"Caleb... Caleb, wake up."
Jolted out of the depths of peaceful sleep, I found my eyes open almost before I had fully awoke. Sophia was standing beside me prodding my shoulder.
"Yeah," I murmured as I rubbed the side of my head.
"You fell asleep."
"Yeah, did you?"
"Yeah."
"What time is it?"
"We got plenty of time before school starts."
"OK." I rubbed my eyes. "You got any coffee?"
"Yeah, probably," she went through the dining room into the kitchen.
"Thanks," I said.
I took off the blanket, stood up, and stretched big. I hate getting up in the mornings, I couldn't be any more of a night person. As I relaxed my muscles, I heard Sophia yell "OH, SHIT!"
"What?"
Sophia came back running through the dining room. "My dad's home, I saw his car drive up through the window," she grabbed my arm, "Come on, you gotta go!"
Being shoved out I blurted "But I don't have a car, you drove me. Mine's still at school."
She didn't even pause to consider the situation. "Then we get to school a little earlier than usual."
She almost threw me into the door trying to open it. Hastily, we ran out to the car and Sophia pushed me against the side door as she ran around to the driver's side. She floundered for her keys, turned the car on, and sped out. I didn't even have time to think.
"Whoa, Sophia, take it down a notch, how early do you want us to be?"
"Caleb, my dad will kill me if he saw any male in the house. Even if I let the electrician in to check the meter he'd throw him into the furnace."
"But he's never around," I added. "How does he know?"
"Oh god, whenever he is around he's all like 'where did you go today, who did you see' and I'm like 'Dad, I'm eighteen, let me live my own life' and then he gets pissed off at me and starts yelling 'I'm the father, I make the money here, I'm paying for these things. I don't take this kind of yap from nobody' and then we insult each other back and forth until one of us leaves."
"I wish I knew what that's like. I can go without seeing my mom for weeks sometimes. She works almost the entire twenty-four hours of the day, sometimes longer."
"Isn't that illegal?"
"Guess not, least not in Texas."
There was a pause.
"We have so much time before we need to get to school. What are we going to do?"
An idea hit me. "Hey," I said softly. "Turn onto the highway."
"Why?"
"I've got something I want to show you."
"All right." At the next turn she got on the highway, "Where am I going?"
"I'll tell you." She drove for awhile, I told her only where to turn and such and she pulled into the parking lot of where I wanted be.
"The burned-down mall? Why the hell are here?"
"I'll show you." We walked up and I shook the handle to open the door.
"You can open that?"
"I used my mini-screwdriver on my key chain to open the padlock the first time." The doors opened and the mall expanded before us.
"Oh my god, look at all this."
"Just about everything's still here, they didn't take it after the fire."
"This is amazing, you got the mother lode right here. Everything in this mall is yours?"
"Pretty much. The owners never came back here to claim their stuff."
"How come?"
"I guess they didn't think it was profitable to come back for a lot of damaged and burnt merchandise."
We started walking down the halls.
"Is there still food here?"
"Some of the non-perishable stuff, but I usually bring my own food. I can reactivate the power whenever I want to use the microwave or anything. The first time I turned on the electricity the mall muzak kicked in, and I had to go though the building and disable each individual speaker cause I couldn't figure out how to turn it off."
"You have to wade through a lot of crap on the floor too," she commented, looking down at the debris and rubble she was stepping on.
"Yeah, that's a problem, but you can live with it. Over here, though, this is the little place I've made for myself." I led her into the Sunsoft Furniture store, my personal area of solitude.
"You dragged all this stuff over here by yourself," she said in disbelief.
"Yeah, took a long time. Especially the couch." I sat down on my fire-scarred sofa and she followed.
"It's nice. How often do you come here?"
"Just nights I can't sleep, I come here so I don't get bored. It's my home away from home."
"Yeah, I guess," she said softly, "You know, you're really not like Quentin or Jo, you're a lot different. Whenever we start to argue, you just sort of stay out of the way and watch us."
I paused. "Well, I'm just not much for conflict."
"But you have no problem defending yourself when you have to."
"Yeah, I don't fight a lot, but when I do, I kick ass."
"Yeah, with a little help from me," she smiled. "But, I mean, you're different from everybody else in the school too. Everyone's the energetic, happy jock in their own little gangs and cliques and whatever. You don't mind being a loner, you're not afraid of it."
I looked down. "Not always. Just because I'm fine being alone doesn't mean that I'm happy. Never belonging to anything, spending all my time in my house, it feels like I'm in prison or something. Sometimes it gets so bad that it actually physically hurts, like this sick pain in my stomach that just stays there always."
"It just stays there?"
"Yup."
"Always?"
"Always."
"Maybe this'll help."
She leaned forward and pressed her lips against mine. I tensed at first, but let myself relax as I opened my mouth slightly and let the warmth of her embrace envelop me. An incredible surge of contentment rose up from my soul and spread through my body. All the feelings I've ever had for her finally were released and come to fulfillment as she kissed me.
And we stayed there, on the couch, for what seemed like eternity.