It was late, real late. It was always this decision time. What should I do? Stay out all night? Go home? Crash at someone's house? No one really minded if I crashed at their house, but I felt bad doing that all the time. Sleeping outside wasn't great, but if things were bad enough at my house I would do it. But I had to go home sometimes. It was really this thought I had that things would be better, somehow. Like my folks would be cool and not like how they usually were. I didn't know, though. I walked around, the wind whipping around me, everything was closed, all the bars and all the pool halls and everything, every diner and pizza place. It was so late. I rubbed my hands together and flipped the collar of my jean jacket up and lit a cigarette for something to do. I had school tomorrow. Didn't look like I'd make it. If I ever fell asleep tonight I wouldn't wake up in time for school. What did it matter anyway?

I yawned as I passed the vacant lot. From here I could see my house and I could hear them fighting. I sighed. Guessed I wasn't going home. So I curled up on the bench and shivered, it was freezing. But I slept a little.

I woke up feeling all stiff from being so cold all night. I sat up and wondered what time it was. Fuck school. I wasn't gonna go. I lit up a cigarette and smoked it even though I'd been smoking too much lately. I'd have to cut it out a little. My mouth tasted like an ashtray. So I pitched the cigarette half smoked into the street. I headed toward my house, knowing that my parents would be passed out somewhere.

It was nine in the morning. School had started two hours ago. I wouldn't go in late. Then I'd get detention and I hated that. I got detention a lot when I ended up going. And my parents wouldn't notice anything. They didn't care.

My house was awful. Everything was all over the place from their fights, lamps overturned and empty liquor bottles everywhere. I stepped over the broken glass and the furniture on its side and headed toward the kitchen. I could hear my old man snoring away in the bedroom, dead to the world. Good.

There wasn't much to eat here, but there was cereal, no milk. I just ate the cereal dry. I peeked in my parents' bedroom. They were both there, looking more passed out than asleep. I narrowed my eyes at my father, thinking of all the times he's hurt me. And he'd hurt me again, there was no way to stop it. There was no way out. I thought of a way out, though. I looked around this run down house, this run down part of the city, everything bleak and hopeless. I thought of the war in Vietnam and how if it was still going on in two years I could get drafted for it. Maybe I could just kill myself. I could. There were plenty of ways to do it. I could slit my wrists, I could take a handful of sleeping pills with a pint of vodka. I could sit in a running car in a garage. I could get hit by a car. I could hang myself. But that last one made me shudder. Maybe I wouldn't kill myself just yet.

I flipped on the T.V. and watched it for awhile, but I was listening for the sounds of my folks getting up. They might yell at me for not being in school. Who knew? When I heard them getting up I took off. I just didn't feel like dealing with them getting mad about me skipping school or anything else they felt like getting mad about.

I headed to the DX station to hang out with Soda for a bit. He was there, cleaning the windshield of a car.

"Hey, Johnny, what's going on?" he said, and I shrugged and didn't say nothing.

"Skipped school, huh?" he said, moving onto another car and checking under the hood.

"Yeah. I overslept," I told him, taking a swig from the bottle of coke he gave me.

I took off after awhile. I just walked around a bit. It was okay to be by myself during school, since most of the socs were in school. They never skipped, either. You didn't get into a good college skipping school all the time. But maybe that didn't matter since they had all that money, anyway. They had all the breaks. I didn't care.