Free 7 Days at the Hot Corner by Terry Trueman Page A

my mom looked back when we built the sandbox, how big and strong and invincible my dad seemed. I remember him lifting me up and flying me around the yard like I was Superman. I swear I can almost see the outline of his footsteps in the grass.
    I look out past the huge old pines in our yard, down to where the waves wash silently onto our beach. And suddenly I start crying. Not just a little teary-eyed boo-hoo, but the real thing. I’m sobbing so hard that it hurts my chest and ribs and drives me to the floor. I can hardly catch a breath. I lie here in the studio all alone on the floor and I cry and cry. I’m ashamed and totally embarrassed. But the weirdest part about this crying is how good it feels, so good and so terrible. I lie here and I think about all those atbats when I couldn’t hit the ball to save my soul; I think about not being able to talk with Trav and not really being there for him when he needs me. I think about when I was a little kid wondering why my parents stopped loving each other.
    My crying is so heavy that my body aches. I wrap my arms around myself to keep from flying apart. I can’t breathe. I feel like I’m drowning.
    After a while I finally get control of myself. It feels like something has lifted off me, like kicking off a heavy blanket when you’re mostly asleep but way too hot. My head hurts a little and my body still feels sore—actually, “trashed” is more accurate—but somehow I feel better. In fact, I feel the best I’ve felt in days. Actually, I feel a tiny sense of peace. I don’t know why, but I just do.
    When I’m recovered enough so that maybe Mom won’t be able to tell I’ve been crying, I walk down to the house from the studio.
    We have two dogs, Evander and Bob, who charge up the yard to meet me. Despite the common wisdom on the subject, having dogs has never done anything much to help me grow up. The truth is, Mom has always done more of the work of taking care of them than I have. She feeds them all the time I’m at Dad’s and most of the rest of the time too. She cleans up the dog crap because, honest to god, it makes me gag to do it. Despite my complete worthlessness when it comes to doing my fair share with the dogs, I really love them. It’s embarrassing how much I baby them, and how I talk to them, calling them moronic nicknames like Baby Bobbie and Pretty Girl. If Matt Tompkins heard me with the dogs, he’d be sure he’d found the girly-boy.
    The dogs love me too. We go for walks together every week. I only leash them up when it’s absolutely necessary, so they get to run free through the woods on the west side of the lake and over the wheat fields to the south. Right now, I wish I were just a dog, running along all happy and stupid and totally unworried, crashing through the brush and over the pine needles and splashing through the shallows of the lake, freaking out the ducks. You live in fantasyland … Yeah, maybe, but right now I’m stuck being a human, so I walk into the house.
    â€œHi, sweetie,” Mom says, turning toward me and smiling.
    â€œHi,” I answer.
    â€œAre you hungry? Can I fix you something to eat?” My mom is exactly the kind of person who, up to her elbows in dishwater, asks me if I’d like to dirty some more dishes.
    â€œNo, I’m good,” I say.
    â€œIt’s such a treat to have you here on a Thursday night,” Mom says. “I can’t think of the last time you were out here on a Thursday—”
    She stops right in the middle of her sentence the second she looks closely at my face for the first time since I came into the room.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, Scotty?” she asks, staring into my eyes.
    I try to smile at her. I walk across the kitchen and plop down onto the big overstuffed couch that runs along one wall of the kitchen–dining room area. From here I can talk to Mom and look out the windows at the