What Happened Next

Two: Life Rafts On a Great Black Lake

Sally sat in her high chair at the table. She had mousy-blonde hair, like her brother, and a few small freckles dotted her cheeks.

A bowl of small, cut-up cubes of bacon and hash brown sat on the tray in front of her. The bowl had suckers underneath to stop her throwing it across the room. She swung her chubby legs happily as she stuffed the breakfast cubes into her mouth.

Dallas set the smart speaker down on the kitchen counter and then went to sit next to Sally.

'Wash your hands first, both of you!' Milo's mom said.

Jill Winters was a short woman, with curly blonde hair. She had a stubby little nose. Her summery dress was oversized and loose, and it danced as she circled the table, filling a round of glasses with OJ from the carton.

Milo rolled his eyes and then lathered up his hands with soap at the sink. His dad did the same. They toweled them dry and then came over to the table. Milo drew up his usual chair. His dad kissed Sally on the forehead and then drew up his.

The plates each had three rashers of well-done bacon, hash browns, two pancakes, and a small mound of scrambled eggs. They started to eat.

'I saw him go by,' Jill said.

'Who?' Dallas asked as he tucked in.

'That Rex. The demon boy that burnt our son.'

'He went by?' Dallas lifted his eyebrows. 'I would've kicked his ass.'

'Yes, well, his uncle did that. Very publicly.'

'Good,' Dallas grunted. He folded a pancake in half and bit into it.

As Milo sat, running his fork through his eggs but not bringing any to his lips, he thought back to his confrontation with Rex the year before.

It was third period, and Milo found himself sitting in Mrs. Gleeson's algebra class while she etched equations onto the whiteboard. He'd drunk a liter of Turtle Cola at lunch, and his bladder was starting to sting.

'Toilet break, Mrs. Gleeson?'

'Make it quick, Mr. Winters,' she said; her eyes not leaving the board.

Milo burst into the first floor toilets. He was already peeing onto the urinal cakes when he realized he wasn't alone in the room.

A silvery canopy of smoke hung just below the bar lights overhead. He turned to see one of the stall doors come open, and out came Rex and his two friends, Dean and Brandon. Whenever you saw Rex, you could safely bet that Dean and Brandon weren't too far away.

Dean was tall. He had a shaved head, large ears, and a lazy eye. All the kids at Masterson High called him 'the inbred', just never to his face.

Brandon was the stockiest of the three. He had two chins, and his shirt didn't quite cover his stomach. His hair was always plastered in gel, forming a crown of twisted, little spikes.

They'd been passing around a Gunslinger cigarette. Now it sat perched between Rex's lips. The three of them quickly surrounded Milo, circling him like chuckling hyenas.

'Winters, that is one tiny dick,' Rex said, as he clasped a hand on Milo's shoulder and peered over it, at the pink appendage.

Milo stopped peeing immediately. The last of the urine gurgled out of the trough. He quickly tucked it back into his pants, tugged up the zipper, and made to leave. But he couldn't leave. Rex's two friends had already formed a wall, and they towered above him, mean-faced and ugly.

'Where you going, Winters? To rat on us for smoking?' asked Dean.

'Nuh-no, just need to get back to class,' Milo said.