Chapter One
~ Glen Thornton ~
“I’m not goingto military school!” I kick the seatback where my father’s driving and arguing with my mother.
“Steven, at least let him finish the school year,” Mom takes my side, as she always does.
A horn blares and my father swerves, then shakes his fist. “People out here don’t know how to drive in the rain.”
“You should slow down,” my mother warns. “There’s a heavy storm front coming in.”
If you ask me, it’s already here. Sheets of water pour down the windshield, and the wiper blades can’t keep up. It’s kind of cool, like we’re weaving underwater in an express submarine.
My parents bicker about my dad’s driving and how late we are to his last minute campaign rally, and I go back to the shooter game on my phone.
My name is Glen Thornton. I’m twelve years old and an only child. I’d be lonely if I actually cared. My parents are always arguing. Mom says I have Asperger’s Syndrome, whereas Dad says I’m spoiled and need to be made a man, whatever that means.
I don’t agree with either of them. I prefer to think of myself as quirky and weird. I’m definitely too weird to be a hotshot senator’s son. I know he’s ashamed of me, and he blames Mom for my slow social development.
“Glen is enrolling in Marshall Military if it’s the last thing I do.” My father pounds the steering wheel. “End of discussion.”
A set of bright lights blind me, and the car lurches to the right, its tires swishing against the wet pavement.
“Holy cr—!”
Pow! The sound of crunching metal socks me in the gut. My mother screams, and the car lurches before flipping over the guardrail.
I’m thrown and tossed with every sickening bounce. I must be screaming, but I can’t hear myself. I couldn’t have been hurtling through space more than a minute, but when we finally stop, I’m upside down, hanging by my seatbelt, and my ears are ringing.
“Mom? Dad?” I bat at the deflating airbags and reach for the front seats.
I touch something wet and sticky and I recoil. Mom’s face is gone. I can’t see her eyes through the blood and twisted metal. Only her mouth and her white teeth.
“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!”
“Son, we have to go.” My dad is already outside of the car and reaches through the open window.
I fall when he disengages my seatbelt, and I land in a heap on the ceiling of the upside-down car.
“We have to help Mom.” I take a breath but gag on gasoline vapors flooding the passenger compartment.
“The gas tank’s leaking,” Dad shouts. His strong arms pull me, but I grab ahold of what’s left of Mom.
“Mommy,” I cry. “Help Mommy.”
“Gl-Glen.” Her mouth moves, but her teeth stay still. “Bye. And. One. One. Der. Bye and wonder.”
A force greater than I can fight drags me from the car.
Heat flashes behind me, and I smell smoke along with the hiss and splatter of raindrops turning to steam. The night sky fills with an orange glow, and a loud explosion hurtles me into a very dark place.
I can’t see. I can’t hear. I can’t feel.
“Mommy!” I think over and over, wondering if she can hear me.
“Bye and wonder. Bye and wonder. Bye and wonder.” The words loop through my head, over and over, endlessly dripping like bloody rain from my mother’s set of teeth.
Or was it “bye and wander?”
