Page 80 of Johnny

I back away and close her bedroom door until it clicks. Then walk over to the packages, still

unopened, sitting on the coffee table.

Again… why did I buy her all this shit? Because it’s a whole lot of shit. Dozens of boxes.

It’s fuckin’ weird. And telling her to wear the dress was weird too.

But I didn’t mean anything by it.

Not the gesture or the thinly-veiled command.

She’s nothing to me.

I don’t trust her. Hell, trusting anyone in the Way is a death wish for sure. I don’t trust anyone in the

Way.

But I could like her. And it would be nice to trust her.

Maybe that’s why I bought her this stuff?

To make her like me? Want to trust me?

Dreams.

Ha.

They’re not as seductive as secrets, but they’re definitely more dangerous.

CHAPTER TEN - MEGAN

I never had the chance to be cool.

I never had the chance to be a kid, or rebel against authority as a teenager, or experiment with

different music, or hairstyles, or clothes, or drugs.

I never really had a chance to be me and I never really missed that until now.

In the beginning we are all children and we are all the same. We all start small, we all start

innocent, we all start empty. And then, as the months and years pass by, we are filled up with the

things our families give us.

But people aren’t equal. Not a single one of us is equal. The sameness we all start out with

disappears almost immediately and we are left at the mercy of our parents. Or in my case, the

employees of the island.

There is no such thing as ‘same’.

My life started with one man—my father. My mother is barely a side note in my life. Mothers…

they just don’t stick around the way fathers do in the world of the Way. I don’t really know what they

do with them. Kill them, move them, use them other places. I don’t know.