CHAPTER 1

"Look Dad! I caught a tiger in my trap!" Calvin held up his long time friend Hobbes, pretending he had just managed to catch him out in the woods.

"Calvin, can't you see I'm busy? Jesus, will you go play somewhere else?" His father's eyes were flaring. It was a look Calvin saw all too often. A look of rejection.

He had always felt like his father didn't care about him. Like he was no one, that if his father had to choose between his job and his son, he would pick the former.

Calvin wished for nothing but to go back in time and tell his father he was sorry for all the trouble he had ever caused him. But of course, that was impossible now...

"Shit!"

He had made a wrong turn. He began about circling around to get back on track when a police officer spotted his peculiar movements. The officer began to make his way toward the car.

"Hello sir! I took a trip down here today and made a wrong turn on my way back to the U.S.! Could you direct me to the quickest way back to the border?"

The Mexican policeman looked as though he didn't believe him. He twitched his lip, and then simply said, "Pop your trunk."

Calvin couldn't believe it. He obeyed the command and then slammed his head down on the steering wheel, which caused the horn to honk loudly. He didn't care.

After the officer was finished with his examination, he allowed Calvin to move on. As he tried to figure his way around the unfamiliar territory, he noticed the traffic was slowing to a crawl. There was a jam. A big one.

He sat back unbelievingly. This was just his luck. Young Hispanic children were walking up to his car, trying to sell things. He rolled up his windows and shoed them away. He then proceeded to sit in his car for no less than eight hours.

All because he let his mind get off things at hand. That was something he'd been doing all his life. But never like earlier... earlier it was like a flash, something was willing him to do something... he never thought he'd say it, but he wished he was a kid again.

Sure, when he was a kid, he was always just wishing he was grown up, but then again, at least he always knew that would eventually happen. Now, in the opposite situation, he knew he could never go back.

When the cars finallly cleared up, he made his way back to the border. After going through the security checks and long waits, he found himself on the other side, back on American soil. He got back in his car and started the long trip home.

He wondered how Lindsey, his girlfriend, was doing. Her cat had recently died and she had not wanted to go anywhere. Some people thought it funny that she could get so upset over something that wasn't even human; but Calvin understood.

He certainly did love Lindsey, but he had begun to have conflicting thoughts about her; she seemed to be in the mentality that she always had to live within one block of her family. Her parents and two siblings would be moving to North Dakota later this year, and for some reason she didn't stand up and say she wanted to stay. Calvin had gotten the idea she feared her parents; he wasn't sure he could live with that.

He didn't know why he had decided to visit Mexico today; maybe it was just to get away from his life for a while. But that didn't matter now; it was time to sleep. He walked in his house and crawled into bed without undressing.

He was going to be late for work in the morning.