’t save a suicidal cat; I struck out four times today.
    Baseball legend?
    Big-shot sports hero?
    No way!
    The whole rest of the drive out to Mom’s, I feel worse and worse, absolutely stupid and worthless.
    Mom’s house at Weaver Lake used to be Mom and Dad’s place before I was even born. We all three lived there together until I was four and they split up. For several years after the separation Dad would stay overnight sometimes and they “tried to work things out,” until they finally gave up for good and got the divorce. And that divorce changed everything forever—at least for me it did.
    Although the town is also called Weaver Lake, Mom’s house is right on the lake itself, twelve miles southwest of Spokane. I pull my truck into my parking spot next to the fence and look out at the wind gently playing across the water. Against my will I say to myself that Weaver Lake would be as good a place as any to lie around and die of AIDS. I gotta knock this off; I don’t even know if Travis has ever had sex with anybody before, much less whether he’s infected. I’ve been acting totally stupid.
    I open the truck door and climb out. I love the smell of the lake: kind of a seaweed-meets-fresh-air scent. Off the shore from our house, about a hundred yards out, there are some big rocks. Seagulls and ducks hang out there. Twice a year Canadian honkers, a huge gaggle, show up and hang around for a couple of weeks. Mom and I have always taken walks along the lake, and it’s beautiful. For a guy my age, the line between boring and relaxing can be pretty thin sometimes. But at Mom’s, even though there’s really not much to do, it’s almost always good; I guess you’d have to call it peaceful.
    When my dad lived here, he built a space in the back of the garage that he called a studio. He put up a wall and insulated it and rewired it for lights and an outlet. He even put in a baseboard heater. I walk into the studio now, clicking on the light. I called Mom from Dad’s house to ask if I could come out, and she was really happy that I’d be coming, but I want a few minutes to myself before I see her. A few years ago I turned the studio into my space, a place for my friends and me. Now, when I come out to stay with my mom, I always spend at least one night up here, away from the main house. It’s kind of like having my own little apartment. Over the years Travis and I have spent a lot of nights here. I sleep in the little loft and Travis sleeps on the foldout couch. We’ve had some great times: eating junk food, talking until all hours of the night, watching ball games on my little black-and-white TV with its weak signal for channels 2 or 6 from Spokane, the only stations we could get. Those times all feel like ancient history now. I miss them. I miss him.
    I stand in the studio looking out the window, down toward the lake. I start thinking about everything: the baseball championships, Travis, his folks, AIDS, and then about my mom and dad. What did Travis say? You think your parents are not okay because they got a divorce....
    I think about how sad I was back then. I can see the old sandbox where I played as a little kid, the boards all weathered and splintery now from so many years exposed to the winds from the lake. I remember how young